Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Has Pride Stopped U.S., England From Learning How To Stop COVID?
The Washington Post: American Exceptionalism Has Become A Hazard To Our Health
What explains why some countries have handled the covid-19 pandemic well and others have done poorly? It’s a complicated question, but if we look at the place that has arguably had the greatest success, the answer is failure. Taiwan gets the gold medal for its coronavirus strategy. It has close ties with mainland China, where the disease originated, receiving almost 3 million visitors from there in a typical year. It is a densely populated land, and Taipei, the capital city, has crowded public transit. And yet, with a population of nearly 24 million, Taiwan has had just seven deaths. New York state, with a smaller population, has had 33,000. Taiwan’s greatest asset turns out to be its failed response to a pandemic in 2003, SARS, which taught it many important lessons. (Fareed Zakaria, 9/17)
The Wall Street Journal: Covid Puts The ‘I’ In The High Holy Days
Future historians will look back on this time and wonder how it came to be that Britain and America, the two greatest defenders of liberty in the 20th century, subsequently abandoned the foundational belief that society is held together by a covenant that commits everyone to collective responsibility for the common good. In its place, they substituted one of the most absurd ideas ever entertained by intelligent minds, that morality is whatever anyone chooses it to be. The “I” won over the “we.” Self-interest triumphed over the common good. The result couldn’t be other than what it is: good for the winners, very bad for the losers, disastrous for families, ruinous for communities, and disintegrative of a sense of shared belonging that transcends economic and political differences. No wonder society has fissured. (Jonathan Sacks, 9/17)
CNN: Rosh Hashanah: Finding Meaning Amid A Pandemic
Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once said, "When we are no longer able to change a situation... we are challenged to change ourselves." This had been a theme of the Jewish people long before Frankl so beautifully articulated it, and the events of 2020 have proven it so once again. (Joshua M. Davidson, 9/17)
Nature: Study The Role Of Hubris In Nations’ COVID-19 Response
Just last year, the United States was considered one of the countries best equipped to confront a virus such as SARS-CoV-2. Others included the United Kingdom, Brazil and Chile — nations ranked by the comprehensive Global Health Security (GHS) Index as being among the world’s most prepared. Yet since the pandemic began, these countries have delivered some of the worst outcomes. The United States leads the world in both total cases and total deaths; Brazil’s fatalities are second. Chile’s per-capita cumulative case rate is the second-highest in Latin America, and the United Kingdom has the highest rate of COVID-19 deaths per capita of all the G7 countries. What might explain these staggering failures? One thing these countries have in common is ‘exceptionalism’ — a view of themselves as outliers, in some way distinct from other nations. (Martha Lincoln, 9/15)
The New York Times: What Is It With Trump And Face Masks?
In other words, we know what works. Which makes it both bizarre and frightening that Donald Trump has apparently decided to spend the final weeks of his re-election campaign deriding and discouraging mask-wearing and other anti-pandemic precautions. Trump’s behavior on this and other issues is sometimes described as a rejection of science, which is true as far as it goes. (Paul Krugman, 9/17)
The Washington Post: Olivia Troye's Devastating Account Of Trump's Coronavirus Response
President Trump faces reelection in about a month and half, with his coronavirus response dragging him down and a growing number of former aides and allies speaking out against him in extraordinary ways. But none of them combines those two things like the latest person to speak out, which makes her easily one of the most significant witnesses to date. Olivia Troye is Vice President Pence’s recently departed homeland security adviser, and as The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reports, she’s stepping forward to make her case against Trump. She does so from a unique vantage point: She was involved in many of the White House’s internal discussions on the coronavirus pandemic. (Aaron Blake, 9/17)
Bloomberg: Trump Bullies The CDC, FDA And HHS To Rush A Vaccine
We are still mired in a pandemic. A new record for daily cases globally — 307,930 — was set on Sunday. At least 196,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, and winter is coming. Yet the guidance from leading federal officials overseeing the push for a vaccine continues to be dangerously inconsistent. On Wednesday, Paul Mango, the deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Bloomberg News that the Food and Drug Administration will “approve shots before the end of the year.” That timetable, he said, along with existing contracts with pharmaceutical companies to deliver adequate supplies, means that the government can “vaccinate every American before the end of first-quarter 2021.”Really? (Timothy L. O'Brien, 9/17)
Axios: Biden Beats Trump On Health Care, But It's Not The Top Issue
Swing voters in three swing states prefer Joe Biden over President Trump on health care and the coronavirus — but those aren't their most important issues, according to the latest KFF-Cook Political Report poll. The big picture: The economy is the most important issue to these voters, and they give the advantage there to Trump. But Biden dominates the next tier of issues in this poll of swing voters in Arizona, Florida and North Carolina. (Drew Altman, 9/17)
The Wall Street Journal: Europe’s Covid Lockdown Lessons
America’s Democrats often say they want to emulate Europe, and given their fondness for coronavirus lockdowns we can only hope this time they mean it. Parts of Europe, like parts of the U.S., are experiencing surges in new Covid-19 cases. Unlike many in the U.S., European leaders have learned from their earlier experiences with the virus. The uptick in cases, as measured by positive tests, is noticeable across the Continent—with one exception we’ll come to in a moment. The renewed outbreak is worst in Spain and France, whose seven-day rolling average of new cases per million residents are about 215 and 130, respectively, from lows of about eight during the June lull. The rise elsewhere is less severe but still pronounced. Germany is up to 20 or so cases per million residents, from four earlier in the summer. (9/17)
