Viewpoints: Health Care Lessons On Losing 100,000 American Lives To COVID; No Mask, No Social Distancing Will Push Death Rates Higher

The Washington Post: Nearly 100,000 Americans Have Died Of Covid-19. Here’s How We Can Honor Them. 
Patricia Cabello Dowd was 57, worked for 28 years as a senior quality manager at a Silicon Valley semiconductor manufacturer, was married for almost 25 years, had a daughter, exercised regularly and loved reading, scrapbooking, traveling, going to movies and wine tasting. She is believed to be the first known U.S. casualty of the novel coronavirus, dying Feb. 6 of a ruptured heart caused by her body’s struggle to defeat the virus. In the 15½ weeks since Ms. Dowd collapsed in her kitchen in San Jose, nearly 100,000 other people in this country have died of covid-19. The U.S. death toll on Monday afternoon stood at more than 97,000. (5/25)

Boston Globe: The Death Toll From Coronavirus Merits A National Day Of Mourning 
As a nation, as a people we have always found solace in the ritual of mourning and of remembrance: the candles, the church bells, the gentle words, the flowers left to mark a spot where a life ended. When tragedy strikes — a terror attack, a natural disaster, a lone gunman with his sights set on an elementary school filled with children — we take the time to grieve. So how to wrap our brains around the number of deaths wrought by this pandemic? (5/26)

Stat: We Need A National Holiday To Honor Health Policy 
Let’s create a holiday for health policy. Not now. But eventually. A holiday that celebrates that the worst of the pandemic is behind us and makes a space to mourn what we’ve lost. A holiday to talk about health care policy. It’s an unrepentantly dry topic. But it has earned a holiday. (Dubin, 5/24)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus: How The U.S. Can Mourn 100,000 American Deaths 
This week, the United States is set to pass another sorrowful milestone in the coronavirus pandemic: 100,000 dead from COVID-19. It bears repeating: One hundred thousand Americans dead since the first known coronavirus death in the U.S. in February. It’s a staggering figure, the equivalent of a Vacaville, Calif., or a Tuscaloosa, Ala., wiped out in just three months. It’s a number that’s no more or less meaningful than 99,337 or 100,152 to the people who died alone, hooked up to a ventilator in a hospital room or gasping for breath through fluid-filled lungs at home. And it’s certainly not as large a figure as it might have been but for widespread stay-at-home restrictions. (5/26)

USA Today: Trump's New American Exceptionalism: Nearly 100,000 Coronavirus Deaths
When our son was very young, we used to tell him he had won at miniature golf because he had the highest score. I think of that whenever I hear President Donald Trump use phrases like “amazingly well” and “badge of honor” to describe America’s response to the coronavirus. There is no disputing our high scores. We officially topped 1.6 million cases on Friday and now near the dreaded milestone of 100,000 deaths. (That’s 28% of the world’s COVID-19 deaths and 30% of its cases, though we account for only 4% of its people.) We’re heading toward 40 million unemployed and a 30% unemployment rate — a downturn “without modern precedent” and “significantly worse than any recession since World War II," in the words of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. (Jill Lawrence, 5/26)

The New York Times: My Mother Died Of The Coronavirus. It’s Time She Be Counted.
We recently received the death certificate for my mother, who died May 4 in an assisted-living facility near New York City. “Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome” was the primary cause. And the secondary — no surprise — was “suspected Covid-19.” The White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the states are debating the proper theoretical (and politically beneficial) way to tally Covid-19 deaths. One group, led by President Trump, feels the current tally is too high. The other, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, thinks it may be an underestimate. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 5/25)

CNN: Coronavirus Is Like A War -- But Not In The Way Trump Thinks 
This year, Memorial Day comes as the US quickly approaches 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, surpassing the number of US military members who died in Vietnam. Soon, it may approach the number of American soldiers who died in World War I. President Donald Trump has ordered the flags to be flown at half-staff at federal buildings and monuments through Memorial Day to honor the nation's victims of the virus. (Janice Blanchard, 5/25)

The Washington Post: An Indelible Image Of This Pandemic: Trump, Without A Mask, On A Golf Course 
It was the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin who supposedly said that one death was a tragedy, one million deaths a mere statistic. One hundred thousand deaths are difficult to get one’s mind around. The toll in our nation from covid-19, as it reaches that horrific milestone, must be seen as a catastrophe — and an indictment. The long Memorial Day weekend gave the pandemic an indelible visual image: President Trump, wearing a ball cap but no mask, enjoying himself on his Northern Virginia golf course. Last week, you will recall, Trump declared it was “essential” that Americans be able to spend Sunday at church services. He chose to head for the links instead. (Eugene Robinson, 5/25)

NBC News: Trump's Coronavirus Failures Have Caused The 'American Carnage' He Promised To End
In his inaugural address Jan. 20, 2017, President Donald Trump painted an unrecognizably dark picture of our country culminating with the bizarre declaration, "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now." Just over three years later, almost 100,000 people in the United States have died from the coronavirus outbreak and almost 39 million have had to file for unemployment, all on Trump's watch. Trump's incompetence and failure of leadership have ushered in an unprecedented public health crisis that continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of countless Americans and has disproportionately impacted vulnerable communities. (Halie Soifer, 5/26)

CNN: Trump Pursues His Political Obsessions As Stark 100,000 Coronavirus Deaths Landmark Looms 
Sometime in the next few days, the 100,000th American will succumb to Covid-19 in a pandemic that President Donald Trump once predicted would just "miraculously" disappear. Yet despite, and perhaps because of, his earlier cavalier attitude, Trump spent the long holiday weekend bemoaning everything but the tragic roll call of death -- while also finding time to claim he got "great reviews" for handling the crisis. (Stephen Collinson, 5/26)

The New York Times: Covid Dreams, Trump Nightmares 
My corona dreams are so crazy and vibrant, with star turns by politicians, celebrities, zombies and my late mother, that sometimes as I wake, I groggily think the virus that devoured the globe has to be a dystopian vision. Then, still sliding into consciousness, I muse that Donald Trump lumbering around the White House must have been a dream, too. How is it possible that this man is actually president? But the Trump carnival of dread, with its twin fixations on masks and unmasking, is all too real. (Maureen Dowd, 5/23)

Foreign Affairs: Sweden’s Herd Immunity Coronavirus Strategy Should Not Be The World’s
No country has been as simultaneously praised and criticized as Sweden has for its response to the novel coronavirus. Each day brings new discussion, much of it heated, of the merits of the Swedish model. In general, opinions fall into one of two camps: those saying the country has found a uniquely effective way to address the pandemic (as Nils Karlson, Charlotta Stern, and Daniel B. Klein have argued in these pages) and those saying it has found a uniquely reckless way of endangering the health of its people. What both sides agree on is that the Swedish experience holds lessons for others, either as a model to be emulated or as a cautionary tale. At the end of the day, however, the two camps are mostly talking past each other. (Josh Michaud, 5/20)