Viewpoints: It’s Time To Update Covid PPE Rules; End Of Pandemic Means Loss Of Medicaid Coverage For Many

Stat: It's Past Time To Change Personal Protective Equipment Guidelines 
Every time we enter a Covid patient’s room, we first don gloves, and a disposable gown. When we come out of the room, we remove that gear and put it in one of the many bulging disposal bags lining the halls of our hospital. We go through the same process for the next patient, as do health care workers across the country and around the world. It would not be uncommon for this to happen 30 times a day for each patient as nurses, physicians, aids, and others provide care. Multiply our actions by the thousands of health care workers who see patients every day, and the nearly 800 days since Covid-19 was declared a public health emergency in the U.S. and around the world, and the scope of the disposal problem becomes huge. (Bruce Farber and Aradhana Khameraj, 3/4)

The Washington Post: An Unwelcome Exception To Returning To Pre-Pandemic 'Normal’ 
No more masking, school closures, social distancing — there are many things to celebrate as we transition into a new phase of covid-19 and, hopefully, return to some pre-pandemic normal. But the end of the public health emergency could harm millions of Americans in a way that’s received relatively little attention. I’m referring to the Great Medicaid Purge, which could come as soon as this summer. (Catherine Rampell, 3/3)

The New York Times: What Will Our Covid Future Look Like?
Omicron cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been substantially declining across the United States for more than a month. In response, governors and mayors are rolling back restrictions like mask mandates and vaccine passports. Many wonder whether this period of low cases and decreasing demand on hospitals is a turning point in the pandemic or is simply a lull before a new variant causes another dangerous surge. (Jeffrey Shaman, 3/4)

The Washington Post: Covid Isn’t Over, But It’s Over For Me 
The day my mother called to tell me she had tested positive, I realized that, for me, covid was over. Practically speaking, of course, it was not. This was late January, when cases were up in Albany County, N.Y. — double the January before — and we were operating under an emergency mask mandate. Augusta County, Va., where my parents live, was weathering a similar surge: twice as many cases as the same time last year. (Kate Cohen, 3/3)

The Boston Globe: The Doctor Poets Of COVID 
Medicine and poetry have never been strangers. John Keats trained as a doctor; Walt Whitman worked as a nurse during the Civil War; and physician William Carlos Williams won the first National Book Award for Poetry, in 1950, as well as a Pulitzer Prize in 1963. The New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which focuses on health care, underwrites the distribution of the anthology “On Doctoring,” co-edited by the physician-poet John Stone, to every first-year medical student in the country. (Alex Beam, 3/4)

Miami Herald: FL DeSantis Has A COVID Mask Complex Not Even A Wife Can Fix 
Don’t listen to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a follower of debunked science. Keep that mask on indoors when social distancing isn’t possible and it’s prudent to do so, Floridians. DeSantis has a masking complex not even a wife can fix.“ The political science show cannot go on,” an arrogant and defiant DeSantis tweeted Thursday, doubling down on his outrageous, mocking anti-mask behavior in Tampa the day before. “It’s curtain call for COVID theater,” he repeated. But ask yourselves: How can a man, whose wife was being treated for cancer, thoughtlessly walk up to strangers — active high school students at that — and bully them into taking off the masks protecting them and others from COVID-19 infection? (Fabiola Santiago, 3/3)