Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Leaders Need To 'Stop Lying' To Us About The Seriousness Of Coronavirus; Top Politicians In U.S., China Looking For Victories
Fox News: Tucker Carlson: The Coronavirus Will Get Worse -- Our Leaders Need To Stop Lying About That
Nobody wants to be manipulated by a corrupt media establishment -- and it is corrupt. And there's an election coming up. Best not to say anything that might help the other side. We get it. But they're wrong. The Chinese coronavirus is a major event. It will affect your life. And by the way, it's definitely not just the flu. In a typical year, the flu in this country has a mortality rate of about one in a thousand. The overall death rate for this virus, by contrast, is as high as 3.4 percent. That's 34 times deadlier. (Tucker Carlson, 3/11)
The Washington Post: Trump And Xi Both Hunt For Coronavirus Victories
The global crisis sparked by the spread of the coronavirus is fraying the already strained ties between the United States and China. In Washington, a coterie of top Republican officials and right-wing media pundits keep qualifying the epidemic as a “Chinese” or “Wuhan” virus. Not surprisingly, Beijing officials have reacted angrily to U.S. attempts to “stigmatize” their country. Meanwhile, on the Chinese Internet, conspiracy theories proliferate about the origin of the disease, including some pinning it all on the dastardly Americans. (Ishaan Tharoor, 3/11)
The Wall Street Journal: Why A Pandemic Is Always Political
People who follow politics for a living are voicing shock—shock!—that the coronavirus outbreak has been politicized. “Is Even the Coronavirus Partisan?” asked a recent FiveThirtyEight podcast. Jeez Louise, folks, of course it is. And here’s an argument for why it ought to be. Making political hay of health scares is a commonplace activity that’s also unfailingly bipartisan. Democrats complained that President George W. Bush was too slow in responding to the West Nile virus and SARS outbreaks that occurred in his first term, and talking points to that effect became part of John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. (Jason L. Riley, 3/10)
The Hill: How Politics Infected America's First Epidemic And Cost Lives
Politics has infected discussion of the novel coronavirus, especially on social media. When Democratic Denver City Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca expressed solidarity with this tweet: “For the record, if I do get the coronavirus I’m attending every MAGA rally I can," she received a swift rebuke. "The depths to which Democrats are sinking to politicize coronavirus is disgusting," Republican National Committee Rapid Response Director Steve Guest responded. CdeBaca clarified her comment as sarcasm. Given today's polarized political climate and lack of impulse control on social media, it's easy to assume that this is the first time politics has tainted a public health crisis. In fact, politics infected America's first epidemic and cost lives. (Jane Hampton Cook, 3/10)
The New York Times: Joe Biden Beat Bernie Sanders. But So Did The Pandemic.
There are two stories about how Joe Biden’s campaign, given up for dead two weeks ago, stormed back to take control of the Democratic primary, effectively burying the Bernie Sanders movement that had briefly seemed poised for an insurgent victory. One is for the pundits; the other, I suspect, is for the history books. The pundit’s story analyzes the Democratic primary in terms of the Sanders campaign’s strategy, which seemed to assume that it was possible to win the party’s nomination as Donald Trump won the G.O.P. nomination in 2016 — as a plurality candidate in a divided field who gradually brings the reluctant majority along when no other candidate can consolidate a larger coalition. (Ross Douthat, 3/11)
The New York Times: Everyone’s A Socialist In A Pandemic
All it took was a global epidemic of potentially unprecedented scale and severity and suddenly it’s like we’re turning into Denmark over here. In the last few days, a parade of American companies that had long resisted providing humane and necessary benefits to their workers abruptly changed their minds, announcing plans to pay and protect even their lowest-rung employees harmed by the ravages of the coronavirus. (Farhad Manjoo, 3/11)
NBC News: Coronavirus In The Trump Era Proves Nationalism's Worse Than Globalism For World
The coronavirus epidemic is an economic calamity of historical proportions. The stock-market collapse Monday rivaled the worst days of the 2008 financial crisis. Oil prices dropped faster than at any time since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The yield on U.S. bonds approached zero percent, the lowest ever. It needn't have happened, not at this scale. (Kevin Carmichael, 3/11)
The Washington Post: GOP Congressman — Who Warned Trump About Pandemics — Offers Pointed Criticism Of Proposed CDC Cuts
This was the day Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has been warning about — and essentially predicted. Back in 2017, when the Trump administration first proposed steep cuts to programs that handle disease outbreaks, Cole said, “I promise you the president is much more likely in his term to have a deal with a pandemic than an act of terrorism. I hope he doesn’t have to deal with either one, but you have to be ready to deal with both.” (Aaron Blake, 3/10)
