Viewpoints: Lessons For Reopening The Economy, What To Demand From Leaders; Businesses Need To Step Up In The Fight

Los Angeles Times: We Got Unlucky On COVID-19. The Wrong Man Is In Charge During A Once-In-A-Lifetime Crisis
At his most recent coronavirus briefing, President Trump said that determining when to reopen the country would be the most difficult decision he’d ever have to make. He’s right. The calculations are complex, the stakes high, the tradeoffs unimaginable. He’s stuck between forcing millions of people out of their jobs and causing a downturn that could rival the Great Depression — or authorizing the deaths, possibly, of tens of thousands more people by reopening too soon. If only such important decisions weren’t in the hands of a president so obviously unprepared and ill-equipped to make them.  (Nicholas Goldberg, 4/12)

The New York Times: Joe Biden: My Plan To Reopen America After The Coronavirus 
People across America are stepping up to the plate. Millions are performing essential services at great personal risk, and millions more are staying at home, away from friends and extended family. In return, they want the answer to a simple question: What is the plan to safely reopen America? So far, the Trump administration hasn’t supplied an answer. (Former Vice President Joe Biden, 4/12)

Fox News: Coronavirus Tipping Point – Trump Must Balance These Concerns To Safely Reopen The Country
With the NBA, Major League Baseball and even table tennis shut down, Monday Morning Quarterbacking is the sport du jour. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and so many others think they could manage the coronavirus pandemic better than President Trump, and they all have a plan to get us out of this mess. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden (or someone) penned an editorial for the New York Times entitled “Joe Biden: My Plan to Safely Reopen America.” In it he offers novel advice such as “we have to get the number of new cases of the disease down significantly.” Also: “If I were president, I would convene top experts from the private sector, industry by industry, to come up with new ideas on how to operate more safely.”I f nothing else, it is conceivable that four years of a Joe Biden presidency could put the country into a stupor. (Liz Peek, 4/13)

The Hill: Trump Is Posing A Public Health Threat That Must Be Addressed 
There is no more time to waste. Too many people are dying. Dozens of very smart citizens, even citizen representatives, have expressed enough concern that a response seems to be in order. These are the same mental health concerns we had from the beginning, and the coronavirus pandemic has only deepened these concerns. (Dr. Bandy Lee, 4/12)

The Wall Street Journal: The Employer Will Test You Now
The intense measures and restrictions to combat Covid-19 are a necessary hardship to prevent a wider and more devastating epidemic. But even after the epidemic subsides, the virus will remain a threat until there is an effective vaccine. America needs a plan to reduce that threat, and business leaders can play a big part. As employees return to work, perhaps as early as May, employers can offer screening at their place of business. Rapid diagnosis and containment will be a critical part of limiting spread. Bringing these activities into the workplace would make them more widespread and routine, and can be done in conjunction with efforts to expand testing throughout the health-care system. People who have signs of respiratory illness should see a doctor. But many Covid-19 patients have mild or no symptoms. Without prompt testing to differentiate mild colds from the novel coronavirus, people could spread the virus unknowingly. Portable and relatively inexpensive testing platforms can be brought to businesses in mobile vans or deployed on-site and administered by professionals. Testing companies are ramping up supply, and businesses can start placing orders now. (Scott Gottlieb and Lauren Silvis, 4/12)

CNN: Why The US Has The World's Highest Number Of Covid-19 Deaths
The US now has the world's highest number of deaths from Covid-19, with at least 21,692 losing their lives to the virus as of Sunday afternoon. Americans will continue to die in large numbers until our country mounts a coherent response to the epidemic. President Donald Trump has failed. The US still lacks even a basic plan for controlling the epidemic and restarting the economy. (Jeffrey Sachs, 4/12)

The Wall Street Journal: It’s Still America, Virus Or Not
Americans by and large have willingly obeyed the government’s shelter-in-place and social-distancing orders, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for some public officials. They’re indulging their inner bully in ways that over time will erode public support for behavior that can reduce the spread of the coronavirus. One problem is excessive enforcement. Some state and local officials tasked with implementing shelter-at-home orders appear either to misunderstand the edicts they are meant to carry out or to suffer from a lack of discernment. Police officers in Brighton, Colo., handcuffed a man for playing with his wife and six-year-old daughter on a nearly empty softball field—though the order police claimed he had violated barred only groups of five or more. (4/12)

The Hill: COVID-19 Pandemic Presents An Opportunity To Refresh US Foreign Policy 
Americans are doing a lot of soul-searching amid the COVID-19 pandemic, questioning everything from public health systems and political polarization to U.S. economic resilience. It seems like everything is on the table, except how the United States formulates, implements and communicates its relations with allies and competitors. In response to this life-altering health crisis, U.S. foreign policy must change too. (Judd Devermont, 4/12)

The New York Times: Restarting America Means People Will Die. So When Do We Do It?
The politics of the coronavirus have made it seem indecent to talk about the future. As President Trump has flirted with reopening America quickly — saying in late March that he’d like to see “packed churches” on Easter and returning to the theme days ago with “we cannot let this continue” — public-health experts have felt compelled to call out the dangers. Many Americans have responded by rejecting as monstrous the whole idea of any trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy. And in the near term, it’s true that those two goals align: For the sake of both, it’s imperative to keep businesses shuttered and people in their homes as much as possible. (4/10)

CNN: How Prepping For Pandemics Can Lead To Big Economic Returns
President Donald Trump appears to have wavered on last month's goal to have the US "opened up and just raring to go by Easter" as well as his warning on Twitter back then that "WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF..." I agree that the economic costs of the Covid-19 pandemic are massive and growing. But the social and human costs are even higher and unequally distributed, hitting the vulnerable the most. (Jennifer Prah Ruger, 4/11)

Stat: Unreported Clinical Trial Results: Lost Opportunities For FDA, NIH
Americans are learning a thing or two about clinical trials as they watch the tense, televised push-pull between President Trump promoting a drug combination for Covid-19 based on skimpy, preliminary clinical trial data and Dr. Anthony Fauci promoting caution about the combination. Fortunately, the federal government provides a handy resource for navigating such disputes, ClinicalTrials.gov, where drug makers and other sponsors of clinical trials must report their results. The Food and Drug Administration bases its decisions largely on the results of such clinical trials, which reveal how effective or safe a drug or device is compared to existing options or placebos. But that decision-making machinery can be thrown off when trial sponsors don’t have to share the results of all of their trials. (Christoper Morten, Peter G. Lurie and Charles Seife, 4/13)