Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Lessons On Low Incomes, Who's Most Likely To Die From COVID; WHO's Mistakes With China Cost Many Lives
The New York Times: Who Is Most Likely To Die From The Coronavirus?
Months into the coronavirus pandemic, scientists have identified some clear patterns in which people who suffer from Covid-19 are most likely to die. Pre-existing medical conditions are one important factor. As of June 3, roughly nine in ten New Yorkers and Chicagoans who died of Covid-19 suffered from underlying chronic conditions. But those underlying conditions don’t affect everyone equally. They are much more prevalent among lower-income workers, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kidney disease and diabetes, for example, among the poorest 10 percent of New Yorkers are estimated to be more that 40 percent higher than the median rate. (Yaryna Serkez, 6/4)
The Wall Street Journal: How WHO Really Feels About China
International agencies like the World Health Organization often praise misbehaving regimes publicly while pushing for improvement privately. Bureaucrats say this is the best way to get cooperation, but the Covid-19 outbreak shows how this undermines an agency’s credibility. “The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, and beyond words,” WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus declared on Jan. 30 after returning from Beijing. “I left in absolutely no doubt about China’s commitment to transparency.” While Dr. Tedros was gushing in public, WHO officials were privately fretting about Beijing’s secrecy—and its deadly consequences. (6/3)
The Washington Post: Trump Irresponsibly Abandons The WHO While The Pandemic Surges In Less Developed Nations
The Coronavirus pandemic is surging into the less developed parts of the world, nations with few intensive care beds, scarce personal protective equipment, little or no testing capability, dense living conditions and weak governance. The prospects for health care are grim, as are the possible collateral effects: schools disrupted, routine immunizations postponed, hunger and extreme poverty spreading. For now, Latin America has become the epicenter of the disease. Cases in Brazil are surging, in part because President Jair Bolsonaro has opposed lockdowns and rejected advice from public health experts. Health-care systems in poor regions are collapsing. Cases are also shooting up in Peru and remain high in Chile and Argentina. (6/3)
The Wall Street Journal: Save Your Kids From Covid’s Digital Deluge
Parents used to feel guilty when our children overused phones and tablets. But during Covid-19, experts gave us a pass. We’ve been told that in extraordinary times, it’s OK to be more lenient. Social media may be just the thing to connect your teen to her friends. These words of reassurance eased our consciences and helped us make sense of the new world of working from home, distance learning and being cooped up. Going online for absurd lengths of time was a stopgap measure to keep us sane. Teens have been surfing the night shift, sleeping away the day. Younger kids are glued to YouTube, and tweens are getting social media accounts and watching crazy amounts of TikTok. (Arlene Pellicane, 6/3)
The Washington Post: The Strange New Quiet In New York Emergency Rooms
Craig Spencer is director of global health in emergency medicine at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. When you walk into the emergency room now, there is silence. It’s not just fewer patients. Fewer monitors. Fewer dying. There is an actual emptiness. The space seems the same. So do the colleagues you see. And all the patients look like they did before this pandemic upended our lives. But there’s an unshakable unease. Something isn’t right. Something is missing. We don’t talk about it much. Maybe we are all trying to forget? (Craig Spencer, 6/2)
Boston Globe: As Telemedicine Takes Hold, What Are Doctors Like Me Missing?
Despite its limitations, telehealth is here to stay, and there are some benefits. There’s a lot to learn from seeing a family’s home environment, and the endorsement of my treatment plan by what I call “the voice of God” — the grandmother speaking off-camera — is invaluable. Virtual appointments work for simple health ailments and are convenient for working parents or those recovering from childbirth or surgery. But continuing this service will require more fiscal support for innovative measures such as our vaccine van; infant care videos translated into many languages; more support staff such as social workers and patient navigators with diverse language capabilities; and appropriate reimbursement from insurers for the novel, but not lesser, clinical management involved. Cyndie Hatcher, 6/3)
The Wall Street Journal: The Lancet, HCL And Trump
One of the tragedies of the Trump era is how opposition to the President has caused some institutions to drop their standards. The FBI’s FISA warrant abuse is one example, and the overt media “resistance” is another. Now it may have contaminated the fight against Covid-19. (6/3)
The Washington Post: In France’s Coronavirus Crisis, The Undocumented Are Being Left Behind
The coronavirus crisis has upended France’s political establishment. As a public health emergency evolves into what looks set to be a grueling recession, President Emmanuel Macron has seen his recent bump in approval slip, and his party’s high brass is openly preparing a change of tack. Pro-business reform appears off the table — at least for now — and a more socially conscious agenda has taken its place.It may not last long, but the shift is real: The government has launched talks with labor unions over how to improve the health sector, it’s expected to unveil new environmental measures, and it may even scrap unpopular pension reforms that sparked one of the longest strike movements in French history. But one absence from the national conversation is especially glaring: the lack of support for undocumented immigrants. (Cole Stangler, 6/3)
The Washington Post: Cities Will Make A Comeback After The Coronavirus. They Almost Always Do.
In the long run, the cities will almost certainly bounce back, because in the long run, the cities always seem to bounce back. No matter how unlikely that may seem at the moment. Rome endured through centuries of plague and sackings, even though for some time its population diminished to the point where goats were grazed and vineyards planted inside the Aurelian walls. It’s now bigger than ever. Individual cities can fall, or even vanish, but over the course of human history, The City has only grown, despite the predictions of countless generations of pastoral fantasists. (Megan McArdle, 6/3)
San Francisco Chronicle: What New York, San Francisco Should Learn From Each Other’s Pandemic Response
Where New York can learn from San Francisco is the way it started to tap back into its progressive core. It was the first major city to offer free testing to all residents and essential workers. It instituted the first rent relief protocols and suspended evictions. It was the first to mandate protections to some gig workers who have become a lifeline to those sheltering in place. Recognizing jails would be prone to outbreaks, it cut its prisoner population by nearly half. (Cary McClelland, 6/4)
