Viewpoints: Lessons On Opening Classrooms; Pros, Cons Of Pre-Vaccine Treatments

The Wall Street Journal: School-Opening Extortion
For most Americans the coronavirus is a scourge. But teachers unions seem to think it’s also an opportunity—to squeeze more money from taxpayers and put their private and public charter school competition out of business. That’s the only way to read the extraordinary effort by national and local union leaders to keep their members from returning to the classroom. (8/3)

The Advocate: Pre-K Teacher In New Orleans: These Things Have To Happen Before New Orleans Schools Open
I am writing as a current teacher in New Orleans. I am urging the School Board to make Orleans the parish where students and teachers don’t die of COVID-19.This week, I signed a petition with three demands: 1) During virtual learning and professional development, in-person attendance must be optional for all teachers and staff. 2) Schools cannot resume in-person instruction until cases in Orleans Parish decrease to 5% positive for a seven-day cycle and there are 50 or fewer cases for seven consecutive days. 3) Any plan for in-person school must include regular and prioritized testing for all school staff. (Shannon Brown, 8/3)

The Washington Post: Blood Plasma Might Be The Covid-19 Treatment We Need
President Trump last week called on those who have recovered from covid-19 to donate their blood plasma as a potential treatment for help stem the pandemic. More work has yet to be done to demonstrate that such a therapy is safe and effective, but if so, it could help millions of patients with the novel coronavirus both here and abroad. The United States could desperately use such a treatment. The nation continues to struggle with high rates of hospitalizations and tragic deaths. While vaccine development continues, it’s important to advance every promising treatment option to improve the odds for those who become sick.Blood plasma — also known as convalescent plasma — has been used as a therapy for infectious diseases for a century, including against the flu in 1918 as well as SARS, Ebola, meningitis and measles. While it doesn’t work for all infections, the idea is to use one person’s successful defense system of antibodies to bolster the immune response of a newly infected person. (Former FDA Commissioners Mark McClellan, Margaret Hamburg, Robert Califf and Scott Gottlieb, 8/3)

CNN: The Other Way To Hit Back At Covid-19  
Hydroxychloroquine is back! And this time it has brought not only hot-aired discussion but space aliens and demon sperm! Yes, it's true, the supposed miracle cure for Covid-19 that is really no cure at all, is all over the news again, thanks to President Donald Trump and a group of true believers, who are re-upping their endorsement of its all-around wonderfulness. Though distracting, the attention hydroxychloroquine is drawing raises a different but very important issue: whatever happened to the relentless US search for a Covid-19 cure? (Kent Sepkowitz, 8/3)

Cincinnati Enquirer: COVID-19 Makes Routine Vaccinations More Important
As Americans eagerly anticipate a COVID-19 vaccine, there's troubling new evidence that they're failing to get inoculated against other infectious diseases. To get vaccination rates back where they need to be, policymakers must remind the public of the importance of routine immunizations and remove the regulatory barriers that make it difficult for people to get their shots. (Sally Pipes, 8/3)

The New York Times: Will Covid-19 Patients In Rural Areas Get The Care They Need?
In a large study that was recently published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, a team of researchers examined hospital mortality rates in more than 2,200 critically ill coronavirus patients in 65 hospitals throughout the country. Their findings? Patients admitted to hospitals with fewer than 50 I.C.U. beds — smaller hospitals — were more than three times more likely to die than patients admitted to larger hospitals. Though they were not able to study factors like staffing and hospital strain, these likely contributed. In fact, a recent investigative piece in The Times examined mortality data for hospitals in New York City — and found that at the peak of the pandemic, patients at some community hospitals (with lower staffing and worse equipment) were three times more likely to die as patients in medical centers in the wealthiest areas. (Daniela J. Lamas, 8/4)

Stat: Easing The Long-Term Stress-Related Toll Of Covid-19 On Children 
The world is learning more about the uncommon but puzzling ways Covid-19 can show up in kids, keeping worried parents on the lookout for symptoms of the disease. We should also be concerned about how toxic stress brought on by the pandemic, or made worse by it, will affect children’s developing brains and bodies and their future health. (Nadine Burke Harris, 8/4)

The Hill: We Are Failing With COVID, Let's Not Fail On Mental Health   
If there ever was a time for our nation to embrace true reform for mental health and addiction, now is that time. But like all significant efforts for change, it takes courage, leadership, and vision. (Benjamin F. Miller, 8/2)

KQED: Who Pays The True Cost Of Dining Out During A Pandemic? 
To enjoy dining out amid a pandemic, you’d have to excise from your brain the fact that brown and Black people, who represent over 80% of the state’s farm and restaurant workforce, are dying at disproportionately higher rates from the virus. Behind those asymmetrical figures is an increased exposure to the virus unmitigated by social safety nets. As epidemiologist and physician Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones put it, race isn’t a risk factor, racism is. If you muffle the inequities the pandemic has made so sharp, then you can task a largely unprotected workforce to feed your escapist fantasies of normalcy, no matter the cost to their lives. (Ruth Gebreyesus, 8/3)

Boston Globe: At Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, Moral Accountability Lingers For Charlie Baker 
Does it matter who hired Bennett Walsh to run the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where at least 76 residents died of COVID-19 due to catastrophic management decisions? If full accountability for those dead veterans matters — then yes, it does matter who hired Walsh. That’s why Governor Charlie Baker has tried to put more than social distance between himself and Walsh. But unlike other designated fall guys, Walsh isn’t making it easy. He went to court, first trying to bar the facility’s board of trustees from firing him, and then arguing that a June 24 letter of termination signed by the governor and Marylou Sudders, Baker’s secretary of health and human services, is invalid, because only the Soldiers’ Home board has the power to do that. (Joan Vennochi, 8/3)

The New York Times: Using Telemedicine To Treat Opioid Addiction 
Covid-19 has made life much harder for people with opioid addiction. But the response to the virus has also revealed a way forward that could radically expand effective treatment and reduce overdose deaths. Until now, getting effective treatment depended on where you lived. Forty percent of American counties — much of Appalachia, for example — have no providers licensed to prescribe buprenorphine, the most successful treatment so far. But the pandemic has made it possible to see a licensed provider from home, and that could make buprenorphine treatment available anywhere. (Tina Rosenberg, 8/4)

The Hill: In Black Communities, Changing How We Treat Diabetes Is Imperative
Perhaps one silver lining of the pandemic is that many Americans finally realize that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief. But even if the president loses in the fall, we cannot allow that to be the only way we improve our nation in response to the pandemic... COVID-19 has brought to light the many disparities in healthcare treatment for Black and brown people in the United States. (Former Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), 8/3)