Viewpoints: National Narcissism Has Rendered U.S. Complacent In Face Of Crises; Is America Too Broken To Fight Virus?
Opinion writers and editorial pages delve into the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. response to the crisis and other health care topics.
The Washington Post:
The U.S. Is Falling Behind Its Peers. Americans — If Not Their Leaders — Are Starting To Notice.
Americans’ belief in American exceptionalism is declining — and that could be a good thing. National narcissism has rendered us complacent, even impotent, in the face of multiple crises. On our biggest societal problems, the United States seems to have given up. Not because we can’t do better — but because many political leaders, particularly Republicans, apparently don’t think we need to. Their faith that America is already Living Its Best Life means there’s no need to learn from peer countries, or even gauge our relative performance. (Catherine Rampell, 6/22)
The New York Times:
America Is Too Broken To Fight The Coronavirus
Graphs of the coronavirus curves in Britain, Canada, Germany and Italy look like mountains, with steep climbs up and then back down. The one for America shows a fast climb up to a plateau. For a while, the number of new cases in the U.S. was at least slowly declining. Now, according to The Times, it’s up a terrifying 22 percent over the last 14 days. As Politico reported on Monday, Italy’s coronavirus catastrophe once looked to Americans like a worst-case scenario. Today, it said, “America’s new per capita cases remain on par with Italy’s worst day — and show signs of rising further.” (Michelle Goldberg, 6/22)
The Washington Post:
Trump Has Raised The White Flag In The Fight Against Covid-19
In addition to being a poorly attended political flop featuring a defensive, bigoted and barely coherent harangue, President Trump’s recent campaign rally in Tulsa was a presidential declaration of surrender to covid-19. It is not possible to maintain that the United States is in a public health crisis while inviting thousands of people to yell spittle-flinging approval in an enclosed space. The provision of masks at the event was a transparent pretense. The Trump campaign must have known that the hardest core of Trump supporters would follow the example of their dear leader by going maskless. It has become a defining characteristic of MAGA macho to practice unprotected social intercourse. (Michael Gerson, 6/22)
Bloomberg:
Arizona, Florida, Texas Can Cut Covid Spread Without Lockdowns
Whether you call it a second wave or, more accurately, the easily foreseeable continuation of a pandemic, Covid-19 is still spreading unchecked in several American states. Florida, Arizona, Texas and other states are reporting record numbers of new cases. And many are neglecting to take steps that could prevent outbreaks from expanding into possibly unmanageable surges in Covid-19 cases and deaths. State leaders understandably resist the notion of issuing new stay-at-home orders, which would be painful, unpopular and at this point difficult to enforce. (Max Nisen, 6/22)
The New York Times:
A Plague Of Willful Ignorance
In the early 20th century the American South was ravaged by pellagra, a nasty disease that produced the “four Ds” — dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death. At first, pellagra’s nature was uncertain, but by 1915 Dr. Joseph Goldberger, a Hungarian immigrant employed by the federal government, had conclusively shown that it was caused by nutritional deficiencies associated with poverty, and especially with a corn-based diet. However, for decades many Southern citizens and politicians refused to accept this diagnosis, declaring either that the epidemic was a fiction created by Northerners to insult the South or that the nutritional theory was an attack on Southern culture. And deaths from pellagra continued to climb. Sound familiar? (Paul Krugman, 6/22)
Stat:
Challenge Trials Aren't The Answer To A Speedy Covid-19 Vaccine
More than 25,000 people have volunteered so far to be infected with the novel coronavirus through 1DaySooner, an online recruitment organization, as an aid in testing vaccine candidates to prevent Covid-19. These volunteers know that Covid-19 can cause suffering and even death yet they are stepping forward, willing to risk their lives, because some researchers and academics contend that such experiments in humans could accelerate vaccine development. (Michael Rosenblatt, 6/23)
The Wall Street Journal:
Lockdown States And The Jobless
The Labor Department on Friday reported jobless rates in May for the 50 states, and the news is the greater than usual variation. Some state economies are recovering much faster than others, and the worst performing tend to be those that have imposed the most severe lockdowns. The national jobless rate was 13.3% in May, but 10 states still have unemployment rates above 15%. From highest down, they are: Nevada (25.3%), Hawaii (22.6%), Michigan (21.2%), California, Rhode Island and Massachusetts (16.3%), Delaware (15.8%), Illinois and New Jersey (15.2%), and Washington state (15.1%). (6/21)
The Hill:
CEOs Need To Do More For COVID
Even as most businesses reopen across the nation, the economic recovery is anemic. As of June 10, consumer spending is down 11.3 percent compared to January 2020 levels. The lackluster performance is partly due to high unemployment, but customers’ fear of contracting the virus is also significant. At the end of May and early June, 70 percent of Texans reported avoiding some or all restaurants, even though the state allowed all restaurants to open at 50 percent capacity. (Vivian Ho, 6/22)
The Hill:
Get The 'F' Out Of The FDA
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way Americans think about public health. There’s little doubt that government officials, corporations and citizens need to do a much better job of working together — and some regulatory agencies are clearly getting in the way. As our Mercatus Center colleague, the noted economist Tyler Cowen, bluntly (but fairly) put it, “Our regulatory state is failing us.” When it comes to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the failure is so dramatic that it might be time for the agency to be dismantled, at least partially. (Patrick McLaughlin and Trace Mitchell, 6/22)
The Washington Post:
Colombia Planned Well For The Pandemic. The Region Is Reeling.
Colombian President Iván Duque began a lockdown in March that has spared his country some of the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. But that hasn’t helped his neighbors in hard-hit Latin America, and Duque says the lesson is that countries must work better together to prevent the spread of disease. “This pandemic could have been better managed by all of us if we had better multilateral coordination when the problem first started,” Duque said in a telephone interview Wednesday from Bogota. Countries in Latin America that resisted “draconian measures” like those taken in Colombia, hoping to protect their economies, have been hit hardest, he said. (David Ignatius, 6/22)
The Hill:
Another COVID-19 Victim: International Education
Whether COVID-19 is the “last nail” in the coffin of globalization, as Carmen Reinhart, the incoming chief economist of the World Bank, recently remarked, remains to be seen. One thing is more certain: The United States’ prominence in international education is likely to be COVID-19’s latest fatality. That will be yet another heartbreaking loss we will all share if we don’t act quickly. (Phyllis Pomerantz, 6/22)
Modern Healthcare:
Amid COVID-19, Telehealth May Help Advance Precision Medicine
Despite precision medicine being touted as the future of healthcare, many Americans are still not familiar with it. This is unfortunate as precision medicine can help identify which therapies will be most effective for individual patients based on their genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. Yet, cost and access remain two primary barriers to its adoption, as not all insurance plans cover these services and genetic testing is often done in academic settings or urban centers. (Fuki Hisama, 6/19)
Dallas Morning News:
At An Inflection Point, Texas Can Emerge As A Leader For The Nation’s Biggest Challenges
There are people marching in the streets, marking almost a month now of daily demonstrations to encourage America to deal with its history of injustice and inequality.Against the backdrop of all that, state and local governments are about to navigate a budgeting process that will undoubtedly be affected by this moment. Dallas ISD is moving forward with the largest bond election in its history — something voters might be hesitant to embrace this year. The city of Dallas is reviewing its public safety budget. And in a few months, state lawmakers will return to Austin to hash out new political maps for the House, Senate and Board of Education, among other important topics. (6/21)
Dallas Morning News:
DACA Texans Are Essential To Our COVID-19 Response And Economic Future
While the court ruling is a temporary win, it’s just that — temporary. We need DACA recipients’ economic and community contributions to become permanent. Please help us urge Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to pass legislation such as the American Dream and Promise Act. It’s what’s best for our state and our economy and we can’t afford to lose these workers, DACA recipients, especially now. (Chris Wallace, 6/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
What The Data Say About Police
I have led two starkly different lives—that of a Southern black boy who grew up without a mother and knows what it’s like to swallow the bitter pill of police brutality, and that of an economics nerd who believes in the power of data to inform effective policy. In 2015, after watching Walter Scott get gunned down, on video, by a North Charleston, S.C., police officer, I set out on a mission to quantify racial differences in police use of force. To my dismay, this work has been widely misrepresented and misused by people on both sides of the ideological aisle. It has been wrongly cited as evidence that there is no racism in policing, that football players have no right to kneel during the national anthem, and that the police should shoot black people more often. (Roland G. Fryer, 6/22)
The Washington Post:
Congress Must Reopen The Courts To People Whose Rights Are Violated By Police
As white supremacist terrorist violence raged across the South in April 1871, Congress adopted the Ku Klux Klan Act to protect African Americans. Its first section authorized those whose constitutional rights had been violated by anyone acting “under color of” state law to sue for damages. Still on the books, that provision is the legal basis of most police brutality claims today. (6/21)
The New York Times:
Trump Exploits The Coronavirus Pandemic To Hurt Immigrant Children
The Supreme Court decision last week protecting the DACA program was reason for celebration, but the Trump administration’s assault on immigration isn’t over. President Trump has already said he plans to keep pushing to end DACA. But more immediately, under the guise of the pandemic, the Trump administration is turning back unaccompanied children at the border in violation of federal law. In October 2017 the White House issued a wish list of immigration policies it wanted to carry out. First on the list was building the border wall. No. 2 was deporting children who were traveling on their own. That is quietly happening right now, with public health as the excuse. (Maria Woltjen, 6/22)
The Washington Post:
A Cruel HHS Regulation Shows The Battle For Transgender Rights Isn’t Over
When President Trump's administration proposed a rule last summer seeking to roll back non-discrimination protections for transgender people in health care, 155,966 public comments came through in response. Yet the final product released this month is nearly identical to the original — just as insidious and now, according to the precedent set by the Supreme Court last week, just as likely illegal. The Department of Health and Human Services regulation is part of a pattern: This White House has made it its mission to restrict transgender rights in areas from housing to education to, now, health. The Affordable Care Act, like many other laws, has a provision preventing discrimination on the basis of sex. (6/22)