Viewpoints: U.S. Is Like A Champion Runner Who Forgot To Tie His Shoes; Trump’s Obsession With Malaria Drug Indicative Of Larger Problem

Stat: The U.S. Gets A D- In The Coronavirus Fight. It’s Fixable
What’s missing is an appreciation of the value of data, and humanity’s mastery of it, as the one weapon we have against an out-of-control virus. The desire to ignore the epidemic and the one to embrace would-be treatments before they’re proven boils down to the same thing: the desire to believe that you can force the world into being fixed without understanding it first. There is no debate that medicines are needed, but we need to make sure we find the right ones. (Matthew Herper, 4/7)

The Washington Post: Hydroxychloroquine Explains Why Trump Should Not Be President
“What do I know? I’m not a doctor.” It’s rare that President Trump speaks with even that level of clarity. Unfortunately, this observation came Sunday amid an avalanche of nonsense about the anti-malaria drug that he believes to be a magic bullet against covid-19. It is remarkable how a tongue-twisting word few of us were familiar with a month ago — hydroxychloroquine — has suddenly come to represent so many of the reasons Trump should not be president, especially during a time of crisis. (Eugene Robinson, 4/6)

The Washington Post: What An Infectious Disease Specialist Learned About The Virus — From Getting It 
Nearly a month ago, on March 12, I was taking the train from Boston to New York City where I was meeting my son, Harry, a physician in Manhattan, for a long drive back to Alabama. On the train, I wrote an op-ed for the Birmingham News warning that the coronavirus was coming to our region and that we were not ready. The piece was published the next day. When we pulled into our driveway in Birmingham that evening, Harry spiked a fever. We looked at each other and, as physicians, knew what this likely meant: covid-19. By Saturday afternoon, I, too, developed symptoms. (Michael S. Saag, 4/6)

CNN: The Coronavirus Blame Game: It's Not Just Trump
In our polarized world, we are united by one truth: Covid-19 has no political objective, no media bias, and no social agenda. It is an equal opportunity killer. People are dying in isolation, working alone in their basement, and sobbing on empty street corners normally full of life. As we long for the "ordinary" in the midst of these extraordinary times, the reality is that while we are united, we are still divided. (Alice Stewart, 4/6)

Bloomberg: It’s Still Hard To Predict Who Will Die From Covid-19
In every epidemic, some die, others become ill and recover, and the luckiest live through infection without symptoms. In today’s pandemic, we are seeing this play out before our eyes. Although the initial epidemiological data show that Covid-19 is more severe in older people, men and those with pre-existing conditions such as heart and lung disease, not everyone with severe disease has these risk factors. And not everyone at risk has the same symptoms, prognosis or outcome. ( Arturo Casadevall and Liise-anne Pirofski, 4/6)

The Hill: Antibody Testing Can Help Open The Economy And Get Us Working Again
President Trump has to balance the intensely-competing demands of public health and economic well-being while battling the coronavirus pandemic. Antibody tests could prove to be the secret weapon that lets us win the war against this invisible enemy. The administration’s “response” to the coronavirus pandemic involves several interlocking responsibilities, and we’re still a ways away from putting this crisis behind us. But an effective antibody test could significantly accelerate the timetable for returning to normalcy. (Madison Gesiotto, 4/6)

The New York Times: To Fight Coronavirus, There’s No Substitute For U.S. Leadership
Close to 370,000 infections and nearly 11,000 deaths in the United States. Nearly 10 million Americans filing unemployment claims. Unimaginable heartbreak and hardship, with worse to come. Given this still-developing emergency, and the fatal inadequacy of the U.S. government’s domestic preparedness and response so far, it is very hard to focus on the devastation that is about to strike the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. But if President Trump doesn’t overcome his go-it-alone mind-set and take immediate steps to mobilize a global coalition to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, its spread will cause a catastrophic loss of life and make it impossible to restore normalcy in the United States in the foreseeable future. (Samantha Power, 4/7)

Axios: Americans Want The Federal Government, Not States, In Charge On Coronavirus
President Trump has repeatedly said that he sees the federal government’s role as “backup” to the states on the response to coronavirus. But Americans want the federal government — not states — to take the lead, according to our latest KFF tracking poll. Why it matters: States have so far been the ones issuing specific directives about social distancing, and are also trying to source health care supplies. By the numbers: 60% of the people we surveyed said the federal government should be primarily responsible for the coronavirus response, almost double the 32% who say their own state should be primarily responsible. (Drew Altman, 4/7)

Politico: We’ll Need Vote-By-Mail In November. And It Could Be A Legal Nightmare.
States are suddenly scrambling to expand vote-by-mail for this year’s election. Exhibit A is Wisconsin, which for this week’s primary election has received more than 1 million absentee ballot requests, quadruple the state’s 2016 numbers, a previous high. The move to vote-by-mail, by and large, is a positive development, given that the Covid-19 threat will remain or return as a menace in November, and in-person voting could pose serious health risks for voters and poll workers alike. But while absentee ballots can help keep people safe and expand voting access, they come with a drawback: a greater chance of litigation. Simply put, there are more things that can go wrong with vote-by-mail compared with in-precinct voting. (Edward B. Foley, 4/7)

The New York Times: Lockdown Can’t Last Forever. Here’s How To Lift It.
Lockdowns, quarantines and extreme forms of physical distancing work: They are curbing the spread of Covid-19. But they cannot last indefinitely, at least not without causing enormous damage to economies and compromising peoples’ good will and emotional well-being. When governments decide to close schools (or not), for example, they are implicitly trying to balance these various interests. One major problem, though: Their calculus about the underlying trade-offs typically is unclear, and the criteria for their policy adjustments are unknown. (Gabriel Leung, 4/6)

The Washington Post: Wait! Before You Take Me Off The Ventilator...
In my recurring nightmare, I’m in bed in a hospital corridor in Fort Lauderdale. The corridor is so wide that beds can fit side by side in it, and so long that the beds stretch as far as I can see in both directions. Of course, my vision is obscured somewhat by my oxygen mask. I’m breathing through a tube attached to a ventilator that I’m sharing with a strapping young man whose lifelong tan can still be detected beneath his current pallor; he looks as though he’s never been sick a day in his life till now. I feel woozy but not too bad, actually. In fact, I’m pretty confident I can lick this thing. (Joanne Gruber, 4/6)

Politico: We Can Do More To Protect Workers Fighting Covid-19
This year, a new crisis has put a much bigger swath of the workforce—far more Americans, in many industries—unexpectedly in harm’s way. Millions of American workers are literally risking their lives every day on the job, saving desperately ill patients, ensuring food and medicine get to our stores and homes, and keeping the public safe. Every day there are reports of physicians, nurses, police and emergency responders, even bus drivers, who have died from Covid-19 after their employers failed to implement appropriate infection control measures or provide the adequate respiratory protection or sanitary facilities needed to prevent exposure in the course of their work. Yet OSHA, the federal agency under the Department of Labor charged with protecting these workers, is almost completely missing from the federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic. (David Michaels, 4/7)

The Washington Post: New York Applause For Hospital Workers: A Vast Audience Rooting For Heroes
Ovations are on pause in the theaters and concert halls and stadiums of this city. But they haven't ceased. They've just moved into the streets. Like clockwork, they happen, every evening at 7. Up and down Manhattan — and probably the Bronx and Staten Island, too — cheers ring out from apartment towers and brownstones, along with the sounds of rhythmic chants, applause and whistles. (Peter Marks, 4/6)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Has Made All Doctors Covid-19 Doctors
We are America’s doctors, and we have been redeployed. Yesterday we were your pediatricians. Your cardiologists. Your surgeons. Today, we are all Covid-19 doctors. Your appointments are canceled, and our offices are closed. We’ve been called to the front lines. This is a global war, and we are the soldiers. The world is united against a common enemy — invisible, but deadly. (Hadi Halazun, 4/6)

Los Angeles Times: Giuliani Advising Trump On Coronavirus, Hydroxychloroquine
With the COVID-19 pandemic intensifying and the economy cratering, can the United States survive another injection of Rudy Giuliani? It looks like we’re about to find out. The Washington Post reports that the former mayor of New York City is taking time off from his relentless pursuit of Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian hiding spot of the Democratic National Committee’s email server to become a medical researcher for President Trump. (Jon Healy, 4/6)

Stat: Misinformation About An Outbreak Is Important Public Health Data
The spread of information — and misinformation — has been playing a crucial role throughout the unfolding coronavirus outbreak and should serve as a wake-up call for scientists who model epidemics. With every outbreak of a new pathogen comes a race to estimate its transmissibility, which scientists, the media, and the public use to compare the new threat to known enemies. What this approach fails to capture is the extent to which disease epidemics are shaped by unique interactions between biological and social factors — and that social communication and behaviors during an outbreak are just as important to public health as tests and diagnoses. (Laurent Hebert-Dufresne and Vicky Chuqiao Yang, 4/7)

Center For Infectious Disease Research And Policy: Respirators Can Be Reused, But Decontamination Not Well Studied
Perhaps lost in the recent debate and federal recommendations on cloth masks for the general public has been the key issue of protecting those putting their lives on the line daily: hard-working healthcare workers as hospitals face limited supplies of N95 filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) during this pandemic. Key to such protection are issues surrounding respirator reuse and decontamination to optimize use of FFRs, which are personal protective devices constructed largely from filter material worn on the face that prevent inhalation of viral aerosols by the wearer. (Lisa M Brosseau and Margaret Sietsema, 4/6)

The New York Times: Who Goes Alt-Right In A Coronavirus Quarantine?
The outside world is closing its doors, and the internet, as a result, is feeling the pressure. The mobile network Vodafone reported a 50 percent surge in internet use last month, and all over the world internet companies are being forced to deal with the extra demand generated by self-isolation. Much of the world is, for an undetermined period, going permanently online. Beyond the much more immediate and pressing threat of the virus, there is something disconcerting about this for anyone who studies radicalization and the internet. (Annie Kelly, 4/7)

The Hill: How I Feel About Returning To The Medical Front Lines
Many health care workers across New York City are being contacted right now in the fight against COVID-19. Extended faculty are considering returning to the medical wards, and I am one of them. Several things have crossed my mind — not fear, nor honor, but more practical questions: Would being middle-aged put me at risk of a serious complication? Would I catch the virus? (Dr. Marc Siegel, 4/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Congress’s Small-Business Ventilator
Congress created a $350 billion lending facility in last month’s $2.2 trillion relief bill for small businesses gasping for liquidity amid coronavirus shutdowns. But its rushed relief has unsurprisingly resulted in confusion, leaving the Trump Administration to mop up the mess. In a normal year the Small Business Administration makes about 60,000 loans totalling $30 billion. Congress last month vastly increased its workload by making the agency responsible for shovelling out $350 billion in loans to millions of small businesses in days or weeks. (4/6)

The New York Times: Social Distancing During The Coronavirus Pandemic Is A Privilege
People like to say that the coronavirus is no respecter of race, class or country, that the disease Covid-19 is mindless and will infect anybody it can. In theory, that is true. But, in practice, in the real world, this virus behaves like others, screeching like a heat-seeking missile toward the most vulnerable in society. And this happens not because it prefers them, but because they are more exposed, more fragile and more ill. (Charles M. Blow, 4/5)

Bloomberg: How To Keep Coronavirus Recession From Becoming A Depression
The U.S unemployment report for March foreshadowed the ugly numbers to come as the economy’s sudden stop sidelines entire sectors. The prospect of double-digit unemployment rates raises the possibility that what is now the “Great Suppression” will become the next Great Depression. This raises an important question for market participants: What separates a depression from a recession? A starting place is to consider the three “Ds” of a depression: Depth, duration, and deflation. (Tim Duy, 4/6)

The Hill: COVID-19 Makes It Clear: Medicaid Block Grants Will Make Everyone Worse Off
COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that has spread to a global pandemic, demonstrates why block grants are irresponsible and hurt the most vulnerable. ... Under the waiver the Trump administration has proposed, in exchange for a set dollar contribution, states would have additional flexibility to decide eligibility and benefits. In theory, it would spur innovation and reduce spending for both the federal government and the states. It is misguided, however. In reality, the only way states reduce the cost of the program is to cut enrollees, benefits, or providers already low reimbursement rates. (Arielle Kane, 4/4)

Los Angeles Times: Amid Coronavirus, Trump’s ‘America First’ Policy Ineffective
It was obvious even before Donald Trump became president that he disdained cooperation with other nations, including traditional allies, and that he had little interest in shoring up international institutions that the United States helped to create. As president, he has made good — or rather, bad — on his campaign promise to put “America First,” which in practice has often meant “America alone.” He has undermined U.S. influence at the United Nations, questioned the foundations of NATO and made this country less secure as well as less influential by repudiating international agreements. (4/6)

The Washington Post: Five Ways To Conquer Your Covid-19 Fears
Last week in San Diego, a doctor friend of mine saw 24 patients from different walks of life. Just less than half were struggling with anxiety, which is understandable, given the circus tent of worry we’re all waking up inside of every day. Another 40 percent were exhibiting more mysterious symptoms. Some had strange rashes on their face. Others had eye and throat irritations or a tightness in their chest that they couldn’t explain. Could it be, they wanted to know, the novel coronavirus? (Amanda Ripley, 4/6)