Viewpoints: Weighing The Pros, Cons Of Reopening This Summer; Expecting College Students To Play It Safe Is Total Nonsense

The Wall Street Journal: New Rules For Covid Summer: Be Flexible And Vigilant
America is entering a complicated new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. The remainder of 2020 warrants flexibility and tolerance, trying different ways to adapt to new evidence. In a country with such fractured politics, this will be no small challenge. That challenge is a function of a complicated public-health picture combined with contradictory public attitudes. Even as economic activity is resuming, Covid cases are rising in about a dozen states. This isn’t a second wave; it’s a series of spikes off the first surge. In the coming months, some states will see infections rise while others fall. The trick will be to manage the constant risk of Covid while restarting normal life.Policy makers are inclined to react to this challenge by looking for exactly the right set of rules to impose. But that overestimates how much of the country’s response to the virus has been a matter of policy, in the traditional sense. A lot of the hand-wringing about whether the shutdowns were justified makes the same mistake.It is clear in retrospect that there wasn’t much of a choice about whether to shut down. (Scott Gottlieb and Yuval Levin, 6/14)

Tulsa World: This Is The Wrong Time And Tulsa Is The Wrong Place For The Trump Rally
President Donald Trump is coming to town this week for a campaign rally. It will be his first since such events were suspended earlier this year because of the COVID-19 shutdown. We don’t know why he chose Tulsa, but we can’t see any way that his visit will be good for the city. Tulsa is still dealing with the challenges created by a pandemic.The city and state have authorized reopening, but that doesn’t make a mass indoor gathering of people pressed closely together and cheering a good idea. There is no treatment for COVID-19 and no vaccine. It will be our health care system that will have to deal with whatever effects follow. The public health concern would apply whether it were Donald Trump, Joe Biden or anyone else who was planning a mass rally at the BOK. (6/15)

The Washington Post: Should We Worship And Protest During The Pandemic?
Protest and worship embody the most hallowed freedoms protected by the Constitution: freedom of thought, of religion, of assembly. They are also often very public and physical endeavors, such as a political demonstration or a church service. In normal times, we barely think twice. But in the middle of a pandemic, with a spreading virus that can sicken and kill, it is vital to think clearly about how to protect these rights yet also avoid making the pandemic worse. The tension between these two forces has been growing. (6/14)

The New York Times: Expecting Students To Play It Safe If Colleges Reopen Is A Fantasy
A number of American colleges and universities have decided to bring students back to campus this fall, believing they can diminish the risk of coronavirus transmission if everyone wears masks, uses hand sanitizer and social distances. Some schools also plan to reconfigure dorms to create family-size clusters of uninfected students, who could socialize in relative safety, if only with their suite mates. These plans are so unrealistically optimistic that they border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff. (Laurence Steinberg, 6/15)

The Washington Post: Covid-19 Is Killing Catholic Schools — And Hurting The Minorities That Attend Them 
Among the many consequences of our covid-19 economy is the likely closing of dozens of Catholic schools that serve minority students in vulnerable, underserved communities. The National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) estimates that at least 100 such schools won’t reopen in the fall — or probably ever. Their fortunes and those of their students rely heavily upon charitable donations, which have fallen off in the months since stay-at-home orders went into effect. Without those funds, the schools can’t offer scholarships to families that otherwise couldn’t afford tuition. Twenty percent of students in the nation’s 6,000 Catholic schools are minorities, including Hispanics, African Americans and Asians. (Kathleen Parker, 6/12)

The New York Times: Don’t Leave The W.H.O. Strengthen It.
The world is fighting the most serious pandemic in a century, and the United States is in the process of withdrawing from the only international organization equipped to lead that effort. President Trump has accused the World Health Organization, which is made up of 194 member countries (including the United States), of failing to sound the alarm about the coronavirus quickly enough, of helping the Chinese government cover up the severity of the virus’s threat, and of being too deferential to China in general. He froze federal funding for the organization in April. In May, he gave the W.H.O.’s leaders 30 days to make unspecified improvements, and then — before that time was up, and as the American death toll from Covid-19 topped 100,000 — he decided to withdraw from the group altogether.It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump can withdraw from the organization without congressional approval, but a senior administration official recently told Politico that the decision was final. (6/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Lockdowns Hit Minority Businesses
If Covid-19 cases keep rising in the weeks to come, city and state leaders might reimpose a strict lockdown. They should bear in mind who’d be harmed most by the ensuing economic destruction. From February to April, the number of active black business owners fell 41%, according to an analysis last week from the National Bureau of Economic Research.“This study provides the first estimates of the early-stage effects of COVID-19 on small business owners,” writes Robert Fairlie, an economist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Overall, he finds, “the number of working business owners plummeted from 15.0 million in February 2020 to 11.7 million in April 2020.” That’s a drop of 3.3 million, or 22%. (6/14)