The New York Times: New York City Marks 9/11 At A Time Of Harrowing Loss 
It has been 19 years since passenger jets hijacked by terrorists slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pa. Nearly 3,000 lives were lost, some 2,700 of them in New York, in the deadliest attack in the country’s history, a blow to America’s psyche. Now, the United States confronts a far deadlier calamity. During the coronavirus pandemic, the United States has exceeded the death toll of Sept. 11, 2001, by many orders of magnitude. In New York City alone, more than 23,000 people have died of the virus. (Gold, 9/11)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Trump, Biden To Visit Flight 93 Memorial As Pandemic Alters How Nation Honors 9/11 Anniversary
In Stonycreek Township, Somerset County, at the Flight 93 National Memorial, what’s traditionally been a 90-minute ceremony with several speakers, routine musical interludes and hundreds of crowd members from the general public will, on Friday, be an intimate 20-minute affair closed to the public. “At the request of the Families of Flight 93, and in order to adhere to public health guidelines, this year’s observance will be held privately,” a notice on the memorial’s website reads. (Routh, 9/11)

CNBC: U.S. Remembers The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks As The Pandemic Changes Tribute Traditions
Americans are commemorating 9/11 with tributes that have been altered by coronavirus precautions and woven into the presidential campaign, drawing both President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden to pay respects at the same memorial without crossing paths. In New York, a dispute over coronavirus-safety precautions is leading to split-screen remembrances Friday, one at the Sept. 11 memorial plaza at the World Trade Center and another on a nearby corner. The Pentagon’s observance will be so restricted that not even victims’ families can attend, though small groups can visit the memorial there later in the day.Trump and Biden are both headed — at different times — to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (9/11)

McClatchy: Blue Light Tower To Mark Scaled-Back Pentagon 9/11 Ceremony 
A tower of 308,000 watts of blue light will pierce the sky over the Pentagon starting Wednesday night in commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, one of many changes that will mark the annual somber remembrance, scaled back this year due to the pandemic. A significantly reduced ceremony at the Pentagon will still include the large flag unfurling at the site of impact at sunrise on Friday. (Copp, 9/10)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Sept. 11 Marks 6 Months Since WHO Declared Coronavirus A Pandemic
Besides marking the 19th remembrance of the nation’s deadliest terror attacks, Sept. 11 will also mark six months since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a global pandemic. Two days later, on March 13, the U.S. declared a national emergency over the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, more than 27 million cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 905,000 have died from COVID-19, Johns Hopkins reported. (Darnell, 9/10)

How 9/11's first responders are helping out in the pandemic —

The Wall Street Journal: 9/11 Responders Give Assist To Coronavirus Essential Workers 
John Feal has spent much of the past 19 years advocating for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and for Ground Zero workers, including successfully lobbying Congress alongside the comedian Jon Stewart for billions of dollars in support. But in 2020, Mr. Feal, himself severely injured as a demolition supervisor at the World Trade Center site, has been focusing much of his charitable attention on the new coronavirus pandemic. Through his FealGood Foundation, he has provided $50,000 of personal protective equipment to police and fire stations, among other places, in the New York metropolitan area. A 53-year-old resident of Nesconset, a hamlet on Long Island, Mr. Feal said the pandemic is an event that deserves the same spirit of goodwill as that which followed the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. (Passy, 9/10)

WUSA9: 19 Years Later: Pentagon 9/11 Survivor Helps Fight Pandemic
Nineteen years after the devastating 9/11 attacks, Dr. Veena Railan can still remember distinct details of that Tuesday morning in 2001. "It was a beautiful morning. That’s something I never forget," she recalls. "It was beautiful sunshine, fall was just coming. It was green and gorgeous.” Dr. Railan worked inside the Pentagon as a medical officer at the facility's clinic. ... Almost two decades after the tragedy, Dr. Railan now serves on the front lines fighting the pandemic as a member of the Department of Defense. During the spread of coronavirus this year, she has helped organize public health education efforts and advised others on how to prevent getting the disease. (Dempsey, 9/10)

AP: Connecticut Holds Socially Distant Sept. 11 Ceremony
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont praised health care and other essential workers Thursday by comparing the jobs they are doing during the COVID-19 pandemic to the heroism of first responders who put themselves in harms way after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Lamont spoke at Sherwood Island State Park during a socially distanced ceremony marking the 19th anniversary of 9/11. (9/11)

New York Daily News: Feds Secretly Withheld $4M From FDNY 9/11 Health Program 
The Trump administration has secretly siphoned nearly $4 million away from a program that tracks and treats FDNY firefighters and medics suffering from 9/11 related illnesses, the Daily News has learned. The Treasury Department mysteriously started withholding parts of payments — nearly four years ago — meant to cover medical services for firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics treated by the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program, documents obtained by The News reveal. (McAuliff, 9/10)

In related news about 9/11 survivors —

Newsweek: Why The 9/11 Death Toll Is Still Rising Today
The death toll from the tragedy continues to rise to this day as those who worked at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the attack succumb to related illnesses. According to information supplied to Newsweek by the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 3,946 members of the World Trade Center Health Program, which supports first responders and survivors on-site during and after the 9/11 attacks, have died. (Waterfield, 9/11)

Newsday: Amid Pandemic, 9/11 First Responders Face A Somber Anniversary
It remains unclear how the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund, which provides financial assistance to those exposed to the pollutants emanating from the sites in lower Manhattan, the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, will view the case of first responders with underlying WTC medical conditions who later died of COVID-19. ... A high percentage of the 9/11 health conditions are respiratory diseases such as asthma, COPD and interstitial lung disease. COVID-19 attacks that same organ, saving its most deadly consequences for victims with weakened immune systems, such as those going through chemotherapy, medical officials say. (Brodsky, 9/8)

New York Post: 9/11 Ground Zero Responders Suffer Early Dementia Risk: Researchers
The Sept. 11 terror attack didn’t just sicken first responders who desperately searched for victims at Ground Zero — it also appears to be robbing them of their mental faculties, disturbing new research shows. A study conducted by Stony Brook University has found that people who worked amid the rubble of the Twin Towers are suffering cognitive decline far earlier than normal. “It’s two to three times more likely that 9/11 responders are likely to have mild cognitive impairment — a precondition of dementia — than the general population that is ten to twenty years older,” said chief researcher Dr. Sean Clouston. (Campanile, 9/10)

USA Today Network: Ohio State Studying Effects Of WTC Dust On 9/11 First Responders
Nineteen years later, the dust still hasn’t settled on the full impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on first responders at the World Trade Center. That’s why a researcher at Ohio State University’s College of Nursing is studying the impact of the dust from the World Trade Center’s collapse on first responders to see if there is a link to heart disease, early onset Alzheimer’s and Parkinson diseases. (Henry, 9/11)

CNN: A Landfill In Their Backyard
The closure of one of the world’s largest landfills, Fresh Kills, in March 2001 was a victory for residents on New York City’s Staten Island, who complained about the waste site for years. But that victory was diminished when, after the September 11th attacks, then-Governor George Pataki reopened Fresh Kills and workers transported more than 1.8 million tons of debris, some of it found to be toxic, from Ground Zero to the landfill. Nineteen years later, some Staten Islanders fear the inactive landfill and its contents — including the 9/11 debris — is contributing to cancer rates in the borough. “I know way too many people with cancer on Staten Island,” said Jamielee Nelson, who recalled standing on her balcony in Staten Island’s Rossville neighborhood after 9/11 and watching smoke rising from Ground Zero. (Chapman, 9/11)

And COVID-19 takes its toll —

The City: How Many 9/11 Survivors Have Died Of COVID-19? At Least 42, And Likely Many More 
Michael Field arrived at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. The FDNY emergency medical technician wound up working at Ground Zero for nine months. He later suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and pulmonary issues — conditions that his wife, Stacey Field, attributed to his work digging through the rubble as the rescue operation quickly turned to a long-term recovery effort. While Field, who lived in Valley Stream on Long Island, fought his illnesses after serving at Ground Zero, 19 years later COVID-19 got the best of him. He died on April 8 at the age of 59. ... He’s far from the only 9/11 first responder or survivor taken by the pandemic. Officially, 42 have died of COVID-19, according to the World Trade Center Health Program. (Rodriguez and Muylaert, 9/10)

NPR: A Father And A Son, Lost To 2 National Tragedies
Albert Petrocelli died from COVID-19 in April, at 73 years old. His death marked the second time the Petrocelli family was touched by unexpected tragedy. Nearly two decades earlier, Petrocelli, a retired New York City fire chief, and his wife, Ginger, lost their youngest of two sons, Mark, in the attacks on the World Trade Center. (Garofalo, 9/11)

ABC News: 'Nothing Scares Me': For 9/11 Responder, COVID Was The Hardest Battle Yet 
For the last 19 years, Sept. 11 has cast a lingering shadow on John Feal. The Nesconset, New York resident and former construction worker suffered long-term health damage from working at Ground Zero and endured the emotional pain of seeing his fellow responders die from ailments contracted at the pile. Feal told ABC News that despite all of those hardships, one of the biggest challenges he's had to face was COVID-19, which he contracted in March. (Pereira, 9/11)

USA Today: 'War Zone': Deadly Wildfires Rage In Western States: At Least 23 Dead, Hundreds Of Thousands Evacuated
Wildfires raced through more than a dozen Western states Thursday, incinerating homes, forcing hundreds of thousands of evacuations, and burning a swath of land almost the size of New Jersey. At least 23 people have died and hundreds of homes have been destroyed by more than 100 major fires that have consumed nearly 7,000 square miles. Authorities in Oregon say more than 500,000 people statewide have been forced to evacuate because of wildfires - over 10% of the state’s 4.2 million population. (Bacon, Hughes and Ortiz, 9/10)

AP: 10 Dead As California Fire Becomes Deadliest Of Year
A Northern California wildfire that destroyed a foothill hamlet has become the state’s deadliest blaze of the year with 10 people confirmed dead — and the toll could climb as searchers look for 16 missing people. The North Complex fire that exploded in wind-driven flames earlier in the week was advancing more slowly Friday after the winds eased and smoke from the blaze shaded the area and lowered the temperature, allowing firefighters to make progress, authorities said. (Beam and Melley, 9/11)

AP: 'Evacuate Now:' Wildfires Grow In Oregon As 500K Flee
Deadly wildfires in heavily populated northwest Oregon were growing, with hundreds of thousands of people told to flee encroaching flames while residents to the south tearfully assessed their losses. People evacuated statewide because of fires had climbed to an estimated 500,000 — more than 10 percent of the 4.2 million people in the state, the Oregon Office of Emergency Management reported late Thursday. (Flaccus and Selsky, 9/11)

San Jose Mercury News: Bay Area Smoke: Stay Inside And Don't Count On Masks
Smoke from wildfires burning throughout California and Oregon is expected to linger in the Bay Area through the end of the week, leading to unhealthy air in certain parts of the region that can be especially harmful to people with underlying health conditions. Unfortunately, Bay Area residents will probably have to cope with varying degrees of unhealthy air as the 2020 fire season continues through November. That means that residents should prepare to stay indoors as much as possible on smoky days, keep their windows closed, consider investing in ozone-free air purifiers and even arrange to leave the area until the bad air clears. (Ross, 9/10)

Scientific American: What's In Wildfire Smoke, And Why Is It So Bad For Your Lungs?
What exactly is in a wildfire’s smoke depends on a few key things: what’s burning—grass, brush or trees; the temperature—is it flaming or just smoldering; and the distance between the person breathing the smoke and the fire producing it. (Montrose, 9/10)

The New York Times: Wildfire Smoke Is Dangerous. Here’s How To Protect Yourself.
The health effects of wildfire smoke are not fully understood, and the particles differ in some ways from other air pollution, which has been shown to cause disease. But wildfire smoke, which can include toxic substances from burned buildings, has been linked to serious health problems. (Perlroth and Schwartz, 9/11)

The New York Times: A Climate Reckoning In Wildfire-Stricken California
Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face. The crisis in the nation’s most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see so soon: a cascade effect, in which a series of disasters overlap, triggering or amplifying each other. (Fuller and Flavelle, 9/10)

ABC News: Trump Tries To Deflect Blame But Stands By Comments Made In Woodward Interview 
President Donald Trump, at a White House news conference Thursday, continued to defend comments he made to journalist Bob Woodward in which he admitted he deliberately downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus to the public despite knowing its deadly danger, and argued that if the comments were so bad, Woodward should have made them public sooner. "If Bob Woodward thought it was bad, he should have immediately gone out publicly, not wait for months," Trump said, appearing to try to deflect any blame. Woodward told The Associated Press Wednesday that he needed time to confirm that Trump's private comments were accurate. (Cathey, Gittleson and Thomas, 9/10)

Politico: What Did Trump Know And When Did He Know It? Inside His Feb. 7 Admission 
By the time President Donald Trump privately told journalist Bob Woodward on Feb. 7 that the coronavirus was “deadly stuff” transmitted by air, a threat “more deadly” than the flu, the warnings around him had been rampant. National security adviser Robert O’Brien had told Trump that Covid-19 would be the “largest national security crisis of your presidency.” Top trade adviser Peter Navarro was drafting urgent pleas to manufacture more medical supplies and personal protective gear in the U.S. Other worried senior aides were organizing meetings about the potential severity and spread of a pandemic. (Cook, McGraw and Cancryn, 9/10)

The Hill: Trump Calls Question About Why He 'Lied' About COVID-19 A 'Disgrace' 
President Trump on Thursday scoffed at a question about why he lied to the American public about the severity of COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic, calling it "disgraceful" in a contentious press conference amid fallout over his comments to Bob Woodward. "Why did you lie to the American people, and why should we trust what you have to say now?" ABC News correspondent Jon Karl asked during a news conference, referencing the president's comments in audio recordings from February that COVID-19 was "deadly" even as he publicly minimized the threat of the virus. (Samuels, 9/10)

The news continues to draw responses —

CNN: Biden On Trump Concealing Coronavirus Threat: 'It's Almost Criminal' 
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said it is "disgusting" and "almost criminal" that President Donald Trump knew of the serious risk posed by the coronavirus in February and then downplayed its threat in March. In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday in Michigan, the former vice president said the revelations about Trump's early understanding of how deadly the virus is and how easily it could spread -- shared in recorded interviews for Bob Woodward's forthcoming book -- are "why we have no confidence in his leadership." (Bradner, 9/9)

The Hill: Harris Calls It 'Outrageous' Trump Downplayed Coronavirus
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate, called President Trump’s remarks to journalist Bob Woodward about the coronavirus pandemic “outrageous” on Thursday. The president told the longtime journalist in March “I wanted to always play [the virus] down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a pandemic.” (Budryk, 9/10)

The Hill: Warren: I Feel 'Deep Down Fury' That Trump Downplayed Pandemic 
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday blasted President Trump’s remarks to Bob Woodward on the coronavirus pandemic, telling MSNBC’s Joy Reid they inspired “deep down fury” in her. Reid specifically mentioned the death of Warren’s brother from the virus and asked her reaction to the comments in light of that. (Budryk, 9/10)

CNN: Vulnerable Republicans Avoid Criticizing Trump After Admission To Woodward About Downplaying Virus
Republican senators facing tough reelection races this fall steered clear of criticizing President Donald Trump after his stunning admission that he downplayed the severity of the crisis caused by the spread of coronavirus, dodging questions regarding his remarks or defending his overall response to the pandemic. (Maju and Rogers, 9/10)

In other news —

The Hill: Biden Vows To Be 'Totally Transparent' On His Health If Elected 
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden vowed to be “totally transparent” on his health if elected. “I guarantee you, I will be totally transparent in terms of my health and all aspects of my health,” Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Thursday. (Moreno, 9/10)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: The Politics Of Science 
The headlines from this week will be about how President Donald Trump knew early on how serious the coronavirus pandemic was likely to become but purposely played it down. Potentially more important during the past few weeks, though, are reports of how White House officials have pushed scientists at the federal government’s leading health agencies to put politics above science. Meanwhile, Republicans appear to have given up on using the Affordable Care Act as an electoral cudgel, judging, at least, from its scarce mention during the GOP convention. Democrats, on the other hand, particularly those running for the U.S. House and Senate, are doubling down on their criticism of Republicans for failing to adequately protect people with preexisting health conditions. That issue was key to the party winning back the House in 2018. (Rovner, 9/11)

CNN: US Coronavirus: Americans Need To 'Hunker Down' This Fall And Winter As Covid-19 Pandemic Will Likely Worsen, Fauci Says 
Nearly 30 US states are reporting downward trends in Covid-19 cases, but the pandemic will likely worsen again, according to the country's leading infectious disease expert. "We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it's not going to be easy," Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday. (Maxouris, 9/11)

The Hill: Fauci Warns US Needs To 'Hunker Down' For Fall, Winter: 'It's Not Going To Be Easy' 
Fauci also reiterated that different U.S. cities should expect to see post-Labor Day surges, with the expert saying last week that the country was heading into the fall with an “unacceptably high” level of COVID-19 cases. “We're right around 40,000 new cases, that's an unacceptably high baseline,” Fauci said at the time. “We've got to get it down, I'd like to see it 10,000 or less, hopefully less.” (Castronuovo, 9/10)

Stat: Anthony Fauci On Lessons Learned So Far In The Covid-19 Pandemic
Six months since Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, the world has learned difficult lessons on how to respond — and not respond — to such a crisis... In a Harvard Medical School Grand Rounds session on Thursday, [Anthony] Fauci shared his takeaways on how Covid-19 has been handled and what this crisis can tell us about how to combat the next one. His remarks have been lightly edited for clarity. (Gopalakrishna, 9/10)

AP: Smithfield Foods Pork Plant Faces OSHA Fine From Outbreak
Federal regulators said Thursday they have cited Smithfield Foods for failing to protect employees from exposure to the coronavirus at the company’s Sioux Falls plant, an early hot spot for virus infections that hobbled American meatpacking plants. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that employees were working closely together and exposed to the coronavirus. It also found that leading up to the first known infections at the plant on March 23, Smithfield did not do enough to space them out or provide other safety measures like face coverings or physical barriers. (Groves, 9/10)

The Hill: Trump Administration Issues First COVID-19 Fine To Smithfield For Failing To Protect Workers
The Sioux Falls plant was the site of a coronavirus outbreak in April and OSHA cited the company for one violation of the general duty clause for failing to provide a hazard-free workplace. At least 1,294 Smithfield workers contracted coronavirus, and four employees died from the virus in the spring of 2020, OSHA confirmed. Smithfield responded on Thursday that the OSHA citation is “wholly without merit,” and that it plans to contest it. Smithfield has 15 business days from receipt of the citation and penalty to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA, or formally contest the findings. (Gangitano, 9/10)

Politico: U.S. Issues First Covid-19 Fine To Meatpacking Plant Totaling $13,500
Worker advocates have been pressing for more attention and protections to address the risks faced by vulnerable populations — including farm and meatpacking labor — to Covid-19. The penalty is the maximum allowed by law. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union called the fine "completely insufficient" and "insulting." (Bustillo, 9/10)

In related news —

AP: Food Plant Cited For Failing To Protect Workers From Virus
California’s workplace safety regulator has cited a frozen food manufacturer and its temporary employment agency for failing to protect hundreds of employees from the coronavirus at two Los Angeles area plants. California’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations this month to Overhill Farms and Jobsource North America and proposed over $200,000 in penalties for each company. (9/10)

The New York Times: Investigation Of Medicare Chief Seema Verma Exposes Underside Of Washington 
A girls’ night at the Georgetown home of a prominent journalist, a lobbying push for soft-focus features in glossy magazines, a professional makeup artist and invitations to awards dinners and prestige panels. The smorgasbord that expensive consultants laid out for Seema Verma, President Trump’s Medicare chief and a new arrival in town, proved to be enticing. The tab — $6 million in less than two years — fell to the federal taxpayer. (Williamson, 9/10)

CNBC: CMS Chief Seema Verma Spent Millions In Taxpayer Funds To Boost 'Personal Brand,' Democrats Say
Congressional Democrats are accusing a top health official in President Donald Trump’s administration of “extensive abuse” of millions of taxpayers’ dollars, in part by retaining a raft of Republican-tied media consultants in an attempt to boost her “personal brand.” Leaders from four congressional committees, who on Thursday revealed the results of a 17-month investigation into Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma’s use of public funds, are now calling on her to “personally reimburse the taxpayers for these inappropriate expenditures.” (Breuninger and Feuer, 9/10)

The Washington Post: Susan Page Of USA Today Criticized For Hosting Off-The-Record Event Honoring Trump Appointees 
USA Today is defending longtime Washington bureau chief Susan Page, after a congressional investigation revealed that she hosted a “Girls’ Night Out” event at her home in honor of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma in November 2018. Page, a longtime member of the D.C. press corps, was recently picked by the Commission on Presidential Debates to host the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 7. (Barr, 9/10)

The Washingtonian: Susan Page Paid For That Seema Verma Party Herself
Thursday’s congressional report on the expenses Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma incurred on private communications consultants has been a subject of breathless Beltway coverage, with Politico reporting that Verma “spent more than $3.5 million on a range of GOP-connected consultants, who polished her public profile, wrote her speeches and Twitter posts, brokered meetings with high-profile individuals — and even billed taxpayers for connecting Verma with fellow Republicans in Congress.” One particularly notable expense: A consultant named Pam Stevens was paid $2,933 for organizing a party at a journalist’s house. That journalist, USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page, also happens to be the moderator for the upcoming vice presidential debate featuring Verma’s onetime boss, Mike Pence. That led to calls for Page to step down from the debate. (Beaujon, 9/10)

ABC News: Democrats Block Senate GOP COVID-19 Relief Proposal
Democrats roundly defeated a slimmed-down GOP proposal for COVID-19 relief Thursday, a move that almost certainly means the end of coronavirus funding efforts through Election Day. The vote was 52-47. GOP leaders were able to get at least 51 of their members to support the legislation, a reversal of political fortunes from July when about half of the conference rebelled against a $1 trillion package, but it is unclear what happens now. (Turner and Pecorin, 9/10)

The New York Times: Hopes Dim For Second Stimulus As Democrats Block Narrow GOP Plan 
The proposal amounted to a fraction of the $1 trillion plan Republicans had offered in negotiations with Democrats, who in turn are demanding more than twice as much. A failure to compromise would leave millions of jobless Americans in potentially dire straits, as they exhaust traditional jobless benefits and states run out of additional funds that President Trump steered to the unemployed by executive order last month. It would also strand a wide swath of small business owners who have endured steep drops in revenue. (Cochrane and Tankersley, 9/10)

The Washington Post: Democrats Block Slimmed-Down GOP Coronavirus Relief Bill As Hopes Fade For Any More Congressional Support
House Democrats in May passed a $3.4 trillion bill that would extend some of those measures and approve a number of other initiatives, such as nearly $1 trillion for cities and states, but Republicans and the White House rejected that plan. The White House didn’t begin negotiations with Democrats over what to do next until late July, and those talks faltered as both sides dug in. (Werner, Kim and Romm, 9/10)

Modern Healthcare: GOP COVID Package Fails To Advance In The Senate
Senate Republicans' narrow bill would have protected businesses from lawsuits related to COVID-19, given states the option to extend reduced additional federal unemployment benefits, opened a second round of small-business loans, provided $16 billion for state COVID-19 testing, and set aside $31 billion for vaccine, therapeutic and diagnostic development and stockpiling. The bill would also have rescinded roughly $200 billion of unspent funds that were allocated to the Federal Reserve in prior relief legislation. (Cohrs, 9/10)

Politico: Vulnerable Dems Anxious Over Stalled Covid Talks
Moderate House Democrats are growing increasingly alarmed about stalled coronavirus relief negotiations, with vulnerable members starting to privately push Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders to take action to break the stalemate. Those anxieties — particularly among the Democrats in GOP-leaning districts known as frontliners — have spiked as lawmakers watched the standoff drag out in the Senate this week while they were stuck back home in their districts amid the pandemic. The Senate on Thursday failed to advance a “skinny” Republican coronavirus relief plan over Democratic opposition, leaving senators in both parties to declare negotiations likely on ice until after the election. (Caygle and Ferris, 9/10)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: New Ohio Health Director Backs Out Hours After Gov. Mike DeWine Announces Appointment 
In an embarrassing turn, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine remains without a state health department director after a South Carolina public health official withdrew her name from consideration on Thursday night, hours after DeWine had announced she’d gotten the job. On Thursday afternoon, DeWine announced he’d hired Dr. Joan Duwve, currently director of public health for South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, as the new director of the Ohio Department of Health. ... But after news of Duwve's withdrawal broke, socially conservative activists shared an online résumé on social media that showed she worked for Planned Parenthood as a volunteer coordinator for eight months in the early 1980s. DeWine, a Republican, opposes abortion and was elected to office in 2018 with support from anti-abortion advocacy groups. (Tobias, 9/10)

Cincinnati Enquirer: DeWine's New Health Director Pick Declines Position Hours After Announcement
Dr. Joan Duwve will not become the next Ohio Department of Health director after all, officials announced Thursday evening. Hours after Gov. Mike DeWine announced Duwve as the state's new health director, Duwve withdrew her name from consideration for the position. ... Before earning her public health degree, Duwve was a volunteer coordinator for Planned Parenthood for seven months in 1984, according to a 2017 resume visible Thursday afternoon on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis school of public health website. She then worked for four years from 1986-1990 as a senior grants officer for the Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception, a family planning nonprofit known today as EngenderHealth. (Mitchell and Borchardt, 9/10)

In other news —

CBS News: Planned Parenthood's D.C. Staffers Unionize As Abortion-Rights Groups Address Diversity Issues 
Staff members at Planned Parenthood's national Washington, D.C., office say they have unionized and reached an agreement with management to improve workers' rights. The move toward collective bargaining comes as Planned Parenthood and other abortion-rights groups have been scrutinized for workplace issues, including a lack of diversity within management. Union leadership told CBS News exclusively that Planned Parenthood's roughly 70 union-eligible D.C. staffers unanimously voted to join SEIU Local 500, a local branch of the second-largest union in the U.S. Under the agreement, Planned Parenthood management will "address equity in the workplace, codify benefits, and provide members a voice in organizational decision making." (Smith, 9/10)

The Hill: Planned Parenthood Leader At Center Of Crucial Battles On Abortion, Race 
Alexis McGill Johnson, the new president of Planned Parenthood, grew up thinking about race — not so much about reproductive rights. Her parents were heavily involved in the civil rights and Black Power movements, so she grew up in a “very race conscious household,” aware as a child of the inequalities that Black people faced in the 1970s and the centuries before. In the following decades, however, states began clamping down on abortion access, and the issue for McGill Johnson become intertwined with racial inequalities that persist in 2020, including unequal access to health care, police violence and poorer health outcomes related to COVID-19. (Hellmann, 9/10)

The New York Times: Coronavirus Can Be Deadly For Young Adults, Too, Study Finds 
The coronavirus may be best known for the brutal toll it has taken on older adults, but a new study of hospital patients challenges the notion that young people are impervious. The research letter from Harvard found that among 3,222 young adults hospitalized with Covid-19, 88 died — about 2.7 percent. One in five required intensive care, and one in 10 needed a ventilator to assist with breathing. (9/10)

Voice Of America: COVID ‘Increasing Rapidly’ Among American Youth
Cases of COVID-19 are “increasingly rapidly among young adults in the U.S.,” according to a research letter from Harvard, published at the online site of the JAMA medical journal. The study included 3,222 young adults between the ages of 18 and 34. The investigation found that the young adults “experienced substantial rates of adverse outcomes: 21% required intensive care, 10% required mechanical ventilation, and 2.7% died.” (9/11)

Fox News: Severe Coronavirus More Deadly Than Heart Attacks Among Young Adults: Study 
While this in-hospital mortality rate was less than reported figures for older coronavirus patients, it doubled the death rate for young adults with acute myocardial infarction or heart attacks. "Given the sharply rising rates of COVID-19 infection in young adults, these findings underscore the importance of infection prevention measures in this age group," study authors wrote. (Rivas, 9/10)

Also —

ProPublica: New Research Shows Disproportionate Rate Of Coronavirus Deaths In Polluted Areas
COVID-19 can be made more serious — and, in some cases, more deadly — by a specific type of industrial emission called hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs, according to new peer-reviewed research by ProPublica and researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The study, published Friday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found this association in both rural counties in Louisiana and highly populated communities in New York. The analysis examined air pollution and coronavirus deaths in the roughly 3,100 U.S. counties and found a close correlation between levels of hazardous pollutants and the per-capita death rate from COVID-19. (Younes and Sneath, 9/11)

CIDRAP: Another Possible COVID Complication: 'Punctured Lung'
As many as 1 in 100 hospitalized COVID-19 patients may experience a pneumothorax, or punctured lung, according to a multicenter observational case series published yesterday in the European Respiratory Journal. Pneumothorax usually occurs in very tall young men or older patients with serious underlying lung disease. But University of Cambridge researchers identified COVID-19 patients with neither of those traits who had a punctured lung or pneumomediastinum (air or gas leakage from a lung into the area between the lungs) from March to June at 16 UK hospitals. (Van Beusekom, 9/10)

The Hill: Researchers Begin Clinical Trials Examining Blood Thinners As Coronavirus Treatment 
U.S. researchers are beginning two clinical trials examining the use of blood thinners to treat COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Thursday. One study will focus on people who were hospitalized for COVID-19 and the other will focus on those who were infected, but not hospitalized. (Moreno, 9/10)

CIDRAP: WHO Says Sepsis Causes 20% Of Global Deaths 
The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday released its first report on the global epidemiology and burden of sepsis, estimating that the life-threatening reaction to infection causes 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Data from 2017 show that sepsis affected 49 million people and was linked to approximately 11 million deaths worldwide—roughly 20% of annual global deaths. The report also reveals that sepsis disproportionately affects children and vulnerable populations living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Twenty million of all estimated sepsis cases worldwide, and 2.9 million deaths, occurred in children under 5 in 2017, while roughly 85% of sepsis cases and related deaths occurred in low-resource settings. (Dall, 9/10)

Stat: Persistent Post-Viral Symptoms Are Common But Hard To Study 
From 2014 to 2018, DePaul University psychologist Leonard Jason and colleagues collected personal information and blood samples from more than 4,500 healthy college students. They followed the group as some students contracted mononucleosis and a small proportion of those subsequently developed chronic fatigue syndrome — the debilitating disease also called myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME/CFS, that is frequently triggered by an acute viral illness. (Tuller, 9/11)

The New York Times: Missed Vaccines, Skipped Colonoscopies: Preventive Care Plummets 
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Americans vastly scaled back their preventive health care, and there is little sign that this deferred care will be made up.Vaccinations dropped by nearly 60 percent in April, and almost no one was getting a colonoscopy, according to new data from the nonprofit Health Care Cost Institute. (Kliff, 9/11)

CNN: Elizabeth Holmes May Attempt To Claim 'Mental Disease' In Theranos Criminal Case 
Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of Theranos, may seek a "mental disease" defense in her criminal fraud trial, according to a new court document. Holmes, whose failed biotech company purported to have revolutionized blood testing and was once valued at $9 billion, was indicted on federal wire fraud charges in June 2018, along with Theranos' former COO. The indictment alleged they engaged in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, as well as a scheme to defraud doctors and patients. They could face up to 20 years in prison. (O'Brien, 9/10)

In other pharmaceutical and biotech industry news —

Stat: Novartis, Roche Are Fined $528 Million For Anti-Competitive Practices
France’s anti-trust regulator fined Roche (RHHBY) and Novartis (NVS) a combined $528 million for conspiring to boost sales of a pricey treatment for a serious eye disease by discouraging unapproved uses of a less expensive medication. At issue is a long-running drama over Lucentis, which is used to treat age-related macular degeneration, a common disease among the elderly that can lead to blindness. (Silverman, 9/10)

Boston Globe: Korro Bio Raises $90 Million To Fix Mutations That Cause Diseases
Korro Bio, a Cambridge biotechnology firm, said Thursday it has raised more than $90 million in venture capital to advance its technology to repair genetic mutations that cause a variety of diseases.The startup, which was founded in 2018 by Cambridge venture capital firm Atlas Venture, hopes to treat disorders through RNA editing, a cutting-edge approach that makes changes to the molecular messengers that create proteins implicated in various illnesses. (Saltzman, 9/10)

Boston Globe: Casma Brings In Another $50 Million To Target Muscular Dystrophy
Casma Therapeutics, a Cambridge biotech trying to develop new medicines based on discoveries about how cells detoxify and repair themselves, has raised $50 million in fresh venture capital and wants to use the money to create drugs for treating muscular dystrophy. It’s the second fund-raising round for Casma, which was launched by Boston-based Third Rock Ventures in 2018 with $58 million in venture capital. (Saltzman, 9/10)

Modern Healthcare: Inova Health System Hit By Breach At Software Vendor That Affects 1 Million
Inova Health System in Falls Church, Va., is the latest health system to notify patients and donors that some of their personal data may have been exposed in a ransomware attack at software company Blackbaud. The data breach affected up to 1,045,270 patients, according to a report that Inova submitted to HHS' Office for Civil Rights on Wednesday. The HHS agency publicly posted the report to its online database of healthcare data breaches in an update Thursday. (Cohen, 9/10)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Federal Aid Results In Soaring Profits For Some Hospitals
Tennessee-based CHS is just one hospital company doing work in Georgia that reaped rewards from government pandemic aid far beyond what it took to just get by. Congress in the midst of the pandemic saw hospitals and other health care providers sinking as they suspended elective services and as leery patients continued to stay away. As part of the CARES Act stimulus law, it put $175 billion toward provider relief. (Hart, 9/10)

Modern Healthcare: Jefferson Health To Build $760 Million Specialty-Care Pavilion
Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University will build a $762 million specialty care center in Center City, the academic health system announced Thursday. The 19-story Specialty Care Pavilion will house Jefferson's Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, the Digestive Health Institute, Jefferson Transplant Institute and Korman Respiratory Institute as well as other service lines related to cardiovascular health, neurology, otolaryngology, rheumatology and urology. The health system will repurpose, consolidate or sell more than 177,000 square feet across 10 buildings as it continues to centralize its service lines. (Kacik, 9/10)

Stat: How Lyft's Health Business Is Trying To Close Gaps In Access To Care
When Megan Callahan was weighing whether to join Lyft’s burgeoning health care business two years ago, she was attracted by the idea of being able to work more closely with patients — and make the process of getting care easier for them. Just a few years earlier, Callahan, now the vice president of health care at Lyft, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She saw firsthand how much of a barrier transportation could pose to care. (Gopalakrishna, 9/10)

Modern Healthcare: Health Systems Rethink Flu Vaccinations Amid COVID-19
As the nation continues to grapple with COVID-19 surges, a persistent message has emerged from public health officials: it's vital to get the flu vaccine this year.Each influenza season puts a strain on the U.S. healthcare system as it leads to hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations. There were an estimated 490,000 hospitalizations last flu season and 810,000 in 2017-2018 when health officials had a difficult time pinpointing which strain would dominate. Concerns are amped up this year that health systems will become overwhelmed if the flu emerges in full force while COVID-19 continues to batter the country. (Castellucci, 9/10)

Crain's Detroit Business: Former Beaumont Director Wants Board To Fire CEO, Top Execs, Delay Merger
A former Beaumont Health board  member and vice chair has sent a scathing five-page letter to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel asking her to "require or suggest" the 16-member Beaumont board of directors fire CEO John Fox and his top two lieutenants. (Greene, 9/10)

Dallas Morning News: When A COVID-19 Vaccine Is Ready, McKesson Will Deliver It — As It Did With H1N1 Over A Decade Ago
Many companies are working to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but one key player in Irving is focusing on another part of the public health response: how to deliver those hundreds of millions of doses as soon as they’re available. McKesson Corp., which relocated its corporate headquarters from San Francisco last year, recently was named a central distributor for the vaccines and related supplies. (Schnurman, 9/11)

Also —

Stat: As Health Tech Soared, Teladoc And Livongo Saw A Chance To ‘Accelerate’
It took a lot of late-night and early-morning Zoom calls plus some socially distanced in-person meetings to create the first health tech giant, all conducted during a pandemic and in near-total secrecy. Now that telemedicine provider Teladoc Health and diabetes coaching company Livongo are moving closer to clinching their $18.5 billion deal later this year, leaders of both companies say they’re ready to provide a single solution for care that will satisfy consumers, providers, and payers. (Cooney, 9/10)

Stat: Remote Monitoring Technology Raises Questions About Inclusivity, Usability
Remote monitoring technologies let doctors keep tabs on how you’re doing, even when you’re nowhere near the doctor’s office. It’s been touted as a potentially revolutionary development in health care, one with profound implications for getting tangible, objective data to clinicians, in real time. And as Mintu Turakhia, a cardiac electrophysiologist who is the executive director of Stanford’s Center for Digital Health, points out, it’s not even that new of an idea — cardiologists have been monitoring heart rhythms with sensors since the 1990s. (9/10)

The Hill: CDC Report: Dining Out Increases Risk Of Contracting Coronavirus More Than Other Activities 
Dining out is one of the riskiest possible activities during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday, citing the fact that masks are not used while people are eating and drinking. CDC officials interviewed about 314 people who experienced symptoms of the virus and got tests, about half of whom were positive. Both the positive and the negative subjects said they had engaged in activities such as attending church and in-person shopping. However, people who tested positive were about twice as likely than those who tested negative to say they had dined at a restaurant. (Budryk, 9/10)

CNN: Restaurant Dining Linked To Covid-19 Risk In CDC Study 
There were no significant differences between those who tested positive versus negative when it came to shopping, gathering with fewer than 10 people in a home, going to an office, going to a gym, going to a salon, using public transportation or attending religious gatherings, according to the study. However, people who tested positive, the data showed, were more likely to have reported dining at a restaurant in the two weeks before they started to feel sick. (Howard, 9/10)

In other news about restaurants and bars —

NPR: Hangover From Alcohol Boom Could Last Long After Pandemic Ends
When the coronavirus swept the country, a lot of things government did in response were controversial. Politicians fought over mask wearing rules and quarantine restrictions. But one policy, making sure Americans have ready access to alcohol, was truly bipartisan. ... It's been an economic lifeline for many businesses, but healthcare experts caution there could be serious consequences for millions of Americans that linger long after COVID-19 has passed. (Mann, 9/11)

Politico: Florida To Reopen Bars, Pack Restaurants After DeSantis Claims Covid-19 Under Control
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a top state official on Thursday cleared the way for bars to reopen and restaurants to begin packing in patrons again, even as some pockets of the state recorded recent spikes in positive Covid-19 test results. Florida's top alcohol regulator said late Thursday he will allow bars to reopen statewide at 50 percent capacity starting on Monday. The move by Halsey Beshears, the secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, gives the industry a second chance at heeding safety precautions meant to protect the spread of the virus after an earlier attempt to ease restrictions fueled a resurgence of the virus in Florida. (Sarkissian, 9/10)

St. Paul Pioneer Press: Inspectors Checked MN Bars And Restaurants For COVID Compliance. Just Over Half Were OK.
State and local inspectors Wednesday reported results for coronavirus compliance checks at 167 bars and restaurants in selected parts of Minnesota outside the east metro. Just over half were in compliance. (Orrick, 9/10)

AP: Puerto Rico Reopening Beaches, Gyms, Theaters Amid Pandemic
Puerto Rico’s governor on Thursday announced she would reopen beaches, casinos, gyms and movie theaters across the U.S. territory as officials report a recent drop in COVID-19 cases and deaths that some experts worry could once again spike. The changes will be in effect from Saturday until Oct. 2. Face masks and social distancing, especially at the beach, remain mandatory, bars and clubs will stay closed and a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew will continue. (Coto, 9/10)

The New York Times: The Nursing Home Workers Who May Spread The Coronavirus 
Health policy analysts say that poorly paid staff members working two or more nursing home jobs may be significant contributors — usually unwittingly — to the spread of the virus. Several nursing home employees in Florida have been terminated after being accused of coming to work sick. “Unfortunately, staff have been the largest vector towards bringing Covid into nursing homes around the country,” David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, said. (de Freytas-Tamura, 9/10)

Kaiser Health News: Making Gyms Safer: Why The Virus Is Less Likely To Spread There Than In A Bar 
After shutting down in the spring, America’s empty gyms are beckoning a cautious public back for a workout. To reassure wary customers, owners have put in place — and now advertise — a variety of coronavirus control measures. At the same time, the fitness industry is trying to rehabilitate itself by pushing back against what it sees as a misleading narrative that gyms have no place during a pandemic. In the first months of the coronavirus outbreak, most public health leaders advised closing gyms, erring on the side of caution. As infections exploded across the country, states ordered gyms and fitness centers closed, along with restaurants, movie theaters and bars. State and local officials consistently branded gyms as high-risk venues for infection, akin to bars and nightclubs. (Stone, 9 /11)

The New York Times: Why Coronavirus Tests Come With Surprise Bills 
For months, Americans have been told not to worry about the costs of coronavirus tests, which are crucial to stopping the pandemic’s spread. ... Patients, whether with or without insurance, are beginning to find holes in those new coverage programs. Nationwide, people have been hit with unexpected fees and denied claims related to coronavirus tests, according to dozens of bills that The New York Times has reviewed. Insurers have told these patients they could owe from a few dollars to thousands. (Kliff, 9/9)

Kaiser Health News: Kids Are Missing Critical Windows For Lead Testing Due To Pandemic
Families skipping or delaying pediatric appointments for their young children because of the pandemic are missing out on more than vaccines. Critical testing for lead poisoning has plummeted in many parts of the country. In the Upper Midwest, Northeast and parts of the West Coast — areas with historically high rates of lead poisoning — the slide has been the most dramatic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In states such as Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota, testing for the brain-damaging heavy metal fell by 50% or more this spring compared with 2019, health officials report. (Zeltner, 9/11)

In other public health news —

The Hill: Zuckerberg Says Facebook Won't Remove Anti-Vaccine Posts Amid Coronavirus Pandemic 
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says in a new interview that the social media giant has no intention of removing anti-vaccination posts. Zuckerberg's remarks come as several companies, such as Moderna, AstraZeneca and Pfizer, are in the late stages of clinical trials for their COVID-19 vaccine candidates. (Kelley, 9/10)

The Hill: Poll: Most Americans Wouldn't Take A COVID-19 Vaccine Before The Election 
A majority of Americans are concerned that a COVID-19 vaccine will be rushed to the market before it's ready because of political pressure from the Trump administration, according to a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). Even if a vaccine is available before Election Day, 54 percent of respondents said they wouldn't take it. (Weixel, 9/10)

CNN: World Suicide Prevention Day: Here's How To Help 
Every 40 seconds, someone in the world takes their own life. That's at least 800,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and the numbers are rising in some parts of the world. In the United States alone, suicide rates have increased by 35% between 1999 and 2018. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls suicide a "growing public health problem." (LaMotte, 9/10)

ProPublica: Hundreds Of Children Are Stuck In Psychiatric Hospitals Each Year Despite The State’s Promises To Find Them Homes
Two years ago, officials from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services vowed to rescue the children they called “stuck kids” — those in state care who had languished in psychiatric hospitals for weeks and sometimes months after doctors had cleared them for release because the agency could not find them proper homes. But children continue to be held at psychiatric hospitals long after they are ready for discharge, a practice our reporting showed leaves them feeling isolated and alone, falling behind in school and at risk of being sexually and physically abused during prolonged hospitalization. (Eldeib, 9/11)

PBS NewsHour: Could The Pandemic Change Addiction Medicine For The Better?
For many Americans facing addiction, the pandemic has made life significantly harder. Across the country, overdoses have soared, with more than 40 states reporting increases in opioid-related mortality. But the coronavirus is also changing how addiction medicine can be provided, and some experts are saying that could be a silver lining in a devastating public health crisis. (Sy and Fritz, 9/10)

In other news —

Stateline: Strained Rural Water Utilities Buckle Under Pandemic Pressure 
The months leading up to the coronavirus pandemic already spelled trouble for the Rome Water System and the tiny community it serves in the Mississippi Delta. A tornado tossed around several homes, closed roads and left the community without power for two weeks. Lightning strikes on two separate occasions damaged pumps used to transport water and wastewater for about 75 connections serving about 220 people. (Simpson, 9/11)

The New York Times: Des Moines Schools Defy Governor's Reopening Order Amid Coronavirus 
No matter how much tension has surrounded the reopening of schools during the coronavirus pandemic, most state and local officials have found a way to arrive at some sort of plan by the first day of classes. But not in Des Moines, where school began this week with local officials openly defying Iowa’s governor and a judge’s order by teaching remotely. The decision puts the district’s funding and administrators’ jobs at risk, and leaves students locked out of athletics and their parents uncertain whether online classes will even count. (Levin and Taylor, 9/10)

Politico: Florida Schools Defy DeSantis Order To Keep Virus Stats Under Wraps
Florida school districts are defying Gov. Ron DeSantis and publicly reporting new Covid-19 cases among students and staff that the state government considers confidential. The state Department of Health has tried to directly quash reporting on the virus in some instances, after DeSantis said K-12 testing data “needs to be put in the right context.” (Atterbury, 9/10)

In other K-12 updates —

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Schools Won't Fully Reopen Until November
No campus in Los Angeles County will be allowed to reopen to all K-12 students until at least November, although schools can begin to offer small in-person classes for children with special needs at no more than 10% of capacity at one time, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. The news will be a blow to students, parents and educators who have been hoping that progress against the coronavirus might allow for campuses to reopen on a faster tract. However, the small in-person classes for children who need special services, announced last week, could allow at least 200,000 students back to campus across the county. (Blume, 9/10)

Boston Globe: Boston To Randomly Test Teachers And Other Educators Weekly For COVID-19
Boston officials and the teachers union unveiled plans on Thursday to randomly test teachers and other educators on a weekly basis for COVID-19, making the city’s school system one of the first in the state to commit to routine testing. Under the plan, the district will test up to 5 percent of the members of the Boston Teachers Union on a weekly basis, giving high priority to those working in schools in neighborhoods with high COVID-19 positivity rates as well as employees who work directly with students where social distancing is not possible, such as those providing hands-on support for some students with profound disabilities. (Vaznis and Vasquez Toness, 9/10)

Dallas Morning News: Dallas ISD Rolls Out A New Plan For Returning To Campuses During The Coronavirus Pandemic
Select groups of Dallas students are poised to return to campuses earlier than planned if the COVID-19 case level in Dallas County stays relatively stable. Dallas ISD rolled out new phased plans Thursday with administrators stressing that in-person classes and extracurricular activities could come with late-minute surprises. That had some trustees expressing concerns that the revised plans could potentially leave parents in a bind when it comes to juggling school and child care. (Smith, 9/10)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Metro Atlanta High School Marching Bands Adjust To Pandemic
Across metro Atlanta, high school marching bands are adapting their operations because of the coronavirus pandemic. The DeKalb County School District postponed all band and athletic activities until at least the end of September. In districts where bands can meet, many students are undergoing temperature checks and filling out symptom questionnaires before entering practice. (Coyne, 9/11)

In higher-education news —

USA Today: COVID Cases At Colleges Fuel Top US Outbreak Rates, Tracker Shows
About three weeks ago, the University of Mississippi started its fall semester, bringing students from around the country back to Lafayette County. The university had hoped its mix of in-person and online classes and mask-wearing guidelines, among other measures, would be enough to prevent an outbreak. On paper, the college appears to be doing well. According to recent numbers, the University of Mississippi has recorded about 430 confirmed cases since Aug. 24, the first day of classes in Oxford, and still has plenty of housing for those who have been infected or exposed to the virus.  (Quintana and Stucka, 9/11)

The New York Times: The University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign Had A Great Coronavirus Plan, But Students Partied On 
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, more than 40,000 students take tests twice a week for the coronavirus. They cannot enter campus buildings unless an app vouches that their test has come back negative. Everyone has to wear masks. This is one of the most comprehensive plans by a major college to keep the virus under control. University scientists developed a quick, inexpensive saliva test. Other researchers put together a detailed computer model that suggested these measures would work, and that in-person instruction could go forward this fall. But the predictive model included an oversight: It assumed that all of the students would do all of the things that they were told to. (Chang, 9/10)

Also —

AP: Arizona Governor Warns Of Suicide Risk Amid Pandemic
Arizona officials warned Thursday that children and teens are at risk of suicide as depression increases during the COVID-19 pandemic.Counseling resources are available to help struggling children, even as schools hold classes online, Gov.Doug Ducey said at a high school in Chandler. “I would like to ask all our parents, especially if your kids are still at home, to engage in that conversation and check how your child is doing,” Ducey said. “We have resources.” (Cooper, 9/10)

The Washington Post: Remote-Learning Health Tips To Prevent Neck Pain And Eye Strain In Children 
This spring, adults suddenly working from home full-time got a lesson in ergonomics the hard way. This fall, make sure your kids don’t have to. To ensure learning from home isn’t a pain in the neck (or strain on the eyes), we turned to experts in ergonomics and children’s health. They prioritize two conditions for healthy learning: frequent movement throughout the day and a screen at eye level. (Long, 9/10)

Politico: Spotty Virus Tracking In Schools Is Leaving Millions In The Dark On Infection Rates 
The data on how coronavirus is spreading at schools and colleges is inconsistent, erratic — and sometimes purposely kept out of the public’s reach. Federal rules don’t specifically require tracking or reporting the numbers by school or college, despite pressure from President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to open schools and colleges for in-person classes. The result is a distorted picture of how and where the virus may be spreading, not just for parents, teachers, students and professors, but the cities and towns where campuses are located. (Quilantan and Goldberg, 9/10)

In sports news —

AP:  2 South Carolina Football Players Test Positive
South Carolina football coach Will Muschamp said two players have tested positive for COVID-19 while another nine are being held out because of possible contact with the infected players. Muschamp gave the update Thursday night. The Gamecocks open the season at home Sept. 26 against No. 25 Tennessee. (9/11)

The New York Times: How The N.F.L. Started Football Season On Time In The Pandemic 
The N.F.L. opened its season Thursday night with a game between the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, a milestone reminder of normalcy during a completely abnormal time. The kickoff, which came after the Texans remained in their locker room during the national anthem and one member of the Chiefs knelt during the playing of it, marked the culmination of months of intense planning and negotiations between the league and its players’ union, who sought to resolve a central question: How could a sport contested by players who slam into one another on every play begin safely amid the coronavirus pandemic? (Shpigel, 9/10)

The Washington Post: High Numbers Of Los Angeles Patients Complained About Coughs As Early As December, Study Says 
The number of patients complaining of coughs and respiratory illnesses surged at a sprawling Los Angeles medical system from late December through February, raising questions about whether the novel coronavirus was spreading earlier than thought, according to a study of electronic medical records. The authors of the report, published Thursday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, suggested that coronavirus infections may have caused this rise weeks before U.S. officials began warning the public about an outbreak. But the researchers cautioned that the results cannot prove that the pathogen reached California so soon, and other disease trackers expressed skepticism that the findings signaled an early arrival. (Guarino, 9/10)

Los Angeles Times: Low-Income Seniors Lose Food Deliveries As Coronavirus Peaks 
Tens of thousands of low-income California seniors stopped receiving home deliveries of free food just as COVID-19 cases and deaths in the state were peaking, thanks to a century-old federal policy to include surplus cheese in government aid packages. As the coronavirus began to spread in March and Gov. Gavin Newsom called on millions of seniors to self-isolate, these needy Californians initially were able to have a box of dried food delivered to their homes each month at no cost because federal regulators granted a state request to temporarily waive certain rules governing the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. The three-month exemption allowed food banks to remove cheese — the only perishable item in the boxes — and then use private companies or volunteers to deliver the monthly aid to clients’ homes. ... But in July, the federal waiver ended and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials refused to extend it, meaning cheese must again be included and, more problematically, refrigerated in transit.. (Wire, 9/10)

In news from the Midwest and East —

AP: Nebraska To End Nearly All Social Distancing Restrictions
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts will end nearly all of his state’s social-distancing restrictions on Monday even as the number of new coronavirus cases has trended upward over the last few months. The new rules will still limit the size of large indoor gatherings, such as concerts, meeting halls and theaters, but will drop all other state-imposed mandates in favor of voluntary guidelines, as other conservative states have done.“We are loosening the restrictions further on Sept. 14,” Ricketts said at a news conference. (Schulte, 9/10)

Dallas Morning News: $5, 15-Minute Rapid COVID-19 Tests Are Coming To Texas
Imagine arriving at your office. You walk through the front door, stop at the front desk, and then take a COVID-19 test. Within minutes you are cleared to begin your work day. Cheap, rapid coronavirus testing could change how businesses, schools and other places move forward during the pandemic, and Texas is hoping to be at the forefront. (Jimenez, 9/10)

The Washington Post: Maryland Buys 250,000 Rapid-Detection Coronavirus Tests For Mass Screenings 
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Thursday that the state has ordered 250,000 rapid coronavirus tests that can deliver results in 15 minutes and will be deployed for mass screenings at nursing homes across the state. The rapid antigen tests, less sensitive than lab-based diagnostic tests that take hours, are newly approved by federal regulators for broad screenings and can be run on a handheld device. (Cox, Sullivan, Hedgpeth and Schneider, 9/10)

Detroit Free Press: New Order To Allow Outdoor Visits At Nursing Homes In Michigan
Visitation will be expanded at nursing homes to allow outdoor visits starting next week, the state health department said in a news release. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon signed the order on Thursday affecting residents in several types of long-term care facilities, including nursing homes, independent living facilities and assisted living facilities. Visitors had been severely restricted, if not barred altogether, at many such facilities during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic. (Anderson, 9/10)

ABC News: COVID-19 Outbreak At Virginia Jail Infects 124 Inmates, 20 Staffers: Officials 
A COVID-19 outbreak has rapidly spread through a Virginia jail, infecting at least 120 inmates and 20 staff members despite emergency protocols officials say have been in place since March to prevent the contagion from infiltrating the facility. The Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Virginia, is the latest U.S. correctional institution to report an outbreak of coronavirus which has plagued thousands of jail and prison inmates across the country since the global pandemic started earlier this year. (Hutchinson, 9/10)

State House News Service: State Hears Ideas To Strengthen Workplace COVID-19 Safety 
Groups representing workers on Wednesday asked [Massachusetts] labor officials to strengthen COVID-19 protections for employees of various types of businesses. The Department of Labor Standards held a hearing — the first of two — on a set of emergency regulations setting COVID-19 safety standards. Department director Michael Flanagan said the standards mirror the workplace safety measures put into place by Gov. Charlie Baker as part of the protocols required for brick-and-mortar operations to reopen. (Lannan, 9/10)

Bangor Daily News: In York County Virus Hotspot, Some Say It’s Time To ‘Stop Fighting Science'
A recent COVID-19 outbreak that has infected at least 10 people affiliated with an evangelical church whose pastor officiated at an August wedding that spurred Maine’s largest virus outbreak has been frustrating for Matthew Gardner. The 36-year-old Sanford man is an air quality contractor and holds multiple certificates from the state Department of Environmental Protection. Understanding how small particles travel through the air and potentially make people sick is his specialty. (Schroeder and Bennett, 9/10)

Fox News: 'Bat Tick' Found In New Jersey For First Time, Researchers Say
A tick species associated with bats was recorded in New Jersey for the first time, researchers say, and humans, pets and livestock could be at risk of infection. Findings from the Rutgers University-led study were published on Wednesday in the Journal of Medical Entomology. (Rivas, 9/10)

Fox News: Brain-Eating Amoeba Claims Life Of Florida Boy, 13
A brain-eating amoeba claimed the life of a 13-year-old boy in Florida, according to multiple reports. The parents of Tanner Lake Wall told Florida news outlet News4Jax that their son contracted the amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, when he was swimming at a campground in North Florida near Tallahassee just a few days before his death. “He swam in a lake there Friday and Saturday with 50-plus kids and our daughters were there, my husband was there, no one else got it, and he’s the only one," Alicia Whitehill, Tanner’s mother, said in an interview with the TV news outlet. (McGorry, 9/10)

And in news from the West —

Fox News: Idaho Reports First Human West Nile Cases Of The Year 
Idaho health officials reported two human West Nile cases Wednesday, marking the first of the season.The infections were found among two residents in Owyhee County, which runs along the state’s southwest border. Both residents were over 50 years old. One had a diagnosis for West Nile fever and the other case was discovered through blood donor screening, per a news release from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. (Rivas, 9/10)

AP: Guatemala To Reopen Borders Next Week After 6 Months
Guatemala plans to reopen its borders next week, six months after closing them in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. A government notice published Thursday in the official register said that with some limitations and requirements to follow health guidelines, the country’s land, sea and air borders would reopen Sept. 18. (9/10)

AP: Peru's Indigenous Turn To Ancestral Remedies To Fight Virus
As COVID-19 spread quickly through Peru’s Amazon, the Indigenous Shipibo community decided to turn to the wisdom of their ancestors. Hospitals were far away, short on doctors and running out of beds. Even if they could get in, many of the ill were too fearful to go, convinced that stepping foot in a hospital would only lead to death. So Mery Fasabi gathered herbs, steeped them in boiling water and instructed her loved ones to breathe in the vapors. She also made syrups of onion and ginger to help clear congested airways. (Abd, 9/11)

AP: UK's 'Moonshot' Mass Virus Test Plan Met With Skepticism
Health experts on Thursday expressed strong skepticism about the British government’s ambitious plans to carry out millions of coronavirus tests daily in a bid to help people resume normal lives in the absence of a vaccine. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday he wanted to roll out much simpler, faster mass testing “in the near future” to identify people who don’t have the virus so that they can “behave in a more normal way in the knowledge they can’t infect anyone else.” Johnson said people with such negative “passports” could then attend events at places like theaters, and he said he was “hopeful” that the plan will be widespread by springtime. (Hui, 9/10)

Reuters: Philippine Health Ministry Says No Conditions Set To Access U.S. Vaccines
The Philippines will have access to potential COVID-19 vaccines being developed by U.S. firms without any strings attached, the health ministry said on Friday, after the presidential spokesman had linked the pardoning of a U.S. Marine to ensuring access. Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said none of the U.S. vaccine makers the government is in talks with had set conditions, adding all potential vaccines will undergo a regulatory process to ensure safety and efficacy. (9/11)

The Washington Post: Why Human Brains Are Bad At Assessing The Risks Of Pandemics
More than six months into a pandemic in the United States, we know a few things. We know that the novel coronavirus can be fatal, that it's passed via respiratory droplets, that masks and social distancing help stop its spread. And yet many Americans, weary of lockdowns, seem determined to return to social gatherings and other "normal" activities, even though experts have warned against this. The question is, why? Why do some take the threat of the virus more seriously than others? (Kvatum, 9/8)

Undark: Amid A Global Pandemic, Designers Aim To Reimagine PPE
In March, as Covid-19 cases spiked and supplies of N95 protective masks dwindled at the Bay Area hospital where her brother-in-law works, Megan Duong launched a local search for N95s. Along with her sister-in-law, Sabrina Paseman, Duong enlisted volunteers and tracked down 7,000 masks — barely enough to cover the needs of two hospitals for one day. “We just knew that it was not a scalable solution,” Duong said.So, Duong and Paseman, both former Apple employees, set out to invent a new tool that, they hoped, would make available mask technologies more effective and accessible. (Thomasy, 9/9)

The Atlantic: How To Better Ventilate Your Home During The Pandemic 
My obsession with ventilation began long before the pandemic. Five years ago, when I moved from central Tokyo to the coast of Japan, a blanket of humidity seemed to levitate out from the sea and the surrounding mountains, wrapping everything I owned in a moist haze. Combined with crushing summer heat, it cultivated a perfect recipe for mold. (Mod, 9/8)

Scientific American: Our Health Depends On Our Homes And Work Spaces 
When COVID-19 hit the U.S., most of us became homebodies. Journalist Emily Anthes was thus propitious in the timing of her new book, The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). You may distract yourself from cabin fever by learning about the cabin.Actually, the work covers a wide variety of indoor situations. One chapter looks at architectural design that encourages exercise. For example, apartment building planners stumbled on this shocking strategy: to get people to use the stairs more, make the stairwells wider and well lit. You know, nicer to use. (Mirsky, 9/1)

The Atlantic: Did COVID-19 Mess Up My Heart?
The stairs have become my daily Everest. Just six months ago, the steep climb to my fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn was a nuisance only when I was carrying bags of groceries. Now, every time I mount those 53 steps, no matter how slowly, even if I’m empty-handed, my heart rate shoots up to marathon-level. I can actually feel the thud-thud in my throat. Sometimes I have to pause between landings to lie on the floor and stick my feet up in the air to avoid passing out. (Copaken, 9/4)

The Washington Post: Italy’s Bergamo Is Calling Back Coronavirus Survivors. About Half Say They Haven’t Fully Recovered.
The first wave is over, thousands have been buried, and in a city that was once the world’s coronavirus epicenter, the hospital is calling back the survivors. It is drawing their blood, examining their hearts, scanning their lungs, asking them about their lives. Twenty people per day, it is measuring what the coronavirus has left in its wake.“How are you feeling?” a doctor recently asked the next patient to walk in, a 54-year-old who still can’t ascend a flight of steps without losing her breath. (Harlan and Pitrelli, 9/8)

Also —

Scientific American: How Good A Diet Is Intermittent Fasting? 
Healthy weight management comes with many perks. Among the proven benefits: a reduced risk of diabetes, less joint pain, lower chances of certain cancers and an overall fitter cardiovascular system. Some regimens, particularly the Mediterranean diet, seem especially well suited to delivering these advantages, though, as with all diets, only to the degree that people can stick with them and avoid overeating. Now research hints that another trendy diet may offer even more extensive health benefits. At least that is the claim by some who study an approach to eating—and not eating—called intermittent fasting. (Wallis, 9/1)

The Washington Post: Palliative Care Offers More Than Treatment For Dying 
Palliative care has an image problem. It’s a medical specialty that focuses on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness to improve the quality of life for both patient and caregivers. But while the specialty’s goal is to help all patients with a serious, potentially life-threatening illness, palliative care specialists are almost always involved with patients approaching the end of life. The result is that the very phrase “palliative care” has become frightening to many people with critical illnesses and their families, wrongly raising the idea that they are being sent to specialists who will help them die. Now a growing movement is advocating to rename palliative care so that patients — and doctors — won’t fear using it. (Warraich, 9/7)

Stat: The Interstate Highway System As A Model For U.S. Health Care 
Driving from California to Vermont, as I did this summer, offers time to think and plenty to look at. The vast interstate highway system that I followed for much of my journey, championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was created in large part by the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, which declared that building this highway system was “essential to the national interest.” (Williams, 9/10)

The New York Times: What I Learned As A Parent Of A Transgender Child
Sweat trickled down my neck as I stood in the heat alongside my daughter and husband, waiting for our turn to march in the Los Angeles Pride Parade in 2018.While I had been a spectator at Pride before, I never guessed that one day I would be marching beside my teenager, dark maroon lipstick painting her lips, a barrette pinning back her now almost shoulder-length hair, a “she” pin fastened to her “love wins” shirt. She was beaming and radiant.I looked over at my husband and held his gaze. We each ceremoniously waved the pink, blue and white striped trans-pride flag with one hand and gripped our daughter’s hand with the other. (Hassouri, 9/8)

The Washington Post: With Shows Like '16 And Recovering,' MTV Is One Of The Networks Looking To Change How We See Mental Health On TV
When MTV introduced its long-running documentary series “True Life” in 1998, the first installment offered a grim look at heroin addiction. Reporting from the affluent Dallas suburb of Plano, Tex. — where a spate of teen overdose deaths had caused nationwide alarm — Serena Altschul interviewed young adult subjects as they used intravenous drugs. Director Wilson Van Law told the Houston Chronicle he was so unsettled by what he’d documented in “True Life: Fatal Dose” that he temporarily quit smoking and drinking. “It certainly depressed me,” he told the newspaper. “It was the most difficult story I’ve worked on, and I’ve done some pretty dark stuff.” (Butler, 9/9)

NPR: Musclebound Mice Thrived In Space With The Help Of A Drug 
Some mighty mice have overcome one of the major obstacles to interplanetary space flight: muscle and bone loss.The mice got a drug that prevented the usual decreases in muscle and bone mass during a month on the International Space Station, a team reports in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The drug was effective not just in preserving the muscle mass and bone mass, but actually caused the muscles and bones to grow," says Dr. Se-Jin Lee, a professor at The Jackson Laboratory and the University of Connecticut. (Hamilton, 9/8)

The New York Times: I’ve Never Seen The American West In Such Deep Distress 
The open road in the Big Empty part of the American West has always been therapeutic. Vacant skies, horizons that stretch to infinity, country without clutter. The soul needs to roam, too. After six months of confinement, I was a caged bird gnawing at the bars. Ahead were mountains beyond mountains, rivers that hustled out of tight canyons and winds strong enough to knock a prairie chicken down. Alas, my map was obsolete. The West of 2020 is very sick. Like much of the country, we Westerners are at each other’s throats, struggling to put our lives back together under a madman for a president. But unlike the rest of the country, we’re also choking on smoke and staring out at Martian-red skies in a world becoming uninhabitable. (Timothy Egan, 9/11)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Climate Crisis And Covid-19 — A Major Threat To The Pandemic Response
Just as an active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is getting under way, the entire U.S. hurricane coast, from Texas to the Carolinas, is witnessing explosive outbreaks of Covid-19 cases in communities where physical distancing restrictions have been eased. As an early wake-up call, Tropical Storm Cristobal made landfall in Louisiana on June 7, triggering coastal evacuation orders and a federal emergency declaration. Concurrently, temperatures continue to set records throughout the southern United States, while Arizona has been battling multiple historic wildfires that are also requiring communities to evacuate their homes. All this as summer had just begun. These events suggest that the United States will increasingly face complex, challenging scenarios, given the confluence of our two most pressing global health threats — the rapid emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the insidiously evolving climate crisis. (Renee N. Salas, James M. Shultz, and Caren G. Solomon, 9/10)

The New York Times: A Climate Reckoning In Wildfire-Stricken California
Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face. The crisis in the nation’s most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see so soon: a cascade effect, in which a series of disasters overlap, triggering or amplifying each other. (Thomas Fuller and Christopher Flavelle, 9/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Woodward’s Non-Revelation
The books professing dark revelations about President Trump appear to be lined up from here to Election Day, like aircraft heading into LaGuardia. This week it’s Bob Woodward’s turn, with the big news reportedly being that Mr. Trump told him in a taped conversation on Feb. 7 that he had played down the coronavirus despite knowing it was “deadly stuff.” This is not news. We know Mr. Trump played down the virus threat at the time because he said so publicly many times. We wrote an editorial about it on March 12, “The Virus and Leadership,” warning Mr. Trump that voters would judge his Presidency largely on how he handled the virus. (9/10)

The Washington Post: When Americans Needed Honesty Most, Trump Gave Them Lies And Fantasy 
When President Trump was told by advisers on Jan. 28 that he was facing the most formidable national security threat of his presidency with the outbreak of a new coronavirus in China, the danger was already evident in Wuhan. The grave warning to Mr. Trump, as described by Post associate editor Bob Woodward in his new book, “Rage,” made a strong impression on him, as he revealed to Mr. Woodward at the time. What is astounding and indefensible is that in the months that followed, Mr. Trump willfully deceived the nation about the seriousness of the threat. Mr. Woodward’s recorded conversations with the president expose a grave dereliction of duty. (9/10)

Boston Globe: A Day With Lessons For Protecting American Lives
It will be a day of wreath-laying and solemn remembrance as it always is. But if the deaths of some 3,000 human beings on American soil can continue to tug at our consciences, how then to acknowledge, mark, remember the more recent deaths on these shores that today approach 200,000? Where is their memorial? And, as this editorial page asked Thursday, where is the special commission that will eventually assign blame for all of the failures of leadership and political will that brought us to this day? (9/11)

Fox News: Why Woodward's Trump Book Is Being Misread By Democrats
This week’s effort to bury the Trump presidency is called “Rage” and it comes from famed Washington Post Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, who’s releasing a follow up to his 2018 Trump Tell All entitled, “Fear." Like its made for TV predecessors, “Rage” has a dramatic title guaranteed to generate big headlines and bigger sales, but I believe it will ultimately end up doing very little to hurt the president. (Jimmy Failla, 9/10)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Lied And Americans Died
So now we have irrefutable proof that President Trump lied to the American people virtually from the start about the threat of the coronavirus. Sadly, this is no great surprise. Trump lies so much, and with such astonishing abandon, that it’s safe to doubt the veracity of anything that comes out of his mouth. (9/10)

The New York Times: Trump’s Coronavirus Response Was Beyond Incompetent 
Until this week I thought that Donald Trump’s disastrous mishandling of Covid-19 was basically negligence, even if that negligence was willful — that is, that he failed to understand the gravity of the threat because he didn’t want to hear about it and refused to take actions that could have saved thousands of American lives because actually doing effective policy isn’t his kind of thing. But I was wrong. According to Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” Trump wasn’t oblivious; he knew by early February that Covid-19 was both deadly and airborne. And this isn’t a case of conflicting recollections: Woodward has Trump on tape. Yet Trump continued to hold large indoor rallies, disparage precautionary measures and pressure states to reopen business despite the risk of infection. (Paul Krugman, 9/10)

Boston Globe: An Incompetent In The White House 
Playing it down — while chastising state and local leaders who gave COVID-19 the serious response it deserved — set the stage for a preventable catastrophe. Almost 200,000 Americans have died, while countless others have lost jobs and endured major disruptions to life. The United States leads the world in coronavirus deaths, a grim testament to the federal government’s limp response to the virus. Had the president merely told Americans what he told Woodward in February — and, better yet, acted on that information with strict public health measures and vigilant preparation — thousands of victims might still be alive. (9/10)

The Washington Post: If Trump Lied, So Did Fauci 
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused President Trump of “a life-and-death betrayal of the American people” on Wednesday, after Bob Woodward revealed that Trump was warned in January about the potential deadliness of covid-19. The president’s failure to act, Biden said, was “beyond despicable. It’s a dereliction of duty, a disgrace. He knew how deadly it was. He knew and purposely played it down. Worse, he lied.” Well, if Trump lied, so did Anthony S. Fauci. (Marc A. Thiessen, 9/10)

The Washington Post: Growing Public Skepticism On Vaccines Is An Indictment Of Trump’s Record
Six in 10 Americans worry political pressure from the administration will lead the FDA to rush vaccine approval before confirming it’s safe and effective, the Kaiser Family Foundation has found. And only about 4 in 10 would get the vaccine, even if it were free, if the FDA approved it before the election. Fearful that these suspicions might reduce the market for a drug that tremendous resources have gone into developing, Big Pharma took an unusual step Tuesday. The chief executives of nine drug companies publicly pledged to “make the safety and well-being of vaccinated individuals the top priority in development of the first COVID-19 vaccines.'' (Catherine Rampell, 9/10)

Stat: The Pharmaceutical Industry Stands In For A Politically Impaired FDA 
How can Americans tell when the Food and Drug Administration has become so politically impaired that it cannot serve its mission to protect the public? One measure is when pharmaceutical manufacturers become the voice of caution and prudence about when new vaccines should be released to the public. (Russell Teagarden and Arthur L. Caplan, 9/10)

The Hill: How COVID-19 Exacerbates Inequities Among Vulnerable Children 
The COVID-19 pandemic has made an unprecedented impact on our society, and for many children, its impact could be far-reaching. An estimated 74 million children under the age of 18 live in the United States. Many of these children have experienced illness and death of loved ones, disruptions in their education and care, limited social interactions with friends and family, and much more due to COVID. (Kelly R. Fisher, 9/10)

St. Louis Post Dispatch: GOP Reticence On Masks Has Turned A Health Issue Into A Political One.
A new study confirms a senseless yet unsurprising phenomenon: States led by Republican governors have been slower than those led by Democrats to issue mask orders during the pandemic — if they’ve issued them at all. That data came as the White House coronavirus task force last week singled out Missouri as a “red zone” and urged the state to close bars and mandate the wearing of masks.Republican Gov. Mike Parson, like so many in his party, has resisted such advice in the past. The party that holds most of America’s political power today should be judged this November by how it has handled the worst public health crisis in a century. The judgment deserves to be brutal. (9/10)

Orlando Sentinel: Parents Need More Detailed COVID Information From Schools
Some students are back in schools for face-to-face learning. As COVID-19 cases crop up, parents in Orange and Seminole counties need more information than they are getting about infections at schools. Some students are back in schools for face-to-face learning. As COVID-19 cases crop up, parents in Orange and Seminole counties need more information than they are getting about infections at schools. (9/10)

Detroit Free Press: Free Education For Frontline Workers In COVID-19 Pandemic
Over the past six months, Americans across the country have put their lives on the line every day to protect others from a deadly virus. Home health care workers taking care of elderly patients. Janitors and custodians working in our hospitals. Grocery store workers stocking the shelves to make sure we can put food on the table. Postal workers delivering our mail. These men and women have emerged as the real heroes of this crisis. But it is not enough to just call them heroes. We must also work around the clock to ensure that long after this crisis is over, our frontline workers have the support they need to get ahead in this country. (Gretchen Whitmer, 9/10)

The Hill: Provide Seniors The Flexibility And Coverage They Need And Deserve 
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the United States into an unprecedented period of uncertainty. America has been ravaged by this public health crisis as states across the country continue to report tens of thousands of new cases daily. While individuals of all ages, race and creed have been impacted by COVID-19, older Americans and individuals with underlying conditions have borne the brunt of this virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 80 percent of COVID-19 related deaths in the United States have occurred among adults 65 and older. (Mary R. Grealy, 9/10)