While we are understandably consumed with the daily, seemingly unstoppable firehose of news about the most dangerous pandemic in a century, little attention has been paid to the long-term impact of this crisis on the world's most vulnerable children.

From the immoral border policy to the environment to the effects of the shutdown and more, the Trump administration has all but declared war on vulnerable children.

It was already clear that Donald Trump’s policies, actions, and words have put millions of children at risk. But although the longest government shutdown in American history is coming to an end, this nearly 40 day financial crisis added a whole new dimension to the challenges facing children living in poor, working poor, and even many middle-class families.

According to state health department data, there are currently 9,354 confirmed coronavirus infections in Oklahoma, up 5.1 percent from the previous day. “It’s likely that an event like this, at this particular moment, is going to be a super-spreader event,” Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University told The Daily Beast. Anthony Fauci, a leading infectious disease expert and key member of the White House coronavirus task force, confirmed that he would not attend, given the choice, citing his own high-risk demographic as a 79-year-old man.

“People are seeing this as a personal decision, and it’s based on our own personal risk tolerance,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and a professor of public health and pediatrics at Columbia University. “That’s not public health, because in public health, your risk should not be my risk.”

As a physician, my task is to keep people safe and as healthy as possible. Medicines, including vaccines, play a big role in this undertaking. However, almost equally dangerous as viral spread is the spread of false hope. To pacify expectations, I often turn to my public health colleague, Irwin Redlener, MD, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University: “Suggestions that oral polio vaccine may have a role in temporarily preventing Covid-19 are provocative, but not really supported by the kind of evidence that would make many of us optimistic.” Dr. Redlener was surprised by Dr. Fauci’s public support of OPV. “It’s far too early to suggest that OPV is some kind of miraculous, low-cost preventive measure,” added the professor of pediatrics.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and an expert on U.S. readiness for pandemics, called it a “delusion of normalcy” to see gradual reopenings as an indication that any community—from New York to Washington—is out of the woods. But to be fair, said Redlener, “risky behavior in younger people is always a public health issue.”

That gamble is made worse by the recent reports that have shown, for children under 18, the potentially fatal multisystem inflammatory syndrome related to COVID-19.

“The fact that these organizations have found doctors who are willing to support a rightwing agenda designed to help Donald Trump against all scientific evidence and appropriate public health practices is shameful,” said Irwin Redlener, a professor of public health at Columbia University.

Critics notwithstanding, Brandon said the coalition recently spent $50,000 for videos on Facebook, Hulu and Twitter targeting independents and Republicans with the message that Covid-19 mostly hits the elderly to minimize risks for others.

Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician, directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Earth Institute at Columbia University; he is also a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and president emeritus of Children’s Health Fund.

It is already clear that 2020 be a year for the history books. The world has lurched from one mega-disaster to the next, witnessing devastating wildfires in Australia, plagues of locusts across East Africa and South Asia, and a pandemic that has crippled the global economy.

“We still haven’t gotten our act together,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to have a second, if not a third, wave” because of the nation’s “erratic and disorganized policies.” 

The campaign has consulted physicians and health experts about safeguarding Mr. Biden, who at 77 falls squarely into a high-risk group for the coronavirus. Irwin Redlener, a clinical professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said he had spoken with the campaign about health precautions, including how to handle the possibility that members of Mr. Biden’s traveling staff had been exposed.

“In terms of the safety of the staff, the candidate, what did they need to know?” said Dr. Redlener, who previously served on Mr. Biden’s public health advisory committee.

As the number of coronavirus deaths across the U.S. passed 40,000, there were emerging signs of hope: hospitalization rates were decreasing, daily death tolls were beginning to flatten, and transmission rates were seeming to slow.

But as mayors and governors, with the president’s blusterous urging, begin easing restrictions and other emergency public health measures—sending Floridians back to packed beaches this weekend, for instance—we still need a better understanding of the true number of COVID-19 deaths. Not just because having a transparent and accurate death count is critical (it is), but because it can illuminate unknown hot spots and provide critical insight into the real scope of this pandemic—and how to avoid new disaster amid the urge to resume normal life.