Reopening Schools in September Is a Dangerous Experiment
As Donald Trump keeps calling for the nation’s 124,000 public and private schools to reopen, even as he’s failed to contain COVID-19, we are about to embark on a massive, poorly controlled national experiment with the subjects being most of the nation’s 55 million school-age children, their families and their teachers.
Unfortunately, this may not go well—which helps explain why New York City is one of the few major school districts planning to open school buildings to students in September, and only on a staggered basis—and we could be facing a significant upsurge in COVID-19 cases, including in states where the outbreak seems, at the moment, relatively under control.
America Is on Track for a Million Coronavirus Cases a Day, and at Least 800,000 Deaths, by the End of 2020
If someone had suggested five months ago that we would be seeing more than 3 million cases and 135,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. by mid-July, I wouldn’t have believed it.
But now it’s distinctly possible that, five months from now, half of all Americans could have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, and more than 800,000 Americans may die in this extraordinary outbreak. That is what many of our most prominent public-health experts now expect.
The Incompetence, Ignorance, and Dishonesty of Trump’s Coronavirus Response Are Literally Killing Us
Donald Trump and his administration did not create the worst biological threat that the world has experienced in more than 100 years, but the American president’s incompetence, ignorance, and dishonesty in handling this crisis has been stunning. One hundred and twenty-seven thousand Americans are dead already, and that number will continue to rise.
Vice President Mike Pence’s status report Friday was so disconnected from reality that it can only be characterized as pandemic gaslighting. “All 50 states and territories across this country are opening up safely and responsibly” as “we flattened the curve,” he said, while insisting that “it’s almost inarguable that more testing is generating more cases.” That would be false, false, and false.
The Trump Administration Is the Worst for Children in the Country’s History
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.
It has become undeniable that after only two years, the Trump administration is already showing itself to be the most anti-child of any presidency in memory.
Behind the WHO’s Irresponsible COVID-19 Transmission Communications Mess
Within 24 hours the World Health Organization made and then pulled back a critically important statement regarding the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 global pandemic. According to Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s leading scientific voice on COVID-19, “We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They’re following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts and they’re not finding secondary transmission onward. It is very rare.”
Disaster season is upon us. The pandemic changes everything.
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.
Don't open businesses until rapid reliable testing available everywhere
The U.S. is on the verge of a mass reopening of businesses in many states.
This mad rush, most notably led by Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp (R), is fraught with the danger of new, uncontrollable surges of COVID-19. If the reopening is not done properly, there could well be tens of thousands of potentially avoidable pandemic deaths throughout the nation.
Today’s children are the pandemic generation. For millions, the future is now grim.
The COVID-19 Death Undercount Is Scarier Than You Think
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.