Perspectives

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• *Former CDC director: There's a long war ahead and our Covid-19 response must adapt
  Tom Frieden, former CDC Director. CNN Health. Updated 10:23 PM ET, Sun March 22, 2020
• *If N.J. only tests the sickest for coronavirus, how can we stop it from spreading?
  This article helps one make sense of issues around COVID-19 testing. Many people think of testing primarily for helping individuals get care, but it's main benefit - not yet fully realized - is in terms of public health surveillance and response.
• *The COVID-19 Pandemic in the US - A Clinical Update (JAMA)
  Saad B. Omer, Preeti Malani, Carlos del Rio, JAMA, April 6, 2020
• *We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has.
  Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher and Richard Besser, Washington Post, July 14, 2020
  The administration is undermining public health
• A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-COVID Strategy
  Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford University. Published in Imprimis (Hillsdale College), October 2020; Vol 49, Number 10
  The article, adapted from a panel presentation on October 9, 2020, could serve as the basis for an interesting discussion/debate about balancing the various challenges associated with SARS-CoV-2. Please note that inclusion of an item in this collection is not an endorsement of its conclusions.,,
• A systems approach to preventing and responding to COVID-19
  Declan Terence Bradley, Mariam Abdulmonem Mansouri, Frank Kee, Leandro Martin Totaro Garcia
  The Lancet, EClinical Medicine, March 27, 2020, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100325
• Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll
  Nick Triggle, BBC News, March 25, 2020
  Raises questions about how many deaths are attributable to SARS-CoV-2 versus would have occurred anyway, versus how many will be lost from the harm to the economy.
• Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?
  David L. Katz, NY Times, March 20, 2020
  A pivot right now from trying to protect all people to focusing on the most vulnerable remains entirely plausible. With each passing day, however, it becomes more difficult. The path we are on may well lead to uncontained viral contagion and monumental collateral damage to our society and economy. A more surgical approach is what we need.
• It’s Too Late to Avoid Disaster, but There Are Still Things We Can Do
  Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker, New York Times, March 27, 2020
  Our leaders need to speak some hard truths and then develop a strategy to prevent the worst.
• Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers
  Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, March 21, 2020
  What Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s success is teaching us about the pandemic.
  
• Laurie Garrett - How Trump and Xi set the stage for the coronavirus pandemic
  The New Republic, April 2, 2020
  It is tragic and perverse that animosities between two egotistical leaders and their sycophantic circles of advisers have placed the entire world in grave peril.
• On-again, off-again looks to be best social-distancing option
  Alvin Powell, Harvard Gazette, March 27, 2020
  Harvard infectious disease experts said recent modeling shows that — absent the development of a vaccine or other intervention — a staggered pattern of social distancing would save more lives than a one-and-done strategy and avoid overwhelming hospitals while allowing immunity to build in the population.
• Opinion: The Right Sends In the Quacks
  Paul Krugman, NY Times, April 20, 2020
  Covid-19 highlights the conservative reliance on fake experts.
• Please, Let’s Stop the Epidemic of Armchair Epidemiology
  Tim Requarth, Slate, March 26, 2020
  Ignore the people misconstruing their expertise and offering false certainty.
  
• Prisons and public health: Gov. Cuomo must let out thousands or many will die
  Susan M. Reverby, NY Daily News, March 27, 2020
  Many are applauding Gov. Cuomo for the honesty and emotionalism of his daily briefings on COVID-19. I am sure he wants his legacy to be that he saved the lives as thousands of New Yorkers. But if he doesn’t act on clemency right now for the state’s aging prison population, who are so vulnerable to COVID-19, he may well be remembered instead more like Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who was responsible for the deaths of 43 incarcerated men and correctional officers killed when he ordered state troopers to shoot into the prison yard at Attica in 1971.
• Public Health Response to the Initiation and Spread of Pandemic COVID-19 in the United States, February 24–April 21, 2020
  Anne Schuchat, MD; CDC COVID-19 Response Team; MMWR May 8, 2020 / 69(18);551–556
  Various factors contributed to accelerated spread during February–March 2020, including continued travel-associated importations, large gatherings, introductions into high-risk workplaces and densely populated areas, and cryptic transmission resulting from limited testing and asymptomatic and presymptomatic spread. Targeted and communitywide mitigation efforts were needed to slow transmission.
• The 3 Weeks That Changed Everything
  James Fallows, The Atlantic, June 29, 2020
  Imagine if the National Transportation Safety Board investigated America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
  
  
• The Fierce Urgency Of Now: Closing Glaring Gaps In US Surveillance Data On COVID-19
  Nancy Krieger, Gregg Gonsalves, Mary T. Bassett, William Hanage, Harlan M. Krumholz
  April 14, 2020
  We assert the time is now for the COVID-19 public health surveillance system to record and publicly share the critical data needed to protect the people’s health and prevent health inequities.
• The Hard Covid-19 Questions We’re Not Asking
  Joseph G. Allen and Helen Jenkins, NY Times, Aug. 30, 2021
  If the goal is zero spread, which we think is not realistic, then the country would need to keep many of the most restrictive measures in place — an approach that has serious public health consequences of its own. If the goal is to minimize severe disease, some states with high vaccination rates might already be there. Low-vaccination states would still have work to do before loosening restrictions.
• The Public Health Response to COVID-19: Balancing Precaution and Unintended Consequences
  Stefan David Baral, Sharmistha Mishra, Daouda Diouf, Nittaya Phanuphak, David Dowdy. Annals of Epidemiology. 8 May 2020 In press, journal pre-proof. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2020.05.001
• The public health response to COVID-19: balancing precaution and unintended consequences
  Stefan David Baral, MD, MPH; Sharmistha Mishra MD, PhD; Daouda Diouf, MsC; Nittaya Phanuphak, MD, PhD; David Dowdy, MD, PhD. Annals of Epidemiology; Volume 46, June 2020, Pages 12-13
  ... our success as a society in combating COVID-19 will rapidly be judged by how effectively we can move from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to a locally responsive, nuanced public health strategy that accounts for both an increased breadth of health consequences and the striking epidemiologic heterogeneity that has characterized the pandemic from its beginning.
• Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us
  Ed Yong, The Atlantic, December 29, 2020
  As vaccines roll out, the U.S. will face a choice about what to learn and what to forget.
• Will inequality worsen the toll of the pandemic in the U.S.?
  Alvin Powell, Harvard Gazette, March 24, 2020
  A Harvard public health professor warned Tuesday that the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. could rank among the world’s worst if the nation fails to take steps to ease the health and economic impacts on America’s poor, who face challenges rare among developed countries.
  Mary Bassett, François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights and former health commissioner of New York City, said the country’s longstanding structural inequality threatens to further complicate strategies by public health and government leaders to manage the pandemic.
• You're history. It's a good time to preserve it.
  Perspective from Orange County Commissioner Sally Greene, recounting 1918 Influenza history