I am not the first one to say this, and it is less prophetic than just observably true: Donald Trump is consistently putting his calculus of how he can win reelection over any commitment to protect the nation’s public health. The president clearly has no coherent strategy for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the recent surge across the country, and it’s clear that the health and lives of the people of the United States matter much less to him than his own political fortunes.
The world has been living through the COVID-19 pandemic for nearly eight months. Much is still unknown about the illness that has stricken 14.8 million people and killed more than 610,000 worldwide, but every day brings new insights and developments. Columbia experts have been at the forefront of the international response to this crisis. We asked them to review what we’ve learned, so far, and to discuss the most significant challenges ahead.
The upcoming school year will be like nothing teachers, students, and families have ever experienced, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic steers school systems to embrace online learning and incorporate it in new ways.
At a press conference before a speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights in 1966, two years before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane because it often results in physical death.”
Wearing a face covering will slow the spread from asymptomatic carriers. Results of a COVID-19 antibody testing study indicate the virus may have infected more than 100,000 Riverside County residents. This finding underscores the need to wear face coverings as people may have the virus without any symptoms, then easily spread it to others when not wearing a mask or keeping six feet of distance.