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Covid-19 cases are on the rise again, but you couldn’t tell from the behavior of the public (rushing back to normal), as well as public health and elected officials who fear backlash from even suggesting the reimplementation of precautions.
Meanwhile, the Senate (again) failed to muster even a simple majority of votes for a bill to write abortion protections into federal law, as the fallout continues from the leaked majority draft opinion from the Supreme Court suggesting it is about to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade.
This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KHN, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call.
Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:
The U.S. passed the threshold of 1 million deaths from covid this week. But that is almost certainly an undercount, and it is impossible to know how big a problem the coronavirus remains because many positive home tests are not being reported to public health authorities.Lawmakers and the administration are further complicating matters. The administration has been pushing a mixed message. On one hand, it is casting the continuing pandemic as serious enough to require tens of billions of dollars in additional emergency funds. At the same time, it’s broadcasting that we really don’t need to do anything — such as masking — to combat it.Meanwhile, warning lights are flashing for public health and future pandemics. Lawsuits — such as the one that originated in Florida and led to the end of the mask requirement for interstate travel on airplanes and other public transportation — have not only hamstrung state and local public health officials and authorities but are havin …