Confronting Covid: The American response has been far better than critics acknowledge; Trump to make COVID-19 vaccine free for Medicare, Medicaid recipients , and other C-Virus Updates

Confronting Covid: The American response has been far better than critics acknowledge:

Attacks on President Trump’s performance on Covid-19 have been common among media commentators and are central to his opponent’s presidential campaign. Polls suggest this continual faultfinding has influenced many voters’ perceptions of how the president has managed the epidemic. These criticisms, however, are unjustified and unwarranted.

Trump’s unconventional style and inherent inability to avoid the spotlight, coupled with the Food and Drug Administration’s initial overregulation and the Centers for Disease Control’s early underperformance, have made him a ready target. But Trump’s application of targeted regulatory relief and financial incentives stimulated an unprecedented private-sector response to the pandemic, more than compensating for these preliminary mishaps. A closer look at the administration’s record reveals a much more successful response to Covid than critics are willing to acknowledge.

The president’s detractors selectively use inter-country comparisons of case and death numbers to disparage the U.S. response, but these numbers are subject to many variables—known and unknown—and are unreliable when a pandemic is ongoing. Many metrics gauge response effectiveness. The U.S. case fatality rate, for instance, compares favorably with that of other Western countries. The United States is a large, heterogeneous country. The performance of Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, and Maine ranks among the best in the developed world on deaths per million population, while New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut rank among the worst. Other countries use different measures of counting cases, infections, and even deaths, hindering accurate comparison. --->READ MORE HERE

Trump to make COVID-19 vaccine free for Medicare, Medicaid recipients:

President Trump plans to announce an initiative to issue early vaccines for COVID-19 free of cost to recipients of Medicare and Medicaid, a report said on Monday.

The administration is expected to announce a plan to cover vaccines that receive emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, according to Politico.

The change could help millions receive a coronavirus vaccine for free.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is expected to make an announcement about the plan on Tuesday or Wednesday, the newspaper said. --->READ MORE HERE

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