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Mumps tore through the Harvard University campus in the spring of 2016. As a reportable disease that has been relatively manageable since a vaccine was approved in 1967, mumps serves as a warning of how viruses can spread rapidly — and in unexpected ways — with lessons for understanding SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. (Pardis Sabeti and Yolanda Botti-Lodovico, 10/8)

Imagine wanting, needing, to take a gulp of air and finding that you can’t. On Monday, a patient walked into the emergency room where I work. He struggled to breathe as he explained his symptoms to me. When the test result came back positive for the coronavirus, his eyes brimmed, and he spoke quietly: “Will I be OK?” I see some version of this story every day at my hospital in rural west Michigan. It’s some 700 miles away from the White House, and feels even farther as I watch President Trump whisked to the hospital and back in helicopters, and flanked by men in white lab coats, ready to serve him. And yet he tweets, “Don’t be afraid of Covid.” (Rob Davidson, 10/7)

Donald Trump is infected with coronavirus -- and because of it we are sicker. "Don't be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life," he tweeted on Monday before Marine One flew him from the Walter Reed hospital back to the White House. Some 211,000 souls and counting are lost, but their loved ones are asked to go away quietly and to bury their pain and truth because the show must go on. (Chris Pernell, 10/7)

A Wall Street Journal editorial had it right: "The shame is that America's media have peddled the fiction that every new COVID case represents a failure of policy. Their line now is that Mr. Trump's infection is karma because he didn't take the disease seriously enough. In remarks Friday, Joe Biden also came close to indulging the karma explanation, while disclaiming partisanship." If he fully recovers -- and everyone with an ounce of goodwill for a fellow human being should hope he does -- he should not engage in triumphalism, as if he is Superman, but share with the nation what he has learned from the experience and what the country can also learn. (Cal Thomas, 10/7)

HILLSBORO, Ohio — After Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate, Trump-Pence campaign officials must be asking if there is some way they can arrange for Vice President Pence instead of President Trump to debate Joe Biden next week. As he did four years ago, Trump’s vice president again demonstrated his poise, knowledge and preparedness in his matchup with Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. The big topic of the night was, of course, the novel coronavirus, and Pence had the advantage of his experience leading the administration’s coronavirus task force. He did more in a few minutes Wednesday to rebut criticisms of how the virus has been handled than all other administration officials combined have managed to do in the past eight months. (Gary Abernathy, 10/7)

After all the hubbub over the plexiglass dividers placed between Vice President Pence and Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), it turned out that Pence would have been wise to duck out altogether. Pence looked uncomfortable at times and frequently interrupted Harris, as if he had forgotten how such conduct went when Trump tried it last week. His voice droned on; he was so inanimate that at one point, a fly landed on his head. (Some commentators also noted one of his eyes looked red.) Just hours before the debate, President Trump declared on another video that his contracting covid-19 was “a blessing from God,” a cruel insult to the 211,000 people who have died and to their grieving families. (Jennifer Rubin, 10/7)

So-called black box warnings on prescription medications are supposed to alert people to the possibility that using the medication can cause serious or life-threatening events. They often, but not always, do this well. (Stephen Soumerai and Ross Koppel, 10/7)