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Experts and officials are unequivocal: Stay home for the holidays. Getting together with family for Thanksgiving without quarantining beforehand is like “bringing a loaded pistol for Grandma’s head,” Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, warned earlier this month. Mark Horne, the president of the Mississippi State Medical Association, sketched out grandma’s demise in even more horrifying detail. “You’re going to say ‘Hi’ at Thanksgiving, ‘It’s so nice to see you’,” he said in a recent briefing, and then “you’re either going to be visiting her by FaceTime in the I.C.U. or planning a small funeral by Christmas.” (Farhad Manjoo, 11/20)

For America's doctors, the greatest public health crisis in a generation has been incredibly bad for business. Eighty-one percent of physicians report that their revenues are still below pre-pandemic levels, according to a survey from the American Medical Association. A separate survey conducted earlier this spring found that only one-third of primary care practices had enough cash on hand to operate for four weeks. These financial struggles could drive doctors into early retirement or other careers -- and thus exacerbate our nation's existing physician shortage. (Sally Pipes, 11/17)

Attention is focused on what Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is closing in the face of an explosion of covid-19 cases: indoor restaurant dining, offices, high schools and colleges. As the pandemic surges, and other governors are facing similar decisions, it is important to focus also on what Whitmer is keeping open and why: schools for kindergarten through eighth grade. She is right to do so. (Danielle Allen and Ashish Jha, 11/19)

Post-election, American media outlets seem to be relaxing the unwritten rule that positive comments about President Donald Trump’s policies must be buried beneath several paragraphs of personal condemnations. Yesterday this column noted the underreported accuracy of the President’s vaccine predictions. Today there is a growing if grudging acceptance that his critics have done enormous damage to poor children by rejecting his calls to keep schools open. (James Freeman, 11/19)

This week, America crossed another grim milestone: a quarter of a million people dead from Covid-19. With positive test and hospitalization rates increasing, and winter and the holidays looming, there is every reason to believe that things will get much, much worse before they get better. Unfortunately, our elected officials have failed us at nearly every level, from the White House to governors and city mayors -- and not just in the red states where Covid-19 denial thrives, but in blue cities and states as well. (Jill Filipovic, 11/19)

“Our situation has changed, and we must change with it.”-- Gov. Doug Burgum, changing course and issuing a statewide mask mandate. ..."It's kind of like a big runaway train, and the brakes are broken."-- North Dakota State University infectious disease specialist Paul Carson, on the spread of the coronavirus. (11/20)