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Covid-19 has been pushed off front pages by falling case counts and other news stories, though the pandemic’s threat hasn’t really changed — we’re just in the trough of the last wave. Nonetheless, it was strange to hear President Joe Biden talk in his State of the Union address as if the pandemic were just another item on a laundry list of issues from the inflation to infrastructure. (Faye Flam, 3/2)

One day after President Biden’s State of the Union address, his administration released a 96-page plan to address the covid-19 pandemic. To understand the essence of the plan, one needs only to consider the setting for Biden’s speech. (Leana S. Wen, 3/2)

When COVID-19 sent Yale students home in March 2020, I was determined to make the most of it. I kept in touch with my college friends over Zoom. I discovered the game of CATAN and played it online religiously with buddies from high school. My club tennis team even made a chain of videos, whereby everyone would “receive” a tennis ball from the previous video and then hit it to the person in the next video. While nothing could come close to the in-person college experience, I was doing my best to make it work. (Jack Barker, 3/3)

It became clear long ago that the COVID-19 crisis that has upended all our lives would have no easily defined end. But there’s no disputing the symbolic weight of the Feb. 28 end of the Illinois mask mandate put in place by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Illinoisans are free to keep wearing a face-covering, of course, but this still feels like a big step toward what passes at normalcy, or as close as we can get given the other shattering problems in the world. Thus Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the state’s Department of Public Health director, has chosen an apt moment to make her exit. In resigning, the state’s top doctor said she now wants to focus on her four kids and her husband, loved ones whom she said have made many sacrifices over the past two years as Ezike led the state’s all-consuming counterattack on COVID-19. (3/2)

I am part of an underground market for drugs that looks a lot different from what you might imagine. It’s a network of Facebook groups and mutual aid organizations plus donors on Twitter that provide insulin and other supplies to people with diabetes. The outrageous cost of insulin puts this life-sustaining medicine out of reach for many people, not just for those without insurance or people who are temporarily down on their luck. It also includes people with diabetes like me who are employed and have health insurance but who simply can’t afford to pay hundreds of dollars for an extra vial of insulin. (Alina Bills, 3/3)

In his first State of the Union address, President Biden touted the temporary expanded subsidies for people receiving insurance via the Affordable Care Act. He reminded everyone that Americans pay more than people in any other country for prescription drugs, and demanded, once again, that Congress pass legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate their cost. Introducing a boy with Type 1 diabetes, he declared that Americans should have to pay no more than $35 a month for insulin. “Drug companies will still do very well,” he said. (Helaine Olen, 3/2)

For decades, partnerships among government-funded academic institutions and private companies in the United States have led to the discovery and development of innovative medicines that are improving, extending, and saving lives. My company’s treatment for advanced prostate cancer, Xtandi (enzalutamide), which emerged from a public-private collaboration, is an example of how this system works to benefit patients. Yet despite the clear health benefits and broad availability of Xtandi, some individuals and organizations want to use it as a test case for disrupting the technology transfer and medical innovation ecosystem that is the pathway to the treatments of tomorrow. (Mark Reisenauer, 3/3)