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Our flawed response thus far is due in no small measure to a fragmented public health system that lacks coordination and technological innovation. It is impossible to fight infectious disease outbreaks without essential data and effective communication about the disease, but that is exactly what is happening now. We need to collect national data that is accurate and disaggregated by age, gender, race/ethnicity and risk profile. It is unacceptable that the U.S. is currently unable to provide accurate assessments of key scientific factors needed to track and respond to monkeypox. (Dr. Susan J. Blumenthal and Lawrence O. Gostin, 8/4)

The Kansas result raises an arresting possibility: Justice Samuel Alito’s long-term legacy may well be as the justice who facilitated a national consensus on behalf of abortion rights. Quite unintentionally, today’s hero of the “pro-life” movement could end up being a giant of the “pro-choice” movement. (John F. Harris, 8/4)

I am no longer able to think of Carmel without thinking of abortion and Nora May French. For this new habit of mind, I blame two things: the U.S. Supreme Court and the literary scholar Catherine Prendergast’s searing 2021 masterpiece, “The Gilded Edge: Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America.” From visiting Carmel, I knew about the city’s early 20th century history as a colony of artists and bohemians. But I had never heard of the poet French until picking up Prendergast’s book. (Joe Matthews, 8/4)

The societal risk from Covid is rapidly changing for the better. The individual risk to kids is — and has always been — low. The crisis kids face at this point in the pandemic is not the virus, but the cost of so many years of disrupted school. The overriding goal for the next school year should be to maximize time in the classroom and make school look and feel much like it did before the pandemic started. The way to do this is to get rid of excessive quarantine and isolation policies, and to rely on the protective power of vaccines and prior infections, with masking reserved as a strategy to get kids back in the classroom quicker after they’ve been sick. (Dr. Joseph G. Allen, 8/4)

Illicit drugs killed more than 107,000 Americans in the last 12 months, the most on record, and are now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, more than firearms, car accidents, and Covid-19. (Jim Crotty, 8/5)

Drug price controls proposed by Democrats in the U.S. Senate are being met with dire warnings that such an approach will stifle innovation, shut off the pipeline of new medicines, and cost lives down the road. Is innovation so fragile that a modest reduction in profits by global giants could seriously impact the supply of new medicines? (Standish Fleming, 8/4)