�������ýҕ�l

You can go to a tattoo parlor in Georgia, but in much of the state you can’t send your children to school at the start of the fall semester. Nine Georgia school districts have announced that they will begin the school year with remote learning. Some 584,000 youngsters, or one-third of Georgia’s public-school students, have to stay home. So will their peers in many states. Some states prioritized the opening of bars and tattoo parlors over the need to control Covid-19 in time for the start of the school year. In many places, local officials aren’t opening up schools because transmission is so intense. The country’s political leadership at all levels failed to carry out plans to manage the epidemic that would allow society to preserve what is most important. In many states, the spread is limited enough that schools should open, even though some may not because parents and teachers don’t want to return until a vaccine removes the threat of an outbreak. (Scott Gottlieb and Michael R. Strain, 8/2)

Children are not free of the novel coronavirus. Consider the outbreak at a Georgia overnight summer camp in June. Some 260 campers and staff tested positive out of 344 test results available. Among those ages 6-10, 51 percent got the virus; from 11-17 years old, 44 percent, and 18-21 years old, 33 percent. The campers did a lot of singing and shouting; did not wear face masks; windows were not opened for ventilation, although other precautions were taken. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that the virus “spread efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups,” many showing no symptoms. The Georgia camp outbreak is the latest sign that children cannot escape the pandemic. (8/2)

The entire testing mindset needs to change from diagnosing someone with the virus (for little other than to add to the daily case count) to determining whether someone is actually infectious because, as we have learned, there is a window of infectivity. That window is what needs to be targeted to lessen community spread.A positive test result (or negative for that matter) does very little in terms of management 16 days after the fact. My son had already cleared himself with the quarantine recommendations by the time his test results were posted, so resources and funding used for his test were wasted.In a time of economical strain like we are in now, the last thing we need is wastefulness. Testing results must be available within hours, even minutes. Not days. And certainly not weeks. (Nicole Saphier, 8/1)

It’s no exaggeration to say that COVID-19 is the most challenging public health crisis of the last 100 years. No outbreak has spread so quickly and affected such a wide range of people — not SARS, not H1N1, not even HIV/AIDS. Yet after seven months of rising cases and at least 147,000 dead Americans, we still have no comprehensive national strategy. This must be immediately rectified. (Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 7/31)

Donald Trump's top government experts now say that the pandemic is entering a new phase as it invades the rural heartland -- and they can't say how long it will last. With millions of kids nowhere near going back to school and the economy reeling from a 32.9% annualized contraction in the second quarter, the months ahead are stretching into what looks like an endless crisis as Trump tweets "Make America Great Again" and spends his weekends on the golf course. (Stephen Collinson, 8/3)

Like every baseball fan, I waited nearly nine months for the first meaningful pitch in the first meaningful game of the 2020 Major League Baseball season. And when it finally happened on July 23, when the Washington Nationals’ All-Star pitcher Max Scherzer threw a first-pitch ball to Aaron Hicks of the New York Yankees, I felt giddy joy — and more than a twinge of trepidation.It took only a few days to amplify the unspoken, but obvious: Baseball is great, but not in the middle of a deadly pandemic. (Renée Graham, 7/31)

Like many Americans, we had hoped that, with proper precautions, sports could resume as the pleasant distraction they have long been in our lives. Whether pro, college or high school, the games our athletes play are important to many of us. They bring us joy and (too often in Dallas lately) sadness. They give us something to share with one another that matters.But with the worrisome restart of Major League Baseball, and the obvious problem that case counts and communal spread are nowhere near under control, it is time, especially for high school sports, to be prepared to continue to delay seasons. (8/2)