Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know

In the category of:  On your marks

All states will be partially reopened by Memorial Day weekend despite at least 17 recording upward case trends

In the category of:  The check is in the mail

Experts say it’s a foolish idea.

While it’s true the WHO made some egregious mistakes, it’s also clear that the Trump administration failed to seriously plan for a possible outbreak in the US once it knew of the disease. On January 3, for example, Chinese health authorities told the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the WHO about a pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan.

Trump’s “letter seems to indicate that had the WHO conveyed the right information, the US would have acted differently in responding to the outbreak,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. But “the president has seldom paid heed to any WHO advice.”

“Whatever the WHO knew, the US knew,” he added.

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In the category of:  Get in line

Politics could dictate who gets a coronavirus vaccine

Deciding which groups come next is fraught with ethical dilemmas and ripe for political power plays.

The promise of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year creates a difficult political and public health question: Who gets the vaccine first?

Health care workers would be among the first to receive any vaccine so they can continue to work the pandemic’s front lines. But deciding which groups come next — the elderly, medically vulnerable people, grocery store and meat plant workers, children — is fraught with ethical dilemmas and ripe for political power plays.

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