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Between the two of us, we have kids in pre-K, elementary, middle school and high school. And as we watched them walk through their school doors on their first day this fall, we did so with both a knot of anxiety and a swell of hope. We knew the stakes were high because we are parents. But we also knew the stakes were high because we serve as the secretary of Education and the surgeon general of the United States. So far, we’ve been heartened by what we see in schools. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 98% of schools are fully open this fall, up from about 70% at the end of the 2020-21 school year. (Miguel Cardona and Vivek Murthy, 11/5)

Recently, it was announced that children between the ages of 5 and 11 can take Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccination, which is wonderful news for children and can hopefully put more parents at ease as they send their kids to school. However, approval of this COVID-19 vaccine also raises two questions: (Ayomide Ojebuoboh, 11/7)

COVID-19 has made us all armchair epidemiologists. We have all been tracking case counts in our communities, deciphering the curves of hospitalizations and deaths on graphs and gauging what we each can do to reduce risks. The data we use are the same critical bits of information our government needs to make policy decisions about masks, vaccines, resource allocation and supplies. (Ali S. Khan and William J. Kassler, 11/7)

In promoting the COVID-19 vaccine, leaders have repeatedly made the claim that more shots in arms will "end the Covid era once and for all," as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio put it. But for too many poor and working-class Americans, this is wishful thinking, given how deeply the pandemic has exacerbated the impossible struggles they were already facing. (Claire Laurier Decoteau, 11/5)

As a cheesehead from Wisconsin, I wasn’t happy to hear the news that star Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers will not play Sunday because he tested positive for Covid-19. I was even unhappier when I learned that he’ll be out in part because of how he reportedly tried to protect himself from the virus. Instead of getting vaccinated, according to NFL.com, he received a homeopathic treatment from his doctor and then asked the NFL to count that as being vaccinated. The league did not, and for good reason — because homeopathy has never been shown to work. (Adam Larson, 11/6)

Vice President Kamala Harris received a Moderna booster shot last Saturday – and in doing so underscored the confusion and mixed messaging in the government’s COVID-19 guidance. Harris is not over age 65, does not reside in a long-term care facility and does not have a publicly known underlying medical condition that would make her more vulnerable, nor does she hold a job, such as postal worker, that appears on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of “high risk” occupations. The White House said Harris, 57, qualifies for a booster because her duties require frequent traveling and interacting with people. (Peter Funt, 11/6)

Approximately 300,000 Tennesseans are unable to afford health insurance, and over 10% of Tennessee’s population lacks health care coverage, resulting in significant geographic, racial and socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes. A critical component of any response to COVID-19 is addressing the health insurance coverage gap — a gap that is largely the result of Tennessee’s failure to expand Medicaid. Medicaid expansion is Tennessee’s best hope of closing the state’s health care coverage gap, and COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity to act. (Kevin M. Gibas, 11/7)