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Tens of millions of students started the school year completely online, including those in 13 of the 15 largest school districts in the U.S. The primary reason is concern over safety for students and staff. But recent data are shifting the discussion on school safety and infection rates of Covid-19. They argue strongly for opening K-12 schools. Previous evidence has suggested that schools are not superspreaders. That research came from other countries (whose rates and environments are different) or very specific cases in America, such as YMCA summer camps. While this suggested little impact on infection rates from opening the schools, it was possible that the unique environment of U.S. public schools would cause different outcomes. (David R. Henderson and Ryan Sullivan, 10/20)

Advocates of “herd immunity” strategies often claim that Covid-19 is relatively safe for the young and that most of the victims are old. This observation is correct, but the question is what to make of it. Often the implication — stated or not — is that the response to the pandemic need not be so vigorous because the loss of life, as measured in years, is less than it appears.It is an uncomfortable but necessary discussion, they say. So be it — but once the conversation turns to which deaths matter the most, other questions about Covid-19 start to arise, almost all of which push in the direction of a very vigorous response. When either foreign enemies or pathogens attack U.S. lives on a noticeable scale, the pushback needs to be very hard indeed. (Tyler Cowan, 10/20)

Forget asking why Anthony S. Fauci hasn’t been fired. Why hasn’t he quit? President Trump has called his top infectious-disease expert a “disaster,” just sentences after implying he is also an “idiot.” He has trashed the doctor’s decisions on a campaign call, not long after twisting Fauci’s words into praise in an advertisement. And on top of all that, he has smeared the man responsible for shepherding the country toward a vaccine with this supposedly grievous insult: “Tony threw out perhaps the worst first pitch in the history of Baseball!” (Molly Roberts, 10/20)

Every four years, partisans on both sides of the political fence ramp up their rhetoric and remind their supporters, “Vote like your life depends on it.” This year those words are literally true.More than 220,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and cases are surging again. But the Trump administration has walked off the field indifferent to the fact that hundreds of Americans are dying every day from COVID-19 — and that tens of thousands more will probably lose their lives in the weeks and months to come. The numbers are terrifying. (Michael A. Cohen, 10/21)

Health care has fragmented into multiple issues in this campaign cycle, and Joe Biden leads President Trump on almost all of them, according to our KFF polling.The big picture: Biden’s commanding leads on protecting people with pre-existing conditions and managing the coronavirus outbreak suggest that Trump’s record and rhetoric on those issues, while popular with his base, may have backfired with the electorate generally. (Drew Altman, 10/21)

During his town hall last week, Joe Biden made a startling admission: “You can’t mandate a mask.” This was puzzling, because he had spent August badgering President Trump to implement a national mask mandate.The confusion is of a piece with the ex-veep’s wider struggle to explain what, exactly, he would have done differently in response to the pandemic were he the one in power. (Karol Markowicz, 10/19)

A granddaughter of the Rev. Billy Graham, Jerushah Duford is a committed evangelical Christian who describes herself as “pro-life.” For most of her life, she voted Republican. Yet this year, she is voting for Joe Biden and is encouraging fellow Christians to distance themselves from a president who she says is trying “to hijack our faith for votes.”“The Jesus we serve promotes kindness, dignity, humility, and this president doesn’t represent our faith,” Duford said. (Nicholas Kristof, 10/21)

If we really want to stem the spread of the coronavirus as winter looms and we wait for a vaccine, here’s an idea: The government should pay bars, many restaurants and event venues to close for some months. That may sound radical, but it makes scientific sense and even has a political precedent. We pay farmers not to cultivate some fields (in theory, at least, to protect the environment), so why not pay bars that cannot operate safely to shut down (to protect public health)? (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 10/21)

Like many nations across the globe, the U.S. continues to combat the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration’s deficient response has elevated the emotional, physical, and economic harm suffered by families in America. As we move through this moment of collective trauma, we must adopt focused, evidence-based approaches to make our country whole again and ensure that these approaches prioritize a precious responsibility — our children’s future. (Ayanna Pressley and Carolyn B. Maloney, 10/21)

More than a century ago, the nation had its first opioid crisis. Narcotic-laced patent medicines, morphine powder and opium tinctures formed the core of a physician’s pharmacopeia. Such medicines relieved the chronic wounds of Civil War veterans and treated a wide spectrum of ailments, including neuralgia, “female complaints,” respiratory disorders and anxiety. Patients who became addicted at the hands of doctors were generally seen as innocent victims. Think of Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” But those who developed an opium habit outside a doctor’s care, presumed to be seeking mere pleasure, were condemned by moral crusaders. By the Progressive Era, drugs and their users were firmly divided between licit and illicit. The distinction guides drug policy to this day. (Sally Satel, 10/20)

A system that is not structured to keep a person like Ford away from his victim and out of society while he awaits trial is broken. The law is clear on that bail should be fixed at an amount that protects “the future safety of the victim of the alleged offense and the community.” That did not happen here, and why it did not happen is baffling. We have said before and will continue to say that bail reform is needed. Nonviolent defendants should not be held simply because they cannot pay. (10/21)