Coronavirus: The Hill and the Headlines, December 7 2020

In Washington:

• President-elect Joe Biden picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary. Becerra was a defender of the Affordable Care Act.   Separately, Biden picked a Harvard infectious disease expert, Rochelle Walensky, to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention replacing Dr. Robert Redfield.  Jeff Zients will serve as Coordinator of the COVID-19 Response and Counselor to the President and Natalie Quillan will serve as Deputy coordinator of the COVID-19 response.  Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, one of the country’s foremost experts on health care disparities, will serve as the COVID-19 Equity Task Force Chair.  He also announced a new role for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.  

• Congress is weighing a weeklong stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown after current funding runs out Friday. A one-week stopgap is likely as negotiators continue ironing out a full-year spending bill in which long-stalled coronavirus economic relief would be attached. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) emphasized the overriding need to get a longer-term measure done, telling reporters, "[w]e cannot leave without it."  Meanwhile, it looks less likely that the text of the bipartisan $908 billion COVID-19 stimulus package will debut on Monday.  Negotiators continue to try and iron out their difference on providing funding to assist states and localities and provides a temporary liability shield for businesses.  Lawmakers are expected to release the text by midweek.  

• Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is asking the Trump administration to veto any coronavirus aid bill that does not include another round of direct payments to individuals. The White House has not responded publically about the President’s discussion with Hawley.  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also talked to Hawley on the issue and opposes efforts to leave this provision out.  Many Republican and Democratic lawmakers believe adding payments could complicate the fragile framework that negotiators are trying to finalize.

• The Trump administration refused to purchase more doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in the summer when the pharmaceutical company offered them.  The administration is scrambling to buy more doses, but Pfizer is unsure if will be able to provide more due to its commitments to other countries.  The administration has purchased 100 million doses, enough to vaccinate 50 million people.

• NIH official Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that Christmas could be worse than Thanksgiving for COVID-19 spread. Fauci told CNN's “New Day” that Thanksgiving celebrations tend to be shorter as people return to work the following week, but Christmas leads into New Year’s, creating a longer holiday. Fauci urged that “[w]e’ve got to not walk away from the facts and the data,” and acknowledged that “[t]his is tough going for all of us.”

• Pfizer and Moderna’s CEOs turned down an invitation to appear at Tuesday's White House 'Vaccine Summit,' after President Donald Trump charged them with holding back good COVID-19 vaccine news until after the November 3 election. The president is expected to take credit for the quick development of vaccines through Operation Warp Speed at the summit, as well as pressure the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to quickly approve an emergency use authorization for both companies' products.  

• A federal watchdog agency has reportedly determined a since-frozen U.S. government loan to Eastman Kodak to produce drug ingredients during the coronavirus pandemic was not improperly awarded. The inspector general for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation provided Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) with his analysis last week following her August request for an assessment, according to The Wall Street Journal. The report uncovered no conflicts of interest or official misconduct regarding the $765 million loan. The Securities and Exchange Commission and several House committees have announced other investigations.

• President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is being treated at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., after testing positive for COVID-19.  Giuliani is the latest in a long string of people close to the White House sickened in a pandemic.  The diagnosis comes roughly two weeks after [his son] Andrew Giuliani tested positive for the coronavirus.  Giuliani’s diagnosis is the latest setback for the president’s effort to cling to power by asserting without evidence that the election was riven with fraud.  Members of the Electoral College cast their votes on Dec. 14.

In the News:

• Struggling U.S. colleges are unilaterally cutting programs, letting professors go and gutting tenure in reaction to the pandemic. Schools employed about 150,000 fewer workers in September than they did a year earlier—a decline of nearly 10%. Along the way, they are changing the centuries-old higher education power structure.

• U.S. workplace break rooms have been linked to the spread of Covid-19.

• Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said Sunday that the second COVID-19 wave hitting the tribe - one of the country’s largest by population - is “much more dire and much more severe.” Nez warned in a statement that, “[w]e are near a point where our health care providers are going to have to make very difficult decisions in terms of providing medical treatment...with very limited resources such as hospital beds, oxygen resources, medical personnel, and little to no options to transport patients to other regional hospitals because they are also near full capacity.” The Nation documented 177 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday. COVID-19 has killed 667 tribal members to date. 

• Medical school applications have increased 18 percent this year in what the Association of American Medical Colleges is calling the “Fauci effect.” Applications are up 27 percent, for example, at Boston University’s School of Medicine, where Associate Dean of Admissions Kristen Goodell credited Fauci with inspiring applicants to “make a difference” by becoming doctors. 

• Amid the pandemic, a new Gallup survey found Americans’ reporting of their own mental health at the lowest level the pollster has ever recorded. The survey found 76 percent of Americans give their mental health positive marks, down nine points from last year. Since the survey’s start in 2001 that number has never before dipped below 81 percent. Overall, 34 percent call their mental health “excellent” compared to 42 percent who called it good, 18 percent who called it fair, and 5 percent who called it poor.

Authored by Ivan Zapien