POLITICO NIGHTLY: Are kids safe?

BY MYAH WARD

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ARE THE KIDS ALRIGHT? In today’s coronavirus press conference at the White House, President Donald Trump suggested that science was on the side of in-person schooling this fall, because children are less likely to get sick and die from Covid-19. “They don’t catch it easily,” he said. “They don’t bring it home easily. And if they do catch it, they get better fast.”

That did appear to be one tiny blessing in March as Covid-19 sprawled across the globe. Early reports suggested kids were virtually untouched by the pandemic.

Now it’s July, and some school districts are just weeks away away from opening up classrooms. Like the president, some politicians — and parents — are arguing the risk is low for kids. Is it?

Kids still appear to be less likely to catch and transmit the virus. The leading explanation is that kids make fewer receptors, a protein called ACE2, making it more difficult for the virus to latch on, said Mark R. Schleiss, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota Medical School. As children move into adolescence and become adults, they make more of these receptors, theoretically increasing their chance of contracting the virus. The evidence for this hypothesis is limited, and would require more research.

Other theories suggest children’s smaller lungs, or even their shorter height, play a role in the likelihood of transmission, Schleiss said.

There are 317,711 reported Covid-19 cases in children and teenagers across the U.S., according to the COVKID Project, led by a team of epidemiologists who track cases in children and teens. There have been 77 reported deaths, and 805 intensive care hospitalizations in children 17 and under.

There are at least 342 cases of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in U.S. children, according to the CDC, and six reported deaths. The Covid-linked illness causes symptoms like rashes, conjunctivitis and stomach problems. While Covid primarily affects the lungs, MIS-C primarily attacks a child’s heart. Most children are developing the illness two to four weeks after being exposed to the virus. But outside of its existence, “we don’t really know what that’s about,” Schleiss said.

And just as Covid-19 is disproportionately affecting Black and Hispanic adults, MIS-C is striking Black and Hispanic children, who make up about 70 percent of reported cases.

Skewed data doesn’t help. Undercounts are likely because kids often don’t show symptoms, tests are scarce, results lag and data collection and reporting is sporadic across the country. Jason Salemi, a professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida, is working with the COVKID project to help provide nationwide data on how the virus is affecting children. “We’re only as good as the data. Currently, with few exceptions, it’s in a pretty woeful state, which precludes our ability to focus on geographic differences, temporal trends, race/ethnic disparities and differences in age within the pediatric population,” he said.

Poor data collection is just one example of how “kids always get the short end of the stick,” Schleiss said. Whether it’s contact tracing, screening for infections or clinical trials for a new drug, children often don’t get the resources and attention they should, he said.

The risk of children dying or becoming critically ill is low, Schleiss said, but that doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t be concerned. He used chicken pox as an example, a virus that killed 100 to 150 people a year before a vaccine was licensed in the U.S. “If you’re that family going through the unspeakable agony and heartbreak of that happening, then it’s pretty damned important,” he said.

“The history of pediatric medicine is peppered with many examples of rare diseases that we took very seriously because we could do something about them. The same thing is true here. We could do something about this — social distancing, face masks, appropriate precautions. We can decrease the likelihood that children will get Covid-19.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Renu is on the move, but her inbox is still right here. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

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Our global team is going full speed to develop potential therapies that may help treat COVID-19. At the same time, we’re collaborating on innovative vaccine candidates that can be made by the millions. Discover what we’re doing right now.

FIRST IN NIGHTLY

TRUMP HOPES FOR OCTOBER SURPRISE — The president’s bet that a proven-effective coronavirus vaccine will be the October surprise to catapult him into a second term is facing increasingly long odds. But that doesn’t mean he won’t find just enough reason to declare victory anyway.

While the race to find an effective vaccine for Covid-19 has crucial implications for nations around the world, it also carries political ramifications in the United States — with Trump banking heavily on finding a vaccine to quell both the pandemic and mounting unhappiness over his handling of the coronavirus response, health care reporter Adam Cancryn writes.

Buoyed by a series of encouraging early trial results, the administration is laying the groundwork for a high-profile rollout of initial coronavirus vaccines in as little as three months. It’s a best-case timetable that also tracks with the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election. The White House’s Operation Warp Speed has poured billions of dollars into developing a vaccine in record time, funding several efforts in parallel and buying up doses of the experimental shots in a wager that one will ultimately pay off. “We’ll end up with a cure,” Trump asserted on Tuesday. “We’re very close to the vaccine — I think we’re going to have some very good results."

DON'T MISS - POLITICO'S NEW "FUTURE PULSE" NEWSLETTER: The coronavirus pandemic accelerated long-simmering trends in health care technology and one thing is certain: The health care system that emerges from this crisis will be fundamentally different than the one that entered. From Congress and the White House, to state legislatures and Silicon Valley, Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies, and technologies driving long-term change on the most personal issue for voters: Our health. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

FROM THE HEALTH DESK

WHO GETS IT? Executive health editor Joanne Kenen emails us:

The Trump administration announced its latest deal, this one worth close to $2 billion, today to buy millions of doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine, jump-starting production so people can start getting immunized quickly if and when the shots are approved. It’s one pandemic response approach where the White House has a clear national strategy, not a handoff to states. The preemptive stockpiling is one of the few aspects of the Trump coronavirus response that health experts broadly support.

The same can’t be said of the White House’s approach to the profoundly complicated challenges of how to allocate the vaccine — both within the U.S. and to 7 billion people across the globe. Who gets it? Who decides who gets it? Is the decision-making clear and transparent enough to build public trust, particularly given how much vaccine skepticism already exists?

The National Academy of Sciences announced this week that the CDC and the NIH asked it to form an ad hoc committee to “develop an overarching framework for vaccine allocation to assist policymakers in the domestic and global health communities in planning for equitable allocation of vaccines.” The first meeting is Friday.

The Academy is respected; its report will have moral weight, although it’s not clear how specific its recommendations will be or how closely they will be followed by the White House.

But the Academy is not a presidential commission. And Donald Trump is the first president since Gerald Ford to not appoint a presidential bioethics advisory board or commission — either an issue-specific one to address an emerging bioethical quandary, or, as recent presidents have done, a standing panel that’s at the ready when a crisis arises.

“The last several commissions were there to give general advice on science, ethics, bioethics, technology before you even knew there was going to be an urgent question — and there was always an urgent question,” said Lisa Lee, who was the executive director of the Obama administration commission and now helps oversee scholarly integrity and research at Virginia Tech.

Past commissions have covered a lot of bioethical ground: from the horrors of the then-newly disclosed Tuskegee syphilis experiments to choices surrounding end of life care to Dolly, the cloned sheep.

But Trump didn’t go that route, and now it would take too much time to set up an official presidential body. That makes the Academy a good fallback because it can be transparent, accountable and “broadly engage and educate the public,” said Amy Gutmann, the president of the University of Pennsylvania and the chair of Obama’s bioethics panel. (Guttman spoke to Politico before the Academy panel was named.)

After Sept. 11, Brian Strom, chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, led a National Academy group that advised the George W. Bush administration on a smallpox vaccination program to protect against a feared bioterror attack. That was more about safety and risk management than broad allocation of a scarce vaccine, but he recognizes the complexity -– and how some of the choices might appear quite provocative.

“One could easily argue that the vaccine should be given early on to people who are homeless,” he said, as they cannot safely take shelter, telecommute and social distance. “Or what about someone who wants to attend indoor political rallies? Should they go first?”

BIG DATA — A Trump administration change in the way hospitals report coronavirus data is bringing confusion and more work to medical centers and states as cases explode across the country. And hospitals that don’t get it right every day could end up receiving fewer critical drugs like remdesivir, health care reporters Darius Tahir and Rachel Roubein write.

The Trump administration uses data on coronavirus hospitalizations, drug supplies and ICU beds to allocate scarce Covid-19 treatments, as well as supplies of plasma and protective gear. But last week, the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly changed the reporting process, bypassing a long-used CDC system with an alternative designed to more quickly help track the virus’ spread.

The move marked the latest flashpoint in a power struggle between the Washington-based federal health department and the nation’s premier public health agency, located in Atlanta. And now the changeover could result in collateral damage for hospitals whose supplies are in danger and are scrambling to make quick software and staffing changes, according to health industry officials.

LISTEN — The CDC is deploying teams across the country to address racial disparities during the coronavirus pandemic. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, health care reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein explains why the deep and deadly problem can't be fixed without a dramatic shift in federal policy.

Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast

ON THE ECONOMY

CLIFF DIVING — A dysfunctional Congress is about to go careening off yet another fiscal cliff — but this will hurt a hell of a lot more than most, Sarah Ferris and Andrew Desiderio write. Tens of million unemployed Americans are about to lose their economic lifeline during the worst recession in 80 years, with eviction protections set to expire at the same time. As the final unemployment checks are set to be processed this weekend, Capitol Hill has begun to feel some urgency. Still, it’s likely too late.

WHAT CRASH? The U.S. housing market, the epicenter of the nation’s last economic meltdown, is thriving — and that's helping to keep the country afloat during the latest crisis, even as other industries struggle to survive, financial services reporter Katy O’Donnell writes.

While the $34 trillion market faltered at the start of the pandemic, its rebound has far outperformed expectations, with existing home sales surging more than 20 percent in June, according to data released today. Some areas of housing are actually doing better than they were before the coronavirus began sweeping the U.S.

White-collar employees — many of whom are able to work from home and keep getting paychecks — are buying. And analysts believe the pandemic has prompted some millennials, now reaching the prime age for buying first homes, to pull up stakes in crowded cities and head for the suburbs. Securing a home loan, meanwhile, is cheaper than ever, with mortgage rates hitting historic lows thanks to the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy.

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ON THE HILL

INSIDE THE GOP BILL (SORT OF) — Senate Republicans started unveiling pieces of their new coronavirus relief bill today, but negotiators remain undecided on several key issues. Republican leadership briefed Senate GOP aides on the proposed legislation this afternoon, Marianne LeVine and John Bresnahan write. The Republican initiative is expected to include a temporary flat payment for unemployment insurance for two months, although the exact amount of the federal contribution wasn’t finalized, according to sources on the call. Beefed-up $600 federal unemployment payments begin expiring at the end of this week, a deadline that has spurred GOP leaders into action.

But Republican leaders also didn't reveal whether their proposal will include a payroll tax cut, a top priority for President Donald Trump. Several GOP sources said the payroll tax cut "was out," but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to confirm that as he walked out of the Capitol tonight.

ASK THE AUDIENCE

Nightly asks you: Have you gotten tested for Covid-19? Do you want to get tested but are unable to? Tell us your testing experience. Send us your story with our form and we’ll include some of the responses in Friday’s Nightly.

A man browses some of the books available in the main area of the Barbican Library following its reopening in London. The United Kingdom has the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality rate at about 68 deaths per 100,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. | Getty Images

THE GLOBAL FIGHT

IT COULD BE WORSE — The U.S. is subject to its share of global Covid-shaming. But at least we’re not Bolivia, Ryan Heath writes. Police there recovered more than 400 bodies from streets, cars and homes over the last week, nearly all of them Covid-19 deaths. In the capital, La Paz, alone, 141 bodies were recovered.

Bolivians are getting desperate: Despite pleas by health officials, lawmakers are encouraging bleach as a coronavirus treatment, and people are lining up to buy it. Political problems are escalating too. The country is scheduled to hold elections in September after living with a temporary government after protests forced out long-time leader Evo Morales in November 2019. But with hospitals now full and the caretaker president, Jeanine Áñez, testing positive for coronavirus two weeks ago, the election is starting to look doubtful.

JOIN TOMORROW AT 1:30 p.m. EDT – A GLOBAL RALLYING CRY: The Black Lives Matter movement has gone global with anti-racism protests sweeping cities around the world. What does the racial reckoning look like abroad? Join Global Translations author Ryan Heath for a conversation with Dominique Day, a human rights lawyer and vice chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, on how the fight for equality has become a worldwide rallying cry following the killing of George Floyd. REGISTER HERE.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

$1.95 billion The amount the U.S. government will pay Pfizer for 100 million doses of its experimental coronavirus vaccine if the shot proves safe and effective.

PARTING WORDS

LAST RITES FOR THE LOST CAUSE? The House voted overwhelmingly today to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol, the latest effort by Congress to respond to the nationwide protests over systemic racism and injustice, Heather Caygle writes.

The bill would remove the bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney from the old Supreme Court chamber, located in the Capitol. Taney authored the controversial and later widely panned Dred Scott decision in 1857, which declared African Americans weren’t citizens. The Taney bust would be replaced with a statue of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice.

Despite overwhelming support for the bill in the House, it’s unclear whether the GOP-controlled Senate will take up the legislation. It’s also unclear whether President Donald Trump would sign the bill.

The legislation would also remove three statues of Americans who promoted slavery and white supremacy — Charles Aycock, John C. Calhoun, and James Paul Clarke — and require states to reclaim and replace their Confederate statues in the Capitol. Currently, there are 12 Confederate statues in the Capitol collection.

A message from Emergent BioSolutions:

We go after public health threats. In the fight against COVID-19, we are going full speed to develop potential new therapies and vaccine candidates.
We go for critical innovations. We are developing two potential hyperimmune treatments for severe hospitalized COVID-19 patients and individuals at risk. Based on proven technology, the research and testing are underway.
We go in partnership with others. We are working with industry innovators to bring COVID-19 vaccine candidates to market. We have the capacity to manufacture vaccines in the tens to hundreds of millions, and we are propelling development forward.
We go. And go. From fighting anthrax to helping prevent smallpox and developing vaccine candidates, we go all in. Because public health threats will never stop. And neither will we.

See how we go all in.

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