| | |  | BY RENUKA RAYASAM AND MYAH WARD | QUESTION TIME — A limited audience and no handshakes will be two of the more noticeable pandemic-era changes on Tuesday night when President Donald Trump and Joe Biden debate for the first time. Covid modelers suggest that daily cases and deaths are rising, not falling. Pivotal Wisconsin is shaping up to become the country’s next hotspot. The pandemic is scheduled to be discussed during a 15-minute segment moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace. In case he’s still looking for questions, Nightly asked some of our go-to pandemic experts, a group of epidemiologists and public health researchers, what they would ask Biden and Trump about Covid and the pandemic. Here are their lightly edited responses. “Are 200,000 deaths from Covid-19 evidence of a job well done?” — Jeffrey Koplan, vice president for global health at Emory University and founder of the Emory Global Health Institute “There have been devastating socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in coronavirus morbidity and mortality. What concrete policies will you enact to address the structural inequities that are driving this pandemic?” — Julia Marcus, epidemiologist and assistant professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute “If the Covid pandemic has shown us anything, it is that we live in an increasingly interconnected society and global threats can arise from anywhere in the world. What plans do you have to ensure that we are prepared in the future to address emerging infections and global health emergencies so we never have a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic again?” — Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina “Based on other successful countries such as South Korea, Japan, or Australia that have each demonstrated effective control of Covid-19, which ‘best-practices’ approaches of theirs would you consider implementing here in the U.S.?” — Mark Slifka, professor at the Oregon National Primate Research Center and Oregon Health & Science University “One of the many challenges in managing Covid cases in this country has been the disconnected patchwork of policies across state and county lines. As residents ride across borders for work or holiday travel, Covid moves quickly to nearby regions before it can be contained. We are seeing this happen again with the latest surge in cases across the Midwest. What would you do to strengthen a coordinated, federal response to manage the pandemic?” — Marynia Kolak, assistant director for health informatics, center for spatial data science at the University of Chicago “What will your administration do to ensure Americans actually trust and take a potential Covid-19 vaccine?” — Howard Koh, former assistant secretary for HHS under President Barack Obama “Why was a country like Taiwan able to rapidly begin the process of testing, tracing and isolating avoiding the costly shutdowns while the U.S., rated as the highest prepared nation for pandemics, unable to execute these simple public health measures not just early on but still cannot today?” — Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security “Will you guarantee that you won’t interfere with the FDA review process for a Covid-19 vaccine and allow the agency to proceed according to its schedule?” — Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota “We are now more than six months into the largest public health crisis in modern history, with more than 200,000 Americans having died and millions of others being infected. How do you envision the end of the Covid-19 pandemic and what would be the key elements of a national plan to prevent, test, treat and contain the virus moving forward and to prevent another crisis of this magnitude?” — Amanda Castel, epidemiology professor at George Washington University Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Radiohead was, as always, ahead of its time. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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Students Blake Wiseman (L) and Christopher Heermann (R), stand-ins for President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden respectively, participate in a rehearsal for the first presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland. | Getty Images | | |
| | GET THE SCOOP FROM THE MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO's Ryan Heath and Ben White are teaming up to write a special "Global Translations" newsletter and bring you exclusive coverage and the top takeaways from the 23rd annual Milken Institute Global Conference, featuring 4,000+ participants and 500 speakers representing more than 70 countries. Don't miss out on insights from the most influential minds and thought leaders reinventing health, technology, philanthropy, industry, and media. This year's conference will center on the theme "Meeting the Moment," and will address the dual crises of a global pandemic and social injustice. Sign up today for everything you need to know direct from #MIGlobal. | | | | | | | WINTER BIRDS FLYING AWAY — Florida seniors, long a bloc of reliable Republican votes, are suddenly in play as Trump’s handling of the coronavirus has his reelection campaign on the defensive, Florida bureau chief Matt Dixon writes. The pandemic and anxiety about possible cuts to entitlement programs have eroded the GOP’s once-solid advantage with the state’s retirees, recent polls show. Republicans have won the demographic by double digits in recent presidential races. “I really got sick of him when he did not wear a mask, and he took the control totally away from the governors. It was a very bad situation,” said Joy Solomon, a 65-year-old from Boca Raton who voted for Trump in 2016 largely because that’s who her husband supported, but who has now turned against the president. “I want this place to come back to some sense of normalcy.” Recent polls show Trump’s comfortable cushion with Florida seniors eroding in a state where campaigns are won on the thinnest of margins. A September poll from AARP had Biden up one point with voters older than 65, within the survey’s margin of error. Monmouth this month released a poll showing Trump up 49-47 with voters 65 and older, within the margin of error. But a CBS News poll had Trump up 53-44, and the president’s campaign volunteered internal Republican National Committee numbers that put Trump up 51-43 with voters 65 and older.
| | LET’S SPEED THINGS UP — Trump announced today the federal government will ship 100 million rapid coronavirus tests to states by the end of the year, health care reporter David Lim writes. “The support my administration is providing would allow every state to, on a very regular basis, test every teacher who needs it,” Trump said. The White House said last month it was buying 150 million of the tests, made by Abbott Laboratories. Each costs $5 and can be analyzed in 15 minutes without the use of laboratory equipment. The first shipments, totaling 6.5 million tests, will be sent this week, and the amount each state receives will be based on population. Governors will be in charge of deciding how to use the rapid tests they receive, but Trump and HHS testing czar Brett Giroir encouraged state leaders to deploy the tests to help reopen schools. HHS already sent a few million of the Abbott antigen tests to nursing homes and assisted living facilities, historically black colleges and universities, and areas damaged recently by wildfires and hurricanes. EXCEPT FOR THESE GUIDELINES — White House objections may prevent FDA from releasing stricter guidelines it has drawn up for the emergency authorization of coronavirus vaccines, the agency’s No. 2 vaccine official said today, health care reporter Zachary Brennan writes. Still, the FDA wants vaccine developers to know it will insist on seeing through clinical trials for any shot that receives emergency authorization, said Phillip Krause, deputy director for the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “It’s a point of significant importance to make sure that the companies understand what’s needed for an emergency authorization,” he said at the World Vaccine Congress. “The key point is an EUA vaccine is still investigational — clinical trials will continue and more safety data will be collected.” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and the agency’s vaccine chief, Peter Marks, said earlier this month that the agency would soon release the new, tougher guidance, bringing the bar for emergency use of a coronavirus vaccine closer to the standard for a full approval. But the guidance stalled last week when it reached the White House, with Trump saying he “may or may not approve it.” HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who signed off on the policy before it hit Trump’s desk, has since raised concerns about the policy. And White House chief of staff Mark Meadows questioned the need for the guidance Sunday on CBS News’ Face the Nation.
| | FROM THE TRANSPORTATION DESK |
| LAYOFFS SET TO TAKE OFF — Tens of thousands of airline workers will lose their jobs in a matter of days if Congress is unable to break through its gridlock, even though a majority of lawmakers support heading off the looming layoffs for an industry that’s been decimated by the coronavirus, transportation reporter Sam Mintz writes. Airline unions have been pleading with Congress for months to extend the Payroll Support Program, a $32 billion program of airline payroll support grants given as part of the CARES Act, a condition of which required that airlines not involuntarily lay off workers until after Sept. 30. Without an extension of the program, which would require a $28 billion cash infusion, airlines say they will have to start laying off pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and more. At least some percentage of those workers, in virtually every community across the country, would head to the unemployment office — right before the November election. So far, no aid appears to be coming from Capitol Hill, absent a last-ditch effort. “I just can’t believe that we may not be able to do the right thing simply because our elected officials can’t come to any sort of compromise agreement,” American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said at a rally outside the Capitol last week.
| | Nightly asks you: Have you adopted a new pet during the pandemic? Send us a picture of your new furry, scaled or feathered friend to nightly@politico.com, and we’ll include select photos in our Friday edition.
| | BAH HUMBUG — Angela Merkel warned today that there could be many thousands of new coronavirus infections per day by Christmas in Germany unless outbreaks are tackled more fiercely now, Laurenz Gehrke writes. According to Der Spiegel, the German chancellor told an internal CDU party conference that local centers of infection must be addressed, “otherwise we will have 19,200 infections per day by Christmas.” Merkel also expressed concern about the pandemic’s broader evolution in Europe. “What leaves me puzzled is that in the countries around us, things are exploding,” she said at the virtual event, according to Bild. Merkel also said she views private parties, trips to restaurants and religious gatherings as problematic, Bild reported. “We must quickly contain the infections and intervene. We must set priorities: Keep the economy running, keep schools and day care centers open. Football is secondary to this for the time being,” she said.
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277,285 The number of reported Covid-19 cases in children since March, according to a CDC report released today. Cases among adolescents, who were 12-17 years old, were approximately twice those of children aged 5-11. |
| | | HISTORY LESSON — When it comes to education, there’s a significant achievement gap between white students and students of color. POLITICO looks into why unequal schooling opportunities have disadvantaged the same groups for hundreds of years.
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| | | HANG THE BANNERS — At Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, just one coronavirus case has emerged from more than 11,500 campus tests administered since August. The flagship University of Connecticut system reports 64 cases among the 5,000-student residential population on its Storrs campus. Clark University in central Massachusetts just spotted its first potential case in more than a month, while a few pricey private colleges in New York also report few infections since the start of the semester. Several universities have resumed in-person classes and invited students back to live on or near campus this semester while logging few infections, even as other institutions struggle to halt outbreaks or rely on virtual education. These early case studies hint at a potential path to recovery for a bruised higher education industry, education reporter Juan Perez Jr. writes. A combination of low infection rates in communities that surround schools and multimillion-dollar pandemic management strategies appear to slash the opportunities for the disease to enter campus and fester among students and staff. “It shows us that we may not need to have a vaccine to do things like have students in classes. But we have to be careful about it, and you have to have the epidemiological situation that can facilitate that,” said Tara Kirk Sell, a Johns Hopkins infectious disease expert.
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