#The need for a COVID commission and other commentary

Innovation expert: The Right COVID Commission

A serious review of how the US government is handling the coronavirus challenge, Syracuse prof Carl Schramm warns at The Hill, must include “a roadmap for meaningful reform of our public health enterprise that, in so many ways, failed as COVID engulfed us.” Notably, “the 800-pound gorilla of public health, the Centers for Disease Control, . . . had no model for how a COVID-like virus would spread, nor how to target preventive measures,” let alone protocols for testing nor plans “to work with private laboratories to produce test kits for widespread distribution, which, during the onset of COVID, it resisted. These delays cost tens of thousands of lives.” Beware: “Merely throwing more money at the existing system would be a mistake.”

Pandemic watch: Rebirth of US Science Needed

Science has done great things against COVID, but we’ve also seen “the biggest public-health fiasco in history, and the marginalization and censoring of dissident scientists,” Scott W. Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya & Martin Kulldorff argue at National Review. And the “myriad long-standing problems facing science . . . go far beyond a single virus.” Notably, “centralization has created a harmful uniformity and herd thinking,” as a “de facto scientific cartel system determines who receives essential research funding; who ends up published in the most prestigious and influential journals; and who are promoted to more senior positions.” This “creates a highly impenetrable and shielded sphere of thinking that crowds out new ideas and true scientific debate,” threatening “a prolonged stagnation that could jeopardize” the nation’s “economic health” and “security.”

Inflation hawks: Beware the Return of COLAs

“The latest sign that Americans think inflation will be more than transitory is the labor agreement struck at Kellogg Co.,” write the editors of The Wall Street Journal. On base pay, “workers chose a deal that offers more in inflation insurance than immediate gains. They’ll get no across-the-board raise after the first year of the contract. But Kellogg will provide a periodic COLA [or cost of living adjustment], granting up to $3 an hour in additional pay by 2026.” Makes sense for labor, as soaring prices mean “real wages after inflation are falling.” But beware “a wage-price spiral,” as “employees demand higher wages, and prices rise again as companies pass those higher wage costs along to consumers,” a cycle tough to “get under control short of a recession.”

From the right: Biden’s COVID Trap

The pandemic that then-candidate Joe Biden “promised to ‘shut down’ continues to bedevil him and the country,” snarks Jonathan S. Tobin at Newsweek. “Democrats expected that the vaccines whose production” Team Trump “had streamlined” and “Biden’s willingness to listen to” Dr. Anthony Fauci would make COVID “subside, if not vanish, during the course of 2021. But viruses don’t obey presidential directives,” and “even widespread vaccination hasn’t been enough to end what now appears to be a permanent public health emergency.” More Americans have “died of COVID on Biden’s watch than on Trump’s” — a problem for Biden thanks to his repeated claim that had Trump “done his job . . . all the people would still be alive.” The prez is “stuck in a trap of his own making that is likely to make 2022 an even more depressing year for Democrats.”

Conservative: Democrats’ Hispanic Problem

“It’s official: The Democrats have a Hispanic voter problem,” notes the Washington Examiner’s W. James Antle III. A group that was once to be key to “the emerging Democratic majority” is now split nearly evenly on a hypothetical Trump vs. Biden rematch. “Biden took just 44% of the Hispanic vote, to 43% for Trump” in a stunning Wall Street Journal poll. Blame Biden’s handling of the economy: “63% of Hispanic respondents said the economy was headed in the wrong direction,” with 54 percent “disapproving of the job Biden was doing as president.” These Americans clearly “appear to be gradually shifting their partisan allegiance.” They’re the new swing voters. 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board