8 of our top opinion columns this week: ICYMI

In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, here are some of this week's top Paste BN Opinion pieces, most of them dealing with aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback. And be safe.

— Paste BN Opinion editors

1. Coronavirus ‘is the Big One … I hope never to see bigger’: Harvard epidemiologist

"As daily coronavirus-related deaths reached new highs in New York and nationally, Paste BN’s Editorial Board spoke Wednesday with Dr. Marc Lipsitch, one of the nation’s leading epidemiologists, about the state of the pandemic."

2. Navy captain fired over coronavirus memo is a calm, honorable leader. He's also my friend

By Brett Odom

"Brett Crozier exemplifies these ideals. However the Navy ultimately adjudicates his decisions and actions in the face of an unprecedented situation, I am certain that he will be found to have acted honorably, and with the best intentions for his ship, his crew, and his Navy foremost in his heart."

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3. Time to put China on lockdown for its dishonesty amid coronavirus crisis

By Glenn Harlan Reynolds

"These are harsh penalties and the Chinese government won’t like them. They will involve much loss of face for the Chinese Communist Party leadership. But they deserve it, and an example needs to be made. The world is a small and interconnected place now."

4. Oversight erased, Supreme Court hijacked: Trump turns the presidency into a dictatorship

By Kurt Bardella

"Trump feels empowered to obliterate the guardrails of checks and balances. Bit by bit, he has stripped away the levers of oversight until there's nothing left...By taking a wrecking ball to independent oversight, Trump has made the presidency into a dictatorship."

5. As Trump reaches for hope and journalists shoot him down, reporters end up looking bad

By Ari Fleischer

"In all times, reporters have a vital role to play in keeping our country free. The First Amendment gives reporters the right to ask whatever they want, however they want... But if this becomes a fight between a president who realistically represents hope and reporters who reject it, that’s a fight the press can’t win."

6. Queen Elizabeth gives a coronavirus speech and the contrast with Trump is stunning

By Bill Goodykoontz

"Queen Elizabeth II addressed Great Britain about the novel coronavirus on Sunday in a televised speech that was at once straightforward and inspirational, without a word of blame or self-aggrandizement...But when Trump addressed the nation about the pandemic from the Oval Office on March 11, he seemed unprepared, and his remarks immediately were clarified."

7. Cafeteria workers need support during the COVID-19 pandemic

By Jennifer Gaddis and Amy Rosenthal

"We count on cafeteria workers to care for students — we shouldn’t ask them to sacrifice their own health and well-being to do so. During COVID-19 school closures, the federal government must ensure that all school food service departments do right by their workers."

8. For black Americans, bias seen in coronavirus response is continuation of injustice

By Ben Crump

"For black and brown people, the story of our lives is rife with endemic injustice, from excessive incarcerations to inadequate access to education and health care to exposure to environmental hazards borne out of poverty and racism."