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Editorials category, Page 73

Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
Editorial: Timing the pandemic reopening
It is no surprise that people are ready for this to be over. For five weeks, Pennsylvania has been a tiger in a cage, prowling back and forth, frustrated by remembered freedom and eager to get out. We know that coronavirus put us here. We know all the simple reasons...
Laurels & lances: Milk, food and liquor
Laurel: To a tall glass of support. When the milk market was drying up for Ben Brown’s Westmoreland County farm Saturday, things looked bleak for Whoa Nellie Dairy. While milk is one of those staples everyone buys when a storm is coming or an emergency threatens, some farmers have been...
Editorial: Masks defend health and economy
The best offense is a good defense. It’s a familiar sentiment. It’s a tenet of arenas from the military to Wall Street. It’s a concept that fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers might even consider a religion. It’s the idea that there is no better way to attack a problem than...
Editorial: Hospital loans could save lives
We need our hospitals. Right now, they are all busy with other things. Emergency departments are taking care of the victims of the coronavirus pandemic. Health care workers are testing to identify those with covid-19 symptoms. Intensive care units are struggling with the task of trying to save lives —...
Editorial: The economy needs an immune system
When President Trump says the economy needs to be open, he’s not wrong. It’s a matter of timing and safety, based on scientific data, as the president himself has said. But when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says, “This is not a light switch we can just flick on and...
Editorial: Voting decision sooner, not later
In some high-stakes competitions, you can get two scores. You get one for degree of difficulty — for trying a backflip instead of a somersault. But you also get one for execution. Fail spectacularly on the attempt and the effort doesn’t matter quite as much. Let’s acknowledge that every government...
Editorial: Pandemic state prison release a bad idea
As soon as Tuesday, Pennsylvania will begin releasing inmates from state prisons. They will send them back to their communities on home confinement or to community facilities — as many as 1,800 people deemed non- violent and who would have been released within the next nine months anyway, or who are...
Editorial: Why hope is the starting point
We need hope. When things are bad — so bad that it seems unthinkable that they will ever be good again — hope is what tells us to hold on and breathe through it. Hope survived the car crash that crushed John Sikora’s NBA dreams. Glenn and Carole Johnson had...
Editorial: Darkness of quarantine, light of Easter
Easter isn’t a celebration of rabbits and chocolate. It isn’t about the lilies and jelly beans and ham. It isn’t even about the church service with meaningful sermons and little kids in crisp new pastel outfits. That’s all an important part of the annual rite of spring. It’s just not...
Laurels & lances: Bunny, bottles, breakdown
Laurel: To a bunny’s best helpers. Easter is one of those milestone holidays for many kids, like Christmas or birthdays. For some, it could be hard to reconcile a quarantine celebration without egg hunts and family parties. But volunteers in South Greensburg helped the Easter bunny out by making sure...
Editorial: New heroes arise in pandemic
Hero. A person admired because of courageous acts or selfless endeavors. We all know what a hero is. It’s the firefighter who rescues a kid from a burning building or the soldier who falls on a grenade. It’s a police officer who stops a bank robbery. We recognize the heroes...
Editorial: Passover teaches lessons about coronavirus
Passover will not be dimmed by the coronavirus. It cannot. A holiday that remembers biblical plagues cannot be bullied by a pandemic. Starting Wednesday at sundown, Passover is the eight-day Jewish celebration that commemorates the Hebrew slaves winning their freedom in Egypt. It begins with the Seder. It is an...
Editorial: Coronavirus can’t stop holidays and normal life
Let’s face it: It’s hard to pretend that anything is normal right now. If this were normal, kids would be playing Little League baseball and high school girls would be trying on prom gowns. People would be enjoying the mild spring weather by shopping for plants for the yard. And...
Editorial: The deadly flu vs. the coronavirus pandemic
The comparisons are inevitable. Coronavirus is a contagious respiratory illness you can pick up from a doorknob or a stray sneeze. Some infected people show no symptoms. Others come down with what ranges from a bad to a monstrous cold. An alarming number of people need hospital treatment. Many die....
Editorial: Be shocked, but not surprised, by massive unemployment
The numbers are exploding as more people are affected by the coronavirus epidemic. Not just the number of people who are diagnosed with the disease, now topping a million worldwide and 266,000 in the United States. Not just the number of people who have died — some 7,000 nationally and...
Editorial: A glimpse of hope in Pitt’s covid-19 vaccine trial
Good news came out of Pittsburgh on Thursday. It came in the form of a fingertip-sized innovation with miniature needles made of sugar and virus proteins. It might be the vaccine that protects millions from the novel coronavirus pandemic. And it has been developed at the University of Pittsburgh School...
Laurels & lances: Giving, feeding, showing
Laurel: To the right prescription. Match Day is something medical students look forward to from their first day of class. It’s the day they find out the hospitals where they will do their residency years. It’s a celebratory day, with students getting their assignments all together. At Pitt, it’s a...
Editorial: Creativity can save pandemic economy
The Pennsylvania economy is a butterfly in a jar, held in place but still fluttering. The jar is the shutdown ordered by Gov. Tom Wolf in response to the coronavirus pandemic. They’re an effort to mitigate the risk to human life posed by a disease that the latest federal estimates...
Editorial: Mixed mask messages for covid-19
When the chips are down, you listen to the people who know what they are talking about. The firefighters say this is the way out of the fire? Go that way. The police say get down during a bank robbery? Lie on the floor. So what do you do when...
Editorial: 30 more days of pandemic distance
Another 30 days. As we sit in our homes or in our eerily empty offices or in stores that are long on lines and short on basics, it might be hard to imagine. As we deal with kids doing classwork via conference calls or visit our doctors on video chats,...
Editorial: Helping each other in pandemic
Bad situations can bring out the best in people. It can also bring out the worst. People are scared and unsure in the coronavirus pandemic. They don’t know what’s coming next on the economic roller coaster, and they are nervous about grocery shopping and opening doors. And let’s just admit...
Editorial: Tracking covid-19 spread in Pennsylvania
It’s up to us all now. The Pennsylvania Department of Health is not untangling the webs that tie one covid-19 infection to another anymore. The disturbing thing is that isn’t just happening now. “Contact tracing stopped last week, as the number of cases alone, without doing follow-up contact, became challenging...
Editorial: $2.2 trillion is coronavirus intensive care
Don’t call it a stimulus. The bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump will pump $2.2 trillion from Washington into the pockets of Americans and the checkbooks of businesses and the coffers of cities and states. For people who have rent to pay and groceries to buy —...
Laurels & lances: Pulling together
Laurel: To reaching out while staying in. Carla Chugani of Dormont isn’t letting social distancing keep her from helping people during the coronavirus pandemic. She’s doing it by creating her own free food pantry on her porch, in the style of Little Free Libraries. Stocked with things like nonperishable foods,...
Editorial: Pennsylvania primary and coronavirus
Pennsylvania was so close to mattering in the presidential primary this year. Things were tight on the Democratic side nationwide, and maybe the Keystone State would be key in making a choice between putting former Vice President Joe Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders on the ballot for the fall. And...


Editor's Picks

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Jimmy Stewart’s P-51 Mustang stops in hometown for museum anniversary
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