Conversation with The Cancer Letter

COVID-19 & Cancer

Early in 2020, we watched with growing alarm as early warnings of the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 started pouring in from Wuhan, and later, from Lombardy. At The Cancer Letter, we quickly decided to chart a course for intensive coverage of the pandemic as it reached our shores—oncologists are well-poised to take the lead in shaping research on COVID-19, and exposure mitigation strategies for high-risk patients. This coverage is collected here.
Let’s not form blue ribbon panels to study disparities in COVID-19 deaths
COVID-19 & CancerFreeGuest Editorial

Let’s not form blue ribbon panels to study disparities in COVID-19 deaths
Instead, let’s find the will to act

On a chaotic COVID weekend two months ago, a friend’s child (a young, talented black and Latino student athlete) came home from college not feeling well. The young man’s mother, an executive administrative assistant, called off work to stay home with him because of his, as she described, “full-blown flu-like symptoms.”
By Robert A. Winn and Katherine Y. Tossas
SARS-CoV-2 and oncology drugs
COVID-19 & CancerFreeGuest Editorial

SARS-CoV-2 and oncology drugs
What do we mean when we talk about value?

The global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has led to expectations of global deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Promising therapeutic strategies have emerged slower than society would prefer. COVID-related deaths in the United States exceed 86,000 as of this writing, with projections as high as 134,000.
By Garth W. Strohbehn, Daniel A. Goldstein and Mark J. Ratain