Welcome to the Manhattan Institute's eventcast, and thanks very much for joining us.

I'm Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal, and today we'll talk about how long-term care

facilities bore the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic and what we can learn from that fact.

We'll draw upon recent writings on this important issue by City Journal and Manhattan Institute

experts.

Let me introduce our two panelists.

First, Steve Melanga.

He's the senior editor of City Journal and the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Writing for City Journal, Steve has pointed to the inadequacies in American nursing homes.

Even before the pandemic, as Steve notes, the U.S. fell short of protecting the elderly

and long-term care facilities from infectious diseases.

For other guests today is Chris Pope.

He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Chris's research focuses on health

care market regulation, hospitals, entitlement design, insurance market reform. In City

Journal Chris has highlighted successful, innovative approaches to staffing during the pandemic

that can be a model perhaps for other facilities,

so we'll talk a bit about that.

So let me start with you, Steve.

The pandemic has proved devastating for nursing homes nationwide, according to some estimates,

as much as 40% of the overall count of people who've died in

America during the pandemic were nursing home residents.

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