Wednesday, May 8

Tag: coronavirus

The homeless could be hit hard by Coronavirus and that could hit everyone hard
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

The homeless could be hit hard by Coronavirus and that could hit everyone hard

As the number of cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, continues to grow, the nation is on edge. Doctors and scientists do not know what percentage of the general population has been infected and what percentage of the infected develops symptoms. State and local governments and the federal public health system are deploying strategies to contain the spread of the virus and consider ways to mitigate the effects of the disease on vulnerable groups, the health care system and the economy. But amid all the planning, and a growing sense of panic, the impact of the spread of COVID-19 among homeless people is not being widely discussed. It should, however, be of special concern to local officials. I am a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at the Keck School ...
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The new coronavirus is hitting colleges and universities hard, but donors can help
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COVID-19, IN OTHER NEWS

The new coronavirus is hitting colleges and universities hard, but donors can help

Amid concerns about the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a rapidly growing number of colleges and universities are closing their classroom doors, forcing faculty to teach students online instead of in person. The risks posed by COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, are both dramatic and abstract. Without a vaccine, scientists can’t say how long it will last or what its full impact will be in any regard – including on higher education. There was almost no time to forge a plan to cope with either the logistical or financial consequences before they began to unfold. We are scholars of philanthropy who have examined the responsibilities of people in charge of overseeing colleges and universities. At this point, we are growing increasingly concerned about the hundreds of colleges ...
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Coronavirus control measures aren’t pointless – just slowing down the pandemic could save millions of lives
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Coronavirus control measures aren’t pointless – just slowing down the pandemic could save millions of lives

Anywhere from 20% to 60% of the adults around the world may be infected with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. That’s the estimate from leading epidemiological experts on communicable disease dynamics. Even the best-case scenario using those numbers means nearly 40,000,000 adults will be infected in the United States alone. Some people may start to feel fatalistic in the face of those kinds of statistics. There are no vaccines and no specific treatments for people who get sick. What’s the point of fighting something that’s bound to happen anyway? Why not just let the epidemic run its course? But public health officials and medical professionals have been advocating for rapid and decisive efforts to reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as much an...
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What to expect as colleges and universities move classes online amid coronavirus fears: 4 questions answered
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

What to expect as colleges and universities move classes online amid coronavirus fears: 4 questions answered

Rising concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus have led a growing number of colleges and universities to cancel in-person classes and move them online. Vanessa Dennen, who studies teaching and learning on the web, discusses what going online will mean for college students and instructors. 1. How hard will it be? Moving classes online in the midst of an emergency isn’t unprecedented. It’s been done before with local disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. But contending with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is a different situation. This is a global problem. A sudden shift to temporary or long-term online learning poses a challenge for brick-and-mortar universities to quickly scale up their online learning offerings under less than ideal conditions. It w...
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Love in the time of the coronavirus: Do you turn your back when someone offers you a hand, a kiss or a hug?
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LIFESTYLE

Love in the time of the coronavirus: Do you turn your back when someone offers you a hand, a kiss or a hug?

The toll of the coronavirus grows, with California under a state of emergency, and more than 150 cases and 11 deaths reported in the U.S.. Also, more than 300 million school children worldwide are facing closures of their schools. What does this mean for you in your personal life? We asked Brian Labus, professor of public health at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, about what kinds of physical contact are safe while COVID-19 is spreading. We are exposed to numerous viruses from our day-to-day interactions with other people all the time. However, our risk of being infected by a simple greeting usually isn’t in the forefront of our minds. The spread of COVID-19 has changed that. Conferences have banned handshakes, churches have changed their worship services, and even politicians have ch...
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Predicting the coronavirus outbreak: How AI connects the dots to warn about disease threats
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AI, COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, TECHNOLOGY

Predicting the coronavirus outbreak: How AI connects the dots to warn about disease threats

Canadian artificial intelligence firm BlueDot has been in the news in recent weeks for warning about the new coronavirus days ahead of the official alerts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. The company was able to do this by tapping different sources of information beyond official statistics about the number of cases reported. BlueDot’s AI algorithm, a type of computer program that improves as it processes more data, brings together news stories in dozens of languages, reports from plant and animal disease tracking networks and airline ticketing data. The result is an algorithm that’s better at simulating disease spread than algorithms that rely on public health data – better enough to be able to predict outbreaks. The company uses the t...
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Why public health officials sound more worried about the coronavirus than the seasonal flu
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

Why public health officials sound more worried about the coronavirus than the seasonal flu

The spread of the new coronavirus, which has infected over 80,000 people worldwide and resulted in the death of more than 3,000, has raised alarms around the world. At the same time, the seasonal influenza, known as the flu, causes severe illness in between 3 million and 5 million people, with hundreds of thousands of deaths every year worldwide. With so many fewer cases than the flu, what explains the dramatic response to COVID-19 and worry around the globe? And how would a person know whether seasonal influenza-like symptoms are COVID-19? As an epidemiologist, here’s how I look at these questions. Difficult to distinguish The first thing to realize is that the emergence of the novel coronavirus isn’t a rare “black swan” event. Rather, this is a product of evolution; there have been ab...
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Stocks are plummeting – could coronavirus cause a recession?
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BUSINESS, COVID-19

Stocks are plummeting – could coronavirus cause a recession?

Fears are growing that the new coronavirus will infect the U.S. economy. U.S stocks are headed for their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis; companies including Apple and Walmart have been warning of potential sales losses from COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans to prepare for the outbreak to spread to the United States, with unknown but potentially “bad” consequences. Lately, many people have asked me, as an economist, a question I haven’t heard in years: Could a virus really send the global and U.S. economies into recession – or worse? Put more pertinently, will COVID-19 trigger an economic meltdown? What a virus can do The worry is understandable; viruses are scary things. I’ve read my share of medical thrillers based on some new virus...
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US workplaces are nowhere near ready to contain a coronavirus outbreak
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

US workplaces are nowhere near ready to contain a coronavirus outbreak

The new coronavirus has spread rapidly around the globe since its discovery late last year in China. It has now infected more than 20,000 people worldwide and killed over 400, prompting travel bans, citywide quarantines and mass hysteria. To combat its spread in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has offered some seemingly straightforward advice: “Stay home when you are sick.” That’s easier said than done for the tens of millions of workers in the United States who don’t have paid sick days or who operate in a “tough-it-out” workplace culture. This gap is a big problem when a disease like the coronavirus can be spread with as little as a cough. As someone who researches work, I’ve been wondering: Do these workplace norms and policies help our companies cope...
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The Trump administration has made the U.S. less ready for infectious disease outbreaks like coronavirus
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

The Trump administration has made the U.S. less ready for infectious disease outbreaks like coronavirus

As coronavirus continues to spread, the Trump administration has declared a public health emergency and imposed quarantines and travel restrictions. However, over the past three years the administration has weakened the offices in charge of preparing for and preventing this kind of outbreak. Two years ago, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates warned that the world should be “preparing for a pandemic in the same serious way it prepares for war”. Gates, whose foundation has invested heavily in global health, suggested staging simulations, war games and preparedness exercises to simulate how diseases could spread and to identify the best response. Colorized scanning electron micrograph of filamentous Ebola virus particles (blue) budding from an infected cell (yellow-green). NIAID,...
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