Friday, May 3

Tag: pandemic

When The COVID-19 Pandemic Closed College Campuses Here’s What Former Foster Children Went Through
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EDUCATION

When The COVID-19 Pandemic Closed College Campuses Here’s What Former Foster Children Went Through

The big idea In the first two months of the pandemic, more than half of former foster children lost their jobs and nearly 40% experienced precarious living situations or homelessless, according to a survey of 127 former foster children between the ages of 18 and 26 that we conducted in May and June of 2020. They were among the estimated 20,000 people in foster care who are “emancipated” each year when they age out of the system, beginning as young as 18. These young adults typically lose most of the support the government provides foster children – such as caseworker support and access to health care and housing. Most of the people we surveyed were college students. Like most former foster youth going to college in the spring of 2020, they did not have a stable living situation or family...
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What Is Genomic Surveillance And Why We Need More Of It To Track Coronavirus Variants And Help End The COVID-19 Pandemic
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COVID-19

What Is Genomic Surveillance And Why We Need More Of It To Track Coronavirus Variants And Help End The COVID-19 Pandemic

“You can’t fix what you don’t measure” is a maxim in the business world. And it holds true in the world of public health as well. Sequencing the genetic code of virus samples taken from COVID-19 patients reveals how SARS-CoV-2 is spreading and changing. Nate Langer/UPMC, CC BY-ND Early in the pandemic, the United States struggled to meet the demand to test people for SARS-CoV-2. That failure meant officials didn’t know the true number of people who had COVID-19. They were left to respond to the pandemic without knowing how quickly it was spreading and what interventions minimized risks. Now the U.S. faces a similar issue with a different type of test: genetic sequencing. Unlike a COVID-19 test that diagnoses infection, genetic sequencing decodes the genome of SARS-CoV-2 virus in samples ...
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9.8 Million Americans Have Been Pushed Further Into Food Insecurity Due To The Pandemic Recession
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IN OTHER NEWS

9.8 Million Americans Have Been Pushed Further Into Food Insecurity Due To The Pandemic Recession

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed hardship on millions of vulnerable Americans through unemployment and reduced work hours. And this has increased food insecurity across the nation. CC BY-ND There is no official figure yet for how many more families are struggling to provide regular meals around the table – the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s next annual report on food insecurity, defined as a lack of access to sufficient food due to limited financial resources, won’t be out until the fall. But for me as an academic who has long tracked food insecurity trends, working out the increase in the number of people affected and projecting what will happen next is important. By understanding this, experts can work out whether what is occurring during the pandemic is likely to follow – or brea...
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To Prepare Now For The Next Pandemic, Here’s 5 Strategies
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IN OTHER NEWS, Journalism

To Prepare Now For The Next Pandemic, Here’s 5 Strategies

While the world is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, public health and emergency management experts are already preparing for the next one. After all, biologists are certain another dangerous new pathogen will emerge sooner or later. We are public health researchers engaged in both leading public health disaster response and evaluating emergency management. Here are five strategies that will give the world a head start – and maybe even help prevent the next outbreak or epidemic from blowing up into a pandemic. 1. Shore up the systems already in place The identification in February 2021 of a new outbreak of Ebola in Guinea showed how critical surveillance and reporting are for rapidly responding to and containing infectious disease. The process generally works like this: Once an ...
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The Coronavirus Is Messing With Our Minds As Well As Our Bodies, A Year Into The Pandemic
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COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

The Coronavirus Is Messing With Our Minds As Well As Our Bodies, A Year Into The Pandemic

COVID-19 has hijacked people’s lives, families and work. And, it has hijacked their bodies and minds in ways that they may not even be aware of. As we see it, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is a sort of zombie virus, turning people not into the undead but rather into the unsick. By interfering with our bodies’ normal immune response and blocking pain, the virus keeps the infected on their feet, spreading the virus. People typically think of zombies as the stuff of science fiction. But in the biological world, zombies are all over the place, from the Ophiocordyceps fungus that perpetuates itself by zombifying ants; to Toxoplasma gondii, a single-celled parasite that completes its life cycle by leading rodents into the jaws of predators. Zombie viruses are also a real thing, i...
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Maybe The End Of The Pandemic, What’s In A Name For A Vaccine Campaign?
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Maybe The End Of The Pandemic, What’s In A Name For A Vaccine Campaign?

Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. had received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine by March 1, and millions of others have spent hours online trying to get an appointment. But soon, the demand could fall because of vaccine hesitancy. How is the government going to get people on board? From my research, I have found that an important part of a successful vaccine campaign is in the name. As a health communication scholar who studies the history of epidemics, I have been interested in the naming and public delivery of the COVID-19 government response. In many ways, this moment parallels crises of the past, as people in previous epidemics and pandemics also struggled to find ways to protect themselves against deadly disease. Abandoning the ‘Operation Warp Speed’ name In the week ...
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Black And Hispanic Small-Business Owners Have Been So Badly Hit In The Pandemic Recession
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IN OTHER NEWS

Black And Hispanic Small-Business Owners Have Been So Badly Hit In The Pandemic Recession

The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on Main Street, with small businesses across the U.S. closing by the thousands. But as bad as the overall scene is, for minority-owned businesses the picture is even bleaker. A survey released on Jan. 27 by advocacy group Small Business Majority found that almost 1 in 5 Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs expected to permanently close their business over the course of the next three months – a rate higher than for white business owners. It comes on the back of a report by the Federal Reserve of Cleveland that suggested that the impact of the coronavirus could be over two times larger for Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses than for white-owned enterprises. As scholars who research racial inequities and entrepreneurship, we know that even before the pande...
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Here’s how to stay safe while buying groceries amid the coronavirus pandemic
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COVID-19, VIDEO REELS

Here’s how to stay safe while buying groceries amid the coronavirus pandemic

Wear a mask, but skip the gloves. Don’t sanitize the apples. And if you are older than 65, it’s probably best to still order your groceries online. As a food virologist, I hear a lot of questions from people about the coronavirus risks in grocery stores and how to stay safe while shopping for food amid the pandemic. Here are answers to some of the common questions. Can I touch the tomatoes? What you touch on the grocery shelves is less of a concern than who breathes on you and other surfaces you might come in contact with in a store. In fact, there is currently no evidence of the virus being transmitted by food or food packaging. You may have heard about studies showing that the virus can remain infectious for up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to 72 hours on plastic or stainless steel. ...
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Filling Research Gaps Created By The Pandemic – Citizen Scientists
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SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

Filling Research Gaps Created By The Pandemic – Citizen Scientists

The rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020 disrupted field research and environmental monitoring efforts worldwide. Travel restrictions and social distancing forced scientists to cancel studies or pause their work for months. These limits measurably reduced the accuracy of weather forecasts and created data gaps on issues ranging from bird migration to civil rights in U.S. public schools. A volunteer looks for waterbirds at Point Reyes National Seashore in California during the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count. Kerry W/Flickr, CC BY Our work relies on this kind of information to track seasonal events in nature and understand how climate change is affecting them. We also recruit and train citizens for community science – projects that involve amateur or volunteer scientists...
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Strategies For Parents To Reduce Kids Pandemic Stress
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Strategies For Parents To Reduce Kids Pandemic Stress

Parents are dealing with huge demands on their time and energy. Children may not be attending school or involved in regular activities. As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on families, routines have collapsed, patience is wearing thin and self-care is a distant memory. Making time to connect one on one is crucial. S&B Vonlanthen/Unsplash, CC BY Decades of research have taught us that adversity during childhood has damaging effects on health and development. Many studies have shown that kids who have faced abuse, neglect and family conflict struggle forming friendships, have academic difficulties and face physical and mental health problems in adolescence and adulthood. Fortunately, developmental scientists have identified ways to help children survive and thrive during times of ...
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