COVID-19 in the news

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School budgets have held up better than expected in some states, but looming cuts will hurt learning long after pandemic ends

Michael Addonizio, professor of educational leadership and policy studies, wrote a piece for The Conversation on the budget challenges facing school budgets. “The year 2020 may prove to be pivotal in the history of U.S. public education. Many children have gone missing from school completely since March, and millions more are struggling with wholly inadequate online learning experiences. Lower-income and minority children are particularly hard-hit. The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated deep inequities across our public schools. Merely restoring school budgets to their prepandemic levels will not be enough to address them after this long period of limited learning. So far, most states have avoided deep education budget cuts this school year. However, they project revenue shortfalls for the 2021-22 school year.”
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How kids can benefit from mindfulness training

Hilary Marusak, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, wrote an article for The Conversation on the benefit of mindfulness training., ”Now that 2021 is here, many are looking for new ways to manage stress. Although mindfulness and meditation are not new – there is evidence suggesting that humans have been practicing meditation for more than 5,000 years – many are turning to these techniques to improve overall well-being. Mindfulness is a technique that involves paying attention to what’s happening now in the present moment, in an accepting, nonjudgmental manner. There are mindfulness apps for managing stress, anxiety, chronic pain, weight loss, better sleep and quitting smoking.”
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Wayne State president: Black people must overcome fear of COVID-19 vaccine

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson wrote an op-ed regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. “As a physician, epidemiologist and scientific researcher, I plan to take one of the coronavirus vaccines as soon as my turn comes.  I am confident that the vaccines are safe and effective, because I am confident in the years of scientific work and care behind their development. As a Black man and a member of Governor Whitmer’s Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities, I plan to encourage all Black men and women to take the vaccine. I know there is a lot of distrust and reluctance to get the vaccine born out of historical inequities and mistreatment. Despite the fact that Black people are almost three times more likely than white people to die of COVID-19, according to a Pew Research survey, only 42% of African Americans say they will get the vaccine, compared to 61% of white people. Frankly, neither number is high enough. I encourage everyone — I implore everyone — to get the vaccine as soon as they can. Especially members of the African American community.
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What effect will holiday travel have on the pandemic?

Please don't travel. That was the advice many public health officials urged Americans to follow this holiday pandemic season. And yet, travel over Christmas surged as millions of people left their homes and cities to spend it with family. All the while, hospitals are overflowing, still dealing with a surge of infections from travel over the Thanksgiving holiday. Dr. Teena Chopra, an infectious disease specialist at Wayne State University School of Medicine, participated in a Q&A with NPR host Sarah McCammon.
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How the NBA's pandemic success created an 'unrealistic expectation' for sports leagues

When the NBA, the NHL and MLB started their playoffs this year, they observed strict rules about whom their players could interact with — "bubbles" meant to make sure outbreaks were limited and contained. The NFL is instituting no such bubble for its coming playoffs, according to an internal league memo obtained by NBC News. The league informed teams this week that they can't require players or staff members to stay in isolation in hotel rooms beyond the night before a game. Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are surging across the country, outpacing the outbreaks early in the year that suspended organized sports across the United States. Since then, most leagues have restarted play even as players have tested positive, games have been delayed and the broader national situation has worsened. "I think a lot of what happened with sport was what happened in the rest of the country," said Dr. Gretchen Snoeyenbos Newman, an infectious disease expert and assistant professor at Wayne State University. "We weren't getting clear messaging from the top. Without that coordinated national response, it was left up to individual leagues, players, communities about what they were going to do, which is no way to run a pandemic." The implications outside of sports have become even more salient now that Covid-19 vaccines have started to roll out, with more widespread availability expected in 2021. "This is the fourth quarter. The sports metaphor is completely apt here. It is time to lock it down," Newman said. "Just make it through until the summer. The end is in sight. Let's not blow it now. We should be being as cautious as possible, because we know it's time-limited."
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Flashpoint 12/20/20: Michigan health leaders discuss managing limited supply of COVID vaccine

The coronavirus vaccine arrives. But so does a logistics puzzle for the ages. How do you manage a limited supply of a medicine everyone needs? And what about those who do not trust that medicine? Are they right to wait? Or do they need to be convinced to jump in? Featured on segment two of Flashpoint are Dr. M. Roy Wilson, President of Wayne State University and an epidemiologist; Christina Zilke, a registered nurse and the nursing supervisor at the Washtenaw County Health Department; and Portia Roberson, CEO of Focus: HOPE.
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Beginning the ‘long climb’ toward economic and social stability

Nonprofits were among the most visible organizations to shift strategies and processes to both endure the pandemic and support those suffering through job and other losses. By April, many colleges and universities began seeing decreases in fall enrollment—16 percent around the country—and drops in residence hall renewals. Consequently, they initiated layoffs and other budget cuts to help stave off hundreds of millions of dollars in predicted losses while also trying to mitigate the financial pain many students were experiencing. Yet, Wayne State University is bucking the trend and has seen increases in some enrollment figures. “We actually had a 5 percent increase in our first-year students,” said university President M. Roy Wilson, M.D., a trained epidemiologist. The university also hasn’t taken the financial losses most universities have so far experienced this year because of shifting strategies a few years ago that included turning to a public-private partnership for housing and food services, Wilson said. Still, with decreased consumer spending in 2020, property taxes left unpaid or deferred, high rates of unemployment and other hits to state budgets, college and university administrators expect state and federal budget cuts to affect their bottom lines in the near term. “We’ve been fortunate, but we are going to be impacted financially,” Wilson said. Wilson added that there’s also the issue of children missing out on the social and educational development they get from in-person learning. “As an epidemiologist, I’m worried about the pandemic and think we have to be very cautious,” he said. “So, I just urge everyone to think in terms of being as aggressive as we can be in driving the numbers down so that we can open up schools earlier.”
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Wayne State mobile COVID-19 testing units win praise, servicing most vulnerable

Wayne State University is expanding its mobile COVID-19 testing unit. "This new model of taking care to the people and delivering it on their terms, is really a bright spot that's come of this," said Dr. Phillip Levy. With a fleet of vans Wayne State brought the tests to the community. Now the mobile program visits churches, nursing homes and more mostly across metro Detroit. This is part of the first COVID-19 mobile testing program in the country, by Wayne State University and its physician group Wayne Health. "The population in Detroit - particularly the African-American population was suffering disproportionately from Covid both with caseload and mortality and we realized a lot of the population was under social circumstances that would make it challenging for them to easily get a test,:" said Levy, chief innovation officer, Wayne Health. Nearly 30,000 tests later -  it caught the attention of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services. Now the program is expanding and the mobile health units will get a big boost. "The real nice thing with these vehicles they have dual sliding doors so when the awnings are down the side wraps are on there and the sliding doors are open," he said. "You get to create this whole contained environment to be heated and air-conditioned whatever it is and it creates a comfortable environment to continue to do the type of testing we've been doing." The new mobile health units will start to roll out on Saturday with Wayne State having a fleet of five by early 2021. Meanwhile, there is a lot more than Covid testing. "We pivoted very quickly to add HIV screening, blood pressure measurement, we do blood bass lab work in the field, we draw blood through windows of cars," Levy said. 
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Mobile COVID-19 testing from Wayne State University

On a snowy Saturday, people drove and walked up to the parking lot at Oak Grove AME Church on Detroit's west side for free coronavirus testing. For Pastor Cindy Rudolph, this hits close to home  because she's seen the devastation COVID-19 can cause firsthand. "We have had loss, but we thank God that most of our members who have had COVID, came through healed," Rudolph said. Rudolph wanted to help, so she partnered with Wayne State University and its physician group, Wayne Health, to bring their mobile COVID testing program to her community. "To be in the community is critical," said Chief Innovation Officer with Wayne Health, Dr. Phillip Levy. "People may not have transportation; they may not have the ability to get to a location where testing is being done. In addition, they may not be able to get into a doctor's office." Since April, Wayne State Healthcare workers have traveled to churches, nursing homes and more. Most of the facilities have been in Metro Detroit. They originally used vans that were borrowed from Ford Motor Company, but now their vehicles are getting a major upgrade - becoming full-fledged mobile health units developed by Ford. "These vehicles are updated with all the equipment we need to run a testing operation and more," Dr. Levy said. "So, we are here doing COVID testing and nasal swabs. We have the refrigeration capacity to put the swabs that are ready for storage and shipment." Since the program started, healthcare workers have done nearly 30,000 tests along with additional screenings. Their efforts caught the attention of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services. Now, the program is expanding. Come January Wayne State will have a fleet of five of these new mobile health units paid for by the state and Oscar Willing Film Director, Steven Soderbergh. "We need to still do COVID testing and people need to get tested," Dr. Levy said. "So anything we can do to facilitate that and keep our neighbors safe, it what we are here for."
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Flashpoint 12/13/20: How pandemic could change future of the business community

The vaccines ride in hoping to rescue a weary world from the pandemic. But it’s more than this current crisis. Are we looking at the future of medicine? It has been a mad dash scramble -- and yet it has also been a studied, cool-headed study in solving a problem through science. The vaccines are coming and in just about a year since the appearance of the coronavirus we’ve come to know as COVID-19. Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor of infectious diseases at Wayne State University and also the corporate medical director of Infection Prevention and Hospital Epidemiology at the Detroit Medical Center, joined a discussion.
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The problem with your pandemic “Pod”

Many Americans are creating “pods,” or small exclusive groups of people, to socialize with indoors as the pandemic rages on. However, these pods that many people have come to rely on aren’t foolproof and take a lot of intention and planning to pull off safely. Dr. Paul Kilgore, associate professor & director of research at the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, suggests people read state guidelines about forming pods at Michigan.gov before starting their own bubble. He says when a pod is created it’s important to have conversations about behavior within the pod and expectations for when members leave the pod as well as the health risks involved. “Another key point is really talking about, within your pod, how vulnerable is each individual member,” says Kilgore on the importance of transparency in maintaining social bubbles. The general recommendation, Kilgore says, is to keep pods under ten people. In addition to keeping your pod small, one of the most important things to keep you safe, he says, is to keep wearing a mask when in public. According to Kilgore, it’s important the mask cover both the mouth and nose as the virus is particularly attracted to receptors in your nasal cavity.
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Vaccine politics, skewed by Trump’s polarizing approach, will complicate Biden’s path to a unified pandemic response

Cold, hard science powered the race that produced the first coronavirus vaccine, expected to win clearance imminently after gaining a positive vote from a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee Thursday night. The challenge next moves to more-fraught terrain — getting impatient Americans to understand that, while a vaccine is here, most will have to wait. Gallup’s most recent polling in November found that 37 percent of Americans would not agree to get a coronavirus vaccine, an improvement from the 50 percent who would not agree in September. Overcoming that hesitancy will require a broad-based education campaign from federal, state and local governments, featuring corporate and religious leaders, celebrities, sports stars and influencers, say experts. They will be up against an explosion of disinformation. “Unfortunately we have done a very good job of creating distorted and misleading narratives around this pandemic, and I still know individuals who say it’s just the bad flu, it’s a hoax,” said Matthew W. Seeger, a professor and dean at Wayne State University and co-author of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention manual on pandemic leadership and communication. “We now have these wildly competing narratives, and we need to do a much better job of telling the truth about covid 19,” he said.
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How promising is the vaccine news if people won't take it? | Opinion

Kristin Taylor, associate professor in Wayne State’s Department of Political Science, co-authored an op-ed about the forthcoming vaccine and prospects for serious public participation. “The last few weeks have brought a key tool in the fight against coronavirus: Moderna recently announced that a vaccine in Phase 3 trials was nearly 95 percent effective, exceeding even the most optimistic projections. Pfizer and BioNTech have also made similar announcements. But excitement about a forthcoming vaccine has been tempered by the reality that more and more Americans report having serious reservations about getting vaccinated. Alongside further vaccine development, the incoming Biden administration will need a strategic communication and public outreach plan aimed at fighting what public health experts call vaccine hesitancy.”
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How to help kids who feel isolated right now

During the pandemic and move of schools to remote instruction, trying to navigate and supplement students’ emotional needs has proven more challenging. For many families, the deeper we get into this pandemic, the harder it gets. Hannah Schacter, a developmental psychologist at Wayne State University studies how adolescents’ social relationships affect their mental and physical health. She said what we’re experiencing right now is not uncommon. “One of children’s and adolescents’ favorite things about going to school is getting to interact with their peers—both in and outside of the classroom. The shift to predominantly online learning has limited kids’ abilities to engage in those informal school-based interactions that make them feel good—things like lunch with their friends in the cafeteria, sports games, after-school clubs, and sharing funny stories at their lockers during passing time.” She also notes that those emotional needs shouldn’t be thought of as separate from learning, calling them “intricately intertwined, not separate priorities.” Hilary Marusak is a developmental neuroscientist at Wayne State who studies brain development in children and adolescents, and the effects of stress and trauma on the brain. She notes that most kids do have anxieties related to social distancing and life during the pandemic. She and Schacter both say that one simple way parents and caregivers can check in on kids’ mental and emotional health is simply asking them questions.
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Michigan Racial Disparities Task Force releases interim COVID-19 report

Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan COVID-19 Task Force on Racial Disparities, chaired by Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II, released an interim report detailing the significant progress Michigan has made in protecting communities of color from the spread of COVID-19. As of Nov. 16, more than 24,000 tests have been administered in previously underserved communities across 21 neighborhood testing sites, according to the governor’s office. These state-operated sites provide COVID-19 testing on a consistent schedule, several days per week. All sites offer free testing, and a prescription is not required for someone to be tested, nor is any form of ID required. From March and April to September and October, the average cases per million per day for Black Michiganders dropped from 176 to 59. In the same period, the number of probable deaths per million per day among Black Michiganders dropped significantly — from 21.7 to 1. “As a member of the Michigan Task Force on Racial Disparities, I am proud of the hard work we have done to protect communities of color from the spread of COVID-19,” said M. Roy Wilson, Task Force Member and president of Wayne State University. “I want to thank Governor Whitmer and Lieutenant Governor Gilchrist for their leadership as we have fought to eliminate this virus. Our work on the task force is far from over, but the data is clear – we have taken swift, meaningful action to protect Michigan’s most vulnerable communities and save lives, and we will continue to do so until this fight is over.”
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Ford donates 50,000 face masks to Wayne State University

A donation of 50,000 medical-grade, disposable face masks from the Ford Motor Co. Fund provides a critical stockpile at Wayne State University that will help protect students and the campus community throughout the pandemic. “We are immensely grateful for this generous gift of face masks from the Ford Motor Co. Fund,” says David Strauss, dean of students at WSU. “Having medical-grade PPE on hand for students will help keep us all Warrior Safe and Warrior Strong.” The disposable masks are a welcome addition to the cloth masks Wayne State distributes to all students and will be available throughout the year for health science programs and at units across campus that primarily serve students, such as the Student Center and the libraries. All students can use them as needed.
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Kids, teens could be feeling pandemic-related stress. Here's how parents can help

From the global pandemic to the divisive 2020 election, kids and teens are absorbing a lot of the same stress 2020 has brought adults; and what's worse, is that at a time when play dates or sleepovers are discouraged for public health reasons, kids might be needing that social outlet the most. Most organized youth sports are on hold right now, and many school districts in Michigan have moved fully remote due to a surge in COVID-19 cases. “During adolescence, this is a time when kids are really primed to want to explore their environment, to seek out new experiences. And being stuck at home with your parents isn’t really the best way to fulfill those developmental needs," said Hannah Schacter, an assistant professor of psychology at Wayne State. In the onset of the pandemic -- kids, especially teens, missed out on some key social milestones like prom, sporting events, and graduation. “And now suddenly you have moments of hope, of maybe it’s getting better and maybe we’re heading back there and then suddenly that’s shifting," Schacter said. Until Dec. 8, high school students statewide are learning remotely due to the an epidemic health order aimed at the slowing the spread of the virus. It's a move Schacter said could pose a greater problem for students who rely on in-school academic or social support. “It requires a greater sort of pro-activeness to seek out those services which is not always entirely possible in a virtual environment."
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Wayne State University and Karmanos Cancer Institute to host two-day symposium focused on advancing health equity and the impact of COVID-19

Wayne State University and the Karmanos Cancer Institute will host the “Community-Engaged Research Symposium to Advance Health Equity: The Impact of Coronavirus Now and in the Future,” on Dec. 1 and 2. The virtual symposium is free and open to the public; registration is required and can be completed online. “This is our third annual symposium, and we are honored to take on the challenge of adapting it to the pandemic,” said Rhonda Dailey, M.D., assistant professor of family medicine and public health sciences, and scientific director of the Office of Community Engaged Research at Wayne State University. “The virtual platform is a convenient way for academicians, community organizations and community members involved in community-based research to present their hard-earned work related to COVID-19. We hope that attendees will use the symposium to form new, lasting connections and partnerships.” Community-academic research partnerships are more important than ever, according to Hayley Thompson, Ph.D., professor of oncology in the Wayne State School of Medicine and associate center director for community outreach and engagement at Karmanos Cancer Institute. “Just like cancer, heart disease and a host of other conditions, the burden of COVID-19 is greater in communities of color, in under-resourced areas and among groups who are marginalized in other ways,” said Thompson. “If we want to generate data and knowledge that can make a difference, meaningful collaboration between these groups and academic researchers is essential. This symposium is one step toward real collaboration.”
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Michigan officials say no to big Thanksgiving gatherings. Who will listen?

Hospital leaders have pleaded. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has warned. Health officials have mandated, inspected and threatened fines. And a statistical model developed by Harvard researchers predicts nearly 1,000 COVID deaths a day in Michigan by year’s end if we can’t change the arc of the virus. But even as hospitalizations and deaths accelerate, will residents follow state pandemic restrictions — including limits on holiday gatherings — to help curb the spread of COVID-19? Public messaging on health risks is a “really challenging form of communication, and it's a lot easier to get it wrong than it is to get it right,” said Matt Seeger, dean of Wayne State University’s College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts and an expert in crisis communications. “It's difficult to get people's attention around risk issues. Consider how long we've been trying to convince people to stop smoking,” he said. Mixed messages, politics — and an evolving understanding of the coronavirus — have complicated the task. Seeger said a one-size-fits-all message is unlikely to work, and may backfire when it’s delivered by the government. 
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The do’s and don’ts to celebrating Thanksgiving safely in 2020

COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing across the country, including here in Michigan. The healthcare system is once again overwhelmed, with some hospitals nearing capacity. This fact is complicated by the impending holiday season. Families are assessing the safety of their typical celebratory gatherings and discussing how to adapt. Public health officials say these small gatherings are dangerous at this stage in the pandemic. Dr. Paul Kilgore is an associate professor and director of research at Wayne State University’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. He is also the principal investigator at Henry Ford Health System’s novel coronavirus vaccine trial. Kilgore spoke with Stephen Henderson on Detroit Today about how to keep safe during the holidays. “With more extended family gatherings, there’s always a risk of transmission…there is a chance that there could be someone there who is asymptomatic who could spread (COVID-19).” Do keep in mind that the virus travels differently indoors and in cooler air. “We know as people come indoors and as the proximity of individuals becomes closer, it’s much easier for the droplets… to move from one person to another,” says Kilgore. He adds, “In the wintertime with the lower humidity… the respiratory droplets can travel farther than they would in the warmer summer months when there is higher humidity.”