COVID-19 in the news

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Michigan universities trying to prevent deportation of international students

Wayne State University and Oakland University will join the likes of Harvard, MIT and the University of Michigan in a fight to keep international students from being deported. The White House said if colleges don’t reopen, international students will have to finish their studies online from their home countries. The universities are now creating in-person courses to keep talent in the U.S. Rather than letting their international students be deported if schools go to a 100 percent online learning model -- they are figuring out how to make courses with the minimum bar of accommodation to keep those students’ visas safe.
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The kid next door: Neighborhood friendships on a comeback amid the coronavirus pandemic

Julie Wargo Aikins, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, wrote this piece earlier for The Conversation. “Children's social worlds have been upended by the suspension of school and extracurricular activities due to the pandemic. Many older children and adolescents have been able to maintain their friendships over social media. But, for younger children, this approach is less likely to be available to them and less likely to meet their social needs. In some places, a silver lining of Covid-19 may well be the resurgence of childhood friendships in American neighborhoods.”
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Feeling anxious about wearing a mask? Here are 5 ways to overcome it

Feeling anxious about wearing a mask is actually a normal physiologic reaction. Jennifer M. Gómez, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child & Family Development at Wayne State University says our bodies detect when we are not getting the resources we need to survive and one of those resources is air. Even though wearing a mask does not put a person in danger of actually suffocating, Gómez says the mask will tell our body, “Hey! I think there’s something bad here that’s interrupting breathing! Danger is afoot!” Our body will then respond by hyperventilating, becoming anxious, or panicking to alert us that there could be a problem, in this case trouble breathing, to cause us to do something about it. Our reaction is intended to save our lives and is actually what our body is supposed to do. Gómez notes, however, that the problem lies with the fact that the mask is tricking our body and we aren’t actually in danger of getting less oxygen by wearing a mask. This is only worsened by the fact that we actually can easily remove the mask to breathe in all of the air we want. In other words, Gómez says, “your body is responding like your fire alarm in your house does when the kitchen gets too smokey but there's no fire. It's a false alarm.”
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Students at Michigan universities turn to summer classes

Students at Michigan's public universities are registering for summer courses online at record rates, marking an unexpected windfall for several schools strapped for cash due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nine of the 10 institutions that shared data with the Detroit Free Press projected a year-over-year growth in summer enrollment, with two-thirds of these schools anticipating a boost of at least 4% for one or more of their summer periods. At Wayne State University, only about a third of spring/summer credit hours are normally taken online. With nearly all instruction shifting virtually in light of social-distancing guidelines, participation is up nearly 6%.
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Excessive hand-washing. Tech addiction. Behaviors once considered extreme are now crucial to protect us amid a dangerous pandemic.

David Rosenberg, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, wrote an article for The Conversation. “One of the hallmarks of obsessive-compulsive disorder is contamination fears and excessive hand-washing. Years ago, a patient with severe OCD came to my office wearing gloves and a mask and refused to sit on any of the “contaminated” chairs. Now, these same behaviors are accepted and even encouraged to keep everyone healthy. This new normal in the face of a deadly pandemic has permeated our culture and will continue to influence it. 
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Pandemic paychecks: Meet these Detroit-area teen essential workers

When you’re an essential worker and a high school student learning online during a pandemic, life can be difficult to balance. The shift to online learning that students across the nation had to deal with was a difficult one. Teens have filled essential roles during the pandemic, keeping restaurants open for people who need it. Often, they’re also helping keep their families afloat, which is important when you consider how many jobs have been lost during the pandemic. In Michigan, the unemployment rate soared to 24% in April, up from 4.3% in March. Marick Masters, a Wayne State University professor specializing in labor markets, said the money teens earn from after-school jobs is “money that they can contribute to the family, for the food bill, the transportation bill, and other incidentials that come into play and can relieve the parents from the obligation of doing that. It is an overlooked aspect, that they are contributors to the family, and that is something that households really depend upon,” Masters said.
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Michigan university students flock to virtual summer classes

Students at Michigan’s public universities are filling their summers with online coursework at record rates — marking an unexpected windfall for several schools strapped for cash as the coronavirus pandemic transforms campus activities. Nine of the 10 institutions that shared data with the Free Press projected year-over-year growth in summer enrollment. Two-thirds of these schools anticipate a boost of at least 4% for one or more of their summer periods. At Wayne State University, only about a third of “spring/summer” credit hours — scheduled for May through August — are normally taken online, according to Registrar Kurt Kruschinska. This term, with nearly all instruction shifting to virtual in light of social-distancing guidelines, participation is up nearly 6%. Dawn Medley, the school’s associate vice president of enrollment management, said she thinks these “pretty amazing numbers” are especially driven by incoming freshmen. Wayne State recently launched its Kick Start College program, which is slated to give around 700 new students a chance to get ahead on their graduation requirements with a free class. The offering is particularly geared toward helping students prepare for the possibility of virtual learning come fall. “The courses are designed to launch them into and make sure that they are successful and comfortable in an online or virtually distant environment,” Medley said. “And that's why we selected English and the communication course — so that students would gain those foundational skills as we look to fall, and as we look to what our fall semester may look like.”
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Why safely reopening high school sports is going to be a lot harder than opening college and pro ball

Tamara Hew-Butler, associate professor of exercise and sports science, and Phillip D. Levy, assistant vice president for translational science and clinical research innovation, wrote an article for The Conversation about reopening school and club sports amidst the pandemic. “Along with the revival of professional sports comes the yearning for a return to amateur sports – high school, college and club. Governing officials are now offering guidance as to when and how to resume play. However, lost in the current conversation is how schools and club sports with limited resources can safely reopen. As an exercise scientist who studies athlete health and an emergency medicine physician who leads Michigan’s COVID-19 mobile testing unit, we wish to empower athletes, coaches and parents by sharing information related to the risks of returning to play without COVID-19 testing. This includes blood tests to see if athletes have already had COVID-19 plus nasal swabs to test for the active SARS-CoV-2 virus. Regular COVID-19 testing on all athletes may seem like overkill, but the current tally of 150 collegiate athletes, mostly football players, who have tested positive for COVID-19 grows longer by the day.”
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How to stay informed, but protect your mental health

A recent survey conducted by Newsy determined that 49% of Americans ranked at least a 6 out of 10 on a scale of how fearful they are of a coronavirus outbreak. That number varied by which news network they watched daily (5.47, for Fox News, was the lowest, and 6.88 for MSNBC was the highest) and the amount of time spent watching each network. In general, the more hours someone spent watching the news, the higher levels of fear they had (though it was not always significant). Perhaps that has something to do with our tendency to pay more attention to negative news. We also saw this after 9/11. In one study, the amount of time spent watching television was directly correlated with the severity of symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Jennifer M. Gómez, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child & Family Development at Wayne State University says that while we generally “need” to be informed, we do not “need” to have our sleep interrupted, to watch videos of violence and murder, or to only know of the bad things that are happening in the world. In fact, she believes we watch and keep watching, in some way looking for hope or positive news, especially currently. She adds, “the need for hope is perhaps stronger than any other need we think we have for staying informed.”
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Colleges say they can reopen safely. But will students follow the rules?

Wayne State University is among the campuses that’s proposing to revise its student-conduct code with language about face coverings and social-distancing. If the university's board signs off on the changes during a meeting on Friday, failure to comply with Covid-19 policies would join the university’s list of prohibited conduct. The proposed requirements include completing a daily self-screening for symptoms before coming to campus; following campus-health-center directions when sick; wearing a face covering in public spaces; maintaining six feet of distance from others; and complying with signage in hallways, elevators and stairwells. University officials proposed modifying the code because they wanted to be specific about what’s acceptable, said David Strauss, dean of students. Once a Covid-19 vaccine has been widely distributed and the threat of the virus has disappeared, any added provisions can be removed, he said. Student-affairs leaders acknowledge that enforcement has its place, but looking ahead to the fall, they prefer to focus on student buy-in and community values. At Wayne State, after conduct-code amendments are finalized, Strauss said, he’ll convene a group of student ambassadors who will help promote a campaign on campus expectations. Riya Chhabra, president of Wayne State’s Student Senate, said she’s glad the university has involved students so extensively. Students want to go back to normal and hang out with their friends, said Chhabra, who’s studying public health. If her peers understand that following these rules will allow them to do that sooner, she believes they’ll comply. “We definitely don’t want to have students get in trouble for it,” she said.
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How COVID-19 affects children compared to adults

A new study by Chinese researchers found that COVID-19 pediatric patients had higher incidents of initial symptoms like fever, vomiting, and diarrhea than adult patients and often recovered an average of 3 to 4 days after treatment. Research on COVID-19 pediatric cases is still limited, but this new study offers a fresh perspective on the early diagnosis and epidemic control of COVID-19 in children and could enhance early intervention and diagnosis. The new study highlights the fact that so much about the pathogen underlying the disease remains unknown and there’s so much more to learn, added Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor of infectious diseases at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine. “[What] is interesting is that the children [in the study] did not present with severe disease unlike adults,” she said. “And most of them had mild or moderate symptoms.” Chopra added that the study has lots of implications for authorities pondering decisions such as school reopenings in the fall. Although the sample size is a “small number, it gives us insight into the world of children and helps us understand the impact on a younger age group,” said Chopra who serves on Wayne State’s reopening task force as well as one of a Detroit area school. School officials “should take studies like this into account before opening schools and making decisions about whether it can affect children or not,” she said.
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Are we all OCD now, with obsessive hand-washing and technology addiction?

David Rosenberg, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, wrote an article for The Conversation. “One of the hallmarks of obsessive-compulsive disorder is contamination fears and excessive hand-washing. Years ago, a patient with severe OCD came to my office wearing gloves and a mask and refused to sit on any of the “contaminated” chairs. Now, these same behaviors are accepted and even encouraged to keep everyone healthy. This new normal in the face of a deadly pandemic has permeated our culture and will continue to influence it. Many stores now prominently post rules mandating face masks and hand sanitizer use and limit the number of customers allowed inside at one time. Walkers and joggers politely cross the street to avoid proximity to each other. Only a few months ago, this type of behavior would have been considered excessive, irrational, even pathological, and certainly not healthy. So, where do doctors draw the line between vigilance to avoid being infected with the coronavirus and obsessive-compulsive disorder that can be harmful? This is an important question that I, a psychiatrist, and my co-author, a wellness and parenting coach, often hear.”
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Schools eyeing big cuts amid funding crash

School budget makers across Michigan are eyeing cuts to employees, salaries and transportation among other things, as they work through the revenue crash caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The two largest sources of state money to the School Aid Fund, sales and income taxes, have fallen sharply during the shutdown, leaving a budget hole that could reach almost $2.4 billion over the next two years, according to state estimates. Educators are pleading for federal help, but nothing is certain yet, except that state law requires districts to submit adopt a balanced budget by July 1. "I expect layoff notices will be going out to teachers," said Michael Addonizio, a professor of education policy at Wayne State University. "If they're not going out right now, they soon will be in the absence of an aid package. You'd certainly see layoffs of support staff, you are going to lose guidance counselors, librarians, attendance officers, school psychologists. I think it would be unavoidable. Teaching staff reductions would be unavoidable." Addonizio serves on the School Finance Research Collaborative, a task force looking to reform Michigan school funding. He said schools have faced budget struggles before and received federal aid, but this time is different. "The only thing approaching it was the cut the schools took in 2011, when federal emergency aid to the districts expired and the state foundation allowance was cut by $470," Addonizio said. "That was astonishing at the time." Addonizio said he expects Congress to pass something, but in the meantime, districts are preparing for cuts. 

Thoughts on theaters during the pandemic

As the pandemic continues, theaters struggle to stay on board this ever rocking ship. Every week it seems communities change and adjust to the “new normal”. But what are the effects of COVID-19 on theaters? How can an industry and a community entirely driven by large groups of people change to customize themselves to fit into the new social distance mold? As Director of Marketing and Audience Engagement at Wayne State University, Thomas Karr says “Our function is the same, but our tools will be different.” For the Bonstelle and Hilberry theaters, these different tools include live streaming, recording and sharing skits and dances, putting together live, in person outside events in parking lots and on campus, as well as drive-by events. Dance and theater students of Wayne State University have created and led virtual events on Facebook and Youtube. These events have received a far greater number of viewers than events produced within their theaters before the pandemic. This new way of production brings a new hope and excitement to the community that is already so intent on sharing stories and art. Soon to be chairperson of the Department of Theater and Dance at Wayne State University, Mary Anderson says, “They have been so resilient. But at the same time I grieve their losses. This time has been incredibly disruptive and alienating for them.”
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Mapping the road to return

Months after it began, the coronavirus outbreak that swept through Detroit and the rest of the country continues to rage. While there are mixed opinions on how quickly the crisis is actually receding, local leaders have already started to consider how the city begins to bounce back. At Wayne State University, which since March has been holding remote and online classes only (as well as a virtual graduation that was livestreamed), President M. Roy Wilson and Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Keith E. Whitfield are among those carefully charting the city’s recovery and weighing the prospects of students’ physical return to campus in the fall. Although their plans are still taking shape, Wilson and Whitfield agreed to sit down for a Q&A for the Michigan Chronicle to discuss how WSU is faring amid the outbreak, the factors driving any potential decision to return to campus and their concerns that the recent unrest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in combination with relaxed social distancing practices could usher in another spike in COVID-19 infections.
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Opinion: Wayne State University works toward return to campus

Keith Whitfield, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, wrote an opinion piece regarding the return to campus in light of the pandemic. “In the fall, we will offer a mix of in-person, remote and online classes. What proportion of which will be determined by July 15. By then, we should have more information about the progression of the virus, and a determination of which classes would best be held on campus vs done remotely. In the end our decision will be based on science and a full commitment to protecting the health and safety of our campus community. Despite the understandable trepidation you may feel about returning to campus — or even continuing your college education — now.
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Detroit area hospital systems lean against use of hydroxycholoroquine for COVID-19

A quickly retracted study that found a higher death rate among COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine has deepened controversy over the drug worldwide and in Michigan. At least one local health system continues to use the drug while others have abandoned it. Many health care institutions, including the World Health Organization, suspended clinical trials of the drug touted by President Donald Trump after the faulty study was published in the British medical journal The Lancet on May 22. The WHO restarted the trials about a week ago. The observational study of about 96,000 patients hospitalized worldwide with the coronavirus concluded that patients who were treated with hydroxychloroquine had a greater chance of death and heart rhythm problems than those who did not receive the drug. The politicization of medical studies was dismissed by Michael Rybak, a professor of pharmacy and medicine at Wayne State University and the primary investigator on a current study that's trying to determine the optimum dose of hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 patients. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, he said, doctors were grasping at straws, using an unproven treatment without really knowing if it would benefit or harm patients. "The journals have a lot at stake as well," Rybak said, noting that the publications' reputations are based on the quality of the research they publish. "It was important to get the information out as fast as possible to the prescribing clinicians so they know what to do next because there was no information," he said. "(Journals) are trying to get the information out as fast as possible because they know we're at an hour of need." 
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Neighborhood-based friendships making a comeback for kids in the age of coronavirus

Julie Wargo Aikins, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, wrote an article for The Conversation. “As the weather has warmed in my Midwestern town, my neighborhood is full of children on bicycles pretending to be riding through the Wild West. I can’t walk down the sidewalk without stepping on chalk drawings or hopscotch boards. There are children jumping rope and playing ball. In the eight years I’ve lived here, I’ve never witnessed this before. As a clinical psychologist who studies children’s friendships, I am fascinated by this development. Children’s social worlds have been upended by the suspension of school and extracurricular activities due to the pandemic. Many older children and adolescents have been able to maintain their friendships over social media. But, for younger children, this approach is less likely to be available to them and less likely to meet their social needs. In some places, a silver lining of COVID-19 may well be the resurgence of childhood friendships in American neighborhoods.”
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As protective gear becomes a new normal, some call for Michigan health systems to buy domestic

The demand for PPE may surge as such large institutions as Michigan's public universities prepare to resume on-campus, in-person classes in the fall. Wayne State University, for example, has ordered 62,000 reusable face masks from Office Depot in  preparation for the fall semester. The university aims to provide students, staff and faculty with a small supply of PPE, and also is considering installing PPE vending machines on campus, said Ken Doherty, associate vice president for procurement and business services. For now, the university is stocked up on hand sanitizer and dispensers. Doherty and other stakeholders have daily conversations about PPE to work through new issues raised as they contemplate a return to school. One example: how to ensure that hearing-impaired students who rely on lip-reading are not at a disadvantage. "Beyond that, we're pretty darn comfortable with where we're at," he said.