Wayne State University law professor and Constitutional law expert Robert Sedler talks about the lawsuit the Trump campaign has filed in the Michigan Court of Claims seeking to stop the vote counting until the campaign had “meaningful access” to the ballots. Sedler said the suit was unlikely to succeed. “Article II, section 4 of the Michigan Constitution, the "purity of elections" clause, says that the Legislature shall enact laws to preserve the purity of elections, to preserve the secrecy of the ballot, to guard against abuses of the elective franchise, and to provide for a system of voter registration and absentee voting. The Legislature has enacted such laws, and local clerks comply with them. The court will not in any circumstances order a stop to counting of ballots. Every vote must count, no matter how long it takes.”

“When you look at the numbers beyond COVID, for African Americans, they have the worst health conditions – diabetes, heart conditions, obesity, high blood pressure – because of diet and poverty, the stressors for living in poverty,” said Khari Brown, associate professor of sociology at Wayne State University with a specialization in race, religion and politics. “Living and eating healthy, exercising, is a function of class and education, not just of the individual’s class but of your social class and being in a network.” Brown explained that we are all in numerous “networks” – friendship networks, networks of our children’s friends, a neighborhood network of where we live, professional networks, religious network, and others. “If you’re in a network with a knowledgeable group, you become more knowledgeable. It’s one of the reasons African Americans have some of the worst health and worst health outcomes. They live in poor communities with poor access to health. You have poor individuals that are living in poor neighborhoods – they’re in poor friendship networks – eating healthy and exercising is a function of class,” Brown said. “It’s one more variable. It’s race and class and place. It’s where you are. If you see people running, biking, kayaking – it looks fun. You may want to try it. It’s exposure. Place matters.”  

Lucy (Kathleen) McGoron, assistant professor of child and family development, and Julie Wargo Aikins, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences, Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, wrote a piece for The Conversation. “Our recent survey found that schools can affect the mental health and well-being of not just students but their parents, too. From April through June 2020, we surveyed 152 parents – primarily mothers – in Detroit, Michigan, who were managing the new demands of remote schooling for their children. Not surprisingly, they reported high levels of anxiety (34%) and depression (27%) during this stressful period, but some indicated that support from their child’s school played an important role in reducing their mental health difficulties. Generally speaking, the more school support parents in our survey felt they had received, the less anxiety and depression they reported. However, this finding did not extend to families that were highly affected by COVID-19 due to lost income, food insecurity or lost access to health care.”

It’s Election Day 2020 and after a long and contentious campaign, tensions are running high. It feels like the country is the most divided it has been since the Civil War. Some are worried that the current climate of political instability could jeopardize the country’s democratic process. Though this election cycle is certainly unprecedented, it isn’t the first contentious election in America’s history. What can we learn from previous fraught elections and how the country endured after them? Marc Kruman, founding director of the Center for the Study of Citizenship and professor of history, says that the current election feels very different and is different from those in recent history. “This is the most contentious presidential election of my lifetime,” says Kruman. He adds that the erosion of trust evidenced throughout this election cycle makes it a uniquely anxious event. “I think that if we are going to compare it, it would probably be to the election of 1876,” says Kruman, adding the caveat that the 1876 election was far tenser than the lead up to 2020. The current climate of division, though anxiety-inducing, may actually be necessary according to Kruman. “Contentiousness actually has led to greater voter participation and greater enthusiasm and that speaks to the health of our democracy,” says Kruman.

Saeed Khan, the director of global studies at Wayne State University, said as the world anticipates results, a tremendous number of votes were cast as absentee or mail-in ballots, which in many places might take days to count, and that includes Michigan. "There's also going to be a sense of uncertainty when it comes to what's going to be the rhetoric," he said. He pointed out earlier in the evening that it was expected President Trump might declare victory based on the trajectory of the race so far. "However, as this thing will go longer and longer and the votes start coming in, then we're going to find the race tightening up and perhaps with Democrats doing far better," Khan said. "If that then turns into an issue, where Biden can then claim victory, especially in the Electoral College, we're going to find not just a rhetorical battle occurring, but we're also going to find several legal challenges because President Trump has never been predisposed to be someone who will concede a defeat, and particularly one where he feels as though it's on a technical matter."

Young voters in Michigan may be breaking some records. Among 14 key states, Michigan has seen the most "dramatic" increase in young voters ages 18-29 casting their ballot at this time of year, according to an analysis released by Tufts University last week. The analysis found 9.4% of all early votes have been cast by youth this year, as compared to only 2.5% in 2016. Nationally, more than seven million young voters have already sent in their ballots. “With the pandemic, I think a lot of younger voters and younger generations overall feel very energized to make their voice heard,” said Riya Chhabra, a Wayne State University senior and student government president. Wayne State University opened its own polling location in 2019, an initiative spearheaded by former student government president Stuart Baum, when he realized in 2016 the nearest polling location was 45 minutes away by foot and shared with three precincts. The new polling location near The Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne Law helped more voices get heard from Wayne State, he said. The student government is continuing Baum’s work, launching the voter website Motivote. “Even though we have really difficult schedules, we still put in the time and the work to get students engaged,” said student government member Sailor Mayes, a sophomore. Motivote allows Wayne State students to complete bite-sized action items, such as making a voting plan, for points, Chhabra said. These points allow students to enter a raffle. She said her team had an extensive “Get Out and Vote” plan for students this semester but was quickly interrupted by COVID-19 — Motivote became the second-best option. 

Michigan election officials are working hard to prevent a cyber attack ahead of Tuesday’s election. The concern over potential cyber attacks on our election system has been building for years. Hackers and disinformation campaigns have gotten more and more sophisticated, and technology is more advanced than ever. Then in March, the world was hit with the coronavirus pandemic. In the United States, that has resulted in uncharted waters in terms of the ways people are voting, which creates a lot of uncertainty. As a swing state, Michigan could be a very attractive target for cyber threats during the election. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Michigan has done a lot to prepare for this. That includes working closely with federal agencies to coordinate efforts to combat attacks. There isn’t a high likelihood of voter infrastructure being attacked, said Andrew Dold, lead security analyst for Wayne State University and member of the Michigan Cyber Civilian Corps (MiC3). But one area the does have cybersecurity experts concerned is voter misinformation. As we saw in the 2016 election, social media is riddled with falsehoods, bots and organizations trying to influence American voters and their votes. Websites spread misinformation that could incite people,” Dold said. “People kind of believe what they want to believe. All they need is a close reason nowadays, right? So, that’s the kind of thing that worries me more. The erosion of public trust with the government or the results. But I think as far as tabulating votes, I think we’re in really good shape.”

The partisan divide has grown wider over the past four years and the threat of political unrest continues to grow. A rise in anger and awareness over the police killings of Black men combined with an upsurge in the participation of militia groups have already led to confrontations and violence. Frustration, injustice, and politics make for unstable chemistry. “The best-case scenario is to see civil disorder as part of the democratic process and that there are boundaries and that we do not want to stop people from engaging in civil disobedience and in civil dissent. The only time we should arrest people is if they threaten the security of the state. And Black Lives Matters groups are not threatening the security of the state – they’re asking for reform,” says Ron Brown, an associate professor of political science at Wayne State University. Protests by racial justice groups have drawn counter-protests from right-wing militia and white nationalist groups and that can present a problem for authorities. “You will probably see the police put both groups in jail. However, I think that that the vast majority of those must be again those on the right because they are the ones who are disruptive. They are the ones that are largely a threat to democratic norms,” Brown says.

Millions of individuals like being scared. They watch horror movies or walk through haunted houses and corn mazes. After Halloween, thrill-seekers can still go bungee jumping, skydiving, or do a dozen different things that set their hearts racing. Why? Why would anyone walk into a house when they know that zombies and werewolves are waiting for them? In his Mental Health Minute, Dr Arash Javanbakht suggests a surprising answer. Fear is a part of our evolutionary history, a mechanism that helps us recognize danger and survive it. Scary movies and extreme sports may be a relatively safe way of giving this part of our brain a workout. In that case boys and ghouls, there is nothing wrong with seeking out a little scare this weekend. It might even be good for you. Javanbakht is director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic and associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

National, state and area experts in public health, including Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson, gathered Monday afternoon for a virtual roundtable to discuss COVID-19 trends, the effectiveness of various strategies to slow the spread of the virus and expert perspectives and experiences. Wilson detailed how he saw how racial disparity greatly increased the impact on the Detroit area in March when COVID began emerging in Michigan. On his travels, he saw how other states were more lenient in implementing social distancing mandates. Wayne State waited for several weeks before making decisions on how to reopen its campus, stating the country was waiting to see how China was handling the virus; Wilson believed the U.S. would follow its own path. “We’re not like China. We take pride in our individualism,” he said. Both Dr. Thomas Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Wilson, also talked about the importance of communication and federal support in combatting the virus.

Wayne State University has been awarded nearly $700,000 in federal funding to study protecting children from lead exposure in their homes, officials said. The grant is part of $9.4 million the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has given to 13 universities to research ways to reduce housing-related health hazards, such as pests, injury hazards and asthma triggers. HUD officials said WSU will be given $699,171 to partner with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, CLEARCorps Detroit and the Detroit Health Department to study the cost effectiveness of protecting children from lead exposure through improved temporary emergency relocations and new permanent voluntary relocations. The goal of the study is to establish whether the policies are effective in reducing blood lead levels in children and then to compare the costs of relocation to the costs of current approaches.

Shortly after I got our results I sent a text message to Phillip Levy, M.D., an ER doctor, associate chair for research at Wayne State University School of Medicine and a co-investigator in numerous COVID-19 clinical trials. He also heads up WSU's public testing outreach program. "It doesn't really necessarily mean much, it just means that her body is shifted to the next phase of the adaptive immune response, meaning that it's no longer about having enough protection available at the ready," Levy said in his best bedside manner. "That's the antibody response. It's about now having the memory to mount the response if you would need it." So, let me get this straight. Her negative test means she doesn't have any COVID-19 antibodies left? You know she was counting on having those for a long time, right? "Yes, what happens is that as soon as you're exposed to the virus, certain types of cells start making these antibodies as part of that immediate response. Those cells live to produce the antibodies for as long as the body thinks it might need to protect itself. And that peak, (we now know from research) is about 50 days or seven weeks."

If Judge Amy Coney Barrett's history of pro-business rulings is any indication, consumer advocates say her appointment to the U. S. Supreme Court could have implications for any number of consumer safeguards. Barrett, confirmed in a 52-48 Senate vote Monday night, replaces the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was renowned for her pioneering influence on gender discrimination and civil rights and one of the justices most likely to rule against big business. Because Barrett's conservative record so starkly contrasts with Ginsburg's, her place on the court could have a particularly meaningful impact on issues expected to split along conservative-liberal lines. "The consumer litigators of the world will be in general trying to stay away from the Supreme Court, would be my guess," said Stephen Calkins, a Wayne State University law professor who was formally general counsel at the Federal Trade Commission.

COVID-19 fatigue collides with new realities as the daily case totals spike. With the governor’s powers deflated by the Michigan Supreme Court, is the state ready for a surge in coronavirus cases? And Election Day is a little more than a week away, but so many votes have already been cast. How do we know they’re pristine? Segment one features Wayne State University President, Dr. M. Roy Wilson; Dr. Preeti Malani, Chief Health Officer and a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Juan Marquez, Washtenaw County medical director.

Preventing infection is an important facet of nearly all programs designed to promote effective use of antibiotics, an area known as antimicrobial stewardship. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global efforts to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics must include strategies for preventing any infection that might be treated with the drugs, whether justifiably or not. Teena Chopra, an infectious-disease specialist at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, is fully behind this approach. Because infections are difficult to diagnose and treat quickly, Chopra says that the biggest impact will come from preventing infections in the community, not just in hospitals. Chopra is keen to keep this hygiene momentum going, and points out that the pandemic has revealed considerable weak spots. “This COVID-19 pandemic exposed a lot of vulnerabilities in our core health infrastructure,” she says. “We dealt with a lack of infection control in alternative health-care settings, like nursing homes, schools, daycare centers, dialysis centers, nursing facilities and rehab facilities.” She thinks that those who run these services need to have a more prominent role in antimicrobial stewardship. Without such measures, people will continue to transfer microbes to each other. The risk of transmission can be limited by using microbe-destroying surfaces such as copper, and through rigorous disinfection with chemicals and exposure to ultraviolet light. However, such measures can be difficult to implement in communities. The only two universally effective methods are hand hygiene and staying away from others, Chopra says. “Hand hygiene is the cornerstone — not only in the hospital, but everywhere.” These strategies might seem simple, but they require people to change their behavior, and that is easier said than done.

Wayne State University researchers and students are digging in Hamtramck to learn more about how people lived more than a century ago right here in Michigan. Krysta Ryzewski, professor of anthropology, talks with WDIV reporter Paul Gross about their findings.

To be safe, people need to be free from the threat of physical or mental harm. But to feel safe, people need to be free from the perception of potential harm, confident that they understand what the likeliest threats are and that they are capable of avoiding them. Whether their perception is accurate is often incidental, at best, to the feeling itself. “Fear reactions are very primitive,” Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatry researcher at Wayne State University, told me. “We don’t react so well or so accurately to conceptual threats.” People learn what or whom to fear in a few different ways, according to Javanbakht. The things we have experienced or observed ourselves, such as car accidents or the kinds of violence frequently depicted on the news, have a significant impact. So do the warnings of peers and authority figures. This assemblage of influences—family members, friends, co-workers, religious or cultural leaders—is as much a tribe now as it was when these instincts evolved, and the security and support that it can provide create a profound psychological incentive to remain a member in good standing of one’s group. People’s dependence on group affiliation for safety and support can be so strong, in fact, that it sometimes overrides more logical assessments of fear and safety, Javanbakht said. Even in situations where the actions of the tribe’s leaders contribute to the group’s collective misery, many members will find it difficult to reject that leadership. Instead, studies have shown, people dig in their heels when confronted with evidence that challenges their beliefs or identity: They redouble their support for trusted authority figures and reject outside criticism, which they’ll often paint as proof that the group is under threat. Javanbakht compared this dynamic to softer forms of American tribalism, such as being a fan of the Cleveland Browns. The team’s leadership has been antagonizing its fanbase for decades, but some people cannot be mistreated into retracting their emotional and monetary support.

National, state and area experts in public health gathered Monday afternoon for a virtual roundtable to discuss COVID-19 trends, the effectiveness of various strategies to slow the spread of the virus and expert perspectives and experiences. Robert Gordon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive and chief deputy director for health for MDHHS facilitated the event. Speakers included Dr. Thomas Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Emily Martin, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan; Angelique Joynes, health officer for the Allegan County Health Department; Dr. John Deledda, chairman of Emergency Medicine and chief medical officer for Henry Ford Hospital and Henry Ford Medical Group; Dr. M. Roy Wilson, president of Wayne State University; and Dr. Norman Beauchamp, executive vice president for Health Sciences at Michigan State University. Both Frieden and Wilson talked about the importance of communication and federal support in combatting the virus.

The disrupted college lifestyle is weighing on Wayne State University students, its leaders have found. So, on Oct. 30, they want a pause in activities, including classes, for a mental health day. "We've been checking in on students and they're feeling pretty stressed," Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Laurie Clabo told the Free Press. "We know they're tired. We're seeing students who are feeling isolated. We're just worried about them." So the university will drastically slow down on that day. "We want them to take a day to just take a pause and recharge so they are ready to finish out," Clabo said. M. Roy Wilson, the university's president, said in a pair of emails sent Thursday morning to the campus community. "The purpose of this day is to allow you time to focus on your health and emotional well-being during these challenging times, connect with fellow students, learn more about the resources available to help you cope and thrive, or close the laptop and dedicate the day to self-care. Faculty are being encouraged to give students some leeway on assignments, and even cancel classes for the day, if feasible."  Wilson encouraged faculty and staff to give themselves a break as well. "Many faculty and staff have not been on campus since March, and continue to face additional stresses, from Zoom/Teams fatigue' and balancing work and child care, to the loss of working alongside our colleagues and the benefits that come with in-person engagement and collaboration. Many are working harder — and longer — and are not taking earned vacation time. While the changes in how we work were made with safety in mind, they bring new challenges, some of which can be unhealthy if not addressed." If Oct. 30 isn't feasible as a mental health day, leaders should consider allowing people to use another day, Wilson said.

Ford Motor Co.'s new CEO Jim Farley's racing hobby is risky business that raises the stakes for shareholders if he is injured or killed doing it, some business experts said. Ford's Executive Chairman Bill Ford has signed off on Farley continuing to race his vintage cars, raising concerns over what measures are being taken to protect Farley and the company in the event he has an accident. Giving Farley the flag to keep racing isn't so bad, said Marick Masters, interim chair of the Department of Finance at Wayne State University, who has studied the risks of executive behavior over the years. “The probability of them dying from these kinds of activities is relatively small,” Masters said. “There are all kinds of engagements company executives participate in, from sky diving to scuba diving to horse jumping. But these are much less dangerous than obesity, heart disease, smoking and drinking.” The death of an executive could hurt the company’s performance in the near term if that executive is pivotal to the company, Masters said. But established companies such as Ford build a bench of leaders to survive any situation, he said. “I’d be more concerned in today’s world whether an executive might abuse drugs, use alcohol or commit sexual harassment,” Masters said. “Those would put the company at risk in that the executive is not performing at an optimal level and could adversely affect the company’s finances.” Masters said it's a safe bet that Ford is "loaded up" on insurance for its executives. Besides, a good leader should come out from behind the desk and live life, he said. "Many executives are very driven people who like to be adventurous, otherwise they wouldn’t be in those positions, and it goes with the territory," Masters said. "Teddy Roosevelt liked to do big game hunting, that’s dangerous. Nobody took more risks in World War II and throughout his life than Winston Churchill did."