Editorial Staff

COVID-19 Roundup from Pioneer: Antibodies & serology tests to the rescue; Why such wide-ranging forecasts?; the Droplets v. Aerosol debate; Crowdsourcing symptoms & more!

/0 Comments/in , , , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

Pioneer staff share their top picks for COVID-19 stories highlighting useful resources, best practices, and questions we should be asking our public and private sector leaders. We hope you are staying safe, and we welcome your thoughts; you can always reach out to us via email:  pioneer@pioneerinstitute.org.

Our Top Picks for COVID-19 Pandemic News:

Jim Stergios, Executive Director: It is amazing to see the kinds of solutions our universities are developing in real time. This out of the University of Pittsburgh. Delivered via a patch, easy to distribute across the world because it can be sent at ambient temperatures.

William Smith, Visiting Fellow in Life Sciences: While treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 are months away, serology tests may be here sooner and may be essential to getting people back to work. The New York Times is reporting that the FDA has approved the first serology test.

Also from Bill: A good summary of industry efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and the inherent challenges in that process. And, these tests could determine who has antibodies against the disease and, theoretically, who may be immune to further exposure to the virus. People with these antibodies may be able to return to work without fear.

Mary Z. Connaughton, Director of Government Transparency: We all know that respiratory droplets propelled after someone with COVID-19 coughs or sneezes can infect us. But what about bioaerosols, even from normal conversation or breathing? This NPR piece sorts through the debate.

Michael Walker, Senior Fellow in Government Database Transparency: Jay Boice, on the website fivethirtyeight, looks at the top expert forecasts for deaths and discusses why the range is so wide—somewhere between 71,000 and 1.7 million. From those individual responses, the survey organizers — Thomas McAndrew and Nicholas Reich of the University of Massachusetts Amherst — build a probabilistic consensus forecast, which is a tool that combines all of the responses to project the most likely future scenario as well as the range of possible outcomes.

Our Picks for Public & Private Sector Best Practices:

Jamie Gass, Education Policy Director: Did you ever think history could prepare you for the COVID-19 pandemic? Find out how The Concord Review, Will Fitzhugh’s long-running journal of high school students’ history essays, is doing just that. And in case you missed it, Pulitzer-winning historian David Kennedy joined “The Learning Curve” podcast on Friday to share his thoughts on COVID-19 vs. the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918.

Michael Walker: A data analytics company, Chrysalis Partners, created an online symptom collector for COVID-19. This is a prototype tool that cities or businesses could use to quickly gather data on symptoms experienced by their public. Great example of the thousands of companies independently mobilizing their resources to help deal with the pandemic. And here’s an excellent video from Khan Academy showing how to estimate the actual number of cases in your area based on reported deaths. This method is based work by Thomas Pueyo, by looking, in retrospect, at data from China.

Questions for Our Public & Private Sector Leaders:

Poll results: We asked readers, “Should Massachusetts reveal know how many COVID-19 cases there are in each city or town?”
Here are the results:
Yes: 94%; No: 2%; Not sure: 4%
Read Senior Fellow in Healthcare Barbara Anthony’s take on this.Do YOU have interesting questions and/or articles to share with us? Please email us, or message us through our social media channels below!

Get Our COVID-19 News, Tips & Resources!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Recent Posts:

COVID’s Unintended Victims: Traditional Diseases Overlooked at the Public’s Peril

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Visiting Fellow in Life Sciences, Dr. Bill Smith, about his newest research paper, “An “Impending Tsunami” in Mortality from Traditional Diseases,” which sounds the alarm that the public health community’s focus on COVID-19 has caused many to avoid seeking medical attention for other illnesses. As a result, more Americans are dying from fear of COVID than from the disease itself.

Vaccine Development Renaissance: Pandemic Brings Niche Industry into Mainstream

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with virologist, Dr. Peter Kolchinsky, about the explosion of vaccine technologies and innovations brought into the spotlight by the massive investment to fight the pandemic, and dives deeply into the exciting promise of vaccines to combat an ever-widening range of disease.

Shifting COVID-19 Goalposts: Moving from Zero Infections to Zero Deaths

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with surgeon and author Dr. Marty Makary about the power and durability of vaccines, natural immunity and clinical therapies, that are overshadowed by the public health community's continued target of zero COVID-19 infections.

Study: Decline in Cardiovascular Health Screenings During COVID-19 Pandemic Poses New Public Health Threat

Pioneer Institute today released a new analysis focused on cardiovascular disease, An “Impending Tsunami” in Mortality from Traditional Diseases?, that examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has created another unrelated public health crisis. The Pioneer analysis examines how a single-minded public health focus on COVID-19, social distancing, and lockdowns drove reductions in screenings, diagnoses, and early treatment for complex conditions such as heart disease.

Supply Chains Understood: Covid’s Global Demand Stress Test

https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/chtbl.com/track/G45992/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1148317750-pioneerinstitute-hubwonk-ep-78-supply-chains-understood-covids-global-demand-stress-test.mp3 This…

CRPE’s Robin Lake on COVID School Closures & Learning Loss

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), a non-partisan research and policy analysis organization developing transformative, evidence-based solutions for K-12 public education.

Prof. Raymond Arsenault on the 60th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides & Civil Rights

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Raymond Arsenault, the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at the University of South Florida, and author of several acclaimed and prize-winning books on civil rights, including Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. He shares how he became interested in researching, writing, and teaching about the Civil Rights Movement.

Study: After Years of Steady Increases, Homeschooling Enrollment Rose Dramatically During COVID

After steadily increasing for years, the number of parents choosing to homeschool their children skyrocketed during the pandemic, and policy makers should do more to acknowledge homeschooling as a viable option, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

ASU’s Julie Young, Virtual Schooling Pioneer, on Digital Learning during COVID-19

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-host Cara Candal talks with Julie Young, ASU Vice President of Education Outreach and Student Services, and Managing Director of ASU Prep Academy and ASU Prep Digital. They discuss the implications of COVID-19’s disruption of American K-12 education and the future of digital learning.

UChicago’s Dr. Leon Kass on Genesis, Exodus, & Reading Great Books

This week on “The Learning Curve," guest co-host Jason Bedrick and co-host Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Leon Kass, MD, the Addie Clark Harding Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago. Dr. Kass describes the important pieces of wisdom and humanity people today can still learn from reading the Book of Genesis, the topic of his 2003 work, The Beginning of Wisdom.

“America Today is on Bended Knee” – 20th Anniversary of 9/11 – 20 Resources for Parents & Students

The heroic stories of 9/11 are part of our national consciousness and memory. It’s the duty and obligation of the living and those who survived to pass along this history to the next generation. As Americans mourn the events of 20 years ago, while in the midst of another national crisis during COVID-19, let’s recommit ourselves to teaching students and the younger generation about seminal events like 9/11 that still shape our world today. To support this effort, we’re offering a variety of resources to help parents, teachers, and high school students.

NYT Best Seller Dr. Kate Clifford Larson on Fannie Lou Hamer & the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, a New York Times best-selling biographer of Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer. Kate shares why she has written about these historical African-American figures, and how she thinks parents, teachers, and schools can draw on their lives to talk about race.