COVID-19 Roundup from Pioneer: Swabbing at home?; Is re-infection real?; Latest unemployment numbers; Can colleges survive?; What does re-opening look like?; How Holyoke happened; Homeschooling summit; Stargazing & more!

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:

William Smith, Visiting Fellow in Life Sciences: The FDA approves a coronavirus test in which patients can swab themselves at home. Vaccine candidates are being tested at record speed. Also: Can people get infected with coronavirus more than once? And, a very important story from South Korea: patients who they thought might have been reinfected were probably victims of false positives.

Michael Walker, Senior Fellow in Government Data Transparency: Don’t forget to check out our interactive map of COVID cases in Massachusetts, updated every week with newly released city and town data!

What’s the latest on unemployment? Greg Sullivan, Research Director, crunched the most recent numbers. Watch him here, and read more here and here.

SURVEY: How will you look at commuting in the future? We’re asking over 30,000 people how their attitudes & habits will shift after COVID. Please be part of our work to understand our changing world – share your feedback, it takes only 2 minutes!

Our Picks for Public & Private Sector Best Practices:

Rebekah Paxton, Research Analyst: When we’re ready to re-open, what will it look like? read this Boston Globe article and Bloomberg interview, based on our recent report.

Joe Selvaggi, Host, “Hubwonk”: Last week, Pioneer Senior Fellow Bill Smith and I interviewed Dr. Peter Kolchinsky, virologist, biotech investor and author, to learn how the SARS-CoV2 works, and the efforts to produce a vaccine.

  • On the next episode, out tomorrow at 11 am, Pioneer Senior Fellow Barbara Anthony and I discuss contact tracing & containing COVID, with Drs. Sheila Davis and John Welch of Partners in Health.

Jamie Gass, Director, PioneerEducation: Join us on Weds., May 13th at 2pm for a free online summit on home education, featuring Princeton University Professor Robert George, NH Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, and many more. Learn more & register here.

Questions for Our Public & Private Sector Leaders:

Andrew Mikula, Peters Fellow: How are colleges and universities being impacted by COVID-19? Read our new report. Also, Greg Sullivan recently talked to the Boston Herald about college enrollment.

Greg Sullivan: Massachusetts’ Holyoke Soldiers’ Home is the hardest-hit facility in the country due to COVID-19. How did that happen? Watch this WCVB-TV segment on the facility’s budget, overtime spending, and questions about the care that it provided even before COVID-19.

POLL: 

Get Our COVID-19 News, Tips & Resources!

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

Related Content

How Public Transportation’s Efficiency Changed During Covid

The MBTA's efficiency plummeted during Covid; as people chose either personal transportation or personal work, the MBTA lost significant ridership. However, it maintained its vehicle fleet and the depth of its services even as its operating cost per passenger mile increased dramatically.

As COVID-19 Emergencies Ease, Some Progress on Telehealth Rules

A new report from Reason Foundation, Cicero Institute and Pioneer Institute rates every state’s telehealth policy for patient access and ease of providing virtual care. The report highlights telehealth policy best practices for states.

Khan Academy’s Sal Khan & ASU Prep Digital’s Amy McGrath on the Khan World School @ ASU Prep

This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, and Amy McGrath, the Chief Operating Officer of ASU Prep and Deputy Vice President of ASU Educational Outreach.

Pandemic Dead Reckoning: Unseen Casualties of Public Health Interventions

Hubwonk host Host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Senior Fellow Dr. Bill Smith about new evidence that during the past two years of the pandemic, there were as many unseen excess deaths from non-Covid-related diseases as seen from Covid. They discuss the need for public health leaders to pivot their messaging to address this hidden mortality.

Why the jump in non-COVID deaths?

The Wall Street Journal echoes our warning about the rise of non-COVID-related deaths.

Mandate’s Constitutional Collision: Court Offers Civics Lesson with Vaccine Rulings

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Cato Institute Vice President Ilya Shapiro about the recent Supreme Court vaccine mandate rulings and what they tell us about the limits of executive branch power and the sitting justices’ views on the guidance of the U.S. Constitution.

How did COVID impact Massachusetts’ long-term care facilities?

Pioneer Institute has filed a Public Records Act request related to COVID's impact on Massachusetts’ long-term care facilities because the Institute believes this is a matter of obvious importance, both on principle (the public has a right to know the facts), and for purposes of evaluating – and where possible improving – public policy. 

Massachusetts Telehealth Report Card: Are We Embracing Disruption for Better Quality of Care?

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Senior Fellow in Healthcare Josh Archambault about his newest research paper, produced with the Cicero Institute and the Reason Foundation, on states' success in implementing telehealth to improve healthcare outcomes. They discuss how Massachusetts has used remote medicine to better reach patients and serve their needs.

Am I Contagious? Divining Covid’s Community Conundrum

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Alva10 CEO and precision medicine expert Hannah Mamuszka about which tests are best for determining who is contagious and the implications for the CDC’s new isolation recommendations.

Virtual Learning Grows During COVID

Virtual learning in K-12 education continues to grow due to the health threat caused by coronavirus variants and the assistance this learning model can provide to at-risk students, according to two papers released today by Pioneer Institute.

COVID Tracker for Long-Term Care Facilities

/
Long Term Care Facilities With 2+ Known COVID Cases and Facility-Reported Deaths in Massachuetts

Face Masks Lifted: Scientists Weigh In With Comprehensive Efficacy Studies

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Harvard Medical School professor, Dr. Jonathan Darrow, about the observations of his recent paper, Evidence for Community Cloth Face Masking to Limit the Spread of SARS-CoV-2: A Critical Review, in which he examines the range, quality, and scientific observations of mask wearing efficacy studies.