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!

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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.

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