Notable excerpts, quotes and videos available

Newswise is hosting a series of Expert Panels discussion on unique aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This tip sheet includes some notable quotes from the panelists. Full transcripts are available. 

October 29th session: “Third spike” in COVID-19 cases, plus the vaccine trials

<iframe src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/473590969″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ allow=”autoplay; fullscreen” allowfullscreen></iframe>

Panelists:

• Dr. Edward Jones-Lopez – Assistant Professor & Infectious Diseases Specialist at Keck Medicine of USC & Investigator on the AstraZenea vaccine trial
• Perry N. Halkitis, Ph.D., MS, MPH – Dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health
• Dr. Stephen Spector – Professor, Pediatrics at UC San Diego & PI on the UCSD arm of the Moderna trial. 
• Sean Diehl, Ph.D.- Associate Professor at The University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. Dr. Diehl found that the level of antibodies correlated with disease severity in a recent study.
• Robert Salata, MD – Infectious Disease Specialist and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center & Participating in the study of the Phase 2/3 global study by Pfizer Inc
• Shobha Swaminathan MD – Associate Professor and the principal investigator for the Moderna trial at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
• Jeffrey A. Shaman, PhD, MS – Chief Science Officer at Coriell Life Sciences

 

 

October 7th session: Latest on COVID Drug and Vaccine Trials: An Expert Panel with Trial Site Doctors and the American Medical Association

Panelists:

Quotes:

“Moderna is an RNA vaccine and it has two injections, whereas Johson is one injection – one of the advantages of this vaccine is that its platform can have a rapid operationalization and create one billion vaccine doses over the next year. So that’s one of the advantages, provided the study shows that it works.”

Dr. Dushyantha T Jayaweera, M.D

“I think March – April we may have some information, it’s hard to say, but the other vaccines are ahead of us – for example Pfizer, Moderna – they started about 2 months before. So, if there is a definite signal then they may come out slightly before us, so it could be somewhere from January to April I would say. The early information.”

Dr. Dushyantha T Jayaweera, M.D

“This particular trial has a combination of two antibodies, they’re what are called non competing, so they’re actually working against different parts of the protein. The theory of that is if the virus did mutate against one of them, potentially the other antibody that’s still in the cocktail would still prevent transmission.”

Dr. Gary I Kleiner, MD

“Most of that data is coming from the treatment studies, not so much the prophylaxis studies, there are patients – particularly young children who might have very high levels in their nose but have very minor symptoms, so the viral load doesn’t necessarily correlate with the symptoms. The studies try to capture both symptoms scores and virus quantitation, so as we learn more about the use of the medications, hopefully, we’ll have better data.”

Dr. Gary I Kleiner, MD

“We don’t know if the amount of antibodies is related to the development of this syndrome, we really don’t have an answer to that, so we really don’t know if the creation of antibodies from a vaccine will definitely be linked to this syndrome.”

Dr. Laura Beauchamp, MD

“Every week that I go to the hospital, I have one or two cases. The majority right now is presenting with neurological symptoms, they’re presenting with encephalopathy, they can’t really think well, they have headaches, they can’t communicate very well, so they are in a coma, so these are the patients that we’re seeing and right now there’s no real answer to those and how to treat them, we just treat with steroids like we usually treat people that are coming with autoimmune disorders.”

Dr. Laura Beauchamp, MD

“The AMA believes that it is critical that vaccine decisions, therapeutic decisions are made based on science and evidence and not on politics, ideology, or some sort of arbitrary timeline. We think it’s incredibly important for the FDA to be completely transparent about the parameters that it’s using to evaluate and approve vaccines and to let us know every step of the way as the approval process continues.”

Susan R. Bailey, MD

“There are literally hundreds of tests that have been given, emergency use authorization by the FDA, and I think time will tell which one of the proprietary tests are going to end up being the most reliable. There is a danger in a test being too good and diagnosing bits of viral fragments that are left even though the patient isn’t contagious yet. So, I think the jury is still out for which is the best test for any point in time.”

Susan R. Bailey, MD

 

September 9 session: Higher Education Reopening During COVID

Panelists:

1. Jill Leafstedt, Ph.D. – Associate Vice Provost, Cal State Channel Islands 
2. Dr. Christopher Sindt – Provost, Lewis University
3. Jonathan Brand – President, Cornell College.
4. Ilene Crawford- Ph.D. – Provost, Vice-President for Academic and Student Affairs, Professor of English, Cornell College
5. Jai Shanata, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of Chemistry, Cornell College 
6. Harvey Stenger, Ph.D – President, Binghamton University.
7. Danielle Xiaodan Morales, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor, UTEP & Member of the Council on Undergraduate Research. 
8. George Zimmerman – Assistant Vice President of Enrollment Management, West Virginia University.
9. Michael Dennin Ph.D – Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Dean of Division of Undergraduate Education &  Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning at University of California, Irvine
10. LaTanya J. Love, MD –  Dean of Education at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston
11. Stephen Conard,  MPA, CEM – Emergency Management Coordinator, University at Albany
12. Henry C. Lucas, Ph.D – Robert H. Smith Professor of Information Systems Emeritus at Robert H. Smith School of Business

 

Quotes:

“The labs are probably the biggest point of concern and so they’re trying to figure out how can we do this and they’re doing labs in their backyard – they’re engaging their own children in labs, they’re sending kits home, so they have experiences that are – the students can actually engage and that also will be able to be used in the future – so these videos and these examples they can embed in classes after they move forward.”

Jill Leafstedt, Ph.D

“We’ve heard from faculty that they’re more excited about teaching than they’ve ever been before – they’ve had to pause and really think about how they make learning happen, instead of just showing up and doing the same thing that they’ve been doing year after year.”

Jill Leafstedt, Ph.D

“I would say a significant aspect of our mission is related to sophisticated, professional preparation that includes a lot of emphasis on experiential learning and community-based learning.”

Dr. Christopher Sindt

“We follow the CDC guidelines and did not require testing at the beginning of the term, although we did target many different populations such as NCAA Athletes, international students coming and students coming from Chicago or state that have a larger frequency of positivity than ours, and quarantine those students and then targeted testing towards those students, and that has been a big part of the initial approach.”

Dr. Christopher Sindt

“We also decided that we would move about 90% of our courses into a format where they’re available online. So, we have courses that are being taught entirely remotely, we have courses that are being taught on campus and remotely at the same time, and we have some courses, a smaller set of courses like lab sciences that are being taught exclusively on campus.”

Jonathan Brand

“Our students returned last week and it was heartening that our local police department was willing to go to the few local drinking establishments in town and reminded them – not that they needed reminding, but just to remind them of the Iowa laws around physical distancing and the consumption of alcohol and food and mask-wearing, all before our students – before the first week together – that was huge”

Jonathan Brand

“We’re a small liberal arts college and so it was essential for our faculty to hold onto those values and move forward with hybrid and online course design from those essential principles. So, our excellent center for teaching and learning was already well down the path with many of our faculty and have designed courses that already have some online.”

Ilene Crawford, Ph.D

“We have a handful of classes on campus that are all in person – the vast majority  of them are hybrid but also accessible to students that are learning remotely from us and then we have some classes that are offered 100% online right now and that was really designed to meet faculty need, who might be high risk themselves versus faculty who felt like they were ready to be on campus and have some in-person experience with students and then some of our faculty feeling that for labs and other intensely interactive courses, that in-person experience was still essential.”

Ilene Crawford, Ph.D

“It wasn’t the modeling we did but others did, we realized that by using that combination of periodic testing, cluster testing – which means testing one person from each residence or floor every week and random sampling of faculty staff and some students, we would be able to add that to our toolkit of hand sanitizers and footfalls on doors and plexiglass barriers and face coverings required and all of the other physical mitigations.”

Jai Shanata, Ph.D

“We moved in a 1000 students a day for 7 days, we tested them all at about a 100 -150 students per hour, we had our industrial engineering department, our school of pharmacy, our school of nursing design this system which was in our basketball arena, where we had 10 lanes of tests set up  and in 30 minutes a student could walk in the door and be outside getting a text message with the results of their tests.”

Harvey Stenger, Ph.D

“Certainly we had the CARES act funding that we supported our students who were Pell Eligible and that was 6 million dollars’ worth of funding that went out to those students as well, and we put on a campaign for alumni to give to students of need and we raised about a quarter of a million dollars from not just alumni but from faculty and staff as well to support students who perhaps couldn’t pay rent or were food insecure.”

Harvey Stenger, Ph.D

“We feel the situation in the spring semester was not as bad as we expected. Most students were able to continue their research but with challenges with reduced research activities. So, then the next session we moved to how the pandemic affects students’ to research in the summer because summer research is different from academic year research.”

Danielle Xiaodan Morales, Ph.D

“I’m positive, because I know other program directors – we are learning, we are trying to modify our programs, we have a better plan and for example while we were recruiting partner institutions, within a very short period of time we got 17 institutions.”

Danielle Xiaodan Morales, Ph.D

“Every person that was doing research out there seems to have these very large predictions in terms of what we would see for a decrease in the normal. But we did see a low pit. Our first-time freshman class came in slightly behind what we would have expected in previous years and we initially saw that as soon as the pandemic hit.”

George Zimmerman

“Lots of schools are struggling right now, big and small, because it’s important to be able to show that the value of the education is in the content, how it’s being delivered regardless of modality. And that’s the challenge.”

George Zimmerman

“We’re going to be remote in the fall and that’s really aligning with where the state is at the moment and we don’t start October 1st cause we’re on the quarter system, so we still have three weeks to be learning from our fellow campuses out there, how to handle the housing piece because we do have students on campus.”

Michael Dennin Ph.D.

“Laptops I think are the biggest challenge cause they’re the hardest to get in students hands, but one thing we’ve learnt is almost all of our students have an initial laptop and financial aid does a good job of covering laptops, for the students who have a laptop break or fail, it’s getting them replacements that really is – from my experience a bigger challenge, but there we’ve ramped up our laptop loan program, we’ve made it more visible and we just have more resources available in that space.”

Michael Dennin Ph.D.

“We don’t allow our students to take care of patients that are presumed Covid positive or known Covid positive because obviously as you can imagine, safety always comes first and foremost for all of our medical students.”

LaTanya J. Love, MD

“We make adjustments as needed and as I think I’ve heard other panellists says – flexibility is the key in all aspects of education this year. We ask that our students be flexible with us, our faculty be flexible as administrators, we have to be flexible and really take it one week at a time and see where we are.”

LaTanya J. Love, MD

“We have a couple different testing options currently. Through our Student Health Centre, we’re conducting diagnostic PCR follow-up. So, we have an individual provider that is supporting that with roughly a two to three-day turnaround for results on the diagnostic.”

Stephen Conard,  MPA, CEM

“We worked with our RNA Institute that’s been phenomenal at developing this program to drive down that pool number so it will also not create an undue stress on the resources of the campus.”

Stephen Conard,  MPA, CEM

“As school is opened this fall for them, they’re much happier because there are synchronous classes scheduled where they see their fellow students and they interact with their teachers. So, there’s a learning curve that goes on here. And I think a lot of the criticism of remote education is unfair because we’ve been teaching the way we’ve been teaching for hundreds of years.”

Henry C. Lucas, Ph.D

“We had people from California who were enrolled in the course, and so we have our synchronous sessions at different times during the day. So that kind of opening of education, a greater opportunity for people, I think will come out of this certainly at the college level.”

Henry C. Lucas, Ph.D

 

August 27 session: Latest News from COVID Front Lines

 

Panelists:

• Dr. Gabriel Lockhart – Pulmonologist in the division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at National Jewish Health.
• Dr. Kenneth Lyn-Kew – Associate Professor & pulmonologist at National Jewish Health.
• Dr. William Janssen – Section Head, Critical Care Medicine, Professor of Medicine, Section of Critical Care Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine Department of Medicine at National Jewish Health.

 

August 20 session: Schools Reopen Vs. Remote

Transcript available here

Panelists:

• Dr. Katelyn Jetelina – Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
• Valerie Crabtree Ph.D – Associate Member, St. Jude Faculty Chief, Psychosocial Services at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
• Pamela Davis-Kean Ph.D – Professor of Psychology, Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research Associate Director of the Michigan Institute for Data Science

Quotes:

“I think for a lot of children, a school is a safe place for them. And unfortunately, we have homes that are less physically and psychologically safe for children. When they’re not able to go back to school, this has been a really extended period if they are potentially in an unsafe environment, having that continue and not having a teacher or school counselor who is keeping eyes on their kids to recognize signs of abuse or neglect.”

-Valerie Crabtree Ph.D

“A lot more pressure on kids to follow all of these rules – to keep their masks on all day long, to not touch people, to play differently, to behave differently in the classroom. We’re expecting a lot, particularly in the younger age groups that may induce some behavior difficulties, just from having expectations that may be really difficult for them to meet needs.”

-Valerie Crabtree Ph.D

“I’ve seen a lot of very smart schools, also teamed up with their county health departments and actually create their own dashboards of cases at the school. Contact tracing at the school, it’s been quite impressive – the teamwork that some school districts have gone into to make sure that this is a manageable situation.”

-Katelyn Jetelina Ph.D

“You know, if you’re a school that’s opening up in an area that has high community spread, we’re going to expect that some kids have COVID. The thing is we just want to make sure that the COVID rate at the school is not increasing compared to the COVID rate in the community so that these schools aren’t becoming hotspots. And so we want to keep that under control.”

-Katelyn Jetelina Ph.D

“Kids now are in the home environment where the roles are different. And it’s always going to be a transition when you have to go into this more ordered and more kind of rule-oriented environment of the schools. And I think one of the things I’ve seen teachers talk about doing is to be in constant contact with their kids, is to also provide opportunities of regulation for kids to learn how to regulate.”

-Pamela Davis-Kean Ph.D.

“The technology right now I think it is what we have, it is what it is, it’s not necessarily going to improve across the next year. I think what we’re going to have to do is do the best we can. And then next year, we’re really going to have to have a plan and it’s going to have to be a serious plan of how we’re going to deal with both the mental health and socio and emotional issues, behavioral issues and achievement issues on top of all of those.”

-Pamela Davis-Kean Ph.D.

 

July 30 session: Lung Cancer Patients and COVID

Transcript available here

Panelists:

• Danielle Hicks, Chief Patient Officer at GO2 Foundation
• Amy Moore, PhD, Director of Science and Research at GO2 Foundation

Quotes from the panelists:

“It’s clear that lung cancer patients are anxious. They are fearful because what our data has shown is that lung cancer patients are uniquely vulnerable to this disease and they have higher rates of severe disease and increased mortality”

-Amy Moore Ph.D

“There have been a number of studies that have emerged since the start of the pandemic, looking at the increased risk of patients with various comorbidities – not limited to cancer. We’ve heard talk about diabetes or hypertension. So, what we do know is that cancer puts patients at added risk for the worse outcome and lung cancer in particular, of the various malignancies seems to be”

-Amy Moore Ph.D

“I’m encouraged by the fact that we have multiple shots on goal, and I think that’s a good thing that we will have multiple different ones that are taking different approaches to solve the challenge and so, that’s a good thing. There is an unprecedented level of collaboration and data sharing among the scientific community because this is a really global threat, and so we all kind of have to bring our skills to the table.”

-Amy Moore Ph.D

“The good news in spite of all of this and even since the pandemic is that things are happening fast and furiously in the lung cancer space, so whether its new drug developments, new technologies for diagnostics, you name it – these things are happening and like I said it’s unfair to expect that a physician treating all these cancer types is going to be up to speed.”

-Danielle Hicks

“The hope here is that – maybe we’ll be able – the proof will be in the pudding, that we can expedite the clinical trial process in getting drugs from the lab to the patients in a clinical trial setting and then out into the general population.”

-Danielle Hicks

“ Like most folks out there who are trying to educate the general population, are using the tools that we have in place. And we’re fortunate enough like I said that a lot of our programs were virtual prior to this. So, we had a lot of folks already knowing to tune in when the pandemic hit.”

-Danielle Hicks

 

 

July 16 session: Asymptomatic Transmission and Reinfection of COVID

Transcript available here

Panelists:

• Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner M.D – Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Vice-Chair of Medicine for Healthcare Quality, and Director of the Laboratory of Mycology Research –  UT Health Science Center at Houston.
• Dr. Rebecca Dutch – Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular and  Cellular Biochemistry – University of Kentucky

Quotes from the panelists:

“ If someone who seems to have cleared the viruses, had multiple negative tests and then comes back infected nine months, 12 months later, that would suggest – be more suggestive of reinfection than someone who a few months later without being 100% sure has cleared the infection is re-spiking sequences.”

-Dr. Rebecca Dutch

“I would make the assumption that it’s possible to get something back even if you had it. So just go ahead and take the precautions. I still think it’s likely that we’re generating protective response for most people, that the history of respiratory viruses would suggest that’s the most likely scenario.”

-Dr. Rebecca Dutch

“Some asymptomatic people may simply not be perceiving that those changes are going on and not be getting ill enough that they notice it. So, you can’t rule out the possibility that someone might have some longer-term issues that they’re dealing with because they had the virus but weren’t aware of it.”

-Dr. Rebecca Dutch

“We have other reports that are mentioning that antibodies are not everything, it’s T-cell dependent as well. So, your immune system cells are trained to respond to this virus. Again, early to tell what’s going to be the sort of the playout of this situation, but if it behaves like other respiratory viruses and it doesn’t mutate too much.”

-Dr. Luis Ostrosky

“Combining molecular antigen and antibody testing is problematic because you’re basically adding into the basket, active infection with evidence of the previous infection. And you may have overlapping patients in that same bucket.”

-Dr. Luis Ostrosky

“We generally recommend people to get tested when symptomatic and after exposure if it’s important to you to be able to sort of go back to work or go back to school, we want you to wait at least five days from the day of exposure to do testing.”

-Dr. Luis Ostrosky

 

 

 

 June 25 session: Cancer Docs Join Fight Against COVID

Panelists:

• Dr. Roy Jensen – Director at The University of Kansas Cancer Center and Director at Kansas Masonic Research Institute (KMCRI)
• Igor Puzanov, MD, MSci, Professor of Medicine, Director of Early-Phase Clinical Trials, Co-Leader of the Developmental Therapeutics Program and Chief of Melanoma, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Carl Morrison – Anatomic Pathology – Senior Vice President of Scientific Development and Integrative Medicine – Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

Transcript available here

Quotes from the panelists:

“Cancer and infection have a lot in common, it’s the processes involve the immune system and the inefficacy of the immune system to actually clear either the cells which went into the cancer pathway or the viruses or bacteria, which are kind of breaking through.”

-Igor Puzanov, MD, MSci

“The immune system should detect any danger and clear it before it becomes so fatal to the organism. And when you think about cancer – cancer usually means that somehow that first line of innate immune defense – meaning like the natural immunity, we all have against, big threats which we inherited from our ancestors got broken through.”

-Igor Puzanov, MD, MSci

“We have not seen any transmission of the virus to any of our healthcare workers. We have started a program of voluntary testing for COVID among our faculty and staff to assure our patients that our workforce is safe, and this is a safe environment.”

-Dr. Roy Jensen

“African American populations, Hispanic populations, folks in lower socioeconomic status and high levels of chronic disease were significantly greater impacted by this virus than other groups.”

-Dr. Roy Jensen

“If you look at perhaps one of those people who are having a poor outcome with the Coronavirus, it’s very likely, right, that’s what’s happening. They have policemen showing up, but just not that many different policemen.”

-Dr. Carl Morrison

“Three people can get same cancer and one will have a very dismal outcome and one will have a great outcome and one will have a moderate outcome and I think we’re seeing the exact same thing with the Coronavirus and the Covid-19 pandemic”

-Dr. Carl Morrison

 

June 25 session: Summer of COVID: The 2nd Wave, BLM, the Economy, and Politics

Panelists:

Transcript available here

Quotes from the panelists:

“Reopening seemed to be more driven by political, economic, and public pressures and frankly fatigue. I think part of that is – maybe in the way that we shut down, which is that many states shut down in a very short time frame, even though the epidemic was not surging in all of those places, so it increased the amount of fatigue that everyone has.”

-Eli Rosenberg Ph.D

“ There’s always this sort of data cleaning and lagging and fixing process that will occur that can cause some of this. However, the typical direction would generally be in the direction of up so that more – there’ll be a delay in reporting for today, but in a few days, the reports will come in from laboratories and hospitals and so forth that would increase the number of cases.”

-Eli Rosenberg Ph.D

“I think we are in a better place overall when it comes to COVID. That being said, I don’t think that all of these interventions are the turnaround where we’re not going to see any ICU level patients. I mean, even looking at the data, not all patients respond to remdesivir, and I know anecdotally, not all patients respond to proning.”

-Kevin Smith, MD, FACP, FAAP

“In urban areas, even though we have a higher density of patients, we are a little bit in a better place when it comes to surging. One is we tend to have more beds in general because we expect that we need them for our larger population, and there also can be some coordination between the different hospitals in urban areas as well”

-Kevin Smith, MD, FACP, FAAP

“I think we have to be really concerned that it’s not just kind of a lot of interest in the case right now, but then we don’t follow this up and for the media, we really hope that you follow it all the way to the end because we have seen this happen over and over and over again, where it starts with protests. It starts with a lot of interest, but it doesn’t end with a desired result and justice. ”

-Anne Bailey Ph.D

“I personally hope that the protesters, advocates, media, others, we continue to keep the pressure on for some kind of change in terms of race relations. I hope that the issue of reparations is on the table.”

-Anne Bailey Ph.D

 

June 18 session: Re-Opening Pro Sports and Economies After COVID

Panelists:

• Dr. Lisa Delpy Neirotti – Director of the MS in Sport Management Program and an associate professor of Sport Management – George Washington University School of Business
• David Pierce Ph.D – Associate Professor; Director of Sports Innovation Institute –  Indiana University
• Dr. Lee Kaplan, Chief of the UHealth Division of Sports Medicine and director of the University of Miami Sports Medicine Institute
• Jayson Kratoville BA, MPA – Interim Director of the National Center for Security & Preparedness – University at Albany

Transcript available here

Quotes from the panelists:

“I think if the kids are using the appropriate situations, their parents are – there’s a higher risk probable if they go out and get pizza afterward and they laugh and carrying on rather than playing baseball at Lacrosse.”

-Dr. Lee Kaplan

“It becomes this sort of sentiment that maybe this threat wasn’t that bad to begin with, especially in contrast to what we’re feeling now. So, I think what we need to do is empower people to realize that – what our experts tell us is, if you look historically at pandemics, the second waves hit pretty strongly for those reasons.”

-Dr. Lee Kaplan

“Changing the social distancing of your dugouts and your benches and all that – those are all things that showed up in our studies, things that people are realizing is going to be a bit of an inconvenience but at the end of the day they’re reporting it’s not going to impact their satisfaction or their experience or their willingness to engage in it.”

-David Pierce Ph.D

“Consistent communication and focus on the facts and focus on the outcome, not so much on – let’s prevent a catastrophe but more – this is what we’re trying to get to. We’re trying to get to the point where we’re all allowed to play sports and we’re all able to play sports.”

-David Pierce Ph.D

“I think at the youth level at least just getting the kids out in some sort of exercise, fitness even if they aren’t doing contact, I think gives them something to look forward to”

-Dr. Lisa Delpy Neirotti 

“When the NBA shutdown that was when the world woke up and said – oh my gosh! If they shut down, this is important and you saw immediately everyone else shut down. So, I’m wondering what kind of signal it sends when they open up – again they’re doing it safely but I know what an impact it made when they shut down, perhaps it’s not the best signal to send when they opened up.

-Dr. Lisa Delpy Neirotti 

“If you engage in these high-risk activities, you’re increasing the likelihood of a negative public health outcome and you are increasing the likelihood of a negative economic outcome, but more importantly if you abstain from these – if you take this action, if you make this sacrifice, you actually are increasing the likelihood that we’re going to get back faster and increasing the likelihood that we can engage in organized sports in the long term without a bunch of fits and starts.”

-Jayson Kratoville BA, MPA

“I think that our message has been consistent whether it’s been sports or businesses or universities, which is you need to look at your broad risk equation. You need to have a really good understanding of the threat, cut through a lot of the misinformation and the disinformation, and understand what the science is saying about the threat.”

-Jayson Kratoville BA, MPA

 

June 11 session: Mental Health during COVID

Panelist:

• Dr. Carl Weems Ph.D- Professor and Chair, Department of Human Development and Family Studies Iowa State University
• Dr. Olga Acosta Price – Associate Professor in the Department of Prevention and Community Health – George Washington University
• Vaile Wright, PhD – Senior Director for Health Care Innovation – American Psychological Association
• Nicole Mavrides, M.D. – Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences- Medical Director, Child Psychiatry Consultation Service – University of Miami Health System
• Nadine Kaslow – Professor Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory at University and former president of the American Psychology
• Roxane Cohen Silver Ph.D –  Professor of Psychological Science, Medicine, and Public Health – UC Irvine and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences

Transcript available here

Quotes:

“George Floyd video filled our feeds, both our social media and our traditional media feeds. And that combination of crises is really unprecedented.”

-Roxane Cohen Silver Ph.D

“It’s important that we don’t think about this, about the public as a uniform group of people but recognize that there are individual exposures and there are consequences for people that may impact how they do respond, both to the first wave and anticipated the second wave.”

-Roxane Cohen Silver Ph.D

“I think we have to be mindful of those things that we can do as individuals, as organizations, as communities and as a nation that can foster resilient action. So, there’s, lots of work to be done in terms of developing things that we can do to respond to this.”

-Dr. Carl Weems Ph.D

“My hope is this – if we have a second wave, we will have a better public health response and that that response will, in turn, teach large groups of people that they do have that self-efficacy, that they have some resilience and that they will know how to handle it.”

-Dr. Carl Weems Ph.D

“We’ve had experiences in our life that maybe we thought we weren’t going to overcome like divorce or the loss of somebody, but we have. And so, if we can remember that, I think that does help address the trauma of the situation.”

-Vaile Wright, Ph.D

“What we found was that for the first time in over 10 years, we saw a significant increase in average stress levels. So, for the last 10 years, stress has really been declining to almost a plateau and now we have a significant increase.”

-Vaile Wright, Ph.D

“What learning and schooling are for many people is not just a place to gain more knowledge, but they very much are very protective environments. They have a lot of individuals within them that are protective for kids who are important for the social, emotional well-being of kids.”

-Dr. Olga Acosta Price

“What I wanted to mention is that maybe what makes the second wave a little easier to digest is that we anticipate the probability that it can happen again. And so that does mentally prepare us. It allows us to – we’ve lived in many ways and when I think about students and families through a very disruptive, quick and difficult period – so in some ways, we kind of have a sense of what that worst-case scenario is.”

-Dr. Olga Acosta Price

“Our federal system, our insurance system will continue to support telehealth – we’ve seen it can be very effective, it can be very helpful but I don’t want it to be this very blanket kind of thing – let’s leave everything to telehealth. I think we need to really figure out who it works for, under what conditions and do a much more individualized approach.”

-Nadine Kaslow Ph.D

“I don’t think we want to call something a psychiatric problem when it is an understandable response to a stressful situation, and certain medication alone would never be the answer for that right now.”

-Nadine Kaslow Ph.D

“We know that kids especially over the summer now, there’s not much else to do, but they don’t need to be on their screen and on the news media all day every day. So, just really putting some limits in place can be really helpful for kids, but adults have to place themselves and really put the limits on and not allow themselves to be bombarded by the negative stuff all day.”

-Nicole Mavrides, M.D

“ I think there shouldn’t be a blanket one size fits all for anyone psychiatry, but especially with children – those who are from underserved populations or people who don’t have the internet capabilities or whatever – it’s been very difficult to get them into a Zoom or even a Facetime situation.”

-Nicole Mavrides, M.D

 

June 4 session: Education during COVID

Panelist:

• Dr. Vanessa Dennan – Professor of Instructional Systems & Learning Technologies in the Department of Educational Psychology & Learning Systems,  Florida State University
• Natalie B. Milman, Ph.D – Professor of Educational Technology and Director of the Educational Technology Leadership Program at The George Washington University
• Gary Liguori, Ph.D., Dean, College of Health Sciences at the University of Rhode Island – ACSM Member
• Robert Schooley, M.D., infectious disease specialist at University of California, San Diego Health

Transcript available here

Quotes:

“What happens if a student shows up to the classroom without a mask? With no ill intentions, they simply forgot their masks. How do they handle that, and how do we handle class space sizes? That’s a real issue we’re struggling with now because if we want to break up our larger classes, we simply run out of space at some point.”

-Gary Liguori, Ph.D

“I think that there is always a risk when you step away from school that it’s much more difficult to come back. At the same time, I think when we talk about these gap years, we have to recognize, acknowledge that it tends to widen the socio-economic divide amongst America’s college students.”

-Gary Liguori, Ph.D

“I believe students need to make a distinction between their perceptions and experiences of the residential college experience and a well-designed online class and you know, it’s hard to take those two apart because what many students have experienced is a residential college experience, but that’s not everyone’s experience.”

-Natalie B. Milman, Ph.D

“This is hard. It’s hard on all of us. And for some extremely difficult – some of us have experienced a great deal of loss. If there’s anything that I have seen really come to the fore – it’s that idea of caring and the need for social and emotional wellbeing.”

-Natalie B. Milman, Ph.D

“One of the things that I have been saying to people throughout our educational response to this pandemic is that their approach needs to be people first, content second, and technology third.”

-Dr. Vanessa Dennan

“I think that both in-person and online education has tremendous value and are very high quality when they are appropriately designed and delivered by professionals who are prepared to do exactly that.”

-Dr. Vanessa Dennan

“We’re trying to set up a program in which we would have, a relatively easy to acquire self-testing sites around the campus and residence halls, classrooms, places where commuters arrive to be able to capture our faculty and staff because after all, we’re one large community faculty, staff, and students – designed to interact in a way that universities and schools interact.”

-Robert Schooley MD

“There are places that I think people can meaningfully spend time. With a gap year – although the – if they’re staying out of school to avoid the COVID risk, there would be no less risk in those settings than in school and probably more.”

-Robert Schooley MD

 

May 28 session: Testing, Testing and More Testing

Transcript available here

Panelist:

• Patrick Godbey, MD, FCAP – President of the College of American Pathologists, Laboratory Director, Southeast Georgia Health System.
• Bobbi S. Pritt, MD, FCAP – Director of the Clinical Parasitology Laboratory and Co-Director of Vector-Borne Diseases Lab Services, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, Chair of the CAP’s Microbiology Committee 
• Raouf Nahkleh, MD, FCAP – Professor of Pathology Mayo College of Medicine, Consulting Pathologist, Department of Pathology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, Chair of College of American Pathologists Council on Scientific Affairs,
• Emily Volk, MD, FCAP – President-elect of the College of American Pathologists, Senior VP of Clinical Services, University Health System and Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Texas Health, Long School of Medicine, San Antonio.

Quotes:

“If you were infected and you’ve gotten over the illness, we want to see if you have immunity so the illness won’t affect you again. That’s one reason. Another reason we do this testing is to potentially use the individual’s plasma to treat other patients with active infections. The other, the last point I want to make about having antibodies is that this is one of the mechanisms that’s used to check the response to a potential vaccine.”

-Raouf Nakhleh, MD, FCAP

“Part of the problem is even if you have good tests if the prevalence of the infection is low, your accuracy really drops. If the prevalence is very high then the accuracy gets better and that’s why it can be false, you get the wrong results in up to 50% of the cases.”

-Raouf Nakhleh, MD, FCAP

“The industry needs to be involved and delivering the needed supplies to the physicians, to the pathologists, to the laboratories performing the test and then to those who need to report the results. So, it needs to be a partnership between physicians, healthcare workers in general, industry, and in the end with this large an effort – government resources need to be brought in to play.”

-Patrick Godbey, MD, FCAP

“More testing so that more people can have access and be tested without rationing. Then, the local physician, local public health department needs to assist in that determination.”

-Patrick Godbey, MD, FCAP

“As the tests have become more locally available and the turnaround time has become better, the limitations on the previous testing such as travel history and a very limited set of symptoms has been changed.”

-Emily Volk, MD, FCAP

“We know among CAP-accredited laboratories there are more labs doing PCR testing than there are antibody testing. We also know that laboratories are still struggling to get enough reagents and enough supplies and so we do look to public and private partners to clear up those supply chain issues.”

-Emily Volk, MD, FCAP

“Not all tests are capable of detecting positive results when the patient is truly positive. They may not be as good at detecting that viral genetic material as other tests. So, those are the two main components that go into the virus detection and the third main component is the time point and disease.”

-Bobbi S. Pritt, MD, FCAP

“We need to continue our safe practices, safe distancing, masking, hand washing and so if you test monthly, sure that’s helpful but that doesn’t mean that you can give up these other things. It still has to be one tool in our toolbox from protecting us for Covid-19 and testing once a month will tell you that time period that on the day of that test that person is not infected but if they’re not exhibiting and adhering to all the safe practices, then for the next months – well that whole entire month they could be potentially at risk.”

-Bobbi S. Pritt, MD, FCAP

 

 

May 21 session: How COVID Changed Healthcare

Transcript available here

Panelists:

• Mary Dale Peterson M.D., MSHCA, FACHE, FASA –  President – American Society of Anesthesiologists. 
• Susan McDaniel, PhD – Professor of Families & Health in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine – University of Rochester. 
• Joseph A. Dearani, MD, – President – The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. 
• Professor Gilberto Montibeller –  Professor of Management Science at Loughborough University (UK) &  Senior Research Fellow at CREATE, University of Southern California.
• Eunice Wang, MD – Chief of Leukemia and Director of Infusion Services, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
• Dr. Robert Bonar – Gordon A. Friesen Professor of Healthcare Administration, Director of Master of Health Administration Program – George Washington University.

Quotes:

“I think that this crisis has brought forward the importance of crystal clear communication and coordination, especially as it related to protecting our healthcare services providers and offering the best advice to patients.”

-Dr. Robert Bonar

“There are assets and resources in public health that could be very helpful to our healthcare systems and in hospitals in responding to a situation like this. And I also think that, as has been previously mentioned, there should be no doubt right now that we have underinvested in public health.”

-Dr. Robert Bonar 

“You need to know what you’re dealing with and screening is probably front and center moving forward, particularly with patients that are going to have surgery, and large numbers of people are going to be exposed during the course of their hospital stay.”

-Joseph A. Dearani, MD 

“At least for cardiothoracic surgery, the vast majority of the decision making is based on imaging studies that patients get and all of that imaging can be revealed remotely and you can have a face to face discussion on a computer or facetime or virtually, however –whatever options you have and you can discuss all these things and explain the imaging and make the decision to do surgery before you actually even see the patient in the majority of circumstances.”

-Joseph A. Dearani, MD

“I think there are a lot of pressures on healthcare professionals right now. Fears about their own health, as we haven’t had enough PPE. Fears about becoming positive themselves or taking the illness to family members.”

-Susan McDaniel, Ph.D 

“Communication can be wonderful and also can be too simple or too complicated for patients to understand and other members of my team to Zoom in as a communication coach and easily watch the interaction and provide some feedback to the physician after the fact and then produce by saying hello to the patients first and they usually are very pleased that the Medical Centre is doing something about this.”

-Susan McDaniel, Ph.D

“One thing that COVID pandemic has allowed us to do is allowed us to address the issue of end of life care and goals of care. Because we don’t have good treatments and we are talking about putting people on and off ventilators, it is brought to the forefront that having discussions about DNR, do not intubate, Do Not Resuscitate really need to be done with patients at any stage whether they be young or old.”

-Eunice Wang, MD

“I feel that antibody testing is very valuable. There are discussions about the development of herd immunity, or those patients who might have been exposed but have the antibodies now identifies individuals that might be able to donate convalescent plasma to help individuals that are actively ill. It is a key component to us moving forward.”

-Eunice Wang, MD

“The question of how often you should test I think that is up for debate. It’s a challenge because I don’t think we have enough testing supplies to test everybody on a daily basis or weekly basis.”

-Mary Dale Peterson M.D., MSHCA, FACHE, FASA

“A lot of anaesthesiologists when elective surgeries were canceled, were redeployed to critical care units in some of the really hard-hit areas like New York and Boston and we actually converted operating rooms and used our anesthesia gas machine ventilators as ICU ventilators to supplement the ICU ventilators.”

-Mary Dale Peterson M.D., MSHCA, FACHE, FASA

“There are a lot of parallels between health threats and security threats, like terrorism. And one thing we know about these kinds of threats is that the perceived risk is very high. Both because it is dreadful, the fear of dreadful consequences, but also because of the unknown caused by an emerging disease and so not only you have actual risks but also perceived risks that play a role and while you can manage actual risks, we have to just try to also manage those passive risks”

-Professor Gilberto Montibeller

“The health capabilities of the current system, the American system, the Western European system is mainly focused on chronic diseases and I think we could learn from the mediatory on how to be prepared against infectious diseases. Pandemics, endemics, and everything that capacity planning can provide us. So that’s the second issue.”

-Professor Gilberto Montibeller

 

 

May 14 session: Vaccine and Treatment Leaders for COVID-19

Transcript available here 

Panelists:

• Rachel Hess, MD, MS – Chief, Division of Health System Innovation and Research – University of Utah Health. Hess is co-leading an outpatient clinical trial. They are examining how long patients with COVID-19 shed the virus, an indication of the length of time they’re contagious, and whether hydroxychloroquine reduces shedding.
• Nisha K. Duggal, Ph.D – Assistant Professor – Virginia Tech. Duggal is working to develop a reverse genetics system to study COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
• Thomas Denny, MSc, M.Phil – Professor of Medicine and Global Health –  Duke University. Denny is chief operating office of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute.
• Natasha Martin, Ph.D – Associate Professor, Medicine –  UCSD Health. Martin is now leading the UC San Diego Return to Learn Program — an effort to potentially test all students, faculty and staff for COVID-19 monthly.
• Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, Ph.D.- Director of Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, Professor –  Mount Sinai.

Quotes:

“We’re seeing that with social distancing interventions, it’s reduced that transmission rate, reduced that likelihood of transmission to somewhere between 0.6 and 1. So now each infected individual is infecting less than one new person. This means that eventually, you’re breaking that transmission, you’re reducing that epidemic. And that’s been really useful information both in San Diego, but many other teams are doing these analyses nationally and in other countries to try to help us understand the impact of social distancing interventions on reducing transmissions and sort of preventing the acceleration of the epidemic moving forward.”

-Dr. Natasha Martin, Ph.D

“We know from clinical evidence that individuals who become symptomatic are likely infectious several days, up to 2 or 3 days prior to their developing of symptoms, if they develop symptoms at all. So, there’s a really critical period of time where people are transmissible and they can be spreading the infection but they aren’t aware of that and they wouldn’t normally be caught by our standard passive screening walking into the health center if they don’t feel well and they ask for a test.”

-Dr. Natasha Martin, Ph.D

“Traditional vaccines require that you develop that immunogen you get that growing in cell culture in a laboratory and grow it in very large numbers and then have to purify it and then get that to the point of what we call phase I material to try it in the human clinical trial.”

-Thomas Denny, MSc, M.Phil

“One of the approaches that we’re pursuing is actually to develop a pan corona type vaccine and if you think of a tree and the branches and the leaves, if you’re making a vaccine to the novel coronavirus that we’re dealing with now, you add on a branch or few leaves, but if you can make a vaccine that takes care of the trunk if you will – the gene – a whole family of coronaviruses there then one would prevent these types of pandemics at least from a coronavirus in the future.”

-Thomas Denny, MSc, M.Phil

“I think it’s great trying to come out with a pan coronavirus vaccine or at least a SARS – pan SARS vaccine but there is also another thing that we can think of. If a vaccine that is based on the – whatever antigen we have against the spike of SARS CoV-2 finally is being found to be successful. It will not be very complicated to add to this vaccine a second antigen that is based on the same antigen.”

-Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, Ph.D

“We know that the majority of the transmission comes from viruses that replicate in the upper respiratory tract. But the severe cases are related to the replication of the virus in the lower respiratory tract, in the lungs, where you can get pneumonia, the problems that they give you at the end with the severe disease. So, in order to prevent disease by vaccination, by antibodies, you need antibodies in the lower respiratory tract, which they have access through the blood.”

-Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, Ph.D

“ It’s been not thought that infection rates differ between men and women but perhaps the severe disease is more common with men and it appears that even in older populations where hormone levels are more similar between men and women, there is still a difference between men and women, with men experiencing – more likely to experience severe disease”

-Nisha K. Duggal, Ph.D

“Recently in New York, decided to screen all pregnant women in the hospital for SARS-COVID II and identified 15% of their women were infected and most of them were asymptomatic, so just as the regular population, there’s going to be a lot of asymptomatic cases for pregnant women, that would be the case too and we’re hoping to understand how infection either before or during pregnancy can affect infants so we’re hoping that exposure of pregnant women will allow for the transfer of maternal antibodies to infants and will protect them against subsequent infection”

-Nisha K. Duggal, Ph.D

“We moved very quickly to encourage social distancing, encourage work from home policies, and encourage school closures to decrease the density of people that we have, not only in the state but also in individual areas. And by doing that we have been able to decrease the predicted rate of infection in the state of Utah, which has been wonderful. We haven’t seen the same overwhelmed in our health system.”

-Rachel Hess, MD, MS

“One other thing that I think we’re seeing in Utah that we’re seeing in other places is a very high prevalence of this disease among a population that has not necessarily been accessing healthcare previously, for various socio-economic reasons. With the increased prevalence down at their Southern border, we are seeing higher prevalence’s in our lower socioeconomic neighborhoods as well, which is of course concerning not just to see how we take care of those in our community that have access to healthcare but those in our community who have not traditionally had access to healthcare.”

-Rachel Hess, MD, MS

 

May 7 session: Food Security, Supply Chains, Meat Shortages

Transcript available here

Panelists:

• Stella Volpe PhD, RD, LDN, FACSM – Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition Sciences – Drexel University, will discuss the benefits of going meatless, food, nutrition, and fitness during the pandemic.
• Benjamin Ruddell Ph.D., P.E – Associate Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems –  Northern Arizona University, will discuss supply chains and vulnerabilities in the food industry during the pandemic. 
• Matti Kummu – Associate professor, Water & Development Research Group – Aalto University, assessing the resilience of countries to cope with food shocks on a global scale.
• Carmen Martino – Director, Occupational Training and Education Consortium (OTEC), Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, will discuss workplace health and safety including OSHA.

Quotes:

“What we found is by looking at the network structure, points of venerability and weakness and I can say that we’ve been pretty lucky so far in this crisis for the most part because we haven’t hit most of those points of weakness. We have hit at least one, which is food processing. Our food supply chain is concentrated, particularly at the food processing step.”

-Benjamin Ruddell Ph.D., P.E

“ It’s really all about your adaptive options during a crisis and so if you have a lot of diversity in the system, a lot of different providers and options, you have more flexibility to shift and adapt and prevent a shock.”

-Benjamin Ruddell Ph.D., P.E

“I think it could be doable if we radically reduced the meat consumption and so we free the crop fields to direct human food. I think there are many ways, reducing food waste, for example, would give many more opportunities to harvest locally. At the moment, if we continue business as usual, it’s no go.”

-Matti Kummu

“I think the diversity in both food production and in the import connections and the whole supply chain it’s one of the keys. Also, the food self-sufficiency was already mentioned, that will be for sure increasing. The food reserves which were quite common during the cold war, those have been shut down, at least reduced significantly in most parts of the world because the global market has been able to supply, it’s quite expensive to keep food reserves.”

-Matti Kummu

“Typically, as we have seen in this pandemic, people will try to get to as much as possible of those food sources that have been more scarce like meat, the non-food sources like toilet paper and even the canned foods, which is again, as I said earlier, that’s good, people can get great nutritious meals from them.”

-Stella Volpe PhD, RD, LDN, FACSM

“Another way that people can have healthier diets and not have to shop as often is buying frozen vegetables and fruits so that they can store them, their shelf life will obviously be much longer and they still provide a great source of nutrients.”

-Stella Volpe PhD, RD, LDN, FACSM

“We’ve been talking about the diversity of supply chains and how nimble the US appears to be in some situations and not so much in others. One of the things that I think gets lost in this is that where you have supply chains that are very diverse, you usually have lots of contractors and that’s what makes the supply chain diverse, you can move from one party to the next.”

-Carmen Martino

“The formula is pretty much the same regardless of the industry. If workers have a voice, if they have a health and safety committee in place that allows them to identify problems and they comfortable going to management with the problems then problems are solved and the workplaces are safer. It’s a pretty simple formula but we’ve found that when it’s implemented and the employer embraces it, normally if there is a union in place it works better but we’ve seen it in situations where it doesn’t necessarily have to be a union environment for it to work fairly efficiently.”

-Carmen Martino

 

April 30 session: New tech from engineers, assessing the recession

Transcript available here

Panelists:

• Professor Doyne Farmer – Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. 
• Randall Moore  DNP, MBA, CRNA –  CEO of the AANA. 
• Dr. Andrew Barnard, Ph.D.-  director of the Great Lakes Research Center and an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Technological University.  
• John Wilczynski – Executive Director of America Makes. 
• Shandy Dearth – Lecturer, Director of Undergraduate Epidemiology Education- Indiana University.

Quotes:

“We’re waiting for some results from South Korea because they had mentioned a couple of weeks ago, they were starting to see some people who were possibly re-infected but they weren’t sure if those people were truly negative or they just happened to test negative.”

-Shandy Dearth

“It’s possible that we shut down the county early enough that it had not spread to those very rural areas in a serious situation. The more we test the more we’re finding it obviously”

-Shandy Dearth

“It’s pretty clear that some sectors like manufacturing should be able to come back fairly quickly, particularly with revised procedures and mask and cleaning and all that kind of stuff. The bigger challenges are consumer-facing industries.”

-Professor Doyne Farmer 

“Manufacturing type industries will get back to work soon, will be able to make stuff fairly soon but restaurants, airlines, vacations, those kinds of industries are going to probably take a long time before they get back to normal because until we have a vaccine and really wipe the disease out, it could be a year or two before people are comfortable going.”

-Professor Doyne Farmer

“Here are healthcare providers all across this country having to make do with an inadequate supply. Some health systems and hospitals and clinics are just fine, many are not and many of them are just fine right now but if they experience a surge and we’ll probably talk about this a little bit later on, if there are subsequent surges or waves, they could be in a lot of trouble.”

-Randall Moore

“As you know the drug supply chain is pretty inflexible. We’re seeing a high utilization of drugs associated with treating critically ill patients. We also know that COVID-19 patients, the ones that become really, really sick are on ventilators for prolonged periods of time.”

-Randall Moore

“There are lots of different sanitizing methods for decontaminating methods out there. We chose to go with thermal because it’s very rapid to manufacture, it’s relatively inexpensive and the parts are available. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. or MD to design and make these units. You’ve to be good at HVAC and have an electrician on board.”

-Dr. Andrew Barnard, Ph.D

“One way to help our front-line health workers is to provide some semblance of decontamination between reuses of PPE, even though the PPE is not made for that.”

-Dr. Andrew Barnard, Ph.D

“We represent a community of manufactures, the additive manufacturing 3D printed space. There is a belief that there is opportunity for that technology to supplement or potential bridge supply chain gaps. That’s how we got involved.”

-John Wylczynski

“The challenging space for this weekend is that of first responders. We recognize there are specific needs of that community, that COVID is now presenting, that we’re not really very well aware of, so we want to make sure that we’re addressing it.”

-John Wylczynski

April 29 session: COVID vs. Re-Open, Business Experts Debate the Pros and Cons

Transcript available here 

Panelists:

1. Roland Rust, University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business.  Rust can speak about the impact on front-line service workers, and what that implies for opening up the economy.
2. Alessandro Rebucci – Associate Professor – Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Rebucci is currently working on the pros and cons of controls on international capital flows, and methods to estimate macroeconomic models of financial crises. 
3. Paul Pfleiderer – Professor of Finance -Stanford Graduate School of Business.  Pleiderer can speak on the regulation of financial institutions.

 Quotes

“Based on the experience of China, but also acknowledging that this type of western society is not suitable for the type of approach taken in China, more coordination would definitely be useful, coordinating at the level of different geographies and also, the idea that eliminating the uncertainty generated by the epidemic, by the medical dimension of the crisis, would contribute enormously to reassure businesses and households that it is sage to resume interaction for leisurely and business purposes.”

-Alessandro Rebucci

“Along similar lines, one maybe not too valuable but one silver lining here is that because the crisis is so protracted, businesses will have to adapt. There will be innovation that is likely to survive past this particular period and the US economy, because of its flexibility, because it’s an ability to innovate and adapt, is uniquely posed in the world economy to take the most advantage. This is I think more positive.”

-Alessandro Rebucci

“I think we’re getting to this very important notion of restoring confidence, people feeling safe, people feeling that there is not the uncertainty that we’re now experiencing, both health decisions and financial decisions, educational decisions. It’s a big problem.”

-Paul Pfleiderer

“Focusing on the stock market and not thinking about a huge part of the economy that is basically privately owned by small corporations, small to medium-size businesses, self proprietorships is I think not focusing our attention where it needs to be. Propping up the markets, the stock and bond markets are not necessarily going to help those throughout the economy and I think that’s a problem. It’s going to potentially keep us from going into the abyss if everything went to hell and a handbasket because the government didn’t support anything, that would be a problem but again, I just want to come back to this theme, taxpayers money is not being allocated in an efficient way to what needs to get done and that’s a lot of the political economy that we’re seeing played out.”

-Paul Pfleiderer

“What’s happening right now is that the people at the very bottom of the income and wealth distribution are the ones that are being completely hammered by this, worse than anybody else. That is very much of a concern.”

-Roland Rust

“Economists tend to think about the economy as being numbers on a computer screen but really the economy is people. What we are seeing right now is a lot of individual people and individual mom and pop service retail locations being completely hammered.”

-Roland Rust

April 23 session: Media Coverage of the Pandemic, Stress Management, Tech Support, Economy Update

Transcript available here

Panelists:

• Allissa Richardson – Assistant Professor of Journalism – USC, Annenberg School of Communication. 
• Kelly Baron, PhD, MPH – Associate Professor in the Division of Public Health, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine – University of Utah Health.
• Christine Reilley – Senior Director – The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
• Mauro Guillen – Holder of the Zandman Endowed Professorship in International Management at University Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. 

 Quotes

“I think that if African Americans were protesting in that same way they would definitely be met with violence. When they were peacefully protesting in Baltimore or in Ferguson, they were met with violence, which then escalated to the things that we typically remember. And so collective memory of events is very important, not just for polarizing and politicizing situations, but it’s to move conversations forward so that we have a set of facts.”

-Dr. Allissa Richardson

“ I think that these groups that I’ve been studying are doing a great job of identifying where those intersections are and keeping the pressing message going that although front-page news isn’t the uprising of the week, it is still occurring. These kinds of injustices and slights are still occurring and so I think that pointing those things out where we can and also noticing that there are communities that are not being serviced as well, in terms of health, and that there are people out there who are doing it, serves two different purposes.”

-Dr. Allissa Richardson

“I want our culture to change, and that we respect that we need night workers. We need early morning workers, that people should have some ability to choose their shift or to have the productive hours when they feel the most productive in line with their circadian rhythm when it’s possible. And so that’s another possible outcome coming out of this.”

-Kelly Baron, PhD, MPH

“There’s probably a disproportionate impact on these health behaviors that could help you stay healthy during the pandemic. One of the things that we’re hoping to do in our research is really reached outside of the University community even more than we typically do in our sleep research and reach out to communities and have a broad representation of people participating in our study.”

-Kelly Baron, PhD, MPH

“We’re also continuing our modeling and simulation efforts, again in the long term to help expedite development and approval of not only medical devices but also pharmaceuticals. And finally, we’re taking a look at the supply chain, improving the supply chain, perhaps in the future using data analytics and artificial intelligence to manage that more closely, and also looking at perhaps instituting redundancies in the supply chain so that if something goes down in one location, we don’t have to worry about the supply chain going down.”

-Christine Reilley

“We’re joining forces with FDA, National Institutes of Health, and the Veterans Health Administration. Because American Makes is creating a repository where all these engineers who really wanna help. There is one central location to have all these designs submitted.”

-Christine Reilley

“They don’t have savings. They don’t have, you know, perhaps the luxury that we do have working from home, and so on and so forth. So that’s one aspect of the question. Just in 10 more seconds. What we also see is very different kinds of strategies to cope with the situation.”

-Mauro Guillen

“I don’t think we should be fearful of a broken supply chain when it comes to foodstuffs. It’s just that we’ve moved very very quickly almost overnight. From, only you know having one meal, perhaps, a meal and a half on average at home, to pretty much many of us having all of our meals at home. And, you know, the supply chain adjusts only slowly to such a dramatic, such a drastic change.”

-Mauro Guillen

April 16: COVID-19 Updates, Medicine Safety, 3D Printed Medical Equipment, Exercise in Isolation

Panelists:

1. Raymon L. Woolsey MD, PhD – Co-Director, Division of Clinical Data Analytics and Decision Support – University of Arizona  
2. Michael Moreno – Assistant Professor, Director of Innovation for Engineering Medicine – Texas A&M
3. Deborah Riebe – Professor, Associate Dean of College of Health Sciences – The University of Rhode Island
4. Ronald Fricker – Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Administration –  Virginia Tech

Transcript available here

Quotes

“The very sickest COVID patients are those at most risk for these life-threatening arrhythmias and cardiac effects, and that’s why it’s so important that we look carefully at how they’re going to be used, and what’s the benefit from that use.”

-Raymond L. Woosley MD, Ph.D

“There are certain tests that ought to be done before and during the treatment. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people have taken the hope that has been expressed about these drugs and said, well, I want to take them, or I want somebody to give them to me to prevent COVID.  And there is absolutely no evidence that that is likely to occur.”

-Raymond L. Woosley MD, Ph.D

“There are other kinds of parametric models like the IHME model we’ve heard about fairly frequently at the COVID briefings.  All those models are different and therefore just in their inherent difference, result in different predictions. So, all those things are actually a challenge to do. The key thing we hope is to look to the suite of models, and across those models get some idea of what’s likely to happen.”

-Ronald Fricker

“Right now what we really know is among those who were sick enough to go to an emergency room with the right characteristics, they can get a test. So, we know among the sickest of us who is getting tests and what the results are, we don’t know the general prevalence of the population.  That’s perhaps the key parameter in a model.”

-Ronald Fricker

“The thing that I’m seeing is now that we’re having this shift in focus where they’re really starting to try and treat these patients when they’re in the early stages of the respiratory illness.” 

-Michael Moreno

“The main trend that I’ve seen is this shift towards how can we better treat patients before they reach a point where they need a ventilator.  And so there is a number of different ways to do that, different technologies that will isolate the patient, including helmets that isolate the patient, you saw the patient isolation chamber, with respect to the mask, people are looking at a lot of different ways to make stuff that’s reusable.”

-Michael Moreno

“I think the message is it doesn’t matter how someone keeps track, I think they need to find what is going to work for them. But whatever it is, whether it be as simple as an adherence calendar or journaling, it’s being able to see that physical, tangible evidence of what they have or have not been doing that can be effective in helping them stay on track with both their diet and their exercise.”

-Dr. Deborah Riebe

“There’s a tendency to buy some comfort foods or out of boredom to eat more frequently during the day.  So it’s really important that you think about that. And again, certainly being mindful of just how many hours that they’re being inactive, particularly with no breaks, and really thinking about maybe scheduling physical activity, some structured physical activity into their schedule, so they make sure that they’re doing it every single day.”

-Dr. Deborah Riebe

April 9: Nurses and healthcare professionals, what challenges are they facing

Panelists:

1. Samantha Penta – Assistant Professor of Emergency Preparedness in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity – University at Albany 
2. Dr. Sophia L. Thomas, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, PPCNP-BC, FNAP, FAANP – President  – the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) 
3. Jonathan B.Berk – A.P. Giannini Professor of Finance – Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB)
4. Dr. Robert A. Salata  – Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and International Health – Case Western Reserve University 
5. Bernard Weinstein – Associate Director of the Maguire Energy Institute – Southern Methodist University 

Transcript available here

Quotes

“There have been a lot of discussions about the effect that physical distancing has made on the epidemic, but I’m a firm believer that it has made a difference. Estimates across the country range from as little as 20 percent decreases in cases of deaths to as much as 67 percent.”

-Dr. Robert A. Salata

“The problem with antibody testing in most reports so far, is these can take as much as seven to 10 days to develop. In our view right now, this is not helpful as much and useful for acute diagnosis. But from a population-based study analysis, to see how much infection there is out there or in redeploying people to go back to work, having a positive antibody test would be reassuring, assuming again, this is the protective immune response that we think it, as with other viral infections.”

-Dr. Robert A. Salata

“We’re seeing that 70 percent of the deaths are in African American individuals and coincidentally this is a population in Louisiana that has the highest rates of kidney disease, diabetes, hypertension. Before this crisis Louisiana was in a perpetual crisis, our healthcare numbers were some of the worst in the nation, we’re one of the most unhealthy states.”

-Dr. Sophia L. Thomas

“I think we’re going to be able to do more over telemedicine. We can do telemedicine visits for things like diabetes and high blood pressure management, especially if a patient has a high blood pressure monitor or a diabetes monitor at home. Asthma checkups, allergies, thyroid disorders, even infections, urinary tract infections, skin infections, rashes, all types of diseases and diagnosis can really be managed over telemedicine, to really keep the patients at home and keep them socially isolated.”        

-Dr. Sophia L. Thomas

“It’s not just a matter of finding a physical place to put a person, there’s a whole host of facts involved and whether you can actually provide the appropriate care for whatever health issue it is that you’re trying to serve. Also making sure you can get the equipment and all those things, all of that support service and network into that physical location.”

-Samantha Penta

“There is a change fundamentally in the logic behind those decisions but it doesn’t mean that the people who are making those decisions are no longer trustworthy, all it means is that there are changing their response and that change in information needs to be considered by the individuals consuming it.”

-Samantha Penta

“As far as I see it, what the government is doing is basically transferring wealth from poor people to rich people in the relief bill. There is a part of the relief bill where there are direct payments to people and that is the one part of the relief that’s a good idea, that is actually a small part of the relief bill.”

-Jonathan B.Berk

“There is all this concern about the finance system and about the supply of credit, which I’m always very suspicious about because it’s one easy way to get a government hand out, is to say, if you don’t give me a government hand out, the whole economy is going to come to a crash, so you have to give me a government hand out. Again, I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a role for government in this but I am suggesting we need to justify that role. It seems unjustified right now.”

-Jonathan B.Berk

“We’re probably going to see unemployment, measured unemployment as high as 1 percent in the US over the next couple of months. Real unemployment is probably much higher. There have been some forecasts that we could see the gross domestic product contract by as much as 25 percent in the second quarter and that’s unprecedented, at least it’s unprecedented since 1930.”

-Bernard Weinstein 

“With the economy shut down, states are collecting a lot fewer sales tax revenue, a lot less income tax, localities are collecting a lot less property tax, particularly here in Texas, where we have many communities that rely on the evaluation of oil field equipment and reserves, help support schools and public services. I’ve seen very little attention being paid to the outlook for state and local government finances and particularly, public pension funds.”

-Bernard Weinstein

 

April 2: COVID-19 Testing, Drug Discovery, Infectiousness, and more

Panelists:

1. Juan Dumois – Pediatric Infectious Diseases physician, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital 
2. Sumit Chanda – Director and Professor, Immunity and Pathogenesis Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute
3. Brian Hedlund – Professor,  University of Nevada Las Vegas 
4. Eric Forgoston – Professor, Mathematical Sciences,  Montclair State University
5. Jessica Peck – Clinical Professor,  Baylor University School of Nursing 

Transcript available here

Quotes

“These are antivirals that were developed for other viruses and now they’re being repurposed. Typically, a drug discovery effort takes five to 10 years, I think our best shot right now to get something to market and into patients quickly is to take old drugs and see if they work against the current Coronavirus that’s circulating.”

-Sumit Chanda

“The vaccine, I think if everything goes well, we’re probably looking at about year to a year and a half. In the meantime, what we’re looking to do is develop existing therapeutics and see if they have any ethicacy against the virus….Right now, there are several exciting compounds that are in clinical trials, I think some of the more advanced trials are coming out of Gilead in the Bay area in San Francisco using a molecule called Remdesivir. Another molecule from Japan, favipiravir, which acts in a similar manner as Remdesivir, and both of those are showing some signs of promise in clinical trials.”

-Sumit Chanda

“We think that the virus can survive on the surfaces of packages and other objects for at least several hours, so that if you get an object delivered to the home or bring an object from outside the home into the home, you can try to disinfect it. “

-Juan Dumois

“…The blood from people who’ve recovered from COVID-19 is being used as treatment for new patients because of the immunity that has developed and the antibodies that have been formed in the blood.”

-Juan Dumois

“We have to be very careful when we go to release the social distancing and the other mitigation policies that have been put into place. If the disease is still in the community and there is still plenty of susceptible individuals.”

-Eric Forgoston 

“The recovery rate provides a measure of how long it takes an individual who has been infected to recovery from the disease and becomes healthy again. Those two parameters are very important to understanding the spread of disease, both just in the real world but also, we need those parameters in our mathematical models to make good quantitative predictions.”

-Eric Forgoston

“As nurses we always want to provide sound, straight forward advice but when we deliver it in a clinical, sterile, generic sounding way with a lot of technical talk, it can be hard to get the message across.”

-Jessica Peck

“One of the things that’s unfortunate is honestly the term social distancing and we really should be emphasizing that this physical distancing. In this time, we have so many people that are afraid and that are anxious and nervous and don’t know what it is and we need to lean in socially and use all of these forms of technology that we have to really foster those social connections.”

-Jessica Peck

“I oversee people who are teaching assistants and lab coordinators for that but there are some health care that are a lot of heroic efforts but in education, there is a lot of heroic efforts to suddenly change that. It’s not as good, so we all know that being able to drive a car is not the same as watching a person talking about driving a car or watching a person driving a car. That same thing with using microscopes and doing steak plates or serial dilutions for counting viruses and so on. But that’s where we are right now and we’re just doing our best.”

-Brian Hedlund

“The real concern and on a daily perspective once we pull out of this is microbes from other humans, that is the best place to find a microbe that is dangerous for humans is another human.”

-Brian Hedlund

March 26: COVID-19 Update, the Relief Package, Coronavirus Origins, 2020 Election

Panelists:

1. Matthew Kavanagh, Director of Global Health Policy & Governance Initiative at Georgetown University
2. Christian Walzer, Chair, Conservation Medicine Unit – Wildlife Scientist
3. Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business
4. Stephanie Preston – Behavioral Neuroscientist – University of Michigan

Transcript available here

Quotes

“The viruses have to adapt so they can enter human cells, first of all they have to jump the species, either directly into a human or into an intermediary host, so they need to adapt, mostly their receptors have to change, so they can enter the cell. Then, on very rare occasions will this virus that has entered a human cell actually be able to transmit to another human, that really happens very rarely.”

-Christian Walzer

“There is a lot of publications out there that are toting incredible titles that the pangolin or what not, we really just don’t know at the moment.”

-Christian Walzer

“What we’re seeing right now is the decent into isolationism and a failure of cooperation. We have right now, a political pandemic that’s actually sweeping the world.”

-Matthew Kavanagh

“What we know is that travel bans don’t work, they haven’t worked and they’re not working now and yet instead of paying close attention to the things that could work, like ramping up testing, including cooperating across the world to ramp up testing.”

-Matthew Kavanagh

Had we taken the time that was achieved by China’s response overall, we actually had months to prepare for the pandemic when it was coming and so things like ramping up testing, figuring out how to get an at home test, figuring out how to saturate the communities that are affected with testing, that could have put us on a very different trajectory that looks much more like what happened in South Korea.”

-Matthew Kavanagh

“We have an economy that’s become more of a gig economy, more of a contract labor economy. There is much less safety net then some of the safety nets have been created after the great depression and have eroded and eroded in recent years.”

-Anat Admati

“The stockpiling is really like a rational response to what they perceive as the threat to themselves… The hoarding of these goods is really a rational strategy that’s evolved in your brain for hundreds of millions or years. Birds and rodents, multiple kinds of mammals’ hoard food, especially during a shortage and these things are set off by stress and perceived uncertainty.”

-Stephanie Preston

“For some reason our politicians are always the one standing at the podium and then doctor, the scientist is standing back here and they don’t ever get to say anything and they’re the one actually knows.”

-Stephanie Preston

 

March 25: Economics & Finance Professors Speak Out on Impact of Congress’ Coronavirus Relief Bill

Panelists:

1. Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business
2. Jonathan Berk, Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business
3. Jonathan Parker, Professor of Finance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management
4. Paul Pfleiderer, Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Transcript available here

Quotes

“This bill is sad commentary on the financialization of our economy. Instead of addressing the most urgent issues and directly helping those who need it the most, it prioritizes corporations and their investors, which is deeply misguided policy.”
-Anat Admati

“It’s the taxpayers who pay if we bail out investments.  That means taxpayers are subsidizing investors, we’re essentially moving money from poor people to rich people. In my opinion, that doesn’t make sense. Rich investors are asking their Uber drivers to bail them out.”

-Jonathan Berk

“This is not the time to be transferring money from taxpayers to the world’s wealthiest people. The $2 trillion dollar price tag for this legislation is about a year’s worth of individual tax revenue.”

-Jonathan Parker

“It’s absolutely true that a lot of people’s pensions plans are invested in the markets. But the point to realize is there are lots of people who don’t have pension plans, and those people are the people most likely living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, and those are the people who are suffering most.”

-Jonathan Berk

We have to come to the realization that bankruptcy does not mean liquidation.  We have endless examples of large companies operating perfectly fine in bankruptcy.

-Jonathan Berk

“South Korea is the great example, I think, of doing a great job of testing and isolation, and instead of having to shut the entire economy down, they’re just shutting down the people who they find who are sick and isolating them, and that’s just a much more efficient way to deal with the health problems, and that naturally leads to a much better economic performance.”

-Jonathan Parker

 

March 23rd: Expert Panel: Children’s Health, Mental Health, and Education During the Coronavirus Outbreak

Panelists:

1. Laurie Theeke, PhD, FNP-BC, GCNS-BC, FNAP, Nursing Professor, West Virginia University
2. Robert Franks, PhD, President and CEO, Judge Baker Children’s Center
3. Mobeen Rathore, MD, Chief, Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology for Wolfson Children’s Hospital 
4. Jennifer Wegman, PhD, Binghamton University

Transcript available here

 Quotes

“The kids fatality rate is smaller. There are a couple of studies that have now been published, that indicate that this to be true. So, the fact that they are not having severe disease or not dying of it, does not mean that their risk of getting the actual infection is any less.”

-Dr. Mobeen Rathore

“I can’t remember it’s one of our leaders who was asked, “What would happen if the young people don’t follow social distancing and isolation… what can happen to them?” And the answer, “well you may kill your grandfather”. That’s true.”

-Dr. Mobeen Rathore

“That’s probably the most important thing that we all have to remember. So, they [children] pick up on our anxiety. They pick up on our fear. If we’re watching the news 24/7 in our house, they’re gonna see it too.”

-Dr. Robert Franks

“Video games do present a way for kids to maintain their socialization with other kids. So, I think there’s a balance. You know you can play an online soccer video game. And you can communicate with your friends. And be part of a team.”

-Dr. Robert Franks

“Everybody’s very stressed and fearful and worried. And so we have to have some outlets for these negative emotions. You know, it might be laughter. It might be exercise. It might be just conversation validating, “hey we’re having this feeling. Let’s take a moment. Let’s meditate. Let’s do a five-minute breathing exercise.”

-Dr. Laurie Theeke

“We know that loneliness can lead to anxiety and depression. And so we do need to check in on some of these symptoms and say, ‘how are you feeling today? Are you having any negative feelings today? What are your thoughts today?'”

-Dr. Laurie Theeke

“We pop up on Zoom and I would say ¾ of my class is actually still laying in bed. And I get that it’s comfy and it’s easy just to like wake up and throw your computer on. But in terms of motivation and intention of getting through this isolating part of our life right now is — I would recommend that all college students would get up and stay in some kind of routine through the day.”

-Dr. Jennifer Wegmann

“Screen time is something the American Academy of Pediatrics has been advising that we should decreased the screen time, but the reality is at this point the issue of the pandemic is so much worse, that we will have to work with each of our patients individually.”

-Dr. Mobeen Rathore

“You can imagine for kids who have behavioral health concerns, it’s even more of a challenge, because they don’t have those services and supports available to them in their home setting.”

-Dr. Robert Franks

“One of the things that I’ve been talking about a lot lately is letting go of the burden of feeling like a burden.”

-Dr. Jennifer Wegmann

“We’re going to have to really be thoughtful about that when we come out of this, hopefully, this terrible time, we’re going to have to really invest in mental health services and supports to try and offset some of those adverse effects that this generation of children is experiencing.”

-Dr. Robert Franks

“Having the opportunity to express gratitude in the midst of writing a letter to another person is something that we just don’t necessarily do anymore, but now that we have the time and opportunity and somewhat the necessity to do it, that certainly could be a new, although not new, creative way to reach out to people that we care about and that we love.”

-Dr. Jennifer Wegmann

 

 

March 16 session: public health, testing, business and financial markets, 2020 elections, and more.

 

March 16th Panelists:

1. Carmen Wiley, Ph.D., President, American Association for Clinical Chemistry (Lab Testing)
2. Dean Headley, Ph.D., Wichita State (Airline Industry and Travel)
3. Jennifer Horney, Ph.D., University of Delaware (Epidemiology)
4. Dawn Bowdish Ph.D., McMaster University (Immunology)
5. Daniel McKeever, PhD., Binghamton University (Finance)
6. Dr. Jennie Kuckertz, Ph.D., from McLean Hospital (Psychology)
7. W. Graham Carlos, M.D., Indiana University (Pulmonology)

Quotes

“Stay calm, don’t panic, and basically keep some social distancing from clicking on your mutual fund account, because looking at it is only going to make you panic.”  

-Daniel McKeever

“We do want to set a media diet so that we’re not constantly glued with our faces in front of the news, and I think the more we do, the more uncertainty is going to increase.”

– DR. Jennie Kuckertz

“We cannot tell if someone has COVID-19 based on symptoms or incubation period. This is because viruses can present differently in different people. We will rely on an accurate test to make the diagnosis.”

-DR. Graham Carlos

“How deep is this recession going to be and how long is it going to last. And that’s one that I think hinges more on the response to the virus than any other factor. And so that’s one that I can’t say anybody knows with a great degree of certainty.”

-Daniel McKeever

“There is sufficient good-quality data to say that vitamin D supplementation and people who live in the Northern Hemisphere like us who tend to be a little bit vitamin D deficient, protects against other acute respiratory illnesses, that’s the only scientifically credible source, it does not necessarily apply to this and in fact, it may not apply. It may not protect us at all from Covid 19 but if you want to do something, and the best data’s for vitamin D”

-Dawn Bowdish

“The limited availability of testing around Covid 19 is not a failure of science. It’s not a failure of our scientists or our healthcare. We’ve all been working really hard. It was really a failure of our government and regulatory agencies to recognize how quickly this was going to escalate”

-Carmen Wiley

“We just don’t have the public health resources available to do contact tracing or something like sign of influenza, but in this case, since it’s a more severe disease and no vaccine, we have to turn to a non-pharmaceutical intervention like social distancing to address this.”

-Jennifer Horney

“You look at the issues in the international sector, people trying to get home from another country to the United States, that’s a disaster as far as what we know we should be doing to social distance ourselves”

-Dean Headley

 

 

March 12 session

Panelists:

1. XinQi Dong, MD, MPH, Rutgers Institute for Health 
2. Zhaohui Chen, PhD, University of Virginia 
3. Ali Khan, M.D., M.P.H, University of Nebraska Medical Center
4. Valerie Reyna, PhD, Cornell University 
5. Tom Ewing, PhD, Virginia Tech  

Quotes:

“When you look at a comparison to other SARS-, MERS- and Influenza-related viruses, really we don’t know what our denominator really is in terms of percentages and mortality, and the risk for spreading.”

-XinQi Dong, MD

“Just because we measure a fragment of a virus or bacteria on the service does not necessarily mean that’s infectious, per se.”

-XinQi Dong, MD

“We’re clearly unprepared and we don’t even need to talk about a pandemic during a really bad flu year. We know that we see ER and hospital diversions because we can’t handle a really bad flu year in the United States”

-Ali Khan, M.D., M.P.H

“We already see healthcare as being very proactive and innovative in approaches. So for example, one of the key things we want to do is make sure that we identify and isolate patients very early.”

-Ali Khan, M.D., M.P.H

“It’s clear that the government made a choice, rather than sort of stop or slow down the spread of disease, they actually chose another direction; that is, to make everybody go back to work, okay? So that may, by the conventional wisdom, make the spread of disease worse.” 

-Zhaohui Chen, PhD