In the News
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January 24, 2022
Although wireless carriers will limit 5G service near airports, airlines are still pushing back, maintaining 5G could interfere with aviation equipment. Ella Atkins, professor of aerospace engineering, says airlines might sue if they think 5G causes flight disruptions: “Every time you cause a plane to not fly because of something like an interference problem or you cause it to divert to an alternate airport, that’s really expensive.”
Marketplace -
January 24, 2022
“The safer states have implemented a bundle of policies that are oriented toward controlling the motor vehicle, while the dangerous states are more oriented toward accommodating it,” Jonathan Levine, professor of urban and regional planning. “The difference between the two suggests that policies that encourage driving make the transportation system more dangerous simply by exposing people to more travel.”
Midland Daily News -
January 24, 2022
Ivermectin prescriptions can cost private and Medicare insurance plans some $2.5 million a week, say Kao-Ping Chua, assistant professor of pediatrics and health management and policy, and Nora Becker, assistant professor of internal medicine. “The true amount of waste may be higher because we didn’t consider Medicaid spending. Also, by reducing barriers to an ineffective drug that some use as a substitute for COVID-19 vaccination, insurers may raise their spending on COVID-19 complications,” Chua said.
Forbes -
January 21, 2022
“Public health experts maintain that after the epidemiological curve plummets from hundreds (or more) cases and deaths per day per 100,000 people to fewer than five cases and deaths per day, for many successive days, officials will have a pretty good chance of declaring that COVID is no longer a pandemic. But as omicron continues to swell, we’re not even close to that,” wrote Howard Markel, professor and director of the Center for the History of Medicine.
WIRED -
January 21, 2022
While experts predict the omicron wave will fall almost as quickly as it rose, just how fast cases fall will depend on how much a community abides by public health measures after that. “It depends on how high the peak is. And on whether or not when people see the case count numbers coming down, if they kind of loosen things up,” said Aubree Gordon, associate professor of epidemiology.
CNBC -
January 21, 2022
“What is really difficult about COVID is that, often, you are the most contagious before you have symptoms. So, that is part of the reason that we’re seeing so much spread of the infection right now,” said Payal Patel, assistant professor of infectious diseases. “Now, at the end of when … you have had symptoms for five or 10 days, you have gotten better, the tests are not going to help you know if you’re contagious anymore.”
PBS NewsHour -
January 20, 2022
“You have kind of a half a loaf,” said Barry Rabe, professor of public policy and the environment, referring to those states that comprise the U.S. Climate Alliance. “A good many of those climate alliance states are ones that don’t produce fossil fuels and many don’t have large industrial sectors. It doesn’t mean that their emissions are trivial, but some of the real, real challenges are in the states that are least likely to sign up for that agreement.”
U.S. News & World Report -
January 20, 2022
“This kind of strict approach … would be well understood to cut back powers of the modern administrative state to address health, safety and environmental issues. It would be quite disruptive and dislodge a lot of expectations about how modern government should function,” said Nina Mendelson, professor of law, on the view by some Supreme Court justices that Congress can only delegate minor policy details to federal agencies, not give them authority to write legislation.
Bloomberg Law -
January 20, 2022
“I don’t think any federal or state agency has done a great job communicating policy during the pandemic. Some amount of backtracking, revision, etc., of policies was inevitable. That should have been stated early, often and repeatedly,” said Briana Mezuk, associate professor of epidemiology. “Instead, they went with ‘We are following the science,’ which was interpreted by the public as, ‘So if you disagree with our decision, you must not be following the science.’”
Vox -
January 19, 2022
“Seeds of financial crises are sown decades in advance. We are not going to know the real costs of the Fed’s deregulation for years to come. … It is far too early to definitively declare success based on how the banking system performed during COVID,” said Jeremy Kress, assistant professor of business law.
Financial Times
