In the News
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October 5, 2021
“We are in the midst of a demographic revolution. There are more women over 50 than ever before in our society. And millions of them are not really ready or eager to be told to go away and obsess about their grandchildren without participating in and doing other things,” said Susan Douglas, professor of communication and media.
The New York Times -
October 5, 2021
“People listen to people ‘from their group’ and whom they think they can trust. People really don’t know what science is, and so do you feel you can trust the person giving you advice, rather than appraising their expertise, becomes the thing,” said David Dunning, professor of psychology, on how vaccine skeptics view information either as affirmation of what they believe or something to be dismissed because it doesn’t fit their anti-vaccine narrative.
Vox -
October 4, 2021
A state bill that would prohibit insurance providers from declining or limiting an individual’s coverage, or raising their costs, because they are, or choose to become, a living organ donor would be a good first step toward making Michigan a more donor-friendly state, says Alan Leichtman, professor emeritus of internal medicine: “I don’t know if it would shift the numbers (of donors) in a big way but it would be a step in the direction of justice and of a better society.
MLive -
October 4, 2021
“It’s frustrating to those of us who live in a world of facts to see distortions and things like that taking place, which really put people at risk. And that’s the bottom line. People are being put at risk by alternate interpretations of data. We’ve got the facts, we should act on them,” said Arnold Monto, professor of epidemiology, on efforts to convince unvaccinated Americans to get the COVID-19 shot.
WDET Radio -
October 4, 2021
“If what we really care about is solving supply chain problems around the globe and the goods that are coming into the United States and our ability to sell abroad, then we have to be thinking not about just vaccinating Americans, but we have to think about vaccinating the world because we can’t solve supply chain problems when there are people around the globe that are getting sick and dying,” said Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics.
National Public Radio -
October 1, 2021
“We’re getting to a point where there’s a huge army of people who are about to retire in the United States. We’re going to need a source of labor to provide them services, and to keep the economy running. I think that the perception needs to change about immigrants,” said economist Don Grimes of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, who believes the serious void in the workforce can’t be made up by U.S. citizens alone.
MLive -
October 1, 2021
Christine Brent, assistant professor of emergency medicine and director of U-M’s EMS Fellowship Program, says many paramedics in Michigan have left the profession amid the pandemic, resulting in a critical shortage of first responders: “Unless we do something to address this shortage, it’s going to come to a point that when we call 911, no one is coming, or no one is coming for an hour.”
WXYZ / Detroit -
October 1, 2021
“In the past they’ve tried to squash cockroaches, but there are always more. You can spend all day stomping your feet and you won’t get anywhere. Going after networks is a smart try,” said Cliff Lampe, professor of information, on the recent crackdown by Facebook to remove a German network of accounts it said had spread COVID-19 misinformation and encouraged violent responses to COVID restrictions.
ABC News / The Associated Press -
September 30, 2021
Adding labels with graphic health warnings to cigarette packs might have averted thousands of smoking-related deaths in the United States, says Rafael Meza, professor of epidemiology: “The evidence is out there from multiple countries that suggests these graphic health warnings do work as intended. If we had been able to implement this regulation (as intended) back in 2012, many more lives could have been saved.”
UPI -
September 30, 2021
“It’s incredibly underwhelming what they came up with. There are real election issues. But that’s not addressed with the level of sophistication they were applying in this audit,” said J. Alex Halderman, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who believes the contractors’ main goal in the Arizona election audit was to raise questions “for people to hang onto, for people to remain skeptical,” not identifying vulnerabilities in the system.
USA Today
