In the News
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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 -
January 19, 2022
Ceramics, aluminum cookware, spices, paint and informal recycling of lead-acid car batteries are some of the sources of lead exposure prevalent in developing countries, although some lead sources found in rich nations also plague poor ones. “A lot of homes in African countries still have lead pipes, and nobody is talking about getting rid of them or what problems they’re creating,” said Jerome Nriagu, professor emeritus of environmental health sciences.
Vox -
January 19, 2022
Research on fossils that suggests modern humans are 30,000 years older than we thought could shift the thinking about where and how humans evolved in Africa, says Brian Stewart, assistant professor of anthropology: “If the more modern-looking Omo specimens turn out to fall squarely within that time envelope, we may need to think twice before we toss out a single origin model altogether, especially one that sees our species evolving across a single interconnected region that was much larger than previously imagined.”
Inverse -
January 18, 2022
“I am very worried. There’s a very real chance that we won’t have enough beds to care for … critically ill children if the spread of omicron continues to increase,” said Luann Ewald, chief operating officer at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. Lorraine Washer, clinical professor of infectious diseases, said, “Now is not the time to let down your guard and get infected because you believe it’s inevitable that you’ll be infected anyway, or to get it over with, or because you perceive your risk of severe disease as low.”
Michigan Radio -
January 18, 2022
“What really makes (monarch butterflies) special is they can act as a sentinel for our interaction with the planet. Their migration covers an entire continent,” said D. André Green, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “If we look at this population size by counting the number of monarchs that make it to Mexico, that number has been declining pretty consistently over the past two decades,” because of climate change and agricultural practices.
PBS Nova
