In the News
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April 14, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic will drive jobless rates higher than those during the Great Recession as the national unemployment rate is expected to reach 16 percent in May and average 14 percent during the second quarter, said Gabriel Ehrlich, director of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, and colleagues. Their economic forecast calls for an even bleaker outlook for Michigan — an unemployment rate of 23 percent in the second quarter.
Detroit Free Press -
April 14, 2020
Albert Shih, professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering, says the material that makes up the inner layer between two outer layers of fabric that form the shape of an N95 mask is the most important part of the mask, but is the hardest to produce and is in short supply: “This material is not easy to obtain or make, and you cannot just start a new line. You have to show that the microbes won’t penetrate it and get into the lungs.”
CBS News -
April 14, 2020
Trish Koman, faculty research program manager in the College of Engineering’s Multidisciplinary Design program, and research investigator in environmental health sciences in the School of Public Health, says there’s a relationship between increasing air pollution and an increasingly worse effect from the coronavirus: “There’s a causal connection between particulate matter and premature mortality from cardiovascular disease and respiratory causes so we already know that air pollution can cause populations to be more vulnerable and susceptible to a variety of respiratory and cardiovascular ailments.”
ABC News -
April 13, 2020
“With this virus shutting down the workplace, people have lost not only social interactions with best friends who don’t happen to live in their home, but also interactions with the wide variety of supportive, friendly, casual relationships at work and in public that make for a rich social texture. I think loneliness, despair and a sense of drifting are going to be prominent,” said Sagar Parikh, professor of psychiatry, and health management and policy, and associate director of the U-M Depression Center.
(Editor’s note: The Record is re-running this item from Monday because the story link was inadvertently broken.)
Healio -
April 13, 2020
“For some things demand will snap back immediately. Those jobs — dentists, health care, barber shops — there’s a backlog of demand. Then there’s a similar category, like restaurants and bars, where people may be cooped up for so long that they’re desperate to go out to eat or get a drink. … And for some industries, like retail and airlines, things may never get back to normal,” said Erik Gordon, clinical assistant professor of business.
CNBC -
April 13, 2020
“Imagine if all that data was being fed to your veterinarian in real time and they’re sending back data. The idea of well-being for the pet, its weight, how far it’s walking,” said Lionel Robert, associate professor of information, commenting on a new streaming camera that can dispense treats for your pet, snap photos and send you a notification if your dog is barking.
The New York Times -
April 10, 2020
“Predicting the peak is really tricky. As testing capacity changes, that changes it. And then also social distancing is changing. So you have these two factors that are both changing that could both affect the peak time,” said Marisa Eisenberg, associate professor of epidemiology, math and complex systems, who helped build a model that is trying to predict the epidemiological curve of COVID-19 in Michigan.
Detroit Free Press -
April 10, 2020
While Paralympic athletes are, in general, much fitter than most people, some have conditions that make them vulnerable to the coronavirus, says Feranmi Okanlami, assistant professor of family medicine, and physical medicine and rehabilitation, and director of adaptive sports at the Michigan Center for Human Athletic Medicine and Performance.
The Associated Press -
April 10, 2020
The Supreme Court’s decision to roll back an absentee-ballot extension that would have given Wisconsin voters an extra week to submit ballots by mail is “an ominous sign about what the court will allow elected officials to get away with during the coronavirus outbreak, even at great harm to our representative democracy,” wrote Leah Litman, assistant professor of law.
The Atlantic -
April 9, 2020
Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability, says satellite photos of reductions in air pollution due to shelter-in-place measures point to how people’s health will benefit if and when societies switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy: “If we can curb fossil fuel burning, which obviously has to change, then we’re also going to curb air pollution and therefore we should start to get health benefits from that that are dramatic. And we will also be less vulnerable to diseases like the flu and this coronavirus.”
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