On Thursday, University of Wisconsin-Madison Provost Karl Scholz announced the campus would offer a special pass/fail grading option for students. Students will have until May 22 — after they’ve received traditional grades in their classes — to decide if they would rather get a less specific passing or failing mark.
What began two weeks ago with a pair of scientists urging the use of plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients to rescue the sick has blown up into a national movement.
UW-Madison anticipates a $100 million loss because of the COVID-19 pandemic that has thrown its campus into chaos as dorms are emptied, classes moved online and students told to stay away.
According to a statement from Gov. Tony Evers’ office, Fitchburg-based Promega, Madison-based Exact Sciences and UW Health, and Marshfield-based Marshfield Health Clinic System will work with the laboratory network to share knowledge, resources and technology to boost the state’s ability to test patients for the virus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison expects to lose $100 million because of the coronavirus pandemic, that’s if social distancing is over by June.
The refunds will not include the spring break period and they will be issued to students as fast as possible, according to Jeff Novak, the UW Housing Director.
TAA wrote in the letter that while they appreciate the university’s quick response efforts to the pandemic thus far, there are several areas in its aid the university needs to improve on. Over 900 members from TAA and other allies have signed the letter.
The COVID-19 shutdowns have taken away cornerstones of newspapers’ already-struggling revenue: business ads and events, said Mike Wagner, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“When news organizations rely on events to advertise about and rely on events that they themselves host, and they’re in an environment where there are no more events, they lose a significant portion of their revenue model,” he said.
Wagner said the situation still has time to get worse.
“It feels like March 84th, but really, we’ve just been at this for a couple of weeks,” he said. “The real economic hits are still to come, and the fact that an organization like the Isthmus had to close down so early, suggests how fragile some news organizations see themselves financially.”
Asian American advocacy groups have warned that Asian Americans might soon be subject to discrimination and even hate crimes because of the coronavirus.
Quoted: Experts say the logistics will get tougher to solve. “There’s a lot of specifics about this situation that makes this particularly risky for food-insecure households,” said Judi Bartfeld, a food security researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “So in many ways I think it’s a perfect storm.”
Shilagh Mirgain, UW Health psychologist, said some of her clients actually prefer virtual health care because they get to talk with her from the comfort of their home.
UW Health, Marshfield Clinic Health System, Promega and Exact Sciences will now work alongside Wisconsin Clinical Lab Network to share resources and technology to increase testing capabilities.
“Getting that confidence and training to go in with these high risk patients is important,” said Shannon DiMarco, the Clinical Simulation Center’s Operations Director. “I think it isn’t something that we look at carefully every single day, but now that we’re faced with it we have the opportunity to bridge that gap.”
The UW Health Clinical Simulation Program trained more than 1,400 physicians and staff on the proper use of personal protective equipment in the past seven days.
Measure comes after several students returning to Madison tested positive for COVID-19.
The letter — which includes signatures from University of Wisconsin women’s golfer Tess Hackworthy, the school’s SAAC president, and women’s rower Eden Rane — outlines three requests regarding financial and eligibility relief.
Quoted: Dr. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said shifting to crisis standards allowed states or healthcare providers to relax or change certain rules, such as using medical devices in ways they were not originally approved for, if they offer a “better-than-nothing option.”
Quoted: Vaccinations are a crucial form of preventive medicine in an animal’s development, said Dr. Ruthanne Chun, associate dean for clinical affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and director of UW Veterinary Care.
Quoted: What kinds of communication can actually push people to take action—to, among other things, socially distance, wash their hands, and not freak out? I recently posed this question to risk communications expert Dominique Brossard, a professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Quoted: The COVID-19 shutdowns have taken away cornerstones of newspapers’ already-struggling revenue: business ads and events, said Mike Wagner, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Climate scientists have a whole suite of tools by which they’re able to look at things like variability and changes over space and time, and now we can take those same approaches and think about how we can capture those dynamics for ecological responses,” said Benjamin Zuckerberg, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and lead author on the new study. “It’s basically treating the biological observations of, say, birds and plants in the same way that climatologists treat observations of temperature and rainfall.”
Quoted: “Grocery shopping is one of those things that we have to do. We have to eat,” Dr. Jeff Pothof, UW Health Chief Quality Officer said.
So he created a Google form on which at-risk neighbors can list the grocery items and medications they need, then posted it to several local Facebook groups in his hometown of Mequon, Wis., offering to deliver the items. The pre-med student, who moved back home after the University of Wisconsin-Madison shifted to distance learning, wears gloves when he shops and leaves the bags on the front porch of recipients’ homes. He asks that people reimburse him for the items using Venmo or PayPal, but since many of the seniors he is shopping for don’t use digital payment apps, they slip an envelope of cash beneath the door.
“I don’t know how many of the people who have renewed plots will be here to garden,” Padorr said. “Right now, a lot of people have left campus and about half, maybe two-thirds of our gardeners, are connected with the (University of Wisconsin-Madison).”
