In the wake of yesterday’s announcement that all adults in Wisconsin will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine starting next week, WORT producer Jade Iseri-Ramos hosts a discussion of vaccine allocation ethics with Paul Kelleher, professor of bioethics and philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Quoted: The lack of data on queer BIPOC farmers is also prevalent in academia, said Jaclyn Wypler, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies queer and transgender sustainable farmers in conservative rural communities. Wypler was recently hired as the Northeast project manager of the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network at the National Young Farmers Coalition.
“There is discrimination for BIPOC folks and queer folks within academia, including within the environmental and rural and agricultural departments,” Wypler said. As a result, research studies that highlight their experiences are difficult to adequately fund.
Quoted: “This is part of a broader process of the Thai state attempting to make the potential cost of dissent too high,” said Tyrell Haberkorn, a professor of Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said legal harassment and violence may succeed in fostering fear, “but the blatant display of injustice” could backfire by eliciting more sympathy for the protesters.
When Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez saw in July how the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting the country and he pondered the possibility of a fall without Big Ten football, he warned UW fans the athletic department could suffer a $100 million operating shortfall in 2020-21.
Quoted: The known benefits of directly protecting vulnerable people outweigh those of indirectly protecting them through immunizing less at-risk community members, said R. Alta Charo, professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “While the data is showing good signs of reduced spread by vaccinated individuals, that data is still not as robust as the data demonstrating personal protection from being vaccinated,” she wrote in an email. Meanwhile, for high-risk individuals — “until they are vaccinated, they have limited ways to protect themselves.”
Quoted: For University of Wisconsin, Madison Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden, the final bill text for Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” could be bipartisan, especially given the return of earmarks. Earmarks permit lawmakers to sneak funding for nonprofit projects in their states or districts into certain measures.
“Many Republican legislators will want a piece of the package to claim credit for in their districts,” Burden said. “At least for some Republican legislators, the spending is an essential part of both national security at ports and borders and economic competitiveness with China.”
A newly-created master’s degree program at UW-Madison will study how psychoactive chemicals like psilocybin — found in so-called “magic mushrooms” — can treat conditions like depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. We hear more about it from the program’s director.
Quoted: Sarah Botham teaches agriculture and life sciences marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said the Cheeselandia campaign is a successful example of the way that agriculture is trying to “market smarter” and with a new customer in mind.
“They are reaching, first of all, people who are really interested in Wisconsin cheese and secondly people who are of a younger demographic,” Botham said. “That generation is interested in not just eating but in understanding where their food comes from, in experiencing the food and sharing it with friends.”
Noted: Duckett, 68, is a Wisconsin guy. He grew up in Waukesha and earned an engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Taken together, while vaccine supply is still limited, if vaccine passports are widely used not only for travel but for other social events such as concerts, broadway shows, nightclubs, it would “double privilege” people got vaccinated early on, said Christine Whelan, clinical professor in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Given that most kids are at low risk for complications from COVID, the need for a pediatric vaccine for the disease may not seem pressing. But scientists say the pandemic may never be fully controlled until kids are inoculated. When we only vaccinate adults, we leave vulnerable “an enormous, immunologically naive population,” says James H. Conway, a pediatrician and associate director for health sciences at the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Without a pediatric vaccine, “the disease, even if our kids don’t get super sick with it, is going to be there and continue to circulate routinely.”
Noted: Edward Campbell, a microbiologist at Loyola University, started SafeGuard after learning of a virus test developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. SafeGuard serves about 30 school districts and runs roughly 30,000 tests per week, at $11 per test, Dr. Campbell said.
Jennifer Gaddis, Assistant Professor of Civil Society & Community Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Before the pandemic, a growing number of schools were employing cafeteria staff to cook nutritious meals from scratch, and implementing farm-to-school programs and other practicesto improve jobs, local economies and the environment.
Due to fewer kids eating school meals during the pandemic and the increased costs associated with COVID-19 safety protocols, these positive changes may stall, or even be reversed.
My research suggests these reforms are needed to transform the school lunch experience and maximize the ability of school meals to improve public health and contribute to a post-pandemic economic recovery.
Quoted: “The pace that led to the incredible generation of knowledge on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 has put enormous demands on the people who are expected to generate that knowledge,” says David O’Connor, a viral sequencing expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has been tracking the spread of the virus, doing Zoom Q&A sessions with the vaccine hesitant, and helping neighborhood schools set up diagnostic testing. “This is a terrible time and we should all do what we can to help. But is it going to be sustainable?”
Quoted: “It’s like looking at the sky at night, and seeing one star,” Francis L. Halzen, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the director of IceCube, said in a telephone interview, describing the current state of the hunt for the ghostly particles.
Interview with Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association Director of Alumni Engagement Gia Gallimore.
Noted: Little went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating undergraduate coursework in 1942. He then went to the UW-Madison Medical School, earning a doctor of medicine degree in 1944. The school is now called the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
Noted: Roth stresses her local roots, noting she was born in Cudahy and lives in Bay View, where she moved at age 11. She lists her Catholic grade and high schools she attended before going to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for her undergraduate degree.
The University of Wisconsin women’s basketball program made it official Friday that Boston University head coach and former Connecticut assistant Marisa Moseley will be the next head coach.
Barry Alvarez, who established Wisconsin football as a Big Ten power in the 1990s and has served as full-time athletic director since 2006, is expected to announce soon he is retiring.
When Vitaly Pisetsky enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1996, he was just three years removed from coming to the United States from the Soviet Union with his family.
Police in Madison have cracked the case of the conifer crooks who stole a rare tree from the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in November.
Quoted: The warming of the lake could also result in changes in the amount of snow seen around the lake, said Michael Notaro, the associate director of the Nelson Institute Center for Climate Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The warming lake waters and declining lake ice cover support enhanced lake evaporation and lake-effect precipitation during the cold season. As the lakes warm in the cold season, the temperature difference between the water and overlying air increases, supporting greater turbulent fluxes of heat and moisture from the lake to the atmosphere,” he said in an email. “That favors more vertical atmospheric motion that can support cloud and precipitation formation in the cold season.”
Quoted: Implementing a two-way tracking system would increase transparency, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It likely would attract support from both parties.
“I think Democrats liked them, because their main worries are about ballots not being received or returned, and a voter being disenfranchised,” he said. “For Republicans, I think it provides some security about the integrity of the election. … If the election official ever thought that someone was fraudulently stealing ballots out of mailboxes and sending them, they could simply check the online tracking system, and the voter could do that as well.”
It’s a sunny winter morning and Tommy Thompson is sitting at the center of a long table on the 19th floor of Van Hise Hall, surrounded by his advisers and an aerial view of the city of Madison.
AstraZeneca reported Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection among adults of all ages in a long-anticipated U.S. study, a finding that could help rebuild public confidence in the shot around the world and move it a step closer to clearance in the U.S.
Noted: I opted for a design created by engineers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Called the “Badger Seal” after the school’s mascot, the design uses materials that are easy to order: vinyl tubing, cord locks, rubber twist ties, and elastic string. The instructional videos were easy to follow; while I didn’t time myself, I’d estimate it took about 20 minutes total to snip all the various pieces of tubing and ties, and put them together.
Quoted: And opening eligibility doesn’t necessarily mean administration is going efficiently, said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. In some cases, states are reaching the limits of vaccine acceptance.
For those still waiting to get it, he said, just knowing they’re eligible can make an emotional difference. “Sometimes people feel better standing in line than not having any line at all,” Sethi said Thursday. “Once a few states do it, other states decide to do it as well, especially if leaders are finding that they don’t want to hit the wall, they want to keep the momentum, they might as well open up the eligibility criteria.”
Quoted: “Telogen effluvium is commonly triggered by stress, and COVID-19 has definitely contributed to a lot of stress these days,” says Apple Bodemer, MD, Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Department of Dermatology. “I am seeing a significant increase in this type of hair loss.”
Quoted: Trump complained about mail-in voting early in 2020 and never stopped. Despite all the suspicions, the 2020 election still had a record turnout.
That’s why Barry Burden, political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, isn’t convinced voting reform bills in battleground states is about restoring voter confidence.
“They were confident. They participated at extremely high rates,” he said.
Quoted: “It has been infuriating to see how this racist and sexist killing spree has been handled by U.S. media outlets,” communications professor Lori Kido Lopez, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Asian American Studies Program, told The Daily Beast. “It is also infuriating to see the news media taking seriously the idea that ‘sexual addiction’ is relevant here. There is a long history of sexual predators using this kind of faux medical diagnosis as a way of escaping responsibility.
“It was particularly insulting and offensive to see headlines repeating the suspect’s description that he was having ‘a bad day.’ That is such a callous statement that minimizes the massive loss of life, but also the way that this kind of terrorism radiates fear and pain throughout the entire community.”
Quoted: “We think the true biodiversity of fungi is somewhere between one million and six million species,” says Anne Pringle, a University of Wisconsin-Madison mycologist—as fungus experts are called—and a National Geographic explorer. Yet despite their global prevalence, fungi have historically been left out of conservation initiatives.
Quoted: Lawmakers in the U.S. have for years debated how to track poverty, and child poverty in particular. Now, in the midst of a pandemic, when the country is caught in a deep recession that has forced families deeper into financial difficulty amid widening inequalities, “it’s not surprising” that politicians have found renewed interest in curbing this hardship, said Rebecca Blank, a macroeconomist who worked on anti-poverty policy for the the Clinton and Obama administrations and now serves as chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
At its meeting tomorrow night, the Dane County Board of Supervisors will consider a resolution condemning hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
The vote comes as lawmakers across the country are speaking out against hate crimes against Asian Americans after a series of shootings yesterday in Georgia left eight people — six of whom were Asian — dead.
But do those resolutions and condemnations go far enough?
For more, our producer Jonah Chester spoke with Doctor Cindy Cheng, a Professor of History and Asian American studies at UW-Madison.
Republican lawmakers on Wednesday rejected Gov. Tony Evers’ $2.4 billion spending plan to upgrade buildings across Wisconsin — nearly half of which would be spent on University of Wisconsin System campuses.
Quoted: The clinical trials for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were done later, when the virus may have been more widespread, and in different countries with different populations, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Graham said the same.
“People should not shun the J&J vaccine,” she said.
Quoted: Wisconsin’s slightly later move to Phase 1C doesn’t mean the state’s rollout is sluggish, though. It’s likely an indicator that demand has been high in Wisconsin among currently eligible groups, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Some of the states have been opening up eligibility criteria earlier because I think in some ways they’ve hit a little bit of a wall,” Sethi said.
Quoted: Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, praised the Plain Dealer’s transparency. She said journalists should be thoughtful about when to cover disinformation and when doing so would simply give the falsehood a platform. They should also consider how a politician might say or do something to distract from an inconvenient news story, she said.
“They have a responsibility to serve the public interest,” Culver said. “And giving a platform to things that are not true does not serve that public interest.”
Quoted: “It’s just a very large number,” said Adeline Lo, an assistant professor of political science at UW-Madison who worked on the study. “Sometimes it’s even hard to think about what that actually means.”
Quoted: Pamela Oliver, a professor emerita of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has studied racial disparities in the justice system. She said communities of color are surveilled by police more frequently than white communities, and as a result, officers arrest a disproportionate number of people of color.
Many crimes are committed at the same rates between young white people and people of color, but people of color have been arrested for them at higher rates.
“White kids screw up just as much,” she said. “They do bad stuff, but nobody sees it because they’re not being watched.”
Quoted: “At some point, we are going hit a wall on vaccine rollout where we will not have as much acceptance,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “It clearly has some impact on transmission,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Turnout (overall) was very high because both Biden supporters and Trump supporters turned out at very high rates,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Barry Burden, who studies turnout and election administration.
Quoted: “We don’t know if we have to do it for the long-term, like with influenza, but it’s smart for vaccine companies to be gearing up,” said Kristen Bernard, a professor of virology at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of veterinary medicine.
A new scholarship will support Milwaukee Public Schools graduates studying to become lawyers.
The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Scholarship is open to female and nonbinary students of color. Students can receive $2,000 in each year of their undergraduate studies in advance of law school and up to $10,000 in each year of law school at the University of Wisconsin or Marquette University.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank apologized after it was reported that she suggested to other Big Ten leaders that their emails related to the COVID-19 pandemic be moved to a private portal.
Quoted: People who live to be 75 to 79 in Wisconsin, on average are expected to live another 13 years, according to state data. That average includes people who are quite ill with health conditions, noted Pat Remington, an epidemiologist from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
“It is amazing how long people can live with multiple chronic conditions,” Remington said. “Everyone thinks that is when people die, but at 77 they are just likely to live to 90 on average.”
Noted: In 2016, Taylor Amann competed and won “Team Ninja Warrior: College Madness”with two teammates while she was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
When the presidents and chancellors of the 14 Big Ten universities began discussing the prospects of students returning to their campuses last fall amid the coronavirus pandemic and with football season looming, they weighed many considerations, from public health to financial impact.
Quoted: “I think one of the unfortunate things about 2020 was that the election system itself was a top issue,” Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told Newsweek. “It got debated and litigated more than just about any other issue in that election. … And that’s not how elections should be run.”
Noted: Psychologist Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes the brain can be trained, and that exercises including short meditation practices will become routine, like running and weight lifting. Emotional well-being will be as important as physical well-being in the coming years, according to Dr. Davidson.
Noted: Because the association wants to equip as many homes as possible with the Ring devices, leaders had to seek out grant funding to buy the equipment. Salb said Steve Chmielewski, a community educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension Waukesha County, has helped facilitate that process, which involves Community Block Grant Funds.
Noted: Chelsey has been a features writer for the Journal Sentinel since 2012, covering travel and outdoor activities. Chelsey grew up camping, hiking and biking all over Wisconsin, from her hometown of Pewaukee to a family cabin in the Northwoods. She has been writing about the places that make Wisconsin special since 2009, including a summer spent visiting every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. She is a former writer and editor for Wisconsin Trails magazine. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: A Menomonee Falls native and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Koglin joined Channel 6 in 2004, spending most of her time at the station on the Fox affiliate’s morning news team.
Quoted: “Indoor settings with prolonged exposure present the greatest risk for transmission, hence why universal masking is particularly important — even if the individuals are immunized,” said Jim Conway, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute.
Packers fans were forced to move on from a pipe dream Monday, when Wisconsin’s own J.J. Watt agreed to sign with the Arizona Cardinals and not with Green Bay.
Quoted: “Most mutations that occur do not cause the virus to be more infectious or deadly, but some variants have mutations that are more concerning,” said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Quoted: Kathleen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said Brooks has a responsibility to disclose to his editors, and to readers, his connections with the Aspen Institute and Facebook.
“If the Times and David Brooks are asking people to trust his opinion journalism, then he should be clear about any entanglements that might affect the independence of that journalism,” she said.
Quoted: Whether a registration requirement complies with open-meetings statute has not been tested in the Wisconsin court system, said attorney Philip Freeburg, with UW-Madison Division of Extension’s Local Government Center.
“The main thing about open meetings is to provide open access,” he said. “If you’re putting up barriers to that, I think you may be at some risk.”
Quoted: In 2015, Congress convened a committee to study how to cut child poverty in half within a decade. Hoynes served on that committee, as did Tim Smeeding, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They say the group issued a clear warning to policymakers: Alleviating child poverty would cost billions, yes, but not doing so would be even more expensive.
“We argued that the cost of not doing anything was $800 billion” in lost productivity, as well as in increased costs associated with crime and health care, Smeeding says. “On the other hand, the cost of doing one of our [recommendations] was about $100 to $110 billion — an 8-to-1 return.”
