Quoted: For families with young children, University of Wisconsin-Madison educator and family engagement researcher Lorena Mancilla offers advice on how to create spaces and establish routines for learning and working effectively from home.
Trump’s path into politics was based on questioning the legitimacy of government and “the need to prepare for disaster by maintaining a closed society protected from infected outsiders,” University of Wisconsin researchers Thomas Salek and Andrew Cole concluded in a 2018 study of Trump’s use of the Ebola crisis. They said that Trump’s “apocalyptic rhetoric sketched some of the foundational features of his ‘Make America Great Again’ ” platform in the 2016 campaign.
Quoted: “It is a fundamental principle of outbreak control to slow transmission,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
“A lot of times, medical professionals are really focused on making this one decision for the patient who is right in front of them,” says Laura Albert, a systems engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was not involved in the study.
Quoted: Loans aren’t taxable but must be repaid, and they can be risky because if you leave your employer you generally have to repay the loan quickly, said J. Michael Collins, director of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
WHYsconsin has received numerous questions from audience members about COVID-19 and we are working to answer them. Here are the answers to some of those questions you have submitted. WPR’s Mary Kate McCoy spoke with Kristen Bernard, a virology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to answer some of your questions.
Quoted: “This is a moment where misinformation can have real consequences, beyond what we have seen in elections,” says Dhavan Shah, the Louis A. & Mary E. Maier-Bascom professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, director of the university’s Mass Communication Research Center and scientific director of the Center for Health Enhancement System Studies. “This is a moment where misinformation can have life-and-death consequences.”
Quoted: “The wealthy have often done better than the poor when faced with epidemics and pandemics because they tend to be resilient as a function of having greater resources,” says Richard Keller, a professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Coronavirus is something kids are likely to be asking about a lot. When it comes up, Travis Wright, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he recommends allowing the kids’ questions and concerns to guide the conversation. That way, you won’t inadvertently introduce fears that they didn’t already have.
Also quoted: “They can take over-the-counter medications and they will do just fine,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer for UW Health. “I know people are worried about our kids. If we’ve got anything going for us, it doesn’t appear that COVID makes children too sick.”
Quoted: “I think it could be an interesting test case for the rest of the country to examine,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Barry Burden said of the “terrible trade-off” between holding the election as scheduled and putting it off.
The outbreak could cut the country’s annual gross-domestic-product growth by half, said Ian Coxhead, an economist who studies Asian economies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But he cautioned that making such projections is difficult.
Quoted: Dr. Patrick Remington, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Preventive Medicine Residency Program, said many people who work in the service industry are now “basically unemployed.”
Quoted: Young Mie Kim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created the recent report. She found that Russia-linked social media accounts were posting about many of the same issues as during the 2016 elections. These include race relations, gun laws and immigration. Facebook has since removed those accounts, too.
Quoted: Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch compiled your questions and sought answers from Dr. Dawn Davis. She is director of the Comprehensive Diabetes Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and section chief for Endocrinology at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison.
Quoted: “Looking at health in older adults with autism can tell us something about the result of a lifetime of the lived experience of being autistic, of the discrimination that comes with being autistic,” says Lauren Bishop, assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Quoted: Dr. Marcia Slattery is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry and pediatrics at UW Health. She says talking to your kids about the coronavirus starts with listening.
Quoted: “We need to really buckle down on the ideas that we’ve talked about the last couple of days,” Dr. Jeffrey Pothof, at UW Health, said. “The most important being social distancing, this idea that we’re going to try to stay six feet away from anyone else.”
Fitness centers are taking steps to combat the spread of coronavirus, but a UW Health doctor says that, for now, it’s safer to exercise outdoors or away from other people.
The virus isn’t found in sweat, so that’s not the problem. However, if someone in a gym has COVID-19, they could spread it through coughing, sneezing or touching a workout machine.
“There are so many surfaces they could contaminate,” said Jeff Pothof, safety officer for UW Health, which is an affiliate of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Quoted: “We’re saying that social distancing is the only thing that we know of that has the potential to blunt the curve of this pandemic,” says Nasia Safdar, the medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
“It includes things like trying to avoid large gatherings, avoiding crowds, if you’re in a meeting trying to make sure you’re maintaining that required distance from your co-workers,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, infectious disease doctor at UW Health.
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted state laws do not explicitly say the governor can suspend most laws during health emergencies but also do not expressly prohibit doing so.
“This seems to be a gray area that is not spelled out fully in state law,” he said by email.
Quoted: “We’re currently in a worrisome situation because this is a disease for which people do not have natural immunity from past exposure, and there’s currently no vaccine and no treatment,” said Vicki Bier, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in risk analysis for homeland security.
Ajay K. Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, expressed support for the development of monoclonal antibodies.
Joe Lauer, agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said some farmers were forced to leave corn in the field after snow started to fill up fields.
“The things I said in it are really basic public health hygiene strategies,” Jones, who is an assistant scientist at UW-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory. “What we can do is wash our hands and don’t touch your face. Actually, I said, Don’t pick your nose. I’ve been joking a lot that I’m the person who told America not to pick its nose.”
The all-out effort to contain COVID-19 or minimize its consequences is something that hasn’t been seen since the “Spanish” flu pandemic in 1918-19, which killed an estimated 50 million people, including 675,000 in the U.S., said Richard Keller, a UW-Madison professor of the history of medicine.
We are infectious disease specialists at UW-Madison — one an epidemiologist and mother of two boys at Van Hise Elementary School, the other a global health pediatric infectious diseases physician. Out of concern for the safety of our community during this critical moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, we ask all parents (who have the means to do so) to please voluntarily keep your children home from school, starting on Monday.
Quoted: Shilagh Mirgain, a psychologist at UW Health, says it’s natural to feel anxious, angry and stressed considering everything that’s going on.
Quoted: That report, from University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim, found that Russia-linked social media accounts are posting about the same divisive issues — race relations, gun laws and immigration — as they did in 2016, when the Kremlin polluted American voters’ feeds with messages about the presidential election. Facebook has since removed those accounts as well.
Quoted: “The Electoral College creates these strange incentives for campaigns to ignore most of the country and pour their attention into a small number of places,” Barry Burden, a professor of political science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek.
Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at UW Health, said if hospitals share masks and equipment and add more isolation rooms, “I think that we could manage” the outbreak.
Independent researchers continue to identify social media accounts with Russian links. Race was among the top issues that such accounts tried to foster division over, said Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies political communication online. Others included nationalism, immigration, gun control and gay rights.
Noted: There’s no doubt Human Nature will contribute to improving the public’s literacy about Crispr, including the differences between editing cells that can pass down those changes to future generations (germline cells, like sperm, ova, and embryos) and ones that can’t (somatic cells, or those from other body tissues). That’s critical for the future of the technology, says Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who appears in the film for her work on the National Academy of Sciences’ reports on the ethics of gene editing.
27 News sat down with Dr. Jeff Pothof, the chief quality and safety officer at UW Health, to discuss what people can do to prepare for potential COVID-19 transmission.
Quoted: Indeed, rapidly falling prices and changing public opinion on climate change have erased the traditional financial and political costs associated with being a clean energy leader, said Greg Nemet, professor of public affairs and environmental studies at UW-Madison.
“There’s going to be a need not just for one animal model, but multiple,” says David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“This is just human psychology. We get scared of things we don’t know,” Dominique Brossard, UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communications Chair and Professor said.
Dr. Jeff Pothof is a UW Health Chief Quality and Safety Officer who is breaking down the facts and myths of coronavirus.
Dr. Michael Cox, a professor of biochemistry at UW-Madison whose lab worked with one of the country’s largest crime labs for seven years, agrees. “These profiles can get pretty complicated, so I think it’s sometimes hard to extract all the details by eye,” Cox said.
“He was more or less left for dead a few weeks ago,” University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communications Professor Michael Wagner said of Joe Biden.
Noted: This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with scientists Dave O’Connor and Tom Friedrich, who research viral infections at the University of Wisconsin. O’Connor and Friedrich formed a Slack channel on Jan. 22 to coordinate coronavirus research with scientists worldwide.
Quoted: Peter Goff, an expert in educational administration at UW-Madison, read the 40-page report at WUWM’s request.
“What this [review] tells me is this is an HR department that’s bureaucratic, it’s about pushing things through,” Goff says. “It’s not about talent management. It’s not about teachers. It’s not about making sure our schools are staffed with the best people.”
Quoted: A cache of Instagram posts captured by researchers showed that the Russians were “better at impersonating candidates” and that influence-mongers “have moved away from creating their own fake advocacy groups to mimicking and appropriating the names of actual American groups,” wrote Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin professor who analyzed the material with her team.
Quoted: People may be mistaken if they feel like a temporary drop in greenhouse gas emissions is good for the environment, Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told ABC News.
When pollution is released into the air, the particulates “actually have a shielding effect” from the sun, Dutton said.
“If you take that away, then it has the opposite effect,” and the planet could warm even faster, Dutton said.
Noted: Ryan J. Owens, J.D., Ph.D., is the George C. and Carmella P. Edwards Professor of American Politics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and director of the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.
Quoted: “He was more or less left for dead a few weeks ago,” University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communications Professor Michael Wagner said of Joe Biden. “It’s really remarkable, Biden won states, where he did not advertise, did not show up, did not have a field office; it was all on the strength of endorsements over the last couple of days.”
Quoted: COVID-19 is expected to have a major impact on the global economy. Projections have become increasingly pessimistic in recent weeks as the virus has continued to spread, said Ian Coxhead, a University of Wisconsin-Madison economics professor. He noted some forecasts predict negative economic growth in the U.S. during the second quarter or even over the whole year.
“The fortunes of any company in the state or in the U.S. are going to be, first of all, determined by the macroeconomic health of the U.S. economy,” Coxhead said.
Quoted: Connie Flanagan, a professor in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, calls the decision “complicated” — one that requires thoughtful discussions ahead of time. “You can’t just put a sign in your child’s hand and be done with it. You have a responsibility to explain.”
The report from professor Young Mie Kim found that Russia-linked social media accounts are posting about the same divisive issues — race relations, gun laws and immigration — as they did in 2016, when the Kremlin polluted American voters’ feeds with messages about the presidential election.
Quoted: This is not to say that smartwatches for kids don’t have any benefits. As Heather Kirkorian, associate professor of| human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that, for example, their texting and phone call functionality can be useful in a world where pay phones aren’t available the way they used to be.
Quoted: Studies show freshman year is the most important year in high school and Geoffrey D. Borman, UW-Madison Education Policy Professor, said it can make or break you.
Quoted: “In general, convention planners should be in touch with Milwaukee and state officials, particularly those in charge of preparedness, to assure the event maximizes safety for convention goers and prevention of any risks for disease transmission (airborne, food-borne, water-borne, etc.),” said Ajay K. Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That communication between convention planners and local and state public health is already happening.”
Quoted: Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies voter turnout, says Trump’s huge levels of support defy historical trends about sitting presidents who run for reelection. “A sitting incumbent running for reelection — that shouldn’t stimulate much interest,” Burden says. “It all runs a little contrary to what I think we would’ve expected.”
Quoted: “The goodwill impairment test is one of the most second guessed of the accounting tests that exist,” said Thomas Linsmeier, professor of accounting and law, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: In general, Indonesia’s timber industry has been on a decline, and many logging concessions in the Bornean provinces of East and North Kalimantan have recently paused or stopped timber extraction, Zuzana Burivalova, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, U.S., and her colleagues observed. This piqued their interest: what was happening in the inactive concessions?
To explore this possibility, my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Elections Research Center and I presented Democratic primary voters with a longer menu of reasons for their choice of candidates. In statewide surveys of 3,600 adults across the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, we asked respondents whether they planned to vote in their states’ primaries.
Quoted: “Wiping down surfaces on a plane won’t hurt, as long as it doesn’t give you a false sense of security,” Andrew Mehle, associate professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said, stressing that sanitizing your space on a plane should be done in conjunction with washing hands and following other best practices.
For UW-Madison professors Thomas Friedrich and David O’Connor, some of the biggest questions are how the virus made its way to humans in the first place, why it causes more severe illness than some other coronaviruses and how long it persists in the body.
Noted: “The goodwill impairment test is one of the most second guessed of the accounting tests that exist,” said Thomas Linsmeier, professor of accounting and law, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Whatever the magic was in 2008, it’s not been re-created this year in terms of bringing out voters,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
