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Category: UW Experts in the News

Dear Pandemic project explains Covid-19 in a way we can all understand

The Philadelphia Citizen

Unfortunately, other social media outlets—where 55 percent of Americans often or sometimes get their news, according to a Pew Research study—were bereft of such information. So Ritter, Buttenheim and Malia Jones, a former Penn epidemiologist now at University of Wisconsin-Madison, started a Facebook page called Dear Pandemic, a source for easy-to-understand, science-backed Covid information written by a volunteer team of 12 women scientists from around the country and England, including five in Philly. (The team is supported by a project coordinator and a team of experts, translators, student employees, and interns.)

Mutant Coronaviruses Threaten To Undermine Vaccines

Buzzfeed News

“Essentially, the huge number of cumulative infections worldwide provides a large number of opportunities for viruses to acquire beneficial mutations and then spread preferentially,” said Thomas Friedrich, a vaccine expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “This is kind of like playing an evolutionary slot machine. One individual slot may be unlikely to hit the jackpot — but if you are able to play millions of slots in parallel, hitting the jackpot on a few becomes much more likely.”

Madison-area business leaders express optimism, caution about Biden administration

Wisconsin State Journal

Biden’s administration could also oversee unemployment return to the low levels that it had been at under the past two administrations, though the pandemic is still wreaking havoc on major sectors of the economy, UW-Madison economist Steven Deller said. “Once COVID is under control, there is no reason why we can’t go back to a pre-COVID economy,” Deller said.

Will public trust in science survive the pandemic?

Chemical and Engineering News

Even though the public largely maintains a generic confidence in science, “people are quite capable of viewing scientists as lousy experts when it comes to specific issues that don’t fit their notions of what’s true,” says Sharon Dunwoody, professor emerita of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The Vaccine Rollout Will Take Time. Here’s What The U.S. Can Do Now To Save Lives

Wisconsin Public Radio

Dr. Patrick Remington, a professor emeritus in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, previously worked as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He says a career spent studying public health policy has taught him that laws are typically only effective for the people already inclined to follow a given health recommendation, like wearing seat belts in cars or not smoking indoors.

Altered Vaccine Data Exposes Critical Cyber Risks

The Wall Street Journal

Quoted: Dietram Scheufele, the Taylor-Bascom chair in science communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that scientists already must counter misinformation on Covid-19 vaccines. Manipulated data only makes that job harder, he said.

“It’s probably the worst possible time to deal with something like this,” he said.

Republicans propose making vaccine available to everyone by mid-March, bar prioritizing prisoners

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: Committee co-chairman Dr. Jonathan Temte of the University of Wisconsin-Madison agreed.

“Our recommendation should be based on the scientific evidence, the ethical pinnings, and the feasibility,” Temte said. “And on all three accounts, one would say, absolutely. If we are saying we’re going to punish these people yet again — because they are being punished for their crimes at this point in time — this constitutes kind of a double punishment and treating them very, very differently and I’m very uncomfortable with that.”

Joe Biden’s First 100 Days: Inside His Agenda

Time

Not all of Biden’s economic agenda hinges on Congress. He has asked the requisite agencies to extend the federal moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through March 31, and the pause on federal student loan payments through Sept. 30. But there’s ultimately a limit to what the Executive Branch can do on its own. “There’s no set of buttons and levers the President can push and pull to generate the optimum mix of economic growth, unemployment and inflation,” says Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor who studies Executive Orders.

The Agenda for Biden’s First 100 Days Takes Shape

US News and World Report

Biden was able to make so many changes so quickly because of the precedent set by his predecessor, Donald Trump, says University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer, author of the book “With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power.”

“Every president looks for ways to use the powers of the office to accomplish their goals, and Trump was unusually aggressive about it, finding things that really broke the norms,” such as declaring a national emergency on the border to redirect money to build a wall Congress refused to fund, he said.

Biden Puts Climate High on Priority List

Spectrum News 1

“That was one very specific step that Biden thought would be important to take to symbolize to the world community that we’re back in the climate change game in terms of negotiations with the rest of the world,” said Stephen Vavrus, a climate scientist with the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Teachers emphasized in COVID-19 vaccine plan sent to state

Wisconsin State Journal

With Wisconsin getting just 70,000 first doses of vaccine each week, the committee acknowledged the challenge in making so many people eligible but didn’t address how to manage the expected large demand for a small supply. “To achieve that group is nearly an impossible task in short order,” said Dr. Jonathan Temte, associate dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “We’re looking at months.”

Op-ed: Black student loan borrowers ‘need cancellation, and they need it now’

Yahoo Finance

Fenaba Addo is an associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ashley Harrington is the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending.

The debate around canceling student debt has been front and center in the wake of the presidential election, and President-elect Biden should provide substantial cancellation on his first day in office.

President Biden starts term at “historically difficult” time, says UW-Madison professor

WKOW-TV 27

University of Wisconsin – Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer said Biden is starting out with a “challenging set of circumstances.””It’s historically difficult. The country is as polarized as it has ever been at any time in the last 140 years. We have serious economic distress…COVID-19 is not remotely under control,” Mayer said.

Visions and views of America, as told by Pres. Biden and 22-year-old poet

NBC-15

Allison Prasch, an assistant professor and expert on political speeches at UW-Madison, said Biden mentioned words like “we” or “us” roughly three times more than the word “I.” She compared his speech to the Gettysburg Address, in which Abraham Lincoln did not mention the North and the South as divided entities. He, instead, spoke about the Union and American unity.

Wisconsin Republicans punt again on Tony Evers’ special session

Wisconsin State Journal

“It is remarkable how little legislating the Legislature has done over the past year,” Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor, said in an email. “As Governor Evers points out, the Legislature has not actually passed any legislation and sent it to his desk since last April, despite the challenges of the pandemic, the economy and the election. Legislative leaders and their allies have instead been active in the courts, challenging many of the orders and actions coming out of the Evers administration.”

We’re not gonna take it: The COVID-19 vaccine is here, along with efforts to overcome skepticism

The Capital Times

“We really need to come together to combat this,” said Dr. Jasmine Zapata, pediatrician and public health strategist with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “And just like masks, social distancing and good handwashing are part of the solution, getting as many people vaccinated as possible is part of the solution.”

Ten computer codes that transformed science

Nature

That’s partly because these tools are free, Rasband says. But it’s also because it’s easy for users to customize the tool to their needs, says Kevin Eliceiri, a biomedical engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, whose team has taken the lead on ImageJ development since Rasband’s retirement. ImageJ features a deceptively simple, minimalist user interface that has remained largely unchanged since the 1990s.

A look at Trump’s economic legacy

ABC News

Trade policy is where the president wields the most economic power, as Congress has over the years delegated negotiating authority to the president’s office, according to Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Chinn documented the trade war saga on his macroeconomic policy blog Econbrowser.

Covid Face Masks Are Disrupting a Key Tool of Human Communications, New Research Shows

Wall Street Journal

In that test, the children correctly identified the emotional expression on uncovered faces about 66% of the time, well above the odds of just guessing, psychologist Ashley Ruba at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said. Looking at faces in surgical-type masks, however, the children were only able to correctly identify sadness about 28% of the time, anger 27% of the time, and fear 18% of the time.

“For very young children, I think it is still an open question as to how they’ll navigate these situations,” said Dr. Ruba, who studies how children learn to understand other people’s emotions. “Infants can use all these other cues, like tone of voice.”

COVID-19 vaccine requirements not likely as Madison area businesses balance public health, liability

Wisconsin State Journal

Though the law allows employers to mandate vaccines, UW-Madison professor emerita of law and bioethics Alta Charo said requiring employees to get the shot could lead to pushback from employees who might get vaccinated on their own but bristle at the mandate. “In the history of public health, we have frequently seen that voluntary compliance winds up more successful at the end than mandates,” Charo said.

Wisconsin Sees First Case Of U.K. Based Strain Of COVID-19

WORT FM

Quoted: Dr. David O’Connor is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at UW-Madison’s school of Medicine and Public Health, where he runs a lab studying viral infections. Speaking with WORT, O’Connor said it’s common for viruses to mutate as they find new hosts.

“The genetic material for the coronavirus is called RNA, and when RNA makes copies of itself, sometimes those copies are sloppy, and a mistake gets made,” O’Connor said.

The Associated Press and other news outlets have focused on the fact the B.1.1.7 strain appears to transmit between people more quickly than other strains. Dr. Thomas Friedrich, who studies diseases and immune systems at UW-Madison, shares this same suspicion.

“This variant does appear to be more contagious, more transmissible between people, about one and half times as transmissible as previous strains. So, that’s concerning to us because it means that virus might spread a bit easier, and might be a little harder to control,” Friedrich said.

The debate over whether to call Donald Trump a fascist, and why it matters.

Vox

Quoted: Stanley Payne, a University of Wisconsin historian of Spain and author of A History of Fascism 1914-1945, agrees that Trump’s lack of coherent revolutionary fervor makes him fall short of fascism. “Never founded a new fascist party, never embraced a coherent new revolutionary ideology, never announced a radical new doctrine but introduced a noninterventionist foreign military policy,” Payne wrote to me in an email. “Not even a poor man’s fascist. Ever an incoherent nationalist-populist with sometimes destructive tendencies.”

Sodium substitutions

Meat & Poultry

Quoted: “In meat systems, permeate can be used to reduce the amount of sodium, enhance browning, protect color, mask bitter flavors and improve structure formation,” said Susan Larson, associate researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for the US Dairy Export Council, Arlington, Va. “The lactose in permeate also provides a carbohydrate that could replace a portion of the sugar in a fermented sausage.”

Democratic Control Of US Senate Will Mean Changes For Wisconsin Senators

Wisconsin Public Radio

Quoted: Barry Burden, professor of political science at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Johnson’s strong allegiance to President Donald Trump, as well as his position within the Senate majority and chairmanship of a powerful committee, positioned him squarely in the national spotlight.

“That combination has been really effective for him for the last several years and has given him a national platform,” Burden said. “And now he’s essentially losing all of that.”

Black and Latina women carried the brunt of job loss in December

PolitiFact

Quoted: Laura Dresser, an economist with the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said prior economic declines were led by male-dominated fields, such as construction and manufacturing. The pandemic-driven decline, she said, has strongly affected areas – such as the restaurant and education industries – with a high number of women workers.

“And those jobs are low-wage jobs,” Dresser said. “They’re held disproportionately by women. They’re held disproportionately by people of color.”

Some of Colorado’s conservative talk radio stations are turning down the volume on “rigged election” claims

The Colorado Sun

Quoted: The motivation for the crackdown is “a combination of corporate pressure through fear of losing advertisers, and some sense of responsibility that this (insurrection) was a bridge too far,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The question is how sustained the corporate response will be,” Culver said. Currently, companies including AT&T, JPMorgan and Coca-Cola have paused their political contributions to the 147 Republicans who objected to certifying the election results, for instance. “Is it performative in the moment or will it last? It feels unlike any moment I’ve seen before.”

Wisconsin residents 65 and older could be in next phase of COVID-19 vaccinations

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: But fellow co-chairman Dr. Jonathan Temte, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said politics shouldn’t play a role in public health decision-making.

“It is our purview to make whatever we think is the best recommendation,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ethically acceptable to say we’re going to do congregate living but exclude the incarcerated, because by definition, that’s congregate living.”

Redistricting poised as a top political issue of 2021

NBC-15

The 2010 map, as UW-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer explained, was widely criticized after being created by the Assembly’s top Republicans and their lawyers. According to the rulings of federal courts, the party claimed attorney-client privilege and did not release the details of its map.

Some Wisconsin hospitals are offering vaccines to staff who don’t take care of patients

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Quoted: In Florida, for example, a nursing home offered vaccines to members of its board and major donors, the Washington Post reported.

But that doesn’t seem to be the norm, said Ajay Sethi, an infectious disease expert with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said the top concern should be that no doses go to waste.

“It’s far better to get a shot in somebody’s arm than throw it out. Throwing it out is a complete tragedy,” Sethi said.

“If it’s happening to the point where the original plans are being abandoned, then I think that would be an issue,” Sethi added. “But I don’t think we’re at that stage right now.”

Quoted: “What we’ve heard more and more is that there are organizations that end up with unfilled slots in their immunization schedules who would like to reach out to members that would technically be in that next (rollout) group,” said Dr. Jim Conway, a professor of pediatrics at UW-Madison.

More Contagious Coronavirus Variant Found In Wisconsin

Wisconsin Public Radio

“A more transmissible variant is something to take seriously and may alter the way we think about schools reopening or other thing we are doing in the community,” said Dr. Thomas Friedrich, a professor in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

Captive gorillas test positive for coronavirus

Science

“The fact that gorillas are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 should come as no surprise,” says disease ecologist Tony Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Fortunately, gorillas at zoos have excellent medical care, and most will likely pull through due to the efforts of dedicated veterinarians. That’s not the case for gorillas in the wild, though.”

In wake of Jacob Blake decision, a primer on ‘use of force’ policies in Wisconsin

The Capital Times

“People often wonder whether an officer’s actions complied with local policy. But as to an officer’s civil or criminal liability, this question does not matter. When a department asserts an officer acted reasonably, the department looks to constitutional law. And constitutional law is very forgiving of officer decision-making,” said Ion Meyn, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, who has extensively studied the issue.

‘The choice is ours’: Panel discusses COVID-19 and schools

The Capital Times

“The choice is ours,” said Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It’s ours as a population, as a country, as a community … Navsaria was joined on the Wisconsin Health News panel by UW-Madison epidemiologist Malia Jones, La Crosse School district superintendent Aaron Engel and Eau Claire City-County Health Department director Lieske Giese.

New Study Ranks Best and Worst States to Raise a Family

Fatherly

“Parents and children can do well in any state. But doing your best will indeed be easier in some states than in others, and child development is better on average in some states than in others,” says Dave Riley, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology who took part in the report.

Mice may ‘catch’ each other’s pain — and pain relief

Science News

“Not surprisingly, the circuits that they’re looking at are remarkably similar to some of these processes in humans,” says Jules Panksepp, a social neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was not part of the study. Both mice and humans share a connectedness with their compatriots in emotional situations, he says, and research points to a shared evolutionary basis for empathy.

Who should get COVID-19 vaccine next? A state committee debates

Wisconsin State Journal

Dr. Jonathan Temte, co-chair of the subcommittee and former chair of the CDC advisory committee, said that if disabled people who live in group homes are prioritized, inmates should be too because both live in congregate settings. “I think we should be unwilling to decouple those,” said Temte, associate dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.