COVID-19 and Hurricane Season could be a Deadly Mix | HealthDay

Public health and emergency management experts are sounding the alarm that the twin risks of the annual hurricane season and the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to overlap in the coming weeks and months.

"The ways to mitigate both risks are in many respects in contradiction. We mitigate COVID by keeping people apart, and you mitigate the risk of hurricanes by moving people typically into close, confined spaces, and that makes things quite difficult," said Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health. "The worry is that we will be unsuccessful in dealing with both of them," Galea continued. "Trying to move people away from hurricanes we will make COVID worse, or being worried about COVID means that people won't move away from hurricanes."

Read the piece here.

Traveling may not be safe, but leaving vacation days behind isn’t healthy, either | Washington Post

“We have compared domestic travel versus weekends at home and found very few differences in terms of activities and experiences,” one of the researchers, clinical psychologist Jessica de Bloom, said via email. “The home environment poses some challenges in terms of mental detachment from work, particularly when your home turned into your office during the pandemic. And we know from [other] research that detachment is one of the most important components for recovery from work stress.”

Other doctors concur. “The value of vacation is to remove the stressors of one’s day-to-day engagements,” Boston University epidemiologist and mental health expert Sandro Galea said via email. “If that can be achieved through staying at home, it would have the same mental health benefit as going elsewhere.

Read the full piece here.

Merck's Progress Toward a Coronavirus (Podcast) | Bloomberg Businessweek

Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, talks about the inequality of the coronavirus outbreak. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber and Bloomberg News U.S. Health Care Reporter Riley Griffin share their insight on Merck taking a slow and steady approach as rivals race for a vaccine. Bloomberg News U.S. Consumer Editor Anne Riley Moffat walks through McDonald’s accusing its ex-CEO of lying about office relationships. And we Drive to the Close with Katerina Simonetti, Senior VP at UBS Private Wealth Management.

Listen to the whole podcast here.

“Doctors, Community Groups Struggle to Tackle Covid-19 Racial Disparities | Wall Street Journal

Among the big factors behind the disproportionate impact, said Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, many community members work in essential jobs like farming, food processing and construction that can’t be done remotely or by social distancing. Cases are also more likely to spread because sizable numbers live relatively close to each other, if not in the same house or apartment.

Dr. Galea said many people in these communities have limited access to testing and doctors. And many are also at higher risk of developing severe cases because they suffer from conditions like heart disease, asthma and diabetes, he said.

“The disproportionate rates of Covid is largely due to the fact that these communities have much greater exposure, but also because recognizing that risk, we have not put in place compensatory mechanisms to offer testing, services and opportunities for information to these communities,” Dr. Galea said.

Read the full piece here.

As Congress Prepares to Recess, Millions of Americans Fear Homelessness, Poverty, and Further Health Disparities | Forbes

Poverty increases the likelihood of experiencing poor health and, in turn, traps communities in poverty. Poor health can also impact an individual’s ability to work, reduce economic opportunities, inhibit educational attainment, and force those who work in riskier professions` to work at any cost. This is especially true during the current pandemic. Blacks and Latinos make up a large number of essential workers who have been forced to work in positions that place them at greater risk of contracting the coronavirus to pay their bills, but have limited access to quality medical care if they become ill. This creates what has been referred to as a negative feedback loop or what epidemiologist Jacob Bor and Sandro Galea call the twenty-first-century health-poverty trap. 

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Resilience In A Time of COVID | Happiness Institute

COVID-19 represents a near ubiquitous traumatic event that will have substantial impact on mental health of populations. Sandro talks about what makes us resilient in these times and how we can quickly bounce back from stressors.

This talk is part of the Happiness Festival, a weekend of virtual talks and live workshops from July 24-26 focused on reimagine how we can integrate happiness into our future economic systems, societies and everyday lives. It is organised by the newly founded Happiness Institute, based out of the University of Oxford, and is raising donations in support of the WHO COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Click here for more on the Happiness Festival.

Republicans And Democrats See COVID-19 Very Differently. Is That Making People Sick?

“Some Republicans are much less freaked out by the virus than they were a few months ago,” said Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina who is tracking Americans’ perspectives of the coronavirus through a panel survey. “But things are changing so quickly — these new outbreaks could scare them and maybe some of that polarization disappears.”

That doesn’t mean the politicization of the virus isn’t having an impact, though. Take the political fighting around whether people should be required to wear masks or the timeline around when businesses should reopen. The virus is spiking in Georgia, with thousands of new cases each day, but the state’s Republican governor is suing the Democratic mayor of Atlanta over the city’s decision to revert to its most restrictive opening phase and mandate the wearing of masks. “The national conversation about how we behave during this pandemic has been so colored by the partisan divide that it’s becoming impossible to talk rationally about the risks we are and are not willing to tolerate,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and the dean of the Boston University School of Public Health who studies the politics of public health. “If both sides were pushed out of their corners, they would both have to concede quite a bit, and we’d frankly all be safer.”

Read the full piece here.

Sharecare launches COVID-19 readiness solution to help employers effectively manage the well-being and safety of their workforces | PR Newswire

Through Well-Being@Work, these tools, programs and content, among other new features, are now available to Sharecare's enterprise partners. Sharecare's new COVID-19 readiness solution covers three distinct areas of focus to support U.S. employers throughout the pandemic and beyond, including:
Assessment & triage: Empowers employers with a real-time perspective on the overall health and safety of their workforce; while providing employees with a simple and convenient way to track their health status on a daily basis and gain confidence that their colleagues are doing the same. Components include:
Readiness survey: Developed in partnership with Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health; assesses employees' willingness to resume activities and what will make them feel safe at work.
Daily screener & digital health pass: Securely monitor an employee's health; employer receives reporting status and test results for each employee as well as aggregated data.
Daily screener: Clinically validated. Provides employees with a personalized COVID-19 report to view daily entries and monitor progress; locate nearby testing sites by state and county; and see lab results from employer-ordered COVID-19 tests.
Health pass: Secure QR code-powered certification within the Sharecare app, validating each employee's health status as part of an organization's return to work protocol.1

Read the full piece here.

Strategies for Controlling the Pandemic | Bloomberg Businessweek

Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean of Boston University School of Public Health, provides a coronavirus update. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber and Businessweek Economics Editor Peter Coy discuss cities no longer being escalators of opportunity, according to an MIT study. And we get the Bloomberg Green segment with Bloomberg News Sustainability Editor Emily Chasan. Hosts: Carol Massar and Jason Kelly. Producer: Doni Holloway.

Listen to the podcast here.

Here’s what coronavirus testing on college campuses in Massachusetts might look like this fall |The Boston Globe

It recommended that schools organize students and staff into groups that will be tested more or less frequently depending on their risk of exposure. Essential campus workers and students who live in dormitories, for example, would be tested most often. The report also recommended three types of testing — an initial test for everyone at the start of the semester, quick testing of symptomatic people, and routine testing at least once a week for everyone else.
“Testing broadly is the sine qua non for safety,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health and a member of the task force. “The more capacity we have, the better.

Read the full piece here.

Loneliness Hasn't Increased Despite Pandemic, Research Finds. What Helped? | NPR

Lest her findings be taken as unremittingly good news, know that neither she nor other psychologists are happy with the relatively high background level of loneliness that existed in American culture before the pandemic — and continues now. They would like to not only flatten the loneliness curve, but drive it way down. They're also concerned about the people their surveys haven't reached — those with lower incomes and others who aren't online.

Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, does research investigating the ways mental health can be affected by social issues. "Perhaps it's good news," he says of Sutin's study, "but I think it's offset by other data that are emerging on poor mental health." Depression and anxiety, he notes, have both increased among all ages in the past several months

Read the full piece here.

Strategies for Controlling the Pandemic | Bloomberg Businessweek Radio

MLS is Back: How the league, players, are coping with COVID-19 concerns in Florida | ESPN

To its credit, MLS has been transparent about its programs and protocols. MLS personnel inside the bubble are tested every other day. If an individual tests positive, they are promptly put in isolation until they are cleared by a medical professional. Contact tracing is then done to see who else might be at risk, with more people put in quarantine."As long as you have systems in place for testing and isolating people with cases so that the disease does not spread, then I think you're doing the right thing," said Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and dean at the Boston University School of Public Health.

Read the full article here.

WorldAfterCorona—Adil Najam’s Crash Course on the Future | Technology Times

By the third week of June, he was up to 63 experts, from BU and around the world, a mix of global policymakers and big thinkers, writers, prominent academics, and rising stars. The lineup includes Francis Fukuyama on democracy, Thomas Picketty on inequality, Ibram X. Kendi (a scholar of racism and newly appointed director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research) on racism, Enrico Letta on the future of the European Union, Kishore Mahbubani on world order, Danielle Citron (a BU School of Law professor of law) on civil rights in cyberspace, David Miliband on refugees, Sandro Galea (BU School of Public Health Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean) on mental health, Rachel Nolan (a Pardee assistant professor of international relations) on immigration, Elizabeth Economy on US-China relations, and Ann Marie Lipinski on journalism. Peter Singer discusses the future of meat. Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton analyzes economic despair. Graham Allison discusses ancient Greek historian Thucydides.

Read the full piece here.

Social determinants of health, COVID-19, and racism in healthcare | Smarter Healthcare Podcast

An Epidemiologist on Why We’re All ‘Sitting Ducks’ For the Next Pandemic | Medium

With new cases on the rise, states are grappling with how to safely and effectively reopen the economy, but this has proven to be no easy task. Many of the first states to loosen restrictions, including Texas and Florida, have rolled back their reopening plans to deal with the rise of hospitalizations. On top of this public health crisis, there’s also the economic fallout that could cost the world economy $82 trillion over the next five years — and a reckoning over racial injustice, sparked by the killing of George Floyd in police custody.
Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health, warns that the U.S. must deal with all three traumas head-on, or risk facing another pandemic. This includes everything from addressing racial disparities in health care to investing in public health infrastructure. The disease expert, co-author of PAINED Uncomfortable Conversations About the Public’s Health, also settles a question that has come up a lot as more and more Americans plan their summers — is it safer to travel by airplane or car?

Read the full piece here.

Physical Distancing | POZ

When epidemiologists coined the phrase “social distancing,” they didn’t realize how much harm those words could have on our communities. In this time of the COVID-19 crisis, physical distancing is necessary, but we need to be socially closer than ever.
“I would argue that what we are doing right now is physical distancing, not social distancing,” said Sandro Galea, MD, MPH, DrPH, an epidemiologist and a professor at Boston University School of Public Health, during a COVID-19 tele–town hall.
“We are creating physical distance between us to limit the spread of the virus,” said Galea. “But we should be doing that in the same breath as we are maintaining our social connections and sense of community and common sense of purpose.

Read the full piece here.

Between Two Monsters: The Scylla of the Pandemic and the Charybdis of Poverty | Word and Way

Most of the attention of United States citizens and government has been on the domestic crisis. As the headline in a Washington Post editorial expresses it, “Trump Irresponsibly Abandons the WHO While the Pandemic Surges in Less Developed Nations.”
Sandro Galea, a Boston University epidemiologist, wrote a Washington Post op-ed piece a week earlier, urging action to avoid the viral epidemic becoming a poverty pandemic. He contends that “the long-term health costs of an economic depression could ultimately far eclipse what COVID-19 has wrought.”

Read the full piece here.

‘We Should Continue To Be Worried’ As U.S. Cases Rise Amid Reopenings, Says Dean of BU’s School Of Public Health | WGBH

As more coronavirus restrictions are relaxed across the country and President Donald Trump flouts social distancing measures with indoor public campaign rallies, roughly half of U.S. states are seeing an increase in cases. “We should continue to be worried,” said Sandro Galea, the dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health. Galea told Jim Braude on WGBH News’ Greater Boston Monday that while Massachusetts is “on the other side of the epidemic curve now,” many other states are still in the early stages of their outbreaks.

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Greater Boston with Jim Braude: June 22, 2020 | WGBH

Massachusetts moved ahead Monday with its gradual reopening plan, with indoor restaurants allowed to serve customers, and nail salons, massage parlors and tattoo and piercing shops allowed to open their doors. As different parts of the country move ahead at different paces with returning to business in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, epidemiologists warn the public health threat is not over. To discuss, Jim Braude was joined by Sandro Galea, Dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health.

Read the full piece here.