Undocumented Immigrants Await Chance at Vaccination | NBC Philadelphia

Like most farmworkers, she is undocumented. Public health officials are adamant that everyone needs to be vaccinated regardless of immigration status if the country is to have a chance at stopping or slowing the virus’ spread. From a public health standpoint, it would be dangerous to exclude undocumented immigrants. “Herd immunity is agnostic to whether or not people have documents,” said Sandro Galea, the dean of the School of Public Health at Boston University. “And if we care about getting back to normal, which is getting herd immunity, we collectively have an interest in having as many people immunized as possible as quickly as possible." "For us to be barring specific groups from being immunized for what are fundamentally -- perhaps legal reasons, we can argue about them -- flies in the face of good common sense," he said. Debates over who is or who is not entitled to the vaccine are irrelevant, he said. The problem is solely a pragmatic one. “The virus does not know who has papers and who does not," he said. "It’s going to spread no matter what.

Read the full piece here.

The Flaming Lips Performed to People in Literal Bubbles. Is It Safer? | New York Times

Some health experts had concerns about users’ safety inside the bubbles. “There is no evidence about the efficacy — or lack thereof — of these bubbles from an infectious disease transmission point of view,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health. He said that virus transmission control depends on good air circulation and filtration. “So, in theory, if air filtration is good, protective barriers can helpfully augment and reduce risk of transmission, but I would be hesitant to attend a concert in a bubble at the moment unless this has been assessed further,” he said.

Read the full piece here.

Spotify Betting Big Podcasts | Bloomberg Businessweek

Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean of Boston University School of Public Health, provides a coronavirus and vaccine update. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber and Bloomberg News Entertainment Reporter Lucas Shaw talk about Spotify betting big on podcasts as a path to profitability. Bloomberg News Cybersecurity Reporter William Turton discusses the article “‘No Regrets’: A Capitol Rioter Tells His Story From Inside.” And we Drive to the Close with Yana Barton, Co-Director of Growth Equity at Eaton Vance.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Aird reintroduces resolution declaring systemic racism a public health crisis in Virginia | Progress Index

The resolution — originally introduced during last August's special session but held until the regular session that begins Wednesday — notes, among others, racial inequity to health care. It cites the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming Black citizens are "more likely to be hospitalized by the virus and more than twice as likely to die from the virus" than Whites and other demographic groups.
It also includes a quote from Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, defining a public-health crisis: "The problem must affect large numbers of people, it must threaten health over the long-term, and it must require the adoption of large-scale solutions."
Thirty states and more than 170 localities across the nation have declared racism as a public-health crisis, including all of the states surrounding Virginia — North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland.

Read the full article here.

The contagion next time: Underlying socioeconomic and racial divides and our risk from COVID and future pandemics | NIH VideoCast

Health is a product of a broad range of social and economic conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic showed how longstanding underinvestment in these conditions affected our overall health during a time of crisis and widened health gaps between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. COVID-19 illustrates how our extraordinary achievement in biomedical science—evidenced by remarkable advances to a COVID-19 vaccine in record time—is not matched by commensurate achievement in creating the conditions that can generate health in populations.

Sandro Galea is a physician, epidemiologist, and author, is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature, and is a regular contributor to a range of public media, about the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. He has been listed as one of the most widely cited scholars in the social sciences. He is chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow.

Click here to watch the video on NIH Videocast

Live with Dean Sandro Galea | Free Associations Podcast

Matt, Chris, and Don are joined by Dean Sandro Galea for a live episode where we discuss a study that looks at whether decreases in COVID mortality are due to improvements in treatment, take audience questions, and Don measures our ears.

Research Finds COVID-19 Has Tripled Rates of Depression | Newswire

Mental health issues like depression have long been a popular subject of research due to their prevalence. They also have negative impacts on the sufferers and their loved ones which encourage scientists to look into them more. A first-of-its-kind study was carried out by the researchers from Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). It has been found that in the United States, 27.8 percent of adults had depression symptoms as of mid-April, compared to 8.5 percent before the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this interesting research were published in the journal JAMA Network Open. According to study senior author Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at BUSPH, depression in the general population after prior large scale traumatic events has been observed to, at most, double.

Read the full article here.

Covid irony: Wearing a face mask protects others from you, not yourself from others | Manila Times

In an interview with Katie Couric’s Wake-Up Call newsletter, Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health, and co-author of PAINED: Uncomfortable Conversations About the Public’s Health, discussed his views on various issues surrounding the Covid pandemic.

Best ways to prevent Covid infection
To the question, “What are the best ways to prevent an infection?” he replied: “Fundamentally being away from people inside — distancing from people when you’re inside. That means staying physically away and protecting yourself from people coughing on you. The infection has spread person to person, so if you keep your distance from other people, you’re less likely to get an infection. And principally inside, the evidence is that outside transmission is actually quite unusual.”

Click here to read the full piece.

"Everyone is holding their breath," Galea says | Bloomberg Businessweek

Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, provides a coronavirus and vaccine update. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber and Bloomberg News Federal Reserve Reporter Chris Condon talk about the story “Fed Effort to Save Midsize Firms Isn’t Working and Here’s Why.” Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Andy Browne details a climate czar’s path through China. And we Drive to the Close with JJ Kinahan, Chief Market Strategist at TD Ameritrade.

An Epidemiologist’s Top Three Tips For Safe Holiday Gatherings | Katie Couric Media

Dr. Sandro Galea said Turkey Day isn’t canceled, but you should take some precautions.

 This year’s holiday season is already shaping up to be unlike anything in years past. Amid a surge in coronavirus cases throughout the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued robust guidelines for Thanksgiving, which emphasize the safest option for the holiday is only celebrating with people in your household.

If you decide to celebrate with others outside your quarantine bubble, the agency recommends taking extra precautions such as maintaining your distance by at least at 6 feet.

Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health, weighed in on the three most important safety precautions you can take if you plan on hosting or attending a holiday gathering. While he said recent vaccine news was “very promising,” he emphasized we still have to be mindful of the risk of not only catching the virus but also being part of its potential spread. 

Read the full piece here.

Massachusetts' COVID-19 response was science-based, so why are cases rising? | ABC News

Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and dean at the Boston University School of Public Health, thinks it's too soon to draw a storyline about what's driving Massachusetts' rebound.
"There's enormous patchiness," he said of the state's outbreak, which looks very different in Boston than it does in rural areas in western Massachusetts.
And while there's evidence that people under the age of 30 are driving the rebound in new cases this fall, Galea doesn't think the rise is related to Boston's high density of universities, some of which have opened in person.
"Transmissions are quite low," he said of schools.
Instead, he pointed to informal gatherings, especially among young people. "Whether those can come under control is an open question," Galea said. "It's fluctuating day by day."

Read the full article.

The Coronavirus and Inequality Podcast | Bloomberg Businessweek

COVID-19: Adolescents experienced higher anxiety during pandemic, study reveals | Malta Today

Boston University School of Public Health, professor Sandro Galea said that COVID-19 could be categorised as a traumatic event because it threatened the public’s health and safety. 
“Right now, we are living through a traumatic event on a global level with worrying ramifications to people’s mental health,” Galea said.
Galea said that because COVID-19 was not a contained event such as 9/11, the effects of the virus on a person’s mental health would affect a person deeply globally. Rather than just affecting people deeply, at the epicentre. Galea said that a study in the UK found that during the pandemic there was an increase in mood disorders, as well as binging drinking and in the US, a study found symptoms of depression had increased three-fold in adults. 

Read the full piece here.

Underfunding Public Health Harms Americans Beyond Covid-19 | Forbes

According to the Trust for America’s Health, almost $300 million was cut from the  Public Health Emergency Preparedness Program between its inception in 2002 and 2017. The fund, which is the only federal program to support state and local health departments in health emergencies, was established by the CDC with a starting budget of $940 million, but was reduced to $667 million over the following fifteen years. When the program does receive an influx of funding, it is to respond to specific threats such as Ebola and Zika, and the money cannot be used to strengthen other aspects of the program. Recent research found that US public health departments are left about $4.5 billion short of what they need, according to public health expert Nason Maani and dean of Boston University’s public health school Sandro Galea. 

Reduced federal funding for public health has direct consequences for everyday citizens. As baby boomers age, there is a greater need for well-funded health services for the elderly. High opioid addiction levels require well-funded rehabilitation and assistance programs, which the US lacks. Our country has suicide rates ranking in the top ten of OECD countries, but there is not enough suicide prevention funding to lower them.

Read the full piece here.

The Preexisting Conditions of the Coronavirus Pandemic | Wired

This is an especially torqued kind of screwing, because it didn’t have to be this way. It doesn't happen in societies with well-built social and medical safety nets. “If you have fewer assets, lower income, less wealth, less housing, are a person of color, you are less likely to be able to work from home,” says Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and dean of the Boston University School of Public Health. “So there was a gap, a disparity in risk of acquiring Covid. That is a reflection of greater exposure.”

Those same people are also more likely to have the chronic conditions that the Global Burden of Disease singles out—because of poverty, lack of universal health care, lack of access to higher-quality food, and a public health system defunded, by some calculations, to the tune of $4.5 billion before Covid-19 was even a twinkle in a bat’s eye. “Your risk of dying if you have no underlying comorbidity is less than 0.1 percent,” Galea says. “People with lower socioeconomic position and people of color had more risk. In some respects, it’s that simple.”

Read the full piece here.

Anxiety, Depression Increased During Pandemic. Why Not Loneliness? | NPR

SILBERNER: That's University of Washington psychologist Jonathan Kanter. He and his team have been surveying people in Seattle and around the country, and a government survey in the United Kingdom and a national survey by the University of Southern California are also failing to find a loneliness pandemic. But there's something unusual going on here. Depression and anxiety are definitely increasing. Many studies have confirmed that, and those mood disorders have long been linked to loneliness. Sandro Galea is dean of the School of Public Health at Boston University. He found Sutin's surveys to be well done but perplexing. He says there could be a lot that this pandemic can teach us about the link between loneliness, depression and anxiety.

SANDRO GALEA: The relationship between social isolation, physical distancing, loneliness, how that mediates or does not mediate a relationship with depression or anxiety. I think that's a really interesting set of questions and one from which we can learn quite a bit.

Read the full piece here.

How chief health officers could help campuses navigate COVID | Fortune

We were joined by Dr. William Kassler, deputy CHO at IBM; Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of Boston University's School of Public Health; and Dr. Preeti Malani, CHO at University of Michigan, in a conversation moderated by Fortune editor-in-chief Clifton Leaf.
While college and university campuses have dedicated medical units to look out for student safety, the idea of having, specifically, a chief health officer is still fairly new. But that position could prove critical during the COVID pandemic as even some of the most cautious schools across the nation see outbreaks.

Read the full piece here.

Teen on family trip spread the coronavirus to 11 relatives across 4 states after a negative test, CDC says | Washington Post

“The main thing with this case is that when you test somebody for coronavirus, you may just miss it. You might not have peak viral replication yet,” says Brad Pollock, the associate dean of public health sciences at the University of California at Davis. “It takes your body a good three to five days of incubation, and if it’s day four then you might test negative. But 12 hours later you could go from a low viral count to millions.”
As more people choose to travel, some U.S. airlines and airports are providing rapid coronavirus tests to travelers — for a price. But if you do travel this holiday season, health experts recommend driving over flying.
But what about holiday gatherings? Are they safe, even if everyone is masked and six feet apart?
“That’s easier said than done in family gatherings. It becomes more difficult when people want to see family members they haven’t seen in a while,” says Sandro Galea, the dean at Boston University’s School of Public Health. “My general advice is that people get tested before seeing more elderly family members, but that they also use other precautions,” including wearing masks, distancing and frequently washing hands.

Read the full piece here.

COVID-19 will have longterm effects on mental health. This expert explains how to limit the damage | World Economic Forum

We are fortunate enough to live in an era where physical distancing does not inevitably mean isolation. Myriad innovative solutions have sprung up to replace normal interactions, both in and out of the workplace.
These exemplars should be built on. Extra efforts must be made to reach vulnerable populations such as the elderly, undocumented immigrants, and homeless populations who may not have easy access to digital tools, as well as those who were already experiencing mental illness, depression or loneliness prior to the pandemic. Furthermore, it is essential to develop and maintain routines, even if they have been switched to digital, for example for children and students learning without physical interaction.

Read the full piece here.

The ‘irony of the day’: Covid-19 at the White House is a simple matter of workplace transmission STAT News

This is indeed the irony of the day. That the president and first lady have tested positive for the coronavirus — and of course it remains to be seen how ill they will become from it — should first be seen as a simple matter of workplace transmission. At one level, the White House is a workplace like any other. From all accounts, it wasn’t one that took seriously testing precautions, physical distancing, masks, and contact tracing. That several people who work in the White House contracted coronavirus shouldn’t come as a surprise.

On top of that, the president and his staff travel frequently and have contacts with large numbers of people, many of whom also aren’t taking the pandemic seriously. This occupational transmission is entirely consistent with what we have been seeing at the public health level: If you don’t take the precautions seriously, then you’re at higher risk of getting sick.

Read the full piece here.