Coronavirus

June 8, 2020

We’re closely following the news about the COVID-19 pandemic and hope you’re staying healthy and safe. The Issues team is working to deliver fresh insights on the social, political, and scientific aspects of the pandemic, which can help you more fully understand and respond to the complex and difficult events that are now unfolding. Up on the site now:

• Eswaran Subrahmanian discusses design principles that can help fix the profoundly broken US health care system;
• Vijay Pereira, Swetketu Patnaik, and Yama Temouri find that global health partnerships for fighting neglected diseases offer lessons for developing COVID-19 drugs and vaccines;
• Colleen Galambos offers a concrete strategy for dealing with social isolation and loneliness during the pandemic;
• Maria Carnovale wonders if the idea of vote-by-mail will survive COVID-19;
• Laura H. Kahn makes the case for a more strategic approach to avoiding pandemics, focused on diet and hygiene;
• Jennifer Kuzma, Khara D. Grieger, Zachary S. Brown, and Christopher L. Cummings propose reorganizing research and funding to incorporate the social sciences in pandemic strategies;
• Clark A. Miller uncovers pandemic insights from a surprising source: the classic children’s books of Richard Scarry;
• Françoise Baylis and Natalie Kofler argue against the idea of providing “immunity passports” COVID-19 survivors;
• Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee cite poor science and media hype for pushing unproven and potentially dangerous COVID-19 treatments;
• José Guimón and Rajneesh Narula highlight how international scientific collaboration has intensified during the pandemic;
• Braden R. Allenby and Mikhail Chester discover lessons from engineering practice that can make the US medical system more resilient;
• Dietram A. Scheufele, Nicole M. Krause, Isabelle Freiling, and Dominique Brossard provide a guide to communication challenges during the pandemic;
• M. Anthony Mills and Robert Cook-Deegan find that Congress is unable to hold executive agencies accountable for their poor pandemic response performance;
• Bruce Guile looks ahead with principles for rebuilding the global economy;
• Leah Gerber proposes a global body that can help prevent the next disease outbreak;
• Constance Citro looks at the difficulties the pandemic poses for the 2020 Census;
• Norman Fost outlines how hospitals should allocate scarce healthcare resources;
• Merlin Tuttle warns that misguided fears of bats threaten a valuable and important species;
• Jessica Pierce examines the ethics of using dogs for emotional support during social distancing;
• Daniel Sarewitz discovers lessons from the pandemic for science and politics;
• Richard Cooper exposes what the virus has revealed about the US healthcare system; and
• Maimuna S. Majumder describes how coronavirus statistics are calculated.

If you enjoy these pieces, consider subscribing to the print edition of Issues. The Spring 2020 edition will be mailed to subscribers in April.

For the latest information about the situation and how to stay safe, please visit the CDC’s website. The National Academies have collected news and resources, including consensus studies and workshop proceedings, relating to the coronavirus and other infectious diseases here.