Digital Commons Network^™

Utility Of Repeat Testing For Covid-19: Laboratory Stewardship When The Stakes Are High, Lindsey M. Rearigh, Angela L. Hewlett, Paul D. Fey, M. Jana Broadhurst, David Brett-Major, Mark Rupp, Trevor Van Schooneveld

Journal Articles: Epidemiology

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to circulate, testing strategies are of the utmost importance. Given national shortages of testing supplies, personal protective equipment, and other hospital resources, diagnostic stewardship is necessary to aid in resource management. We report the low utility of serial testing in a low-prevalence setting.

Covid-19 Vaccine Acceptance: We Need To Start Now, Krutika Kuppalli, David Brett-Major, Tara C. Smith

Journal Articles: Epidemiology

In this perspective, we discuss the importance of developing a vaccine to help curb transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The question remains: Once a safe and effective vaccine is developed, will the public be willing to get it? We present information from one of the first tracking polls to assess public attitudes and perceptions toward a possible coronavirus disease 2019 vaccine that suggests public hesitancy over a potential vaccine, concern regarding accelerating clinical trials, and unease over the vaccine approval process. Public health experts, government officials, advocates, and others in the scientific community should respect the signals …

The Relationship Between Social Vulnerability And Covid-19 Incidence Among Louisiana Census Tracts, Erin N. Biggs, Patrick M. Maloney, Ariane L. Rung, Edward S. Peters, William T. Robinson

Journal Articles: Epidemiology

Objective: To examine the association between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and COVID-19 incidence among Louisiana census tracts. Methods: An ecological study comparing the CDC SVI and census tract-level COVID-19 case counts was conducted. Choropleth maps were used to identify census tracts with high levels of both social vulnerability and COVID-19 incidence. Negative binomial regression with random intercepts was used to compare the relationship between overall CDC SVI percentile and its four sub-themes and COVID-19 incidence, adjusting for population density. Results: In a crude stratified analysis, all four CDC SVI sub-themes were significantly …

Characteristics Of Sars-Cov-2 Transmission Among Meat Processing Workers In Nebraska, Usa, And Effectiveness Of Risk Mitigation Measures, Jocelyn J. Herstein, Abraham Degarege, Derry Stover, Christopher Austin, Michelle M. Schwedhelm, James V. Lawler, John Lowe, Athena K. Ramos, Matthew Donahue

Journal Articles: Epidemiology

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has severely impacted the meat processing industry in the United States. We sought to detail demographics and outcomes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infections among workers in Nebraska meat processing facilities and determine the effects of initiating universal mask policies and installing physical barriers at 13 meat processing facilities. During April 1-July 31, 2020, COVID-19 was diagnosed in 5,002 Nebraska meat processing workers (attack rate 19%). After initiating both universal masking and physical barrier interventions, 8/13 facilities showed a statistically significant reduction in COVID-19 incidence inspecifically, high attack rates among meat processing industry …

La Voz Winter 2021, El Instituto: Institute Of Latina/O, Caribbean, And Latin American Studies

La Voz

In this issue you will find:

• MA Student Researches Takeover in Providence Schools
• Indigenous Language Survival in Colombian Amazon
• "Rise of the Latinx Vote"
• La Colectiva Virtual Conversation
• Mark Healey Wins SCHARP Award

Reducing Objectification Could Tackle Stigma In The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From China, Youli Chen, Jiahui Jin, Xiangyang Zhang, Qi Zhang, Weizhen Dong, Chun Chen

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Stigmatization associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is expected to be a complex issue and to extend into the later phases of the pandemic, which impairs social cohesion and relevant individuals' well-being. Identifying contributing factors and learning their roles in the stigmatization process may help tackle the problem. This study quantitatively assessed the severity of stigmatization against three different groups of people: people from major COVID-19 outbreak sites, those who had been quarantined, and healthcare workers; explored the factors associated with stigmatization within the frameworks of self-categorization theory and core social motives; and proposed solutions to resolve stigma. The …

Health Information Beyond Pandemic Emergencies: Privacy For Social Justice, Leslie Francis

American University Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has forcefully revealed the critical importance of timely information to identify emerging infections, discern patterns of disease, and stop disease spread. Information about individuals both as patients, and as ordinary people in the world is necessary for each of these tasks. Yet the implications for information use and efforts to achieve social justice are significant.

This Article first surveys information needs as revealed by the pandemic. It then articulates different normative approaches to privacy and confidentiality to develop two implications for privacy and justice: that information gleaned in clinical care and information possessed by public health should …

National Legal Paradigms For Public Health Emergency Responses, James G. Hodge Jr.

American University Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed significant weaknesses of the U.S. federalist system in controlling major infectious disease threats. At the root of American failures to adequately respond is a battle over public health primacy in emergency preparedness and response. Which level of government—federal or state—should actually “call the shots” to quell national emergencies? Constitutional principles of cooperative federalism suggest both levels of government are responsible. Yet real-time applications of these principles, coupled with dubious national leadership, contributed to horrific public health outcomes across America. No one seeks a repeat performance of U.S. COVID-19 response efforts to forthcoming major health threats. …

Big Pharma, Big Problems: Covid-19 Heightens Patent-Antitrust Tension Caused By Reverse Payments, Hannah M. Lasting

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of COVID-19, pharmaceutical companies rushed to produce vaccinations and continue to work on developing treatments, while the tension caused by reverse payments intensifies between patent and antitrust law. Lawmakers must address this tension, and the current pandemic should serve as a catalyst to prompt reform at the legislative level. By amending the Hatch-Waxman Act, lawmakers can ease the increasing strain between patent and antitrust policy concerns. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to resolve this tension in its landmark decision, F.T.C. v. Actavis, but the tension remains as lower courts struggle to produce a uniform standard …

Perceptions Of Covid-19, Information Seeking Behavior, And Political Orientation, Bailey Dodd, Sean Rife

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

COVID-19 was declared an international pandemic in March 2020 and infected millions of people globally in less than six months. Research suggests that a large amount of both accurate and misinformation exists on the pandemic, and it would be expected that an individual’s political orientation would influence their perception of the virus and the information that they endorse. Based on past research, it would be expected that both liberals and conservatives would be equally concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic and endorse similar measures. However, Republicans downplayed the pandemic and were more likely to consider it a hoax, while Democrats exaggerated …

Exploring Health And Risk Information Seeking In The Context Of Covid-19: Testing The Comprehensive Model Of Information Seeking And Risk Information Seeking And Processing Model As Competing Explanatory Models, Xianlin Jin

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Facing a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the public feels uncertainty and fear. To cope with the pandemic and reduce uncertainty, the public needs accurate and prompt information. By theoretically and empirically comparing the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (CMIS) and the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP), this dissertation aims to unpack the core mechanism of health and risk information seeking. Built on the two models, the author proposed an Integrated Model and explored which variables are the significant predictors of health and risk information seeking.

The author recruited 729 adult participants and analyzed 394 completed …

Tripbam: Creating Digital Value During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Gabriele Piccoli, Federico Pigni, Barbara Wixom, Joaquin Rodriguez

Faculty Publications

TRIPBAM pioneered automated clustered rate monitoring in the hotel industry. As the technology startup prepared for a successful exit that would reward founders, employees, and investors for their success, the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic hit. The case chronicles TRIPBAM’s leadership’s fast reaction and discusses the strategic initiatives the firm put in place to set itself up for a return to growth after the crisis.

What Am I?": Navigating Running Identity During Covid-19, Joshua Yeager

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempted to answer how collegiate student-athlete runners navigated their running identity through the COVID-19 pandemic. This international health crisis served as an identity threat to the participants in this study as it cancelled outdoor track and field season in the spring of 2020. The main goal was to investigate how student-athlete runners navigated their athletic identity during COVID-19 and the social and psychological costs associated with said navigation. Utilizing in-depth semi-structured interviews, I collected data from five male and five female collegiate distance runners, from the same university. With grounded theory approach and identity theory as a theoretical …

The Aoc In The Age Of Covid - Pandemic Preparedness Planning In The Federal Courts, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis for American society—and the federal courts were not exempt. Court facilities came to a grinding halt, cases were postponed, and judiciary employees adopted work-from-home practices. Having court operations impacted by a pandemic was not a new phenomenon, but the size, scope, and technological lift of the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly unique.

Against this background, this Article examines the history and future of pandemic preparedness planning in the federal court system and seeks to capture some of the lessons learned from initial federal court transitions to pandemic operations in 2020. The Article begins by …

The End Of The Golden Age Of American Legal Education: My Year As Interim Dean, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

This article is part of the story of my year as interim dean. The year began without a sign of trouble anywhere on the horizon and ended with an empty campus, cancellation of traditional law school events, face masks and social distancing requirements, uncertainty about whether new law graduates would be able to take the bar exam, and furloughs and layoffs of law school personnel. As my year drew to a close, dozens of American law school deans were meeting online every Friday to share information about how to cope with the challenges of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the uncertainties …

The Citation Of Unpublished Cases In The Wake Of Covid-19, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

California's Rules of Court prohibit the citation of unpublished state court opinions. Courts and litigants, however, may still cite unpublished federal opinions and rulings and unpublished opinions from other states' courts. This may result in problems, such as limiting courts' and parties' authorities to a skewed sample set, and the covert importation of inapplicable, stricter federal court pleading standards in state court cases. COVID-19 was a stress-test that brought the problems with California's citation rules into focus. The pandemic led to a flood of claims for pandemic-related business interruptions by insured business owners against their insurance companies. While state courts …

Covid-19 And Public Accommodations Under The Americans With Disabilities Act: Getting Americans Safely Back To Restaurants, Theaters, Gyms, And “Normal”, Frank Griffin

Saint Louis University Law Journal

COVID-19 permanently changed the way places of public accommodation like restaurants, theaters, medical facilities, arenas, gyms, and many other proprietors of mainstream American activities must operate in order to accommodate people with newly-defined, COVID-19-related disabilities under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The required modifications will affect all patrons and employees of these establishments. Under the ADA, places of public accommodation are barred from discriminating against people with disabilities in the full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, and facilities. Infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV have been categorized as disabilities under the ADA, and COVID-19 is …

Covid-19 And Law Teaching: Guidance On Developing An Asynchronous Online Course For Law Students, Yvonne M. Dutton, Seema Mohapatra

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Most law schools suspended their live classroom teaching in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and quickly transitioned to online programming. Although professors can be commended for rapidly adapting to an emergency situation, some commentators have nevertheless suggested that the emergency online product delivered to students was substandard. Based on our own experiences in designing and delivering online courses, we caution against embracing a broad-reaching, negative conclusion about the efficacy of online education. Indeed, much of this emergency online programming would be more properly defined as “emergency remote teaching,” as opposed to “online education.” Online education requires professors to …

Is Economic Nationalism In Corporate Governance Always A Threat?, Martin Gelter

Faculty Scholarship

During the past decades, corporate law and corporate governance debates have generally been skeptical of elements of economic ‘Nationalism’ or ‘protectionism.’ Arguably, globalization and convergence in corporate governance have resulted in a reduction of protectionist policies. However, recently COVID-19 has resulted in nationalist and protectionist conduct in economic policy across jurisdictions. Contrary to the predominant view, this paper argues that corporate governance policies intended to serve a particular country’s interest may at times be justified. First, globalization and convergence in corporate governance are likely to have beneficial effects only when outside investors pursue financial rather than political goals. Protectionist policies …

Consumer Perceptions Of The Right To Repair, Aaron Perzanowski

Indiana Law Journal

Part I of this Article details the strategies upon which device makers rely to frustrate repair. Part II considers legislative interventions intended to push back on existing barriers to repair, with a particular focus on the set of bills introduced in state legislatures across the United States. Part III describes the results of a survey of more than 800 U.S. consumers, focusing on their expectations of and experiences with the repair of electronic devices. The legal and policy implications of those results are discussed in Part IV.

Tort Immunity In The Pandemic, Betsy J. Grey, Samantha Orwoll

Indiana Law Journal

The Covid-19 pandemic set off a public health emergency that quickly brought doctors and other health care providers to the front line, while shuttering businesses throughout the United States. In response to the emergency, the federal and state governments rapidly created broad protections from tort liability for health care providers. To encourage businesses to reopen, some states have also provided liability protection for businesses from personal injury suits brought by patrons and employees. Congress is considering similar protections for businesses as it contemplates further aid packages. Some industries, like nursing homes and universities, are lobbying for specific immunity. This Essay …

Learning Organization In A Time Of Crisis: A Case Study Of Logistics And Freight, Llc And Covid-19, Matt Meador

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The term learning organization (LO) is a widely used conversation piece in corporate cultures, particularly among managing practitioners and leaders in talent management, learning and development, and leadership development (Marquardt, Berger, & Loan, 2004). Given the market upheaval due to COVID-19, this work incorporates current literature on a learning organization's dimensions, known as characteristics, through a qualitative approach. This investigation aims to capture the experiences of managing practitioners as the logistics community revisits learning strategies due to the extremely rapid change of COVID-19 (Ferguson et al., 2020; Marquardt, Berger, & Loan, 2004). Marsick and Watkins dimensions of a learning organization …

Quantification Of Sepsis Model Alerts In 24 Us Hospitals Before And During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Andrew Wong, Jie Cao, Patrick G. Lyons, Sayon Dutta, Vincent J. Major, Erkin Ötles, Karandeep Singh

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of A Clinical Decision Support Strategy To Increase Seasonal Influenza Vaccination Among Hospitalized Children Before Inpatient Discharge, Evan W. Orenstein, Omar Elsayed-Ali, Swaminathan Kandaswamy, Erin Masterson, Reena Blanco, Pareen Shah, Patricia Lantis, Amy Kolwaite, Thomas E. Dawson, Edwin Ray, Christy Bryant, Srikant Iyer, Andi L. Shane, Stephanie Jernigan

Open Access Publications

Importance: Hospitalized children are at increased risk of influenza-related complications, yet influenza vaccine coverage remains low among this group. Evidence-based strategies about vaccination of vulnerable children during all health care visits are especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: To design and evaluate a clinical decision support (CDS) strategy to increase the proportion of eligible hospitalized children who receive a seasonal influenza vaccine prior to inpatient discharge.

Design, Setting, and Participants: This quality improvement study was conducted among children eligible for the seasonal influenza vaccine who were hospitalized in a tertiary pediatric health system providing care to more than half …

A Critical Analysis Of How Large Irish Architectural Practices Responded To Initial Covid-19 Restrictions And The Affect Implementing Remote Working Had On Bim Processes, Policies, And People, Bim Tudublin, John Mcenroy

Capstone Reports

The unprecedent events which transpired in the 88-day period from the 31st of December 2019 to the 27th of March 2020 have changed the world in which we live and work. The outbreak of Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) and the ensuing pandemic which has evolved are descripted as one in a hundred-year events. This paper researched and critically analyses the operations which large Irish Architecture firms initiated during this period in order to facilitate the ability of its employees working from a remote location, focusing on how the People, Processes and Policies of BIM (3 Ps of BIM); adapted to …

Pandemic, Plague, Pestilence And The Tropics: Critical Inquiries From Arts, Humanities And Social Sciences, Anita Lundberg, Kalala J. Ngalamulume, Jean Segata, Arbaayah Ali Termizi, Chrystopher J. Spicer

History Faculty Research and Scholarship

The Tropics have long been associated with exotic diseases and epidemics. This historical imaginary arose with Aristotle’s notion of the tropics as the ‘torrid zone’, a geographical region virtually uninhabitable to temperate peoples due to the hostility of its climate, and persisted in colonial imaginaries of the tropics as pestilential latitudes requiring slave labour. The tropical sites of colonialism gave rise to urgent studies of tropical diseases which lead to (racialised) changes in urban planning. The Tropics as a region of pandemic, plague and pestilence has been challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel coronavirus did not (simply) originate in …

Covid-19 And The Effects On World's Most Admired Companies, Justin P. Mooney

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Just Plain Dumb?: How Digital Contact Tracing Apps Could’Ve Worked Better (And Why They Never Got The Chance), Brian E. Ray

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This essay describes how the privacy debate that emerged over digital contact tracing and Google’s and Apple’s decisions to strictly limit apps permitted to use their platforms resulted in undercutting their potential usefulness as a tool to combat the pandemic while still failing to engender trust in these tools as intended.

Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Covid-19 Policy Intervention At The State And National Level, James L. Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This study analyzes the benefits of statewide policy intervention in reducing COVID-19 deaths and the costs of that intervention in lost jobs and lower real gross state product (RGSP). Policy interventions are measured by the Oxford stringency index which places a daily numerical value on the level of a state’s policy intervention.

Empirical evidence is provided that shows policy interventions have reduced COVID-19 deaths by 375,000 lives in 2020. On the cost side, it was found that policy intervention resulted in a loss of 7.3 million jobs and a decline of $410 billion in RGSP.

The study concludes by integrating …

Imaging Patterns Of Encephalopathy In Patients With Covid-19, Kumail Khandwala, Fatima Mubarak, Nadeem Ahmad

Department of Radiology

The aim of this retrospective observational study was to describe the neuroimaging manifestations of patients with COVID-19. This study was conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan from March to July 2020. COVID-19 patients with neurological symptoms and positive neuroimaging were included after confirmation of COVID-19 by polymerase chain reaction test (PCR). In the 12 included patients, seizures and altered mentation were predominant neurological manifestations. Three cases had acute watershed infarcts (25%), two cases had posterior cerebral artery territorial infarcts (16.7%), two cases had periventricular corona radiata infarcts (16.7%), three cases had hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (25%), two cases had …