Harvard University's Edmond J. Center for Ethics has launched a research initiative to help answer the question looming on most people's minds: when will the coronavirus quarantines end?
Danielle Allen, director of the center, told Cheddar that ending quarantine will require a robust social effort involving potentially thousands of workers and brand new technology solutions.
In the past, best practices for a quarantine order included setting a deadline to protect individual rights and set expectations, but COVID-19 presented too many unknown variables for lawmakers to come out of the gate with a set date for letting people return to normal.
"It was absolutely reasonable in this case that people issued orders with indefinite duration," Allen said. "This disease is so new and has so many distinctive features that it has been very hard for people to completely master its shape, its parameters. We did sort of need that blunt instrument."
But more than a month since the first stay-at-home orders went into effect, there is widespread demand for more information about when to expect state and local quarantine orders to end.
"It's going to take massively scaling up testing, tracing, and supportive isolation," Allen said.
Testing is perhaps the most widely understood post-quarantine measure, but it's also one of the most logistically complicated. Governors are currently making the case that heavy federal support will be necessary to produce the supply of tests needed to cover the entire U.S.
Tracing presents challenges as well, but there are a number of available options to pull it off.
"Contact tracing is one of the oldest and most important tools in the public health toolkit," Allen said.
The old-fashioned way to handle tracing is to do it manually. Individual investigators interview positive cases about where they've been and who they've been in contact with over the last two weeks.
"Can you actually achieve that with people, with person power doing all that contact tracing, or do also you need tech support?" Allen said. "Right now, I think the jury is out."
She pointed to a proposal from Johns Hopkins University recommending that the federal government invest in 100,000 paid or volunteer contact tracers to spread out across the country.
On the technology side, Allen highlighted Bluetooth-based apps that would help you track interactions for rolling two-week periods. That way, if someone comes up positive, the people they contacted could be warned.
Lastly, shifting to supportive isolation would be a step down from current stay-at-home orders.
"[Supportive isolation] is when you're infected and then you stay home, but it means people who aren't infected don't have to stay home," she said.
David Nelson, Chief Strategist at Belpointe, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says that Wednesday's market movement shows a rotation back into the industries that were hit hard in January, but says his eyes are firmly fixed on the January CPI data set to be released Thursday.
Russia is preparing alongside Belarus for reportedly one of the largest joint military exercises ever held. Some analysts are concerned this could be a disguise for a real attack, while the Kremlin contends that the exercise is meant to confront potential "unprecedented security threats." Christian Whiton, a former State Department senior advisor, joined Cheddar News to break down the still tense situation. "While it could of course be a prelude to invasion, it seems like the Biden administration is signaling that if you look at Europeans, the Germans and Macron … who just met with Putin, they seem to be thinking that maybe this is a show of force by Russia intended at political intimidation, not actual invasion," said Whiton.
Truckers in Canada have blockaded the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest border crossing between Canada and the U.S. protesting a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Cheddar News spoke with Samir Kapadia, head of trade practice at the Vogal Group, about how this impacts trade between the two countries.
New York City is not only dealing with the ongoing pandemic, it’s also facing a surge in crime. President Biden recently traveled to New York to meet with the city’s new mayor, Eric Adams, to discuss the rise in crime and gun violence.
The president praised Mayor Adams' crimefighting agenda and unveiled a new federal initiative to curb the flow of illegal weapons from the south. Josefa Velásquez, Senior Reporter for THE CITY, joined Cheddar's Fast Forward to talk about how the mayor is battling this increase in crime in his first weeks in office.
The Democratic governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Oregon say they will lift mask requirements for schools in the coming weeks, reflecting a nationwide shift away from restrictions. Cheddar News speaks with internist Dr. Vivek Cherian whether it's safe to relax the regulation.
Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are set to begin voting to unionize for a second time after workers at the facility in the town of Bessemer overwhelmingly voted against forming a union during an election early last year; but in November, the National Labor Relations Board overturned the vote, upholding a union challenge of the results which argued that Amazon undermined the conditions for a fair election. Another round of ballots will now be mailed out to works at the warehouse for a so-called re-run election. Director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University John Logan and National Field Director for Our Revolution Mike Oles joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
David Daley, author of the book 'Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy,' joins Cheddar News to discuss redistricting battles taking place across the U.S.
