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.
Andrew Cuomo is reportedly planning his comeback. According to the Wall Street Journal, the former New York governor and his aides are considering how to make his first public appearance since he abruptly resigned last August amid sexual harassment allegations. Jake Lahut, politics reporter for Insider, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss Cuomo's potential return to politics.
The pressure is on for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson - after his closest aides handed in their resignations this week.
It comes after a report found that 16 parties had taken place at Downing Street while Covid lockdown protocols were in place in the region. Ari Aramesh, Attorney & National Security/Foreign Policy Analyst joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
President Biden has ordered about 3,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe as Russia refuses to back off its pressure on Ukraine. The deployments to Poland, Germany, and Romania are a show of support to NATO allies concerned about a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is in addition to the 8,500 troops put on high alert. David Tafuri, former Obama campaign foreign policy advisor and former State Department official, joined Cheddar to discuss what this move means for U.S.-Russia relations.
After tennis player Peng Shuai made an explicit sexual assault allegation toward a former Chinese government official, she disappeared from the public eye. Her recent reappearance with the IOC alongside a Chinese Olympic committee official raised eyebrows and renewed concerns for her safety. Asian affairs expert Gordon Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China," joined Wake Up With Cheddar to discuss Peng Shuai's retraction and the various human rights controversies swirling at the Beijing games. "It's clear that the IOC was working with Beijing to make sure that she did not express herself freely," Chang said. "So really this is the IOC being complicit in these mechanisms of control over Peng."
The opening ceremony of the 2022 winter Olympics has kicked off at the Beijing national stadium. 150,000 spectators are in attendance for the games inside the 'closed loop' system separating Olympic personnel from the public. Cheddar News spoke with Brian Cazenueve, Sports Illustrated contributor, to share the highlights you may have missed and much more.
The Biden Administration is set to revise federal rules to address potential security risks from foreign-owned apps, mainly Tiktok. This comes after the White House opted not to pursue a forced shutdown of the Chinese-owned video sharing platform. Under these new rules, federal oversight would be expanded to explicitly include apps that could be used by foreign adversaries to steal or otherwise obtain data. Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Craig Singleton, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Although this week's weather is predicted to be less severe than the 2021 storm, Texans are preparing for the worst - stocking up on supplies and emptying shelves in grocery stores, once again. Some Texans still have not recovered from last year's tragedy, and are heading into the next few weeks with anxiety for what's to come. Leslie Beyer, CEO of the Houston-based energy workforce & technology council, joins Cheddar News to discuss if the Texas grid will fail again.
Student loan debt continues to be a major concern for tens of millions of Americans who collectively owe about $1.7 trillion. Black college students often take on larger amounts of student debt in order to pay for a higher education. In turn, they are more likely to struggle post-graduation with repaying their debt, creating a racial wealth gap divide. Andre Perry, senior fellow at Brookings Institution joined All Hands to help break down the black student debt crisis.
After two NYPD officers were killed with an illegal gun, President Biden made a trip to New York City to speak on the issue of gun violence fed by the "iron pipeline" of illegal firearms that make their way from the South to the Big Apple. Kris Brown, the president of the gun violence prevention organization Brady United, joined Cheddar to discuss what this visit from the president could mean for the future of gun laws in America. "He's asked Congress to pass things like expanding the Brady background check system, but with the filibuster a barrier to so much action right now in the Congress, he's looking at solutions that involve funding at the federal level and really involve enforcement."
