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.
Student loan collection company Navient agreed to cancel $1.7 billion in debt and paid more than $140 million in other penalties to settle a lawsuit over abusive lending practices. Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania who led negotiations in the settlement, joined Cheddar to go over the details of the company's predatory lending. "What Navient would do is charge [borrowers] these exorbitantly high rates, even though they knew people couldn't pay them or they would likely default on them," he explained.
The January 6 committee has subpoenaed four tech giants for more information on what they did and didn't do leading up to last year's deadly Capitol insurrection. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit were asked to assist the investigation in August, but the committee says their responses have been 'inadequate.' Craig Timberg, a national technology reporter at the Washington Post, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell for more details about the subpoenas, why this is happening now, and how it might impact social media companies moving forward.
With the Australian Open set to begin on Monday, Novak Djokovic is once again being threatened with deportation from Australia after his visa was briefly reinstated and revoked again over alleged discrepancies. Djokovic’s team will sit for an Immigration hearing on Saturday.
Makena Kelly, politics reporter at The Verge, joins Cheddar News to discuss what's next for net neutrality as Biden's other nominee for the FCC, Gigi Sohn, awaits votes from the committee and Senate.
Jewell Jackson McCabe, chair of the Keep Love Alive Campaign and founder of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and Marvin Owens, chief engagement officer of Impact Shares and former senior director of Economic Development at the NAACP, join Cheddar News to reflect on racial issues still prevalent in America.
Hagar Chemali, Host of 'Oh My World' on Youtube and Former Spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the UN, joined Wake Up With Cheddar to share her expert insight into what the future of diplomacy could look like as the Russia-Ukraine crisis deepens.
Markets opened higher on the first trading day of the new year as investors continue to watch inflation and the rapid spread of the omicron variant in the U.S. Frances Newton Stacy, Optimal Capital Dir. of Strategy/Market Analyst joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
Markets opened lower this morning as investors rounded out a wild 2021. Jay Hatfield, CEO Infrastructure Capital Advisors, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss which sectors and industries to watch in the new year.
Markets opened higher as investors react to positive data on the labor front, with weekly jobless claims falling to 198,000 for the week ending December 25. Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss the market open.
