CIDRAP: CDC revamps wastewater COVID data reporting. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently unveiled new wastewater data tracking dashboard to make it easier to track local and national trends, even by variant. Wastewater tracking is one of the early indicators health officials use to gauge the activity of SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses.”
University of Massachusetts Amherst: UMass Amherst Libraries Announce Jerry Russo Oral History Collection. “In March of 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, filmmaker and photographer Jerry Russo began working on an oral history project to interview visual artists and creatives all over the world. During the subsequent two years, he completed 249 interviews via Zoom. Russo donated the oral histories to the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center (SCUA), for which social change and the arts are major collecting focuses; more than 100 of the interviews are now available in SCUA’s digital repository, Credo.”
University of Nebraska Medical Center: Online resource offers child-friendly lesson on COVID-19. “Parents and guardians looking to find a child-friendly yet scientifically accurate way of speaking to kids about COVID-19 and other communicable diseases can turn to a new resource from UNMC, in partnership with the ‘Youth in Agriculture’ education program. A user-friendly online COVID-19 Training mini-course for kids now is available via phone, tablet or desktop computer.”
Mother Jones: When You’re Young, Lonely, and Chronically Ill, Online Communities Offer a Lifeline. “After becoming chronically ill, some young people turn to the internet to build community and learn more about their condition and symptoms. Others socialize with informal groups based on a common interest—gaming on Twitch, joining a virtual language practice group, talking about a favorite show on Discord—which can accommodate their varying abilities, which can change day to day and even hour to hour.”
Route Fifty: ‘Tripledemic’ dashboards set health agencies up for flu season. “COVID, influenza and RSV—oh my! Fall and winter bring an increase in respiratory illnesses, so state health departments are revamping their COVID dashboards for enhanced insights into their communities’ health.”
News18: India’s Biggest Data Leak So Far? Covid-19 Test Info of 81.5Cr Citizens With ICMR Up for Sale | Exclusive. “In what is suspected to be the biggest data leak case in the country so far, details of 81.5 crore Indians with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) are on sale. Given the grave nature of the incident, India’s premier agency Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is likely to probe the matter once ICMR files a complaint.”
Ars Technica: Fall COVID shot uptake is an “abysmal” 7%; wastewater testing impaired. “More than a month since US health officials recommended updated COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans, only 7.1 percent of US adults have rolled up their sleeves for the shot and just 2.1 percent of children have been immunized. The uptake is sluggish at best, and the current rates were dubbed ‘abysmal’ Thursday by one immunization adviser for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
The Art Newspaper: Pandemic-fueled shift from in-person to virtual art activities may be permanent, two US surveys suggest. “A comprehensive statistical report of the 2022 SPPA data will be released next year, although a summarised report released today (18 October)—which aims to examine its results in light of the effects of the 2020 pandemic outbreak—reveals that the impact of the Covid-19 era made Americans increasingly inclined to consume art through their screens rather than in-person, even after government restrictions were lifted.”
Cornell University: Online learning widens gap for minority students. “After the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as institutions had adapted to online learning, students belonging to underrepresented ethnic minority groups struggled to bounce back academically as compared with their non-minority classmates.”
Dartmouth University: K-Pop Fans Helped COVID-19 Public Health Messaging Go Viral. “When health officials and agencies such as Tedros leveraged entertainment groups like ‘#BTS’ into their public health messages on COVID-19, this generated 111 times more virality or retweets, according to a new Dartmouth-led study.”
North Carolina State University: State COVID-19 Websites Fail to Meet Accessibility Standards. “Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. states and territories all created websites designed to share information with the public about the disease, vaccinations and related public health recommendations. However, a new study finds these sites do not meet accessibility standards – meaning that some members of the public, such as individuals who are blind or visually impaired, are not able to access all of the relevant information on the sites.”
Talking Points Memo: EXCLUSIVE: 5th Circuit’s Craven Ruling In Biden Social Media Case Was A ‘Clerical Error’. “The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this morning abruptly withdrew Monday’s order giving red states a chance for an even bigger win in a case that has blocked much of the Biden administration from flagging misinformation on social media sites. The 5th Circuit’s Clerk of Court told TPM that the original order was a ‘clerical error.’”
Harvard Gazette: How federal missteps opened door to COVID misinformation. “Federal agencies helped set the stage for a wave of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories about its origins through early missteps in messaging about the virus and control measures, stumbles that fueled public distrust and hampered government efforts, according to New York Times health and science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli. For instance, public health agencies failed to speak clearly and in a timely fashion about how the virus could spread indoors, Mandavilli said in a talk sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication on Wednesday afternoon.”
Reuters: US Supreme Court Extends Pause on Order Curbing Biden Social Media Contacts . “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday extended a temporary block on an order restricting the ability of President Joe Biden’s administration to encourage social media companies to remove content it deemed misinformation about COVID-19 and other matters of public concern.”
New Jersey Institute of Technology: Data Science Techniques Help Evaluate COVID’s Impact on Mental Health. “In case of another pandemic, authorities might only have a 28-day window to connect vulnerable populations to mental health providers before it’s too late to prevent long-term concerns, according to new research assisted by a data science expert at New Jersey Institute of Technology.”
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