The deadly building collapse in South Florida is a searing reminder that fragile infrastructure can have tragic public health consequences.
What the building collapse in Surfside, FL says about our nation’s infrastructure and our public health
How coronavirus has created a new split in American life
“People are seeing this as a personal decision, and it’s based on our own personal risk tolerance,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and a professor of public health and pediatrics at Columbia University. “That’s not public health, because in public health, your risk should not be my risk.”
Could The Polio Vaccine Curb The Coronavirus Pandemic?
As a physician, my task is to keep people safe and as healthy as possible. Medicines, including vaccines, play a big role in this undertaking. However, almost equally dangerous as viral spread is the spread of false hope. To pacify expectations, I often turn to my public health colleague, Irwin Redlener, MD, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University: “Suggestions that oral polio vaccine may have a role in temporarily preventing Covid-19 are provocative, but not really supported by the kind of evidence that would make many of us optimistic.” Dr. Redlener was surprised by Dr. Fauci’s public support of OPV. “It’s far too early to suggest that OPV is some kind of miraculous, low-cost preventive measure,” added the professor of pediatrics.
A COVID-19 Surge in Young People May Sabotage Reopening
Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and an expert on U.S. readiness for pandemics, called it a “delusion of normalcy” to see gradual reopenings as an indication that any community—from New York to Washington—is out of the woods. But to be fair, said Redlener, “risky behavior in younger people is always a public health issue.”
That gamble is made worse by the recent reports that have shown, for children under 18, the potentially fatal multisystem inflammatory syndrome related to COVID-19.
Pro-Trump donors in huge cash drive to boost doctors pushing states to reopen
“The fact that these organizations have found doctors who are willing to support a rightwing agenda designed to help Donald Trump against all scientific evidence and appropriate public health practices is shameful,” said Irwin Redlener, a professor of public health at Columbia University.
Critics notwithstanding, Brandon said the coalition recently spent $50,000 for videos on Facebook, Hulu and Twitter targeting independents and Republicans with the message that Covid-19 mostly hits the elderly to minimize risks for others.
Disaster season is upon us. The pandemic changes everything.
Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician, directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Earth Institute at Columbia University; he is also a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and president emeritus of Children’s Health Fund.
It is already clear that 2020 be a year for the history books. The world has lurched from one mega-disaster to the next, witnessing devastating wildfires in Australia, plagues of locusts across East Africa and South Asia, and a pandemic that has crippled the global economy.
Aftershock: If coronavirus swells in a second wave later this year, will the nation be ready?
A Candidate in Isolation: Inside Joe Biden’s Cloistered Campaign
The campaign has consulted physicians and health experts about safeguarding Mr. Biden, who at 77 falls squarely into a high-risk group for the coronavirus. Irwin Redlener, a clinical professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said he had spoken with the campaign about health precautions, including how to handle the possibility that members of Mr. Biden’s traveling staff had been exposed.
“In terms of the safety of the staff, the candidate, what did they need to know?” said Dr. Redlener, who previously served on Mr. Biden’s public health advisory committee.
The COVID-19 Death Undercount Is Scarier Than You Think
As the number of coronavirus deaths across the U.S. passed 40,000, there were emerging signs of hope: hospitalization rates were decreasing, daily death tolls were beginning to flatten, and transmission rates were seeming to slow.
But as mayors and governors, with the president’s blusterous urging, begin easing restrictions and other emergency public health measures—sending Floridians back to packed beaches this weekend, for instance—we still need a better understanding of the true number of COVID-19 deaths. Not just because having a transparent and accurate death count is critical (it is), but because it can illuminate unknown hot spots and provide critical insight into the real scope of this pandemic—and how to avoid new disaster amid the urge to resume normal life.
Governors should ignore Trump's advice until widespread testing and effective contact tracing are ready
While acknowledging (finally) that re-opening the economy and lifting some of the social distancing restrictions is not really his decision, President Donald Trump gave US governors a clear message on Thursday: time to start getting the country back to normal within the next couple of weeks.
Unfortunately, we are far from being able to do so without risking a major resurgence of Covid-19.
Even if we assume that sometime this summer — maybe June, perhaps as late as August — the first wave of Covid-19 will have tapered down, the world will likely see a second wave of the deadly virus in the fall or winter, perhaps extending into the early months of 2021.