Thoughts on the evolution of the pandemic

A Message from Dean Newschaffer

Today, I will keep my epidemiologist’s hat on and share with you my thoughts on the evolution of the pandemic. The latest widely-circulated model based on projections are now a week old and, with data accumulating here in the US, there is no doubt that the picture will evolve. However, despite the data lag, and the reliance of any projection on a range of assumptions, the general story suggested by that work will probably hold: as a society we will need to maintain dramatic changes in social distancing for months, not weeks, in order to preserve the life-saving capacity in our health care system (recent data on the consequences of infection coming from Italy confirm dramatic mortality increases with age and the presence of comorbid disease). Our ability to emerge safely from these lifestyle changes sooner rather than later will depend largely on increased availability of testing (both for active infection and potential post-exposure immunity) in order to provide information that will guide such strategies. Treatment breakthroughs and rapid vaccine development are lower probability events less likely to influence our near-term ability to revert back to some semblance of normalcy.

We are making changes in our work and personal lives to protect ourselves, our families, our friends – but we also take individual action because their collective power can protect an entire population. We are now living this powerful prevention concept that underlies much of our teaching and research at HHD. As we do this, we also need to be very much aware that adverse consequences of these social changes, like the effects of the virus, will not distribute evenly. We need to understand these disparities and to assist those most in need. Recent progress on Capitol Hill regarding an economic stimulus bill is encouraging but, on top of this, I hope those of us that can will step up and provide some extra help – a few options include supporting the State College Food Bank, area Red Cross Blood Drives, or the Penn State Student Care and Advocacy Emergency Fund.

In closing, I want to mention that the HHD scientific community is also mobilizing to try to close key pandemic-related knowledge gaps in our college’s areas of expertise. For example, work is already underway to better understand how the travel and tourism industry should be reacting in these extraordinarily challenging times, to track state-level variability in public policy responses to the outbreak, and to explore the effects our lived-experience is having on our state of mind and well-being. We hope to share more about these, and other, important HHD contributions in future editions of the Digest.