Coronavirus

Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School spoke about the shift to remote work, which he views as an impermanent arrangement. “My bet is, within a year, things will retreat back to normal,” he said. “It’s hard to change workplace behavior.”

Alison Buttenheim of the School of Nursing spoke about how COVID-19 vaccine discourse may evolve during the next few months. While the public conversation is currently focused on vaccine scarcity, “pretty soon, I would say in four to six weeks, it’s going to be about finding people and persuading people,” she said.

Alison Buttenheim of the School of Nursing spoke about what will be necessary for states to meet President Biden’s vaccination goals. “It really is going to be the start of much more surveillance and analysis being needed to make sure that this was both a fast and a fair rollout of the largest vaccination campaign in human history,” she said.

John Wherry of the Perelman School of Medicine weighed in on reports that COVID-19 vaccines have alleviated symptoms in patients with long COVID. "Right now, we have anecdotes. We'd love it to be true. Let's wait for some real data," says Wherry.

Harald Schmidt of the Perelman School of Medicine co-authored an op-ed calling for equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution. “Three things are central: prioritizing more vulnerable communities; conveying that doing so is good for both public health and equity; and making clear that equity is not the enemy of efficiency,” Schmidt and his co-authors wrote.

Susan Weiss of the Perelman School of Medicine expressed skepticism regarding conspiracy theories that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab. Conspiracy theorists cite one of the virus’ unique features, which makes it more infectious, as evidence of genetic engineering. “I just don’t buy that any human could figure that out,” Weiss said.