Penn Integrates Knowledge Professors

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel and Scott Moore of the School of Arts & Sciences wrote about why many highly infectious diseases appear to originate in China. “First, rapid development in highly biodiverse regions brings more people into contact with exotic animals and the viruses that lurk within them,” they wrote. “Second, ever-more-extensive transport, trade and communications links continue to shorten the distances between a potential pandemic hot spot and virtually any other point on the globe.”

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel said recent reports that more people may have already had the coronavirus “doesn’t make any of the goals you want to reach easier.”

PIK Professor Jonathan Moreno and Stephen N. Xenakis of the Law School wrote about health care workers facing burnout and moral injury while working through the pandemic. “The health care workers fighting the ‘war on the virus’ deserve unqualified and public acknowledgment for their selfless service,” they wrote. “It is especially tough for them, and they should not be forgotten.”

School of Nursing Dean Antonia Villarruel and PIK Professor George Demiris commented on Penn’s free online trainings for health care providers. “During the COVID-19 crisis, significant barriers to the wide adoption of telehealth have been lifted,” said Demiris. “Many providers are now eager to do telehealth. This is a modality that we’ll be using for a long time.”

In an op-ed, Carmen E. Guerra of the Perelman School of Medicine and PIK Professor Karen Glanz wrote, “This pandemic has shined a bright light on the social and health disparities that affect black individuals in non-pandemic times. In the time of COVID, we need to address these disparities with even more urgency.”

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel weighed in on when the U.S. can resume more normal activities. “Restarting the economy has to be done in stages, and it does have to start with more physical distancing at a work site that allows people who are at lower risk to come back,” he said.

PIK Professor Philip Tetlock was cited for his research on superforecasters.

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel commented on Florida’s decision to exempt religious services from the stay-at-home order. “It’s unacceptable,” he said. “I’m feeling deprived not being able to go to synagogue. It really bothers me. But it’s really important.”

PIK Professor Jonathan Moreno said it was inappropriate for medical manufacturing companies to have been dwelling on matters of liability back in early March, as the pandemic was looming. “You didn’t have to be a fancy epidemiologist or Dr. [Anthony S.] Fauci to know what was coming,” he said.

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel and Steven Joffe of the Perelman School of Medicine recommended that the U.S. create a COVID-19 Recovery Corps of people who have survived the infection and become immune. These people could be employed as hospital support staff, educators, food delivery workers, and more.