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CUNY SPH Weekly COVID-19 Survey Update Week 6

CUNY SPH Weekly COVID-19 Survey Update Week 6

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New Yorkers say: Don’t re-open the economy before June

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Credit: CUNY SPH

Nearly half (49%) of New York City residents believe we should wait until after June 1st to reopen all non-essential businesses, while 19% said openings should take place between May 16-31. These findings are part of the sixth weekly city and statewide tracking survey from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH), conducted April 17-19.

Three in five (60%) New Yorkers say the epidemic has made them feel more connected to fellow New Yorkers, and a similar number (61%) reported a feeling of solidarity with all Americans nationwide.

“The New Yorkers we surveyed have been badly buffeted by the coronavirus. This experience appears to have made them more cautious than some in other parts of our country,” said CUNY SPH Dean Ayman El-Mohandes. “Nonetheless, New Yorkers feel a strong sense of solidarity with all Americans.”

Consistent with their concerns about re-opening the economy, almost two thirds (66%) of employed New Yorkers expressed concern about returning to their jobs. Over a quarter of workers (28%) want COVID-19 tests taken before returning to work, another 27% said they would not return to work because of fear of getting sick or getting a family member sick. Respondents cited childcare as an important barrier to returning to work: 11% reported they will need to stay home to care for a child when business resumes. Overall, about a fourth (24%) report having a student in grades K-12 at home now, and a majority (51%) said there would be no parent in the household when non-essential businesses re-open.

Household job loss has continued to rise, from 29% in week two to 37% in week six, accompanied by a substantial shift in ethnic distribution. Between weeks two and six, household job loss among African Americans doubled (17% to 35%). Among Asian Americans there was also a marked increase (25% to 40%), and for whites there was an increase from 24% to 32%. The hardest hit group, Latinx/Hispanics, stayed relatively steady, increasing from 42% to 44%.

Respondents’ perception of their risk of getting sick with the virus has plateaued over the last three weeks, with just more than half (53%) believing that they have a high chance of becoming ill.

Notably, people who reported living in larger households (five or more persons) reported significantly higher numbers of people at home with symptoms associated with the viral infection at 34%, compared to 13% with households of three or four people and 8% of households with one or two people.

New Yorkers continue to exhibit high risk for mental health challenges, with 40% of residents reporting feeling anxious and 32% feeling depressed more than half the time in the past two weeks. Reports of social isolation are unchanged from weeks three and four, with 43% reporting not feeling socially connected at all. Women are more likely than men to report anxiety (45% vs 34%) while levels of depression are similar across gender.

Causing the most distress for New York residents were fears about family and loved ones getting sick or dying (44%). Seventeen percent (17%) are most anxious about their own health, followed by feeling unsafe (13%), remaining isolated from others (12%), losing their job (9%), and not having enough food (4%).

At week six, Asians report the highest rates of hopelessness (75% vs. 49% to 66% among other groups) and depression risk (42% vs 30-32%), although they report the lowest rates of anxiety symptoms (34% vs 40- 41%). For Asian Americans feeling unsafe is the most stressful factor contributing to their mental health symptoms, while all other groups report that the fear of loved ones getting sick is the top stressor. Like Latinx/Hispanics (65%), Asians report higher perceived risk of getting sick with COVID-19 (62%) compared with 42% for African Americans and 48% for whites.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of New Yorkers reported consuming alcohol while 26% report using marijuana. For New Yorkers who drink, nearly half report that their drinking remains the same (43%), 31% report less than usual, and 25% report more. A similar pattern was found for marijuana use, with 43% using about the same amount, but a higher percentage using more than usual (31%), and 26% using less than usual. Men are more likely to report an increase in drinking (62% vs 47%) and marijuana use (33% vs. 20%) compared with women.

“We are seeing persistent elevated mental health challenges and an increase in depression risk for Asian Americans, suggesting changing social, economic patterns across ethnicities as the pandemic unfolds,” said Dr. Victoria Ngo, Associate Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences and Director of the Center for Innovation in Mental Health at CUNY SPH.

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The complete survey results and related commentary can be found at https://sph.cuny.edu/research/covid-19-tracking-survey/week-6 and JHC Impact, an initiative of the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives.

Survey methodology:

The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) survey was conducted by Emerson College Polling from April 17-19, 2020 (week 6). This tracking effort started March 13-15 (week 1) and continued with questions fielded March 20-22 (week 2) and March 27-29 (week 3), April 3-5, 2020 (week 4), April 10-12, 2020 (week 5).

The sample for the NY Statewide and New York City results were both, n=1,000, with a Credibility Interval (CI) similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE) of +/- 3 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by gender, age, ethnicity, education and region based on the 2018 1-year American Community Survey model. It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, ethnicity and region carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced. In the New York City results, data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines (n=495), SMS-to-online (n=263) and an online panel provided by MTurk and Survey Monkey (n=242). In the Statewide results, data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines (n=513), SMS-to-online (n=261) and an online panel provided by MTurk and Survey Monkey (n=225).

In the statewide survey regions were broken out into the following:

Region 1: Long Island 14.7% (USC1-4), Shirley, Seaford, Glen Cove, Garden City

Region 2: NYC 45.3% (USC 5-16) Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, Bronx

Region 3: Upstate 40% (USC 17-27): Albany, Harrison, Carmel, Rhinebeck, Amsterdam, Schuylerville, Utica, Corning, Irondequoit, Buffalo, Rochester

The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) is committed to teaching, research, and service that creates a healthier New York City and helps promote equitable, efficient, and evidence-based solutions to pressing health problems facing cities around the world.

Media Contact
Barbara Aaron
barbara.aaron@sph.cuny.edu

Original Source

https://sph.cuny.edu/research/covid-19-tracking-survey/week-6

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Moderna turns the spotlight on long Covid with new initiatives

Moderna’s latest Covid effort addresses the often-overlooked chronic condition of long Covid — and encourages vaccination to reduce risks. A digital…

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Moderna’s latest Covid effort addresses the often-overlooked chronic condition of long Covid — and encourages vaccination to reduce risks. A digital campaign debuted Friday along with a co-sponsored event in Detroit offering free CT scans, which will also be used in ongoing long Covid research.

In a new video, a young woman describes her three-year battle with long Covid, which includes losing her job, coping with multiple debilitating symptoms and dealing with the negative effects on her family. She ends by saying, “The only way to prevent long Covid is to not get Covid” along with an on-screen message about where to find Covid-19 vaccines through the vaccines.gov website.

Kate Cronin

“Last season we saw people would get a flu shot, but they didn’t always get a Covid shot,” said Moderna’s Chief Brand Officer Kate Cronin. “People should get their flu shot, but they should also get their Covid shot. There’s no risk of long flu, but there is the risk of long-term effects of Covid.”

It’s Moderna’s “first effort to really sound the alarm,” she said, and the debut coincides with the second annual Long Covid Awareness Day.

An estimated 17.6 million Americans are living with long Covid, according to the latest CDC data. About four million of them are out of work because of the condition, resulting in an estimated $170 billion in lost wages.

While HHS anted up $45 million in grants last year to expand long Covid support initiatives along with public health campaigns, the condition is still often ignored and underfunded.

“It’s not just about the initial infection of Covid, but also if you get it multiple times, your risks goes up significantly,” Cronin said. “It’s important that people understand that.”

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Consequences Minus Truth

Consequences Minus Truth

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“People crave trust in others, because God is found there.”

-…

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Consequences Minus Truth

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“People crave trust in others, because God is found there.”

- Dom de Bailleul

The rewards of civilization have come to seem rather trashy in these bleak days of late empire; so, why even bother pretending to be civilized? This appears to be the ethos driving our politics and culture now. But driving us where? Why, to a spectacular sort of crack-up, and at warp speed, compared to the more leisurely breakdown of past societies that arrived at a similar inflection point where Murphy’s Law replaced the rule of law.

The US Military Academy at West point decided to “upgrade” its mission statement this week by deleting the phrase Duty, Honor, Country that summarized its essential moral orientation. They replaced it with an oblique reference to “Army Values,” without spelling out what these values are, exactly, which could range from “embrace the suck” to “charlie foxtrot” to “FUBAR” — all neatly applicable to our country’s current state of perplexity and dread.

Are you feeling more confident that the US military can competently defend our country? Probably more like the opposite, because the manipulation of language is being used deliberately to turn our country inside-out and upside-down. At this point we probably could not successfully pacify a Caribbean island if we had to, and you’ve got to wonder what might happen if we have to contend with countless hostile subversive cadres who have slipped across the border with the estimated nine-million others ushered in by the government’s welcome wagon.

Momentous events await. This Monday, the Supreme Court will entertain oral arguments on the case Missouri, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al. The integrity of the First Amendment hinges on the decision. Do we have freedom of speech as set forth in the Constitution? Or is it conditional on how government officials feel about some set of circumstances? At issue specifically is the government’s conduct in coercing social media companies to censor opinion in order to suppress so-called “vaccine hesitancy” and to manipulate public debate in the 2020 election. Government lawyers have argued that they were merely “communicating” with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others about “public health disinformation and election conspiracies.”

You can reasonably suppose that this was our government’s effort to disable the truth, especially as it conflicted with its own policy and activities — from supporting BLM riots to enabling election fraud to mandating dubious vaccines. Former employees of the FBI and the CIA were directly implanted in social media companies to oversee the carrying-out of censorship orders from their old headquarters. The former general counsel (top lawyer) for the FBI, James Baker, slid unnoticed into the general counsel seat at Twitter until Elon Musk bought the company late in 2022 and flushed him out. The so-called Twitter Files uncovered by indy reporters Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others, produced reams of emails from FBI officials nagging Twitter execs to de-platform people and bury their dissent. You can be sure these were threats, not mere suggestions.

One of the plaintiffs joined to Missouri v. Biden is Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and professor at the Harvard Medical School, who opposed Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He was one of the authors of the open letter called The Great Barrington Declaration (October, 2020) that articulated informed medical dissent for a bamboozled public. He was fired from his job at Harvard just this past week for continuing his refusal to take the vaccine. Harvard remains among a handful of institutions that still require it, despite massive evidence that it is ineffective and hazardous. Like West Point, maybe Harvard should ditch its motto, Veritas, Latin for “truth.”

A society hostile to truth can’t possibly remain civilized, because it will also be hostile to reality. That appears to be the disposition of the people running things in the USA these days. The problem, of course, is that this is not a reality-optional world, despite the wishes of many Americans (and other peoples of Western Civ) who wish it would be.

Next up for us will be “Joe Biden’s” attempt to complete the bankruptcy of our country with $7.3-trillion proposed budget, 20 percent over the previous years spending, based on a $5-billion tax increase. Good luck making that work. New York City alone is faced with paying $387 a day for food and shelter for each of an estimated 64,800 illegal immigrants, which amounts to $9.15-billion a year. The money doesn’t exist, of course. New York can thank “Joe Biden’s” executive agencies for sticking them with this unbearable burden. It will be the end of New York City. There will be no money left for public services or cultural institutions. That’s the reality and that’s the truth.

A financial crack-up is probably the only thing short of all-out war that will get the public’s attention at this point. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it happened next week. Historians of the future, stir-frying crickets and fiddleheads over their campfires will marvel at America’s terminal act of gluttony: managing to eat itself alive.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 14:05

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One city held a mass passport-getting event

A New Orleans congressman organized a way for people to apply for their passports en masse.

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While the number of Americans who do not have a passport has dropped steadily from more than 80% in 1990 to just over 50% now, a lack of knowledge around passport requirements still keeps a significant portion of the population away from international travel.

Over the four years that passed since the start of covid-19, passport offices have also been dealing with significant backlog due to the high numbers of people who were looking to get a passport post-pandemic. 

Related: Here is why it is (still) taking forever to get a passport

To deal with these concurrent issues, the U.S. State Department recently held a mass passport-getting event in the city of New Orleans. Called the "Passport Acceptance Event," the gathering was held at a local auditorium and invited residents of Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District to complete a passport application on-site with the help of staff and government workers.

A passport case shows the seal featured on American passports.

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'Come apply for your passport, no appointment is required'

"Hey #LA02," Rep. Troy A. Carter Sr. (D-LA), whose office co-hosted the event alongside the city of New Orleans, wrote to his followers on Instagram  (META) . "My office is providing passport services at our #PassportAcceptance event. Come apply for your passport, no appointment is required."

More Travel:

The event was held on March 14 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. While it was designed for those who are already eligible for U.S. citizenship rather than as a way to help non-citizens with immigration questions, it helped those completing the application for the first time fill out forms and make sure they have the photographs and identity documents they need. The passport offices in New Orleans where one would normally have to bring already-completed forms have also been dealing with lines and would require one to book spots weeks in advance.

These are the countries with the highest-ranking passports in 2024

According to Carter Sr.'s communications team, those who submitted their passport application at the event also received expedited processing of two to three weeks (according to the State Department's website, times for regular processing are currently six to eight weeks).

While Carter Sr.'s office has not released the numbers of people who applied for a passport on March 14, photos from the event show that many took advantage of the opportunity to apply for a passport in a group setting and get expedited processing.

Every couple of months, a new ranking agency puts together a list of the most and least powerful passports in the world based on factors such as visa-free travel and opportunities for cross-border business.

In January, global citizenship and financial advisory firm Arton Capital identified United Arab Emirates as having the most powerful passport in 2024. While the United States topped the list of one such ranking in 2014, worsening relations with a number of countries as well as stricter immigration rules even as other countries have taken strides to create opportunities for investors and digital nomads caused the American passport to slip in recent years.

A UAE passport grants holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 180 of the world’s 198 countries (this calculation includes disputed territories such as Kosovo and Western Sahara) while Americans currently have the same access to 151 countries.

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