How COVID-19 Is Impacting Low-Income Americans' Access to Public Transportation Here are all the details. by Ramya Vijaya

Low-income Americans have borne the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. They may also get left behind in the recovery. 

Steep declines in ridership during the crisis have pushed public transit systems across the U.S. into deep financial distress. Though Congress included allocations for transit in the CARES Act, cities said it won’t be nearly enough. Even major systems in large metro areas like New York City and Washington, D.C., have serious concerns about long-term survival without more sustained support.

Failure of transit systems would be a disaster for the large proportion of low income households that depend on buses and trains to get to work and elsewhere – not only in urban areas, but in rural ones too.

I’m currently in the middle of a two-year study of transport inequality in the U.S. One of my early findings is that about 20% of the poorest households don’t own a vehicle. That would make them entirely reliant on public transportation, compared with 6% for all households.

For my study, I looked at the income and vehicle data from 2013 to 2017 for households in the bottom quintile of the income distribution in each of the country’s 709 commuting zones, which represent local economic clusters.

In urban areas, 21% of these low-income households didn’t have a single vehicle. In rural areas, it was slightly lower but still significant at 16%. The share without a car varied widely among states, from over half of the poorest households in New York to just 6.8% in Utah.

Dependence on transit also mirrors the deep racial inequalities in America. Almost a third of low-income African American households didn’t own a vehicle. Even among black households of all income levels the share without a car is very high at 16%.

Even before the present crisis, America’s inadequate transport infrastructure was being seen as a driver of inequality, limiting access to jobs, education and other services for poorer households. Higher unemployment rates and longer duration of joblessness had also been linked to limitations in transit access in certain regions of the country.

If cities and states have to drastically cut back public transportation availability over the long term, it could exacerbate these inequalities. Higher-income households with access to cars will be able to more easily return to their commutes as the crisis eases. And those who, prior to the outbreak, used mass transit might be more weary of returning to the subways and buses, which would worsen the funding problems.

Any long-term disruptions, however, will bring devastating isolation to a large number of low-income households across the country. Their ability to get to work or even look for work once the lockdown ends will be severely hampered if transit systems are not adequately supported to maintain at least pre-crisis service levels.

What Do You Need and Want During Coronavirus? The past tells us we make long strategic decisions during a crisis. by Grant Alexander Wilson

At the present time, COVID-19 has infected almost two million people and killed more than 125,000. 

Beyond its unprecedented health and social implications, COVID-19 has had catastrophic effects on the global economy.

Between January and March 2020, the world economy contracted by 12 per cent. In response to this economic crisis, G20 governments have pledged more than $5 trillion in relief and stability initiatives. Either directly or indirectly, every country, institution, industry, sector, business, individual — and all aspects of the global economy — are negatively impacted by COVID-19.

Economic effects in Canada

As of April 14, 2020, there were more than 26,000 cases and more than 800 COVID-19-related deaths in Canada. Millions of people have filed for Employment Insurance and applied for the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit.

Similar to other G20 countries, the Canadian government unveiled an initial aid package of $82 billion. The package includes $27 billion in emergency aid designed to help Canadians pay for essentials such as rent and food. With more than four million Canadian individuals and families living in rental properties, the government of Canada recognized the importance of including explicit funding to meet the needs of renters.

In addition to this funding, a few provinces, including British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, have enacted rent support programming. However, all governments have indicated that tenants will be required to pay back any and all rent in full.

Governments have instructed landlords and tenants to engage in discussions of meaningful payment plans. Irrespective of province or territory, rent support programs or rent repayment plans, experts urge tenants and landlords to be in regular communication.

If the dialogue has not been started between landlord and tenant, now is the time. The federal and provincial message has come through loud and clear, suggesting that no one is “off the hook” for paying their rent.

Needs versus wants

COVID-19 has brought about unprecedented unemployment and financial insecurity, but it’s not the first time people have faced challenges fulfilling some of their most basic needs.

In times of crisis, it is essential for individuals to differentiate needs versus wants. According to Abraham Maslow, one of the most prominent psychologists of the 20th century, the most basic needs are physiological. Physiological needs are defined as a requirement of human survival, including health, food, water and shelter. These needs are primary, essential and non-negotiable.

Consumer behaviour changes drastically in times of crisis, including recessions. Consumer spending on food, shelter and health care generally rises during economic downturns. That’s because those both employed and unemployed are typically concerned with covering the basics such as rent, mortgage payments, groceries, utilities and medications. As such, recessions provoke need-centric spending.

Consumers have historically been strategic by focusing on spending their limited financial resources on the essentials. Specifically, people eat at home more, purchase fewer larger items and focus on paying their rent or mortgages during recessions. This supports Maslow’s theory that suggests consumers look to fulfil their primary needs above all else.

A similar study of 27,740 households in the United States showed that despite exhausting their unemployment benefits, Americans attempted to spend the same amount of money on essential goods, insurance, utilities, etc. In general, and rightfully so, consumers are more cautious spenders in recessions. Consumers also consider the long-term implications of their spending and allocate funds to their physiological needs.

The path forward

COVID-19 is likely to be the catalyst of a sustained global financial crisis. Although governments are supporting individuals, families, businesses and communities, consumers will be accountable for their actions in these unprecedented times. Governments have recognized their role as a support system for those who cannot fulfil their basic needs.

Early on, landlords like Boardwalk have assured tenants that they won’t be subject to rent increases during this crisis. Avenue Living Communities (which owns and operates multi-family housing across the Prairies), have even given their essential staff raises, indefinitely, to ensure their properties and tenants are adequately served. Landlords must continue to provide, safe, clean and peaceful spaces.

Consumers should be doing their part as well, making careful spending decisions and distinguishing between needs and wants. As historical empirical evidence suggests, consumers have been smart and made long-term strategic decisions about their spending during previous economic crises.

As the old psychology adage says: “The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.” We’d be wise to emulate our past decisions moving forward.

Why Coronavirus Is an Opportunity for Businesses to Reinvent Themselves With crisis comes opportunity. by Felix Arndt

2020 was doomed to become shaky. 

No one fully foresaw the extent of the COVID-19 crisis. Business has been disrupted and will not necessarily go back to normal. Instead, the current disruption has changed and continues to change the business landscape as we know it.

How can business leaders react to the challenges, reassess what they do, reconfigure their companies and reinvent their activities to adapt to the disruption and prepare for the new normal?

The implications of climate change, new technologies, digitalization, demographic changes, artificial intelligence, and financial and political uncertainties have moved many of us. We saw a significant event coming, but the pandemic has likely taken it at least one level up from our expectations.

Some companies may have advanced their digitalization capabilities in the past few years. These companies are likely experiencing, at least in the short term, only a moderate impact due to the global pandemic. By shifting their operations to remote work via online conferencing and communication tools like Zoom and Slack, most projects continue.

Companies in industries heavily affected by the restriction of physical movement (hotels, airlines), however, and those less prepared for technological changes (many retailers, for example) are seeing their operations shattered.

Reacting to the crisis

When crises first hit, companies need to react to immediate challenges and threats. At that point, it’s important not to lose sight of doing the right thing. Businesses must remain true to their vision, be empathetic to stakeholders, make quick decisions and adjust those decisions, if necessary, frequently and transparently on the basis of new information in order to adapt quickly.

The actions by Air Canada illustrate this principle very well. Air Canada laid off 16,500 employees as a fast and direct response to a reduction of their flight schedule due to the decline of demand and border closures for non-residents. Recently, the federal government communicated the details of a wage subsidy package. Right after, Air Canada announced it was immediately rehiring most of their people based on the 75 per cent wage subsidies promised by the government.

In disruption, operational challenges need solutions, cash management and liquidity need to be adjusted for the changes in demand and communications and leadership must be expanded into the digital space.

If companies haven’t been online before, they likely are now. In a fast-changing marketplace, aggressively pushing new solutions into the market may help some companies. Many business issues resulting from disruption due to worldwide efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 will need quick fixes and solutions. They are also the beginning of new problems.

Reassessing long-term plans

Next, businesses must reassess not only their plans for the year, but also on a longer-term basis. The exercise may reveal important insights. Resilience is valuable in crisis. However, just bouncing back from such a consequential worldwide event is not enough. We will likely see long-lasting changes on both the demand and supply side.

Short term, we may see the gin distillery in town producing hand sanitizers as is happening in Toronto or the maker-space at the local university 3D-printing protective equipment as we’re doing at the University of Guelph. This is a good moment for businesses to assess their capabilities and how they can be used to meet immediate needs or can be leveraged, upgraded or complemented with new technologies or partners.

Over the long term, finding and pursuing new opportunities will drive change. Companies may now serve new, different customers. They may need to get out of their comfort zones and learn new skills.

And in an online world, data strategies and analytics matter. Writing skills are as important as presentation skills. Cybersecurity becomes a strategic concern. Whatever the changes needed, change will become the new normal.

Reconfiguring and reinventing

It’s critical that companies continuously move in the right direction as the pandemic shutdowns continue. Businesses that have change ingrained in their culture are likely to do better in uncertain times.

A crisis like this brings new opportunities and should be a trigger to explore new directions. A recent study shows that sustaining innovations developed during a crisis often yields a positive impact in the long run as opposed to organizations that cut back innovation budgets.

Government will invest more over the coming years to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19. How they direct this spending, whether it’s aimed at restoring the old economy or triggering market changes, will have an impact on a business’s outlook as well.

We are likely entering a time in which people change consumption patterns. Fitness solutions for home, home entertainment, people-tracking and data security, new health-care equipment and online education solutions, to name just a few, will be in higher demand.

All of these developments create many new opportunities for businesses.

Learning From the Past: How to Mitigate Pandemics in the Future By correcting these 10 myths, we can better understand what actually happened and learn how to prevent and mitigate such disasters in the future. by Richard Gunderman

Two years ago marked the 100th anniversary of the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Between 50 and 100 million people are thought to have died, representing as much as 5 percent of the world’s population. Half a billion people were infected.

Especially remarkable was the 1918 flu’s predilection for taking the lives of otherwise healthy young adults, as opposed to children and the elderly, who usually suffer most. Some have called it the greatest pandemic in history.

The 1918 flu pandemic has been a regular subject of speculation over the last century. Historians and scientists have advanced numerous hypotheses regarding its origin, spread and consequences. As a result, many of us harbor misconceptions about it.

By correcting these 10 myths, we can better understand what actually happened and learn how to prevent and mitigate such disasters in the future.

1. The pandemic originated in Spain

No one believes the so-called “Spanish flu” originated in Spain.

The pandemic likely acquired this nickname because of World War I, which was in full swing at the time. The major countries involved in the war were keen to avoid encouraging their enemies, so reports of the extent of the flu were suppressed in Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. By contrast, neutral Spain had no need to keep the flu under wraps. That created the false impression that Spain was bearing the brunt of the disease.

In fact, the geographic origin of the flu is debated to this day, though hypotheses have suggested East Asia, Europe and even Kansas.

2. The pandemic was the work of a ‘super-virus’

The 1918 flu spread rapidly, killing 25 million people in just the first six months. This led some to fear the end of mankind, and has long fueled the supposition that the strain of influenza was particularly lethal.

However, more recent study suggests that the virus itself, though more lethal than other strains, was not fundamentally different from those that caused epidemics in other years.

Much of the high death rate can be attributed to crowding in military camps and urban environments, as well as poor nutrition and sanitation, which suffered during wartime. It’s now thought that many of the deaths were due to the development of bacterial pneumonias in lungs weakened by influenza.

3. The first wave of the pandemic was most lethal

Actually, the initial wave of deaths from the pandemic in the first half of 1918 was relatively low.

It was in the second wave, from October through December of that year, that the highest death rates were observed. A third wave in spring of 1919 was more lethal than the first but less so than the second.

Scientists now believe that the marked increase in deaths in the second wave was caused by conditions that favored the spread of a deadlier strain. People with mild cases stayed home, but those with severe cases were often crowded together in hospitals and camps, increasing transmission of a more lethal form of the virus.

4. The virus killed most people who were infected with it

In fact, the vast majority of the people who contracted the 1918 flu survived. National death rates among the infected generally did not exceed 20 percent.

However, death rates varied among different groups. In the U.S., deaths were particularly high among Native American populations, perhaps due to lower rates of exposure to past strains of influenza. In some cases, entire Native communities were wiped out.

Of course, even a 20 percent death rate vastly exceeds a typical flu, which kills less than one percent of those infected.

5. Therapies of the day had little impact on the disease

No specific anti-viral therapies were available during the 1918 flu. That’s still largely true today, where most medical care for the flu aims to support patients, rather than cure them.

One hypothesis suggests that many flu deaths could actually be attributed to aspirin poisoning. Medical authorities at the time recommended large doses of aspirin of up to 30 grams per day. Today, about four grams would be considered the maximum safe daily dose. Large doses of aspirin can lead to many of the pandemic’s symptoms, including bleeding.

However, death rates seem to have been equally high in some places in the world where aspirin was not so readily available, so the debate continues.

6. The pandemic dominated the day’s news

 

Public health officials, law enforcement officers and politicians had reasons to underplay the severity of the 1918 flu, which resulted in less coverage in the press. In addition to the fear that full disclosure might embolden enemies during wartime, they wanted to preserve public order and avoid panic.

However, officials did respond. At the height of the pandemic, quarantines were instituted in many cities. Some were forced to restrict essential services, including police and fire.

7. The pandemic changed the course of World War I

It’s unlikely that the flu changed the outcome of World War I, because combatants on both sides of the battlefield were relatively equally affected.

However, there is little doubt that the war profoundly influenced the course of the pandemic. Concentrating millions of troops created ideal circumstances for the development of more aggressive strains of the virus and its spread around the globe.

8. Widespread immunization ended the pandemic

Immunization against the flu as we know it today was not practiced in 1918, and thus played no role in ending the pandemic.

Exposure to prior strains of the flu may have offered some protection. For example, soldiers who had served in the military for years suffered lower rates of death than new recruits.

In addition, the rapidly mutating virus likely evolved over time into less lethal strains. This is predicted by models of natural selection. Because highly lethal strains kill their host rapidly, they cannot spread as easily as less lethal strains.

9. The genes of the virus have never been sequenced

In 2005, researchers announced that they had successfully determined the gene sequence of the 1918 influenza virus. The virus was recovered from the body of a flu victim buried in the permafrost of Alaska, as well as from samples of American soldiers who fell ill at the time.

Two years later, monkeys infected with the virus were found to exhibit the symptoms observed during the pandemic. Studies suggest that the monkeys died when their immune systems overreacted to the virus, a so-called “cytokine storm.” Scientists now believe that a similar immune system overreaction contributed to high death rates among otherwise healthy young adults in 1918.

10. The 1918 pandemic offers few lessons for 2018

Severe influenza epidemics tend to occur every few decades. Experts believe that the next one is a question not of “if” but “when.”

While few living people can recall the great flu pandemic of 1918, we can continue to learn its lessons, which range from the commonsense value of handwashing and immunizations to the potential of anti-viral drugs. Today we know more about how to isolate and handle large numbers of ill and dying patients, and we can prescribe antibiotics, not available in 1918, to combat secondary bacterial infections. Perhaps the best hope lies in improving nutrition, sanitation and standards of living, which render patients better able to resist the infection.

For the foreseeable future, flu epidemics will remain an annual feature of the rhythm of human life. As a society, we can only hope that we have learned the great pandemic’s lessons sufficiently well to quell another such worldwide catastrophe.

How to End Lockdown in the UK Four experts explain how. by Zania Stamataki, Beatrice Heuser, David Hunter and Jonathan Ball

Italy, Spain and Austria are taking the first tentative steps out of lockdown, with Germany soon to follow. In Italy, forestry workers and IT manufacturers are back at work, while Austria is re-opening parks and small shops. The British government, however, remains tight-lipped about its exit strategy – which is surely just weeks away.

In the absence of information, we asked four experts their views on how Britain should exit the lockdown. Here is what they said.

Zania Stamataki, senior lecturer and researcher in viral immunology, University of Birmingham

It’s too early to say if people who have recovered from COVID-19 have developed protective immunity. Until these studies are concluded, we must take every precaution to avoid re-exposure. This is because in some infections, such as dengue virus, re-infection can result in more severe disease. We don’t know yet if this is the case for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind COVID-19.

It would be unwise to return to business as usual when the lockdown ends. We suffered great losses and we ought to learn from this pandemic. We need fast and accessible testing for virus surveillance, and we need sensible strategies to contain small outbreaks without compromising vital services.

Do we have time to refine our vaccines thoroughly? Our urgency to end the global quarantine will lead to rapid vaccine development and the pressure to release vaccines with verified safety profiles but questionable efficacy. Candidate vaccines that pass safety tests in young, healthy volunteers will probably have reduced efficacy in vulnerable groups who struggle to raise protective immunity, such as the elderly and people with compromised immune systems.

It is critical to carefully plan how to protect people at high risk of severe complications. We should retain privileged access time to services such as early supermarket shopping hours and extend this facility to other vital services, such as hospital appointments.

Beatrice Heuser, professor of international relations, University of Glasgow

As they are announcing the end of lockdown, and its substitution by extensive restrictive measures, governments are remaining silent about the highly likely need for one or more further lockdowns if these measures are not enough to prevent a renewed surge of infections.

The measures that most European countries will continue to impose include the continued closure of restaurants, cafes and bars, no mass gatherings, no tourism, instead mass testing and wearing of masks, intrusions on civil liberties by tracking and isolating infected individuals.

Governments have discarded the ideal option, from a health point of view, of continuing lockdown until a vaccine or other effective treatment is found. But they could still go for a stop-and-go option with scheduled future lockdowns alternating with “open” periods in which the above restrictions nonetheless apply, as we argue in our new report.

Instead, they keep their fingers crossed that the restrictions alone will be enough. The prospect of additional periodic lockdowns may seem very disagreeable. In reality, however, a planned, regionally and internationally coordinated scheduling of future lockdowns might be preferable to announcements of emergency lockdowns at a week’s notice or less – as happened when the British government implemented the lockdown.

David Hunter, professor of epidemiology and medicine, University of Oxford

It is now clear that when the peak of the first wave has passed, most of us – perhaps more than 80% – will not have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and will still be vulnerable to being infected, passing on the infection or becoming ill. Everyone agrees that testing for the virus will be key, and testing for recovery from infection (antibodies) should play a role for health and care workers. No one is even pretending that enough tests will be available for a full release from lockdown.

Without saturation testing, releasing the lockdown will need to be gradual (and potentially reversible) in order to prevent a second wave. To limit the number of susceptible people being exposed, difficult decisions will need to be made about who can return to work. Those who can continue to work effectively from home should continue to do so.

Jobs will need to be ranked in order of degree of importance to society and the economy. Those in the most important jobs should return to work first. Workplaces able to practise social distancing will be safer than those that require workers to be close together. Temperatures may be taken at the factory gates or office entrance. Mass gatherings will be banned, and congregating in pubs and restaurants, theatres and cinemas greatly limited.

These steps will create controversy, create winners and losers, and risk social cohesion. Governments (national and local) will need to prepare the public for these incremental steps, articulate an orderly series of lockdown releases, and be seen by the public to have clean hands in these decisions rather than favouring political donors, regions or pressure groups. Safely releasing the lockdown will be much more difficult than imposing it.

Jonathan Ball, professor of virology, University of Nottingham

Coming out of lockdown won’t be easy. The virus hasn’t gone away – we’ve simply slowed the spread. As soon as social distancing measures are relaxed we can expect the virus to bounce back, and it’s controlling this rebound that will prove key. So how can we return to normality without giving the virus free rein again? Testing will be key.

We will need the capacity to perform extensive testing for the virus – using the so-called PCR test on throat or nose swabs – out in the community, not just in hospitals where most of the testing in the UK is now focused. And that won’t be easy. We will have to move from performing tens of thousands of tests a week to literally hundreds of thousands if we are going to be able to identify where and when the virus re-emerges and stop it spreading more widely.

Another possibility is to have a phased relaxation, allowing those less vulnerable to developing severe COVID-19 to return to work first, or perhaps lifting sanctions on people known to have already been infected and who have hopefully built up a degree of immunity.

The first option is not without risk and anyone can suffer serious disease or, worse still, be an easy vehicle for transmission onto other more vulnerable people. Similarly, option two will require there to be wide-scale testing using an accurate antibody test. It will also assume that those people are protected. Whatever the government does, it will have to be backed up by more extensive testing – and building that capacity will take time.

Zania Stamataki, Senior Lecturer in Viral Immunology, University of Birmingham; Beatrice Heuser, Professor of International Relations, University of Glasgow; David Hunter, Richard Doll Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine, University of Oxford, and Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology and Director of the Centre for Research into Global Virus Infections, University of Nottingham

How the Wealthy Haven't Changed Their Reaction to Pandemics Since the Medieval Ages Coronavirus is no different. by Kathryn McKinley

The coronavirus can infect anyone, but recent reporting has shown your socioeconomic status can play a big role, with a combination of job security, access to health care and mobility widening the gap in infection and mortality rates between rich and poor.

The wealthy work remotely and flee to resorts or pastoral second homes, while the urban poor are packed into small apartments and compelled to keep showing up to work.

As a medievalist, I’ve seen a version of this story before.

Following the 1348 Black Death in Italy, the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a collection of 100 novellas titled, “The Decameron.” These stories, though fictional, give us a window into medieval life during the Black Death – and how some of the same fissures opened up between the rich and the poor. Cultural historians today see “The Decameron” as an invaluable source of information on everyday life in 14th-century Italy.

Boccaccio was born in 1313 as the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker. A product of the middle class, he wrote, in “The Decameron,” stories about merchants and servants. This was unusual for his time, as medieval literature tended to focus on the lives of the nobility.

“The Decameron” begins with a gripping, graphic description of the Black Death, which was so virulent that a person who contracted it would die within four to seven days. Between 1347 and 1351, it killed between 40% and 50% of Europe’s population. Some of Boccaccio’s own family members died.

In this opening section, Boccaccio describes the rich secluding themselves at home, where they enjoy quality wines and provisions, music and other entertainment. The very wealthiest – whom Boccaccio describes as “ruthless” – deserted their neighborhoods altogether, retreating to comfortable estates in the countryside, “as though the plague was meant to harry only those remaining within their city walls.”

Meanwhile, the middle class or poor, forced to stay at home, “caught the plague by the thousand right there in their own neighborhood, day after day” and swiftly passed away. Servants dutifully attended to the sick in wealthy households, often succumbing to the illness themselves. Many, unable to leave Florence and convinced of their imminent death, decided to simply drink and party away their final days in nihilistic reveries, while in rural areas, laborers died “like brute beasts rather than human beings; night and day, with never a doctor to attend them.”

After the bleak description of the plague, Boccaccio shifts to the 100 stories. They’re narrated by 10 nobles who have fled the pallor of death hanging over Florence to luxuriate in amply stocked country mansions. From there, they tell their tales.

One key issue in “The Decameron” is how wealth and advantage can impair people’s abilities to empathize with the hardships of others. Boccaccio begins the forward with the proverb, “It is inherently human to show pity to those who are afflicted.” Yet in many of the tales he goes on to present characters who are sharply indifferent to the pain of others, blinded by their own drives and ambition.

In one fantasy story, a dead man returns from hell every Friday and ritually slaughters the same woman who had rejected him when he was alive. In another, a widow fends off a leering priest by tricking him into sleeping with her maid. In a third, the narrator praises a character for his undying loyalty to his friend when, in fact, he has profoundly betrayed that friend over many years.

Humans, Boccaccio seems to be saying, can think of themselves as upstanding and moral – but unawares, they may show indifference to others. We see this in the 10 storytellers themselves: They make a pact to live virtuously in their well-appointed retreats. Yet while they pamper themselves, they indulge in some stories that illustrate brutality, betrayal and exploitation.

Boccaccio wanted to challenge his readers, and make them think about their responsibilities to others. “The Decameron” raises the questions: How do the rich relate to the poor during times of widespread suffering? What is the value of a life?

In our own pandemic – with some of the most well-off now clamoring for the economy to re-open, despite the ongoing spread of the disease – these issues are strikingly relevant.