Florida has become a public health catastrophe. Its daily COVID-19 case counts now rival New York’s at the height of the pandemic there, and the death toll is rising. With the state’s big elderly population and large number of front-line employees and tourists, it’s a perfect storm.
So why did Disney World just open up and why is the state government demanding that Florida schools hold in-person classes? Two Texas A&M professors who are studying state responses to the pandemic take us inside Florida’s economy to explore why COVID-19 policies are both more necessary and politically harder to implement in the Sunshine State.
This week we also liked articles about the origins of mild-mannered synonyms for profanity, why you may need to adjust your coping strategies as the pandemic grinds on and the role teachers are playing in local decisions about how K-12 schools should operate this fall.
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Florida cities like Miami have resorted to issuing their own protective rules as coronavirus case numbers climb.
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Tiffany A. Radcliff, Texas A&M University ; Murray J. Côté, Texas A&M University
A close look at Florida's economy shows just how vulnerable the state and its population are to a pandemic, and some of the reasons state officials hesitate to take action.
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Using minced oaths became a habit in NBC’s The Good Place.
YouTube/NBC
Kirk Hazen, West Virginia University
From 16th-century playwrights to 'The Good Place,' wordplay has found clever ways to get around uttering profane and blasphemous language.
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Keeping your equilibrium can be a challenge in times of uncertainty.
Léonard Cotte/Unsplash
Craig Polizzi, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Steven Jay Lynn, Binghamton University, State University of New York
As the pandemic drags on, uncertainty and fears about health and safety mix with confusion and challenges tied to re-opening society. You need flexibility when picking your coping strategies.
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Michael Addonizio, Wayne State University
An effort to bring three teachers together while they taught young students online over the summer in Arizona didn't bode well.
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Nir Kshetri, University of North Carolina – Greensboro
As colleges and universities strive to protect their campuses from COVID-19, they must also pay attention to cyberattacks that target sensitive data, a cybersecurity expert warns.
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Edie Goldenberg, University of Michigan
Voting by mail is rarely subject to fraud, does not give an advantage to one political party over another and can in fact inspire public confidence in the voting process.
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A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, discloses the results from phase 1 of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine trials.
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Sanjay Mishra, Vanderbilt University
The results from the phase 1 trial are a promising first step in showing that the mRNA vaccine is a viable candidate, but there are unanswered questions and it is still early in the process.
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