8 O'Clock Buzz

Damita Brown talks with…

Dr Jasmine Zapata, pediatrician, author, and preventative health expert from UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health talking about Covid-19, it’s impact on our community and other Madison community health issues.

Jessica Williams from Freedom, Inc talking about the Movement for Black Lives, Free The 350, policy change, and more on Covid-19’s impact on our community, especially the underprivileged and people of color.

Photo by duncan c on Flickr: flic.kr/p/2iE8LNy

Last month, the Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff arrested evangelical pastor Rodney Howard-Browne for defying the county’s “stay-at-home” order.  In order to limit the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, Hillsborough County Public Health Department banned large assemblies and activities to “essential services,” a list that did not include religious services.  In spite of the order, Howard-Browne continued to hold services at his mega-church outside of Tampa until the Sheriff stepped in and charged the pastor with two misdemeanors. That story illustrates the tension between science-backed public health orders and issues of faith.  Perhaps, however, there is a more productive way — where government agencies and religious leaders can work together for the common good.  Katherine Marshall is a Senior Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University and is the Executive Director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.

Nitrogen dioxide is a chemical byproduct of fossil fuel combustion and contributes to smog, acid rain and has been linked to human asthma and other respiratory illnesses.  Since 2005, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been observing nitrogen dioxide levels across the globe. In March, 2020, the NASA satellite noted the lowest NO2 emissions over the northeastern portion of the United States it had ever recorded  — 30% lower than the previous year’s.  These observations came as most of the northeastern states were under lockdown, with all but essential travel curtailed, under public health orders designed to combat the COVID-19 virus.  Scientists have observed other environmental effects of the forced reduction in human activity.  University of Wisconsin – Madison Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Ankur Desai joined Monday Buzz host Brian Standing on April 27, 2020.

Naloxone hydrochloride, better known just as naloxone, or by its most common brand name, Narcan, has been around as a treatment for opioid overdose since 1971.  Naloxone can effectively roll back an overdose, with relatively light side effects and little to no effect on people who are not taking opioids.  It’s been so successful, that many doctors, treatment specialists and others have called for the drug to be available, on demand, without a prescription.  Wayne State University Pharmacy Professor Victoria Tutag-Lehr joined the Monday Buzz on April 27, 2020.

 

Kazu Haga on the line from Oakland talking about his new book “Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm.”

Tom Cordon, social justice coordinator from First Unitarian Society on “Building Unity & Celebrating Earth – Virtually” coming up Saturday 4/25 and the start of the Building Unity Virtual Tour.

Hiding under all the publicity of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration is quietly continuing to weaken environmental standards. WISPIRG Director Peter Skopec talks about the effort to undercut mercury pollution standards and more.

Is your bank charging you fees for almost every “service” it provides? Marc Armstrong, Founder and Development Director of the Public Banking Institute, thinks there is a better way to provide inexpensive financial services to underserved communities and writes about “Banking in the Public Interest and Postal Banking”.

The group “Communities and Postal Workers United” is a grass roots organization to support the U.S. Postal Service against threatened cuts and privatization. Jan Miyasaki talks with retired letter carrier and organizer, Jamie Partridge, about their efforts.

In the fall of 1918, Colorado business owners started campaigns to pressure Denver Mayor W.F.R. Mills to lift restrictions on businesses and public gatherings designed to combat the influenza outbreak.  The restrictions were costing them heaps of money, said the business interests, and besides, the virus appeared to have leveled off.  Surely, the greatest risk was past. The mayor relented, lifting the public gathering restrictions in time for the Armistice Day celebration.  The crowds that thronged downtown Denver that day sparked a surge in new infections, 650 in the next two weeks and 22 deaths in a single day.  In 1918, epidemiology was still a rough science, so Mayor Mills, at least had the excuse of not having a good way to predict how the epidemic might play out.  University of Wisconsin engineer and infectious disease modeller Oguzhan Alagoz is working hard to make sure that today’s officials have better tools at their disposal to predict the course of the COVID-19 virus, and hopefully, avoid repeating Mayor Mills’ mistake.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, lecturer at Harvard Medical School, recently co-authored a paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine entitled “New Study: Intersection U.S. Epidemics: COVID-19 and Lack of Health Insurance”, where she documents the number of Americans without health insurance, because of layoffs, will increase by 13 million to the already 43 million without coverage.