Good privacy engineering is one piece of the puzzle for contact tracing apps, writes Professor Woodrow Hartzog in an op-ed for the LA Times. "Perhaps even more difficult is weighing the long-term consequences of how these tools will be used after the pandemic ends."
“We’ve already learned what moving fast and breaking things can do to society,” Professor Woodrow Hartzog tells The New York Times, referring to the negative consequences of a tech mind-set that values speed and disruption above all else.
“If allowing people to have access to sunshine and recreation is what’s going to keep them from protesting and violating laws, that may be a trade-off worth making,” Professor Wendy Parmet tells The Guardian. “A beach gathering is safer than an indoor party, for example.”
There's not a lot of good history on [the emergency temporary standard], nor is there a lot of judicial review that provides guidance, Professor Emily Spieler tells Law360. "Calls for emergency standards have often been denied, including during the Obama administration. But then we've not had a pandemic before."
Professor Leo Beletsky tells the National Geographic that campaigns to get nonviolent drug offenders released during the pandemic may not be sufficient. “Prisoner re-entry into regular society is difficult and dangerous from a health perspective, even during normal times,” he says.
“If one state opens up— whatever that means—in a way that the other states are not ready to do, it could cause a catastrophe,” says Professor Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern Law’s Center for Health Policy and Law. “The virus doesn’t pay a toll on the George Washington Bridge.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have selected Marielena Hincapié ’96, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, to serve as co-chair of their joint task force. Hincapié will advise the Biden campaign on immigration policy.
Professor Wendy Parmet tells The Wichita Eagle the underlying consensus that appeared to be holding in the early stages of the pandemic is breaking down: "Public health orders are becoming yet another issue viewed through a political prism."
Unless timely action is taken, South Africa could be faced with a new form of “pharmaceutical apartheid,” like that experienced in the early days of the AIDS response, when access to medicines here was blocked by decisions made by rich countries and pharmaceutical companies in the Global North, writes Professor Brook Baker in a co-authored op-ed for Spotlight.
There are a few, still weak, glimmers of hope regarding the nation’s response to dangers created by our immigration policies, writes Professor Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern Law's Center for Health Policy and Law, in her latest blog for Health Affairs. "If we are to learn the lessons of this moment, these small glimmers must give rise to a new approach to protecting the health of immigrants.