Outdoor educational experiences cannot be replicated inside the classroom, but the pandemic is endangering countless outdoor education programs across the United States. According to a recent policy brief by University of California, Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science, which surveyed nearly 1,000 environmental education and outdoor science schools that serve primarily K-12 learners, 63 percent of such organizations are uncertain whether they will ever open their doors again, if pandemic restrictions last until year's end. These organizations are nature centers and preschools, parks, zoos, aquariums, museums and residential outdoor science schools. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

What will it take to get macho men to wear masks? A recent study by UC Berkeley and Middlesex University London found that men are more likely to go out without a mask because they find them uncool, shameful, and a sign of weakness. Montana thinks it has the answer, and has unleashed a new statewide ad campaign that uses humor.

Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, have begun trials of a new spit test for COVID-19 infections developed by the university's Innovative Genomics Institute. Since the disease was first identified on U.S. shores, the Berkeley research institute led by the trailblazing CRISPR researcher Jennifer Doudna has worked tirelessly to bring innovative methods to diagnose and process viral samples and develop potential treatments for the disease to production. The new saliva-based samples that the university is trialing would obviate the need for trained medical staff wearing personal protective equipment to conduct tests to determine whether an individual is infected. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

Face masks are a fact of life, at least for now. How do you choose one without being too hard on the environment? Cloth masks seems to have the least environmental impact. Mark Nicas, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Environmental Health Sciences, estimated that, when worn properly, surgical masks and cloth masks are about equal (75 percent effective) when it comes to reducing the spread of viral droplets to people around you.

UC Berkeley researchers announced Tuesday they have begun trials of a saliva test for COVID-19 that would eliminate the need for taking painful nasal swabs. The announcement came from researchers with the Innovative Genomics Institute — the same group that rapidly popped up a state-of-the-art COVID-19 testing laboratory in March. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic also appeared on ABC7, NBC11 and in the Sacramento Bee.

A 60 Minutes investigation revealed that federal officials knew many of the antibody tests suddenly flooding the market were seriously flawed, but continued to allow them to be sold anyway. In early March, Dr. Alex Marson of UC San Francisco, and Dr. Patrick Hsu, an assistant professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley, assembled a team of 50 scientists to do what the FDA had not: test the antibody tests. All but one test delivered so-called false-positives, meaning they mistakenly signaled antibodies in people who did not have them.

Coronavirus antibody testing is suddenly everywhere, but results are often incorrect or inconclusive. Patrick Hsu, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, was a senior author on a recent study on the accuracy of antibody tests. His group analyzed 14 tests and found only three produced consistently reliable results. "People want answers: Am I immune? Can I go back to work? Can I play soccer in the park?" Hsu says. "But the story's not quite so simple." He says that even for tests that can accurately detect the virus, many questions remain. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News

Public policy professor Solomon Hsiang, director of Berkeley's Global Policy Laboratory, joined Rachel Maddow to discuss the results of a study he led on the effectiveness of emergency policies intended to slow the spread of COVID-19.  He and his colleagues found that the measures -- including shelter-in-place, business closures, and transportation restrictions, and school closures -- prevented about 60 million COVID-19 infections in the United States and 285 million in China. Since so many people who become infected never get tested or diagnosed, the true number of cases avoided is inevitably much higher, and they estimate that figure in the six countries they studied to be more like 530 million. During the interview, Maddow reads back to Professor Hsiang one of the statements he made in the report, which particularly stunned her. He had said: "I don't think any human endeavor has ever saved so many lives in such a short period of time. There's been huge personal costs to staying home and cancelling events, but the data show each day made a profound difference." She asks him: "Do you mean that literally - that this might have been a collective human endeavor that saved more lives than anything else we've ever done?" He replies: "Absolutely. I think this is an incredible achievement. I mean, the ability to coordinate millions of people to stay home when they don't want to - to take on these hardships to save other people's lives - it's incredible."  Link to video here. For more on this research, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in more than 1,000 sources around the world now, including NPR and Reuters.

Emergency measures -- including shelter-in-place, business closings, and travel bans -- prevented about 60 million COVID-19 infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a new study led by public policy professor Solomon Hsiang, director of Berkeley's Global Policy Laboratory. Since so many people who become infected never get tested or diagnosed, the true number of cases avoided is much higher, and they estimate that figure in the six countries they studied to be more like 530 million. "Without these policies employed, we would have lived through a very different April and May," Professor Hsiang says. The study examined how China, the United States, France, Italy, Iran and South Korea responded to the pandemic. "The disease was spreading at a really extraordinary rate that is rare even among very infectious diseases," Professor Hsiang says, crediting the global response for "saving more lives in a shorter period of time than ever before." Timing is all-important, the researchers found, with delayed implementation leading to "dramatically different health outcomes." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in hundreds of sources around the world, including CNN, U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg Law (link to audio), and KPIX TV (link to video).

The first 25 teams awarded seed funding for technology projects designed to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis were announced today by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, a multicampus research institute of the University of California, headquartered at UC Berkeley. Within days of the application deadline, a $1.6 million matching challenge from an anonymous donor expanded potential funding exponentially, increasing the number of projects that can be awarded.

COVID-19 patients treated at Kaiser facilities in California and Washington have been requiring longer hospital stays and are more likely to need intensive care than patients in China, according to a new analysis conducted by Berkeley researchers and Kaiser Permanente. The findings indicate that the burden the crisis has placed on U.S. hospitals may have been higher. "The hospital resources needed to meet the needs of severely ill patients are substantial," says assistant public health and epidemiology professor Joseph Lewnard, the paper's lead author. "We found that observations from China may not provide a sufficient basis for anticipating the U.S. health care demand." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in dozens of sources, including CBS Bay Area Online, News Medical, California EPeak.

Recommending further federal action to bolster the economy, economics professor Maurice Obstfeld and business professor Laura Tyson, both members of the Governor's Council of Economic Advisers, write: "Under current conditions, the macroeconomic rationale for significant additional federal funding for state governments is compelling. If plummeting revenues force states to slam on their fiscal brakes, that will undermine the federal government's own countercyclical measures, resulting in a deeper recession, more unemployment and a slower recovery for the entire nation. ... Investors around the world are willing to make long-term loans to the federal government at very low interest rates. The Federal Reserve is committed to unlimited purchases of U.S. securities and Fed Chair Jerome Powell has warned of deep and lasting economic consequences without more fiscal support. Under current and foreseeable economic conditions, the federal government can and should fund another major economic relief package and include at least $1 trillion in flexible funding for state and local governments."

Normally, Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute, co-founded by molecular and cell biology professor Jennifer Doudna, works on research related to the CRISPR gene-editing technology she co-invented. But when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down their work, the lab, co-run by UCSF, quickly reconfigured itself to be a popup COVID-19 testing facility. Expecting to dramatically boost testing capacity in the Bay Area, they soon discovered that bureaucratic obstacles prevented hospitals and clinics from switching testing providers midstream, even though IGI would have dramatically speeded the turnaround of test results. The problem highlights how disjointed and disorganized our healthcare system has become. "It's still amazing to me, like, how can that be the case, that there is not a more systematic way to address a central need?" says molecular and cell biology professor Fydor Urnov, the institute's director of technology, who led the lab's transformation. Adapting to the situation, the lab reached out to the city of Berkeley and other local organizations to start testing underserved groups of frontline workers and other vulnerable populations. While the lab is still under-utilized, Dr. Bob Kocher, a member of California's testing task force, says that the state is in touch with IGI and another lab at UC San Diego, and he expects that their role will ramp up as the state reopens and far more testing is needed. "I think excess capacity today is ethereal and about to be used up," he says.

In the latest New York Times dispatch about the COVID-19 experience in California by students at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, Max Brimelow, Julie Chang, Pedro Cota, Kristen Hwang and Alex Matthews write about new COVID-19 testing initiatives "led by health experts at California's top public and private universities," including a couple of Berkeley projects. They write: "The university health experts leading these efforts said they acted to fill a void. Eva Harris, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, said that watching the virus spread around the world while bickering government leaders hesitated to act was like witnessing the Titanic speeding toward the iceberg. 'We finally just said, "OK, it hit," and still nothing happened, so we need to get involved,' she said. ... One of the most aggressive efforts currently underway to examine the extent of infection in homeless encampments is being led by the Innovative Genomics Institute, a biochemistry lab at the University of California, Berkeley, best known for its work at the forefront of the CRISPR gene-editing process, and Lifelong Medical Care, a community health center also based in Berkeley. The two have begun expanding testing to low-income and homeless populations in Alameda County. ... 'If we can't help the vulnerable, what are we doing?' asked Fyodor Urnov, the institute's scientific director for technology and translation. Not far from Dr. Urnov's office on the Berkeley campus, two professors in the School of Public Health have teamed up for a different kind of study. Dr. Harris, the infectious disease expert, and Lisa Barcellos, a genetic epidemiologist, are investigating the infection's spread throughout the Bay Area. ... They are testing thousands of residents to look for the presence of active Covid-19 virus as well as antibodies in the blood. This could reveal patients who were exposed but never showed symptoms, and it could also shed light on how widespread the disease truly is in California."

The popup COVID-19 testing lab at Berkeley/UCSF's Innovative Genomic Institute is scaling up its daily samples, with a near-term goal of about 1,000 tests a day. After starting with firefighters, potentially exposed nursing home patients, asymptomatic university police officers, and health center workers, the lab is now expanding its reach to include underserved groups such as utility workers, more nursing home residents, first responders, and the homeless. For more on the lab, see our press release at Berkeley News.

A 2016 survey found that in California alone nearly a fifth of registered nurses were Filipino, and today the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting their prevalence on the frontlines. Ethnic studies professor Catherine Ceniza Choy wrote a book about the history of Filipino nurses, called Empire of Care, in which she connects their arrival in the U.S. to early-20th-century American colonialism in the Philippines. The colonizing started in 1898, she says, and it introduced an educational system that taught English and trained nurses, many of whom were brought to the U.S. after World War II to address a critical nursing shortage. "And they have continued to come, especially when there are crises," she says. For more on this topic, see our story at Berkeley News.

Licensed child care centers and family child care providers are very worried about the money they've lost during the pandemic and the costs they'll face when reopening, an extensive survey by Berkeley's Center for the Study of Child Care Employment has found. The findings show that the field is extremely vulnerable, and many providers may have to close permanently, greatly reducing available child care in the state. "Whether they closed or remained open, all face financial and safety challenges," says Sean Doocy, a research associate at the center.

Some 70% of registered California voters say they agree that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating inequality, with just 9% disagreeing, in the latest poll by Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies. Opinions generally followed party lines, education levels, and regions, with more educated and metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles residents perceiving the inequality at higher rates. Associate sociology and African American studies professor Tianna Paschel suggests the results correlate with the dominance of Democrats in the state. She expressed surprise that Latinos were least likely to agree that blacks are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with only 45% agreeing. "Latino folks and black folks are competing for material and political resources," she deduces. "There's job competition, housing and political representation. ... What I was surprised about was how large those numbers were. If you compare them, Latinos had higher numbers than Trump supporters." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

It's been pretty well publicized that an intensive study of proliferating COVID-19 antibody tests, co-led by assistant bioengineering professor Patrick Hsu of the Berkeley-UCSF Innovative Genomics Institute, has found that very few are effective and all have flaws, but that has not discouraged many eager buyers. "There are over 200 different antibody tests out there right at this point, more than we have for any other infectious disease," Professor Hsu says. "One of the things that we're able to do in our study is to test on individual blood samples both positive and negative, all of these tests against each other, head to head, right, in this bake-off, systematically." The tests returned too many false positives, and only one, called Sure Biotech, was found to be 100% accurate. "Some were over 10 percent, and some were even over 15 percent false positive, right? So that would really not be acceptable performance," he says. Link to video. For more on this study, see our press release at Berkeley News.

De Kai, a research scholar at Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute and professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is about to release a study he led with an international team of scientists, showing that everyone should be wearing a mask, as they do in many countries in East Asia, to protect against COVID-19. Among the study's findings: If 80% of a closed population wore a mask, infection rates would drop to roughly one twelfth the number experienced in a similar population in which no one wears a mask. The team arrived at their conclusions by building a computer forecasting model they called masksim simulator. Among other things, the simulation took into account differences in effectiveness between different kinds of masks. "What's most important about wearing masks right now ... is that it works, along with social distancing, to flatten the curve of infections as we wait for treatments and vaccines to be developed -- while also allowing people to go out and some businesses to reopen," says masksim collaborator Guy-Philippe Goldstein, an economist, cybersecurity expert, and lecturer at the Ecole de Guerre Economique in Paris. Jeremy Howard, a researcher at UCSF and founding researcher at fast.ai, who was among a group of scientists assessing the study, said of the work, "It's almost overkill how careful they were with this modeling."

People in the Bay Area are more supportive of shelter-in-place rules than residents of other California areas, a new poll co-conducted by Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies has found. The survey, among 8,800 registered voters, revealed that 68% of Bay Area residents are more concerned that the restrictions will end too soon, as opposed to 20% expressing concerns that the rules will go on too long. The statewide numbers are 62.5% and 26.5%. Political science professor Eric Schickler, the institute's co-director, says that public support for the mandates is "related to progressive ideology and also skepticism of President Trump -- features that are both prominent in the Bay Area." Referring to the higher trust Bay Area residents place in state and local health officials and scientific experts, he says that that partially reflects "high education levels in the area." He says: "This trust likely means the proactive, decisive leadership of Bay Area officials was an important influence on residents. ... Bay Area residents tend to trust scientists and health officials more than in many parts of the country, and so they were receptive to the clear message they received early on."

Dr. Eva Harris, a public health professor specializing in infectious diseases and vaccinology and Dr. Lisa Barcellos, a public health professor specializing in epidemiology and biostatistics, are co-leading an extensive study of the Bay Area's exposure to the virus to see how widespread it has been and for how long. On this program, they discuss their strategy, which includes a mailed questionnaire, followed up with testing. Dr. Harris says they've mailed 307,000 invitations to participate in the study to "every single home, every household in the census track in 11 cities." Dr. Barcellos says: "We're asking all about current symptoms, past symptoms and going back as far as December. We're asking about travel histories. We're asking about who's in the household and what they've been exposed to." From the respondents, 5,000 to 6,000 will be selected randomly to participate in the testing phase. "The in-home collection kits include all the materials that someone needs to collect saliva, as well as an oral and nasal swab," Dr. Barcellos says. "It's really very straightforward and doesn't hurt at all," Dr. Harris adds. Link to video. Read more about the study at Berkeley's School of Public Health.

A significant majority of California voters support paid sick leave, medical benefits, and replacement wages for farmworkers who contract COVID-19, according to a new poll by Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies. The support applies to undocumented farmworkers, as well, with 79% of respondents supporting equitable pay regardless of immigration status. More than 90% of respondents support employers' provision of hand-washing stations, personal protective gear, and workplace rules allowing for physical distancing among the workers.