Vaccines, work from home, online learning, curbside pickup and masks became part of the daily routine as states issued stay-home orders in March 2020 to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Since then, there are many ways in which people have adjusted to a new normal. Here, 20 experts from across Michigan State University share important perspectives about our experience with the COVID-19 pandemic and note key takeaways to keep in mind as we move forward.
Vaccines, long COVID and related medical conditions
Jed Magen is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry in the College of Human Medicine and the College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Contact: magenj@msu.edu
“The virus that causes COVID, SARS-CoV-2, resulted in multiple kinds of problems including mental health issues for patients and for caregivers. For many people, this is a hidden epidemic. Physicians and other health professionals were traumatized by the huge numbers of very ill patients. Family members who lost loved ones are dealing with grief and people with continuing symptoms from long COVID are often depressed. Once identified, there are many mental health interventions that can be helpful, from medications to various types of therapy.”
Peter Gulick is an associate professor of medicine at the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine and serves as adjunct faculty in the MSU College of Human Medicine and the MSU College of Nursing. He is a certified and practicing medical oncologist, an infectious disease physician and an expert in vaccines.
Contact: gulick@msu.edu
“Vaccines are important, especially for the current respiratory season with RSV, COVID, flu and even the H5N1 [bird flu] possibility. Long COVID continues to cause debility in certain people. We’re still learning more about how it presents, who is high risk, and how to diagnose as well as treat it. The next pandemic — when, where and with what type of organism is uncertain. Currently, H5N1 is the leading potential candidate. We’re one mutation away.”
Jonathan Gold is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development at the MSU College of Human Medicine and is a practicing physician at MSU Health Care. Gold also serves as chair of the Government Affairs and Advocacy Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics, Michigan Chapter.
Contact: goldj@msu.edu
“Vaccines are an essential part of keeping children healthy. As a community, we are safer when our children are vaccinated, and declining vaccine rates lead to outbreaks of disease. Vaccines are also safe. Serious side effects are rare, and there are very few medical reasons that keep children from getting a vaccine.”
Todd Lucas is a health psychologist and a C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health in the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health at MSU’s College of Human Medicine. Over the past five years, he has served as the lead investigator on a large Serological Sciences Network project, where he considers the use of evidence-based health communication to encourage noninvasive COVID antibody screening in underserved communities, such as Flint and northern Michigan. Lucas can address psychological and behavioral aspects of the COVID pandemic, including how behavioral prevention and safety can intersect with biological factors and public health resource utilization to influence pandemic-related disparities and preparedness.
Contact: lucastod@msu.edu
“Future pandemic preparedness is just as much about understanding people as it is about understanding viruses. The COVID pandemic illuminated that human behavior and decision-making are at the center of any public health outbreak. Even the best and most effective vaccines will not be fully realized until we better understand why people decide to use them or choose not to.”
Amit Sachdev is the associate chief medical officer of MSU Health Care, medical director of the Department of Neurology and assistant professor of neuromuscular medicine in the Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology in the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine and the MSU College of Human Medicine.
Contact: sachdeva@msu.edu
“Long COVID includes neurologic complaints like brain fog, problems with blood pressure and numbness of the hands and feet. Five years later, we see many community members who are still not as functional or independent as they once were. Each year we learn a little bit more about how to best serve these patients. With attention and support, we are seeing many long COVID symptoms improve or resolve by 12 months. This gives us hope that these symptoms can be treated.”
Furqan Irfan is an associate professor in the Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology in the MSU College of Human Medicine and College of Osteopathic Medicine and an affiliated faculty member at the Institute of Global Health at MSU. Irfan also serves as the director of research development for the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Contact: irfanfur@msu.edu
“The COVID pandemic killed millions and destroyed economies globally. Our work indicates that there was no trade-off between restrictive health policies and the economy in developed countries during the pandemic. However, in the case of developing countries, there was a trade-off. Nepal and India, for example, had lengthy lockdowns and a mismatch between the stringency of government response and test positivity. This led to higher adverse economic effects, unemployment and other burdens of COVID.
“In terms of pandemic preparedness, One Health systems integrating human-animal-environmental health need to be strengthened to prevent disease spillover and to serve as early warning surveillance systems for infectious disease outbreaks. The Mekong One Health Innovation Program implemented in Laos, Vietnam and Thailand has given us insights into the gaps and challenges in One Health in the Mekong region and how to work with partners and stakeholders to strengthen One Health systems.”
Charles “Chaz” Hong, cardiologist, is chair of the Department of Medicine at the MSU College of Human Medicine and an MSU Research Foundation Professor. Hong’s research focuses on bridging chemical, cell and molecular biology, genetics and cardiology.
Contact: hongchar@msu.edu
“Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS, is an often-misunderstood condition that disrupts the body’s ability to regulate blood flow when changing positions, leading to symptoms like dizziness, fatigue and fainting. As a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, it highlights the delicate balance our body maintains between different systems. We have seen a sharp rise in the number of individuals who experience POTS following the pandemic.”
Health-specific communications
Maria Lapinski is a professor of communication in MSU’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences and is director of the MSU Health and Risk Communication Center. Lapinski studies cultural dynamics and communication processes, or how our cultural values shape our perceptions of what other people do, related to global health and environmental issues.
Contact: lapinsk3@msu.edu
“The COVID pandemic changed health communication research in several major ways. First, it elevated the role of communication in public health as people realized for the first time how much of health decision-making was connected to the communication and information coming in about it from the media and our social networks.
“Second, it galvanized attention toward preventing the spread of COVID and away from other pressing health problems. This means there is a very large body of new research on infectious disease prevention communication that resulted from the pandemic but that other important things may have been ignored. Ignoring these other issues will have long-term consequences for the knowledge base on health communication and, ultimately, the health of people in the U.S. and the world.”
Victor DiRita is chair of MSU’s Department of Microbiology, Genetics and Immunology and the Rudolph Hugh Endowed Chair in Microbial Pathogenesis. He is affiliated with the colleges of Human Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Natural Science.
Contact: diritavi@msu.edu
“Pandemic preparedness is a challenge. We are planning for something we hope never happens, and maintaining a high degree of preparedness is costly. At the core of the effort is shaping attitudes among the public about why preparedness is important and the rationale and value of our public health measures and vaccinations. Communication and education are key, as we learned from the COVID pandemic. The public has an expectation of knowing the basis of decisions that impact their lives in dramatic ways; at the same time, public health leaders have a responsibility to be clear about what we know and what we don’t know. In particular, regarding vaccines, addressing the source of reticence to become vaccinated can only come from a place of mutual trust.”
Celeste Campos-Castillo, associate professor of media and information in the MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences, studies ways technologies can be designed and implemented so that they mitigate inequalities, particularly with respect to health outcomes and access to health care.
Contact: camposca@msu.edu
“The need to social distance increased our reliance on information and communication technologies to access health care, participate in workplace meetings and attend school. Five years later, many people — including those from marginalized groups — want to continue using these technologies. We learned during the pandemic how and when technologies, such as telehealth and online learning, could be used to mitigate inequities in health and mental health.”
Education and online learning
Scott Imberman is a professor in the Department of Economics in the College of Social Science and the College of Education. Imberman specializes in the economics of education and education policy and studies returns to higher education, charter schools and teacher incentives. He can comment on what the future could hold for charter and private schools, as well as proposals for K-12 education.
Contact: imberman@msu.edu
“The COVID pandemic had substantial implications for the provision of education for students with disabilities both nationwide and in Michigan. Our team wanted to understand how the pandemic and its related restrictions on in-person learning affected districts’ abilities to identify new disabilities in students and discontinuation rates for existing disabilities. Using data on individual students in Michigan, we find that the pandemic had a profound effect.
“There were sharp reductions in new disability identifications during the first two years of the pandemic concentrated in learning disabilities. At its trough, new identifications fell by 19% relative to pre-pandemic rates. The reductions were larger in districts that had longer periods of remote instruction. Identifications eventually returned to their long-term trend, but did not exceed it. This suggests that there was not enough ‘catch up’ to find all the disabilities that were not identified during the pandemic. Hence, we are left with a substantial set of students whose disability identifications either became substantially delayed or permanently missed.”
Christine Greenhow is a professor of educational psychology and educational technology. Greenhow’s research focuses on learning in social media contexts such as online social networks, from learning sciences, learning technologies and new literacy studies perspectives — all with the goal of improving theory, practice and policy.
Contact: greenhow@msu.edu
“In March of 2020, the COVID health emergency forced a rapid transition to emergency forms of online learning in many countries. We learned that this emergency remote instruction was a far cry from the carefully designed online learning we know from decades of educational research to be best practice.
“Global trends suggest online learning and self-directed learning through social media have grown since the spring of 2020 and will likely continue to grow as learners of all types and ages — young people, adult learners, people with disabilities — go online to take control over what, how, where and with whom they learn. The rise in artificial intelligence will only exacerbate these trends, expanding both the possibilities and challenges for education.”
Tara Kilbride is interim associate director of MSU’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, the research partner of the Michigan Department of Education.
Contact: kilbrid9@msu.edu
“In the years since COVID’s unprecedented disruptions to learning and schooling began, student achievement trends in Michigan show signs of progress but not full recovery. On average, math achievement improved significantly, reaching or surpassing pre-pandemic national norms on many benchmark assessments by spring 2024. Although average reading scores have changed little since 2020-21, gaps between high- and low-performing readers improved at the middle school level. Elementary students’ literacy development remains a top concern, with little evidence of reading recovery on benchmark assessments and slight declines in third and fourth grade ELA proficiency on the most recent M-STEP. Recent NAEP data show that Michigan’s recovery is largely consistent with national trends on most tests and exceeds national trends in fourth grade math.”
Keith Hampton is director of research at the MSU Quello Center, which focuses on the social and economic implications of communication, media and information technologies of the digital age, as well as the policy and management issues raised by these developments. Hampton is part of a team that conducted a 2022 survey that warned that gains made to address broadband and internet connectivity in Michigan’s rural communities are beginning to fade.
Contact: khampton@msu.edu
“Students in rural America still lack access to high-speed internet at home despite governmental efforts during the pandemic to fill the void. This lack of access negatively affects their academic achievement and overall well-being. The situation has been getting worse as the urgency of the pandemic has receded.
“During the pandemic, school districts quickly deployed emergency resources such as Wi-Fi hot spots to facilitate remote learning. In rural Michigan, student home internet connectivity soared to 96% by the end of 2021, a remarkable 16 percentage-point increase from 2019. However, these gains are proving temporary. By 2022, student access in rural Michigan began to decline. Today, many more students are disconnected than during the height of the crisis. The downward trend is likely to continue as resources from pandemic emergency measures diminish.”
Social justice, quiet quitting and lifestyle changes
Stephen Spates, assistant professor of communication in the MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences, is an expert on cultural communication — particularly diversity-related communication messages — and organizational communication.
Contact: spatesst@msu.edu
“Five years later, we can still feel the impressions from the pandemic across communication contexts. Within health, the pandemic helped push efforts to increase communication about mental health conditions and access to care. Among organizations, we saw a shift in professional desires and outcomes, including terms like “the great resignation,” “quiet quitting,” and a significant increase in telework, popularly known as working from home. The pandemic intersected with calls for social justice, as the Black Lives Matter movement propelled from the death of George Floyd. A surge of DEI-focused units, programs and positions were created to increase opportunities, but have recently been reduced or eliminated.”
Soohyun Cho, assistant professor of English in the MSU College of Arts and Letters, studies how people turned to creativity during the pandemic. Cho explores how shared acts of creativity bring together individuals from diverse communities, revealing their significance for health and well-being.
Contact: chosooh1@msu.edu
“During the COVID pandemic, people turned to creativity not only as a coping mechanism, but also as a means of connection, expression and resilience. As people navigated different perceptions of time, disrupted rhythms and isolation, many explored creative outlets — some by choice, others by necessity. What began as scattered, solitary activities — including everyday creativity such as baking, gardening and journaling — connected people across diverse communities around the world through shared acts of creative expression and storytelling. This surge in creative engagement fueled a persistent demand for more studio spaces and art programs, underscoring the power of creativity to foster collective healing and a sense of belonging.”
LeConté Dill is an associate professor of African American and African Studies in the MSU College of Arts and Letters. She spent 25 years working with and researching public health, health and social policy, and intersections of the arts and health. While earning her doctorate, Dill studied how creative expression and writing can be used to understand and articulate health issues, particularly among youth of color in urban neighborhoods. Her most recent funded project at MSU enables her work specifically with Black women in student and staff roles to better understand how community-building and wellness practices are supported through physical space and time together.
Contact: ldill@msu.edu
“Ultimately, the pandemic and its political aftermath disproportionately impacted Black people. Given my background in public health, I’m recalling the initial barring of doulas, spouses and partners from hospitals during births, as well as maternal deaths among Black women in hospitals during the pandemic. For a population persistently mistreated by health care systems, the pandemic amplified this vulnerability. I’m also recalling the fact that law enforcement in the U.S. murdered more people, again disproportionately Black people, in the first six months of 2020 than they did during that same period in the previous five years, even though most of the population was quarantining indoors during most of that time.”
Economy, supply chain and hospitality
Jim Anhut is the director of the real estate management minor in MSU’s School of Hospitality Business within the Eli Broad College of Business. Anhut is a Certified Hotel Administrator and is a founding member of both the Extended Stay Lodging Council of the American Hotel and Lodging Association and the Atlanta Hospitality Alliance. He can discuss COVID’s impact on the real estate industry.
Contact: anhutjim@msu.edu
“Less than 100 years ago, fewer than one in 10 families in the United States owned a home. Since then that number stands at more than six in 10. The COVID pandemic has spawned untold numbers of articles about the challenges of buying a home, with rising home mortgage interest rates oftentimes cited as the most prominent of those challenges. I encourage everyone to look back over those 100 years to recall that the home mortgage interest rates during and shortly after the pandemic were at historic low levels due to uncertainty in the economy. Let’s not forget that home mortgage interest rates in the early 1980s peaked at close to 20% on the heels of very high inflation that was instigated by the high cost of imported oil. COVID was a similar jolt to the economy that should be a history lesson for all of us. The lesson is that consumers react by deferring purchases or managing expectations for that dream house.”
Simone Peinkofer, associate professor in MSU’s top-ranked Department of Supply Chain Management in the Eli Broad College of Business, is an expert on logistics and retail strategy.
Contact: simonep@broad.msu.edu
“The pandemic taught us that organizations need to invest in and develop end-to-end supply chain visibility. Visibility allows companies to identify any potential issues in their supply chain network and is key for strategic decision-making. Visibility allows companies to monitor their supply chain network and can help companies to not only prepare for future disruptions, but also to respond quicker.”
Adam Roy, the Dr. Lewis J. and Mrs. Ruth E. Minor Chef and Professor of Culinary Management in the MSU School of Hospitality Business, is an expert in food service and restaurant management. Roy is also a certified executive chef, culinary educator and hospitality educator who has worked in restaurants, hotels and resorts in over 10 countries.
Contact: aroy@msu.edu
“COVID shifted food and beverage operations from thrive to survive. Adaptability was a key word that separated success from closure. Technology played a large role in restaurants’ revenue capture strategies built on delivery and apps, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats. However, like any industry, some restaurants that followed the same formula in a new format proved to be unsustainable.
“Although human resource challenges facing the food service industry have always been at the forefront, this intensified during this challenging period. Higher costs of operating a restaurant are being passed off to patrons while these safety buffers are assisting risk-taking entrepreneurs’ desire to grow.
“Owners that were fortified with personal resources before the pandemic were able to absorb some of the pain of doing business in COVID. Overall, the pandemic turned more people into ‘foodies.’ This is helping create a demand for better restaurant concepts and guests learning more from food and beverage-focused professionals.”