Episode 8 - The Pandemic Perspective: The Local and State Government's Response to COVID-19, the 2020 Election, and Everything in Between (Part 1)

This month's two part (!) episode features everything but the kitchen sink! We're tackling how government, primarily at the local and state levels, transitioned to remote work, unemployment and the recession, the messaging behind school closings/mask wearing, the 2020 Election, COVID-19 vaccines distribution, and everything in between.

For the second episode of our new series, The Pandemic Perspective, we spoke with Commissioner Mike Pipe, Centre County Chair of the Board of Commissioners and Co-Chair of the Election Board of Centre County, and Dr. Chris Witko, Associate Director of the School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Penn State University. This episode is broken into two parts - we had a lot to talk about! - and will be released biweekly.

Please note that this episode was recorded in early December 2020.

Resources/Additional Links for this Episode

• Business Insider: Unemployment surged to 14.7% in April as the US lost a record 20.5 million jobs
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Ability to work from home: evidence from two surveys and implications for the labor market in the COVID-19 pandemic
• ProPublica: What Coronavirus Job Losses Reveal About Racism in America
• NPR: Pandemic Forces More Women To Leave The Workforce
• Pew Research Center: Economic Fallout From COVID-19 Continues To Hit Lower-Income Americans the Hardest
• Newsy/Ipsos: Newsy/Ipsos Poll Finds Broad Support For National Mask Mandate
• Pew Research Center: More Americans say they are regularly wearing masks in stores and other businesses
• The Hill: Restaurant group calls on governors to make closing indoor dining 'a last option'
• WITF: The dispute over the Wolf administration’s handling of coronavirus in nursing homes, explained
• New York Times: More Than One-Third of U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Linked to Nursing Homes

The Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative Podcast's new series, The Pandemic Perspective, examines how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and various aspects of our society, institutions, and other systems have collided, changed, and even collapsed in the last nine months.

The transcript for this episode is available here.