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How We Overcame the Fear of the COVID-19 Vaccine
~Leonard Casiple The COVID-19 pandemic response has upended the very essence of humanity by constraining social interaction, mandating indoor seclusion, and making us flinch at the thought of outdoor bustle. Even the elegance of the lingering waft of perfume and cologne has been supplanted by the shock of quickly-dissipating rubbing alcohol and sanitizers. Every connection…
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The Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Remittance Flow to Cuba: A Glance at the Use of Digital Platforms
Denisse Delgado Public Policy Ph.D. student UMass Boston During the COVID-19 crisis, Mexico and the Dominican Republic have been experiencing an unexpected increase in the remittance transactions. However, most of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean saw a sharp decline in their remittance receipts in April, before they began to rebound in June…
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Should you let your cat wander, if it bullies other cats?
Kwame Appaiah, Professor of Philosophy poses a question that should be relevant to all of us, cat owners or not: Should you let your (bullying) cat wander? Is his freedom more important than the rights of other cats, to live in peace? This is a question that seems to have become relevant as we discuss…
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Removing bottlenecks to flow of remittances should be a top priority during COVID-19: Policy Brief
Summary With close to $500 billion of remittances flowing around the world, the phenomenon of remittances as a force for community development and individual empowerment cannot be ignored. Remittances impact the lives of almost a billion people, worldwide. While the flow of money during the best of times is constrained by various policy initiatives and…
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Coronavirus: How can we keep remittances flowing?
The World Bank is projecting the largest decline in remittances in history, due to COVID-19. On April 23, 2020, The World Bank hosted a webinar with Dr. Dilip Ratha, Chief Economist Remittances unit at the bank on how we could keep remittances flowing. Here is an abridged version of the webinar. Q: Can you give…
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Maintaining National Cohesion During A Drawn-out Pandemic
The localized crisis causes distressing discord to a community. Widespread catastrophe creates agonizing chaos in any region. If not managed carefully, long-term chaos will knock the wind out of our sails and destroy national cohesion. Noble response to the novel COVID-19. Public administrators, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, medical staff, sanitation workers, long-haul truckers, local delivery…
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Innovative solutions to travel policy challenge in Canada
John Marroquin The Republic of Canada is known for having some of the strictest laws for immigration and visitation for foreign nationals who have been convicted of driving under the influence (DUI), or equivalent misconduct in their respective countries. With the steadily rising number of tourists year by year and the number of foreign nationals…
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How can charity and philanthropy help during COVID-19 crisis
I accidentally came across a short video on twitter by Chef Jose Andres. Chef Andres shared a recipe of a simple lentil soup and also a message: feed others with what you have. Feed your own family, feed the people around you. This simple message resonated with me, both as an educator and as someone…
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Frontline Workers & Stress: COVID-19 Reminds Us to Pay Attention to What Matters
Crawford Coates A recent study out in the Journal of the American Medical Association surveyed 1,257 healthcare workers in China who worked on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic response. It finds a significant number of those surveyed experiencing symptoms of distress, including depression, anxiety, and insomnia.[1] The closer to the epicenter of the pandemic,…
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Government mandated shutdowns are making a case for welfare
With talks of some sort of welfare mechanism for millions of Americans doing the rounds, it looks like Universal Basic Income (UBI) is having a moment of spotlight. Let us not forget that it had its moment during the Democratic Primaries, with Andrew Yang making it his signature policy. Welfare policies are making a comeback…
