Experts in the News

"Really it’s pretty obvious: If you have a job and you get paid hourly and you don’t have any unemployment insurance or paid sick leave and you go down for three weeks, how do you pay your bills? How do you do anything?” said John W. Diamond, the director of the Center for Public Finance, about the impact of coronavirus on hourly workers and the need for paid sick leave.

“The Trump administration could exacerbate the oil glut and prolong the price downturn by supporting domestic producers, which would push even more oil into the market,” said nonresident energy fellow Anna Mikulska.

“It’s incredibly hard to (make) projections about what’s going to happen because this is a unique first-time event and we have so little data,” said Vivian Ho, the director of the Center for Health and Biosciences, about the spread of coronavirus and the prediction that Houston-area hospitals won't have enough beds to deal with the crisis. “Because we don’t have that much testing, we do not know how quickly it’s spreading, what percent of cases are serious, if we can target hot-spot areas and essentially shut them down.”

Fellow Quianta Moore discussed her work to shape policies that advance the health of children.

Energy fellow Jim Krane figured that oil prices are already well below the $80-a-barrel level, so the Saudis will need to finance government spending.