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Daniel Dunaief

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Dr. Nick Fitterman said they wouldn't necessarily endorse a COVID-19 vaccine immediately without first getting all the information. Photo from Huntington Hospital

Huntington Hospital won’t automatically endorse a COVID-19 vaccine, even if it receives approval from the federal government.

The hospital plans to evaluate the data from the vaccine’s phase 3 trials to ensure that the vaccine is safe and effective.

“We’ll see if things are starting to uptick long before it’s more obvious to the public.”

— Nick Fitterman

“It’s part of our oath, ‘Do no harm,’” said Dr. Nick Fitterman, executive director at Huntington Hospital. “If we don’t think the safety is there, I will scream it from the rooftops. It has to be a combination of safety and efficacy.”

Fitterman said at least seven vaccines are in phase 3 trials, with over 250 experimental vaccines in the works in total.

Fitterman was pleased to see that nine vaccine makers signed a pledge to uphold medical standards and not succumb to governmental pressure for rapid approval.

At this point, Fitterman would only take a vaccine after publication of the evidence from the clinical trials.

Once he is convinced that a vaccine is safe and effective, he said he would feel an urgency to take it as a health care worker.

“If you take care of people who are high risk, you’re going to need to take it,” Fitterman said.

The hospital would likely have the same policy for a COVID vaccine that it does for a flu vaccination: if workers choose not to get a vaccine, they will be required to wear a mask.

For the flu, hospital workers with purple badges on their name tags have had a flu shot.

At this point, it is unclear how long a COVID-19 vaccination might provide potential protection. Like tetanus or mumps, no vaccine wards off infection indefinitely, which means people will likely require boosters.

“I’m more worried about people getting complacent because they have been vaccinated,” Fitterman said.

Years down the road, the virus could return.

Asked whether those people who have antibodies for the virus would need a vaccine, Fitterman highlighted a recent case in Hong Kong. Published in the journal Lancet, doctors shared the story of one patient who contracted COVID-19 and then tested positive again.

The virus currently has several strains, so a vaccine might provide greater protection than natural antibodies against a single type of COVID-19.

The man who contracted the virus twice had antibodies that “didn’t protect him from another infection,” but he did not have any symptoms during the second positive test.

An infection in which a person develops antibodies could “protect you from the disease, but it doesn’t [necessarily] protect you from getting infected again,” Fitterman said.

A health care worker in particular would benefit from a vaccine that prevented infection from numerous strains to prevent that worker from spreading a disease to which he or she would likely be exposed during the course of any increase in cases.

With the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 overlapping with the flu, Fittterman strongly urged residents to get a flu shot, which would help prevent the virus from overwhelming a health care system that might again face an influx of hospitalizations from the coronavirus.

“It’s part of our oath, ‘Do no harm.'”

— Nick Fitterman

Huntington Hospital recently started making the flu vaccine available to frontline workers and urged people to get flu shots this month. He reminded people that the vaccine only works two weeks after an injection after the immune system has had a chance to recognize the virus.

Fitterman is encouraged by the range of current vaccines in trials for COVID-19, including those that use messenger RNA.

Fitterman said Huntington Hospital is prepared for a potential second wave of COVID-19. He monitors the data every day.

“We’ll see if things are starting to uptick long before it’s more obvious to the public,” Fitterman said.

As a part of Northwell Health, Huntington Hospital has stockpiled personal protective equipment. Northwell also gave Huntington $4 million to be prepared, which includes having more ventilators, dialysis machines, and negative pressure rooms ready. Huntington can handle 10% more than the number of patients who needed medical help in the spring.

“We are beyond ready [but we] hope we don’t have to exercise any of that,” Fitterman said.

Fitterman urged those people who need other hospital services, such as cancer screenings, to come to the hospital.

When the spring surge for COVID-19 occurred, the hospital told people who were dealing with nonemergency situations not to come to the hospital because they needed the beds, and not because they felt patients would be exposed to the virus.

Indeed, after the viral numbers declined, the hospital tested its staff for the presence of the antibodies. They found that 9% of the staff had antibodies to the virus, which is below the 14% for the surrounding community.

“What we did works,” Fitterman said, which included PPE and procedures to protect the staff. The hospital is a “safe place to be,” he said.

In monitoring the daily changes in infection in Suffolk County, Fitterman said positive tests have been rising and falling during the last few weeks. So far, he has not seen an increase in hospitalizations.

“Our numbers continue to go down,” Fitterman said, as the hospital had three people with COVID-19 as of Sept. 8.

There will be a significant reduction in the number of people who can commemorate 9/11 this year, with many like the annual event in Shoreham being closed to the public due to COVID-19. File photo by Kyle Barr

TBR News Media reached out to several local elected officials at the national, state and county level to let them share their thoughts as we head into another commemoration of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

*This post will be updated as more officials respond to our questions.*

Sen. Gaughran Shares his Thoughts on 9/11

State Sen. James Gaughran (D-Northport) spoke with the TBR News Media on the eve of the 19th year since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

TBR: What do you think of when you reflect on 9/11 today?

Gaughran: When I think of 9/11, I obviously think of the heroism and the number of people I know who died. I certainly think of the police officers and the firefighters and the first responders who, without hesitancy, ran right into those buildings. Probably, some of them knew they were going to get killed. Maybe others figured it was another day when they were going to try to save people.

TBR: Who is the first person you think of in connection with 9/11?

On Sept. 11, 2019, Gov. Cuomo signs 9/11 bill, sponsored by N.Y. State Sen. Jim Gaughran.

Gaughran: Since I have been in the senate, the first person that comes to mind more than anyone else is Tim DeMeo, who is a constituent of mine, who was working for the Department of Environmental Conservation. He was in charge of dealing with oil spills, other contaminated sites and other hazardous clean ups. He was in Manhattan, driving over the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn, when the plane crashed. He got a call, “You should turn around, go back to Manhattan. This is something we’ll have to deal with.”

He turned around. The second plane crashed. He was permanently injured by debris. He stayed there. The next day and the next day, throughout [the clean-up] with all the other heroes…

He worked alongside police and firefighters and others working at the scene. He got very sick. He was not entitled to the same disability retirement benefits that everybody else was who was there. The way the state legislature wrote the bill, it was written so it would [be for] uniformed employees. He was not one of them. He was in the Department of Environmental Conservation. There were eight or nine other people like him. One of the first who came to see me in my district office, he came and told me a story … He said, “everybody else has been helped and I haven’t.”

He has significant medical issues. Attempts to pass a bill never went anywhere. I ended up writing a bill. We passed a bill last year, on 9/11. The Governor [Andrew Cuomo (D)] signed the bill.

It’s my proudest achievement so far. It didn’t help as many people as some of the other legislation I dealt with. I’m proudest of [that bill]. All these people were just as much heroes as everyone else. They were left out. New York was ignoring them.

TBR: How would you compare the heroism of first responders who raced to the burning buildings in Manhattan to the heroism of first responders and health care workers who have dealt with the ongoing unknowns and challenges from the pandemic?

Gaughran: I think it’s basically the same. A nurse or a doctor or a firefighter or an EMT who picks up somebody and puts them in an ambulance and brings them to the hospital are doing this knowing they could easily contract COVID and face the same issues that people they are trying to help are facing. The risks are the same. Running into a burning building is a more immediate risk. Dealing with a sick COVID patient, who may give you the disease, you’re facing a risk that potentially could cost you your life.

TBR: Do you think the divisiveness of today will ease during 9/11?

Gaughran: I would hope so. I remember on 9/11, watching George W. Bush at the site, that iconic image, with the bull horn and everything. That wasn’t that long after the election. My kids were young. They paid attention to everything. [They said] “dad, you didn’t vote for him.” This is a moment when we all have to stand behind him. It was a different world then. It’s hard to get people to agree to the same thing today. The president we have now is not going out of his way to try to create national unity.

I voted for Al Gore, but Bush did push for national unity after that, including visiting mosques, to make it clear that even though the terrorists who killed us were of a certain background, the folks who were living in the United States who happened to be Muslim are patriotic citizens like everyone else.

Rep. Lee Zeldin Shares his Thoughts on 9/11

U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY-1) responded to questions from TBR News Media on the eve of the 19th year since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

TBR: What do you think of when you reflect on 9/11 today?

U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin. Flie photo by Alex Petroski

Zeldin: The bravery, selflessness, fearlessness, and resolve of first responders, Americans, and our entire nation as a whole. When so many of us think about 9/11, we remember exactly where we were that day, when ordinary Americans became extraordinary heroes. We vividly remember what we heard, what we saw and how we felt. We remember first responders running towards danger at the greatest possible risk to their own lives.

While our memories of those moments have not faded, most importantly, neither has our resolve to rise stronger than ever before. New Yorkers remain committed, especially this year, to remember, honor and exemplify those Americans, who in the face of unconscionable evil, were the very best of who we are.

TBR:  Who is the first person that comes to mind in connection with 9/11?

Zeldin: It’s difficult to choose just one person who comes to mind, but with the full permanent funding of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund signed into law last year, one of the first people who comes to mind is Luis Alvarez. While he wasn’t with us to witness the legislation he fought so hard for signed into law, he spent his final weeks with us continuing the fight until the very end so other 9/11 first responders wouldn’t have to.

TBR: In the context of the pandemic, is 9/11 overlooked?

Zeldin: Even in the midst of a pandemic, the commitment of New Yorkers to Never Forget, as we’ve seen with the Tribute in Light and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, underscores how dedicated New Yorkers are to the memory of those who died on that day and the so many who have passed since due to 9/11 related illnesses.

TBR: How would you compare the heroism of first responders who raced to the burning buildings in Manhattan to the heroism of first responders and health care workers who have dealt with the ongoing unknowns and challenges from the pandemic?

Zeldin: The same bravery in the face of clear danger and uncertainty that drove so many first responders on 9/11 to save countless lives at the expensive of their own, is the same bravery that has spurred so many of our local first responders and health care workers to serve throughout the novel outbreak of coronavirus.

METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

What are we all waiting for? A vaccine ranks high on the list, if you read the newspapers and hear the dialog and diatribes from that epicenter of anger, hostility and finger pointing known as Washington, D.C.

But, really, how much will a vaccine change our lives? If a vaccine were available tomorrow, would you take it? For a vaccine to create herd immunity, a majority (70 percent or more) of the population would need to take a safe, effective treatment.

In an unscientific survey of 18 people to whom I promised anonymity, eight of them said they would take a vaccine if it were available tomorrow, while the other 10 said they would wait anywhere from several months to a year to take it. Several of the respondents elaborated on the rationale behind their decisions.

Jody said she would take it because “absolutely anything that helps us get kids back into school and the world moving again” is worth the effort.

Melissa said she would also take a test. Her husband is currently in a clinical trial and doesn’t know if he received the vaccine or a placebo.

While Sheila suggested she usually waits a month or two after a new vaccine comes out to determine if there are any side effects, she would take it whenever it’s available “as long as the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] backs it.”

A health care worker, Doug explained that his company won’t let him work without getting a flu shot. He wondered whether the company’s policy would be the same after a COVID vaccine comes out. Indeed, a vaccine would create a college conundrum, as schools that require a new vaccine before students return for the spring might cause some students to choose remote learning or to take a semester off.

Stephanie would only consider taking a vaccine if Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it was safe and effective.

Matt would not rush to get a vaccine. He said he doesn’t “buy the first model of a car or wait in line to get the newest cell phone. Let’s see how it works.”

Jacob was much more adamant, expressing concern that the urgency to get a test on the market would create a potential health hazard.

John shared Jacob’s concerns, saying he’s nervous about anything new. “I would consider taking a vaccine a year from now,” John said, but not until researchers and doctors know more about it.

Cindy, who is suffering with several other health problems, said she wouldn’t take a vaccine for a year or more. She doesn’t know if the vaccine might interact with medications she’s currently taking, while she’s also concerned that any change in her body might alter her overall health. Mindy wouldn’t rush to get a vaccine. “Testing takes time and if it were available that quickly, I would not trust the effectiveness and/or safety,” she said.

So if my non-scientific sample is reflective of the overall population, a vaccine, even if it’s effective and safe, would take more than the typical few weeks after it is available to provide a benefit to both the individual and the greater population.

While an available vaccine might be a relief, it also causes concerns about whether the process moved too quickly. Assurances from the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and Dr. Fauci might help ease those worries. To borrow from the sports world, the population is eager for an umpire to call balls and strikes after the pitch is thrown, and not before, to satisfy a timeline for people eager to return to the life of handshakes and hugs.

Anže Slosar. Photo from BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Ever since Ancient Romans and Greeks looked to the stars at night, humans have turned those pinpricks of light that interrupt the darkness into mythological stories.

Two years from now, using a state-of-the-art telescope located in Cerro Pachón ridge in Northern Chile, scientists may take light from 12 billion light years away and turn it into a factual understanding of the forces operating on distant galaxies, causing the universe to expand and the patterns of movement for those pinpricks of light.

While they are awaiting the commissioning of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, researchers including Brookhaven National Laboratory Physicist Anže Slosar are preparing for a deluge of daily data — enough to fill 15 laptops each night.

An analysis coordinator of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope’s dark energy science collaboration, Slosar and other researchers from around the world will have a unique map with catalogs spanning billions of galaxies.

Anže Slosar

“For the past five years, we have been getting ready for the data without having any data,” said Slosar. Once the telescope starts producing information, the information will come out at a tremendous rate.

“Analyzing it will be a major undertaking,” Slosar explained in an email. “We are getting ready and hope that we’ll be ready in time, but the proof is in the pudding.”

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is named for the late astronomer who blazed a trail for women in the field from the time she earned her Bachelor’s Degree from Vassar until she made an indelible mark studying the rotation of stars.

Slosar called Rubin a “true giant of astronomy” whose work was “instrumental in the discovery of dark matter.”

Originally called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), the Rubin Observatory has several missions, including understanding dark matter and dark energy, monitoring hazardous asteroids and the remote solar system, observing the transient optical sky and understanding the formation and structure of the Milky Way.

The study of the movement of distant galaxies, as well as the way objects interfere with the light they send into space, helps cosmologists such as Slosar understand the forces that affect the universe as well as current and ancient history since the Big Bang.

According to Slosar, the observatory will address some of its goals by collecting data in five realms including examining large structures, which are clustered in the sky. By studying the statistical properties of the galaxies as a function of their distance, scientists can learn about the forces operating on them.

Another area of study involves weak lensing. A largely statistical measure, weak lensing allows researchers to explore how images become distorted when their light source passes near a gravitational force. The lensing causes the image to appear as if it were printed on a cloth and stretched out so that it becomes visually distorted.

In strong lensing, a single image can appear as two sources of light when it passes through a dense object. Albert Einstein worked out the mathematical framework that allows researchers to make these predictions. The first of thousands of strong lensing effects was discovered in 1979. Slosar likens this process to the way light behind a wine glass bends and appears to be coming from two directions as it passes around and through the glass.

The fourth effect, called a supernova, occurs when an exploding star reaches critical mass and collapses under its own weight, releasing enough light to make a distant star brighter than an entire galaxy. A supernova in the immediate vicinity of Earth would be so bright, “it would obliterate all life on Earth.”

With the observatory scanning the entire sky, scientists might see these supernova every day. Using the brightness of the supernova, scientists can determine the distance to the object.

Scientists hope they will be lucky enough to see a supernova in a strongly lensed galaxy. Strong lensing amplifies the light and would allow scientists to see the supernova that are otherwise too distant for the telescope to observe.

Finally, the observatory can explore galaxy clusters, which are a rare collection of galaxies. The distribution of these galaxies in these clusters and how they are distributed relative to each other can indicate the forces operating within and between them.

The BNL scientist, who is originally from Slovenia, is a group leader for the BNL team, which has seven researchers, including post docs. As the analysis coordinator of the dark energy science collaboration, he also coordinates 300 people. Their efforts, he said, involve a blend of independent work following their particular interests and a collective effort to prepare for the influx of data.

Slosar said his responsibility is to have a big-picture overview of all the pieces the project needs. He is thrilled that this project, which was so long in the planning and development stage, is now moving closer to becoming a reality. He said he has spent five years on the project, while some people at BNL have spent closer to 20 years, as LSST was conceived as a dark matter telescope in 1996.

Scientists hope the observatory will produce new information that informs current understanding and forms the basis of future theories.

As a national laboratory, BNL was involved in numerous phases of development for the observatory, which had several different leaders. The SLAC National Accelerator in Stanford led the development of the camera that will be integrated into the telescope. BNL will also continue to play a role in the data analysis and interpretation.

“Fundamentally, I just want to understand how the universe operates and why it is like this and not different,” said Slosar.

Northport power plant. File photo

A decade after the Long Island Power Authority sought to reduce the taxes it paid on the Northport Power Station, the Huntington Town Board voted to approve a settlement 56 minutes before the offer on the long-standing case expired.

With the possibility of a judgment that would not only hurt Huntington’s finances but would also have implications for the economy of Suffolk County, the Town Board voted 4-1 at 11:04 p.m. Sept. 3 to support a settlement that will cut LIPA’s taxes to $46 million from $86 million over the next seven years.

During a public forum that ran for well over five hours, Supervisor Chad Lupinacci (R) said he supported the settlement, in part because he wanted to protect the value of real estate. He also described it as a transaction the town could be “proud of.”

Councilman Gene Cook (R) voted against the terms because he suggested the board was elected to fight for the people.

Several residents spoke during the virtual hearing, with some expressing their reluctant support and others bristling at the deadline to agree to the settlement in the midst of the pandemic.

As part of the terms of the deal, LIPA also agreed to pay the town an additional $1 million each year for 2021-23.

LIPA had submitted an appraisal in 2019 that valued the property at the Northport power plant, which has the four tall red-and-white smokestacks that are visible from the Long Island Sound, at $193 million, considerably below the original $3.6 billion assessment. A judgment in favor of LIPA could have dramatically cut LIPA’s taxes while putting the town on the hook for a refund and interest liability of $825 million.

The Suffolk County Tax Act would require the county to pay the LIPA refund, which the county would then have to charge back to the town.

While the county could raise funds from public investors to pay LIPA, county Comptroller John Kennedy Jr. (R), who supported the settlement, laid out the extreme difficulty in such a course of action.

“We had to go into the market in April for a $105 million budget anticipation note,” he said. “We got slaughtered. We had to pay 4%” interest on that money. “That’s the equivalent of going to a leg breaker. We’re not in a good financial position at all. Saying we’re shaky” in raising any additional funds, let alone $1 billion, “is an understatement.”

Additionally, County Executive Steve Bellone (D), who voiced his support through a letter prior to the vote, argued that the settlement was “far better than anything [else] offered during the course of the dispute.”

As a part of the settlement, LIPA has agreed to waive all refund liability upon compliance, will pay $14.5 million to the Northport-East Northport school district and will have a lower assessed valuation for seven consecutive years to achieve tax payments not exceeding $46 million by 2026-27.

In years eight through 12, the taxes would remain steady at $46 million.

In addition to the financial implications, the settlement withdraws all appeals and pending lawsuits and gives the town a most-favored nation entitlement, which means that the town would be eligible for similar terms that other municipalities negotiated with the power authority.

The settlement also protects against a ramp down or the retirement of units, which means that the tax base won’t decline even if LIPA closes down some of the capacity of its Northport facility.

The implications of the deal are most profound for residents of Northport and East Northport. For an average residential home worth $484,868, taxes would increase by an average of $370.29. That is still well below the $4,558 increase residents would have seen if LIPA had won a court judgment.

For South Huntington, the increase in the residential tax assessment is a much more modest $22.57 per year for a home valued at $388,816.

COVID-era Human Language Analysis Lab Meeting in July, top row from left, MZ Zamani, Matthew Matero, Nikita Soni ; bottom row from left, Adithya Ganesan, Oscjar Kjell, Linh Pham and H. Andrew Schwartz in the middle. Photos taken July, 2020

By Daniel Dunaief

Computers might not be able to tell you how they are doing, unless they run a diagnostic test, but they might be able to tell you how you are doing.

Using artificial intelligence, a team of scientists at Stony Brook University recently received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how social media posts and mobile phone data may be able to predict excess drinking among restaurant workers.

By using data from texting, social media and mobile phone apps, these researchers, led by Andrew Schwartz, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, are hoping to use artificial intelligence to predict excessive drinking.

According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, unhealthy drinking involves seven drinks a week for women and 14 for men.

Schwartz said the study hopes to be able to address whether the researchers, including Richard Rosenthal, the Director of Addiction Psychiatry at Stony Brook Medicine and Christine DeLorenzo, Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Psychiatry, could “say what the mood predicts how much participants will be drinking in the future.”

By analyzing the content of texts and social media posts, Schwartz and a team that also involves scientists from the University of Pennsylvania will explore whether an increase in stress is more likely to happen before an increase in drinking.

The researchers will study the effect of empathy, which can be health promoting and health threatening. “We believe AI-behavior-based measures will work better than questionnaires for detecting an unhealthy style of empathy,” Schwartz explained in an email. The AI will search for non-obvious patterns of social media posts and texts to determine which type of empathy a person might demonstrate and whether that empathy could lead to a drinking spiral.

Empathy theoretically may add to stress for bartenders and restaurant workers as they often listen to customers who share their tale of woe with food service professionals and are also in a social job.

Indeed, amid the pandemic, where levels of stress are higher during periods of uncertainty about public health and in which restaurant workers might be more likely concerned about their employment, this study could provide a way to understand how increases in alcohol consumption develop potentially to inform new ways to interrupt a negative spiral. “The extra stress of job security is heightened right now” for restaurant workers, among others, Schwartz said.

By validating AI against accepted tools, the researchers hope to gauge the AI-decoded link between emotion and unhealthy drinking behavior by aligning what an individual is expressing in social media with indicators of their emotional state and drinking.

Participants in the study are filling out brief surveys several times a day.

In the long run, the scientists hope this kind of understanding will allow future public health professionals to offer support services to people without the cost of having to administer numerous questionnaires.

The researchers had received word that their proposal had received the kind of score from the NIH that suggested they would likely get funded last July. They could have received positive funding news any time from November through May, which was when they learned that they had secured the financial support to pursue their research.

The topic of study is “extremely relevant,” he added, amid the current uncertainty and the potential for a second wave in the fall or winter.

“We’re interested in studying how unhealthy drinking develops and how it plays out in people’s daily lives,” Schwartz said.

Social media provides a window into the emotional state of the participants in the research.

To be sure, the researchers aren’t looking at how people post about drinking, per se, online. Instead, the scientists are looking at how people in the study answer questions about their drinking in the regular questionnaires.

The researchers came together for this effort through the World Well Being Project, which is a research consortium in collaboration with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, Stony Brook University and Stanford.

The project involves groups of computer scientists, psychologists and statisticians to develop new ways to measure psychological and medical well-being based on language in social media, according to the group’s web site, which describes “Authentic Happiness.”

In a recent study, 75,000 people voluntarily completed a personality questionnaire through Facebook and made their status updates available. Using these posts, the researchers were able to predict a user’s gender 92 percent of the time just by studying the language of their status updates.

Researchers in substance use approached the World Well Being Project, which Schwartz is a part of, about the topic of unhealthy alcohol use.

The Artificial Intelligence methods Schwartz is developing and that the scientists are testing through this grant are aimed at understanding how a person is changing their language over time through their digital footprint.

In the future, Schwartz believes this approach could contribute to personalized medicine.

“When someone is most at risk, apps that are validated [may be able to] detect these sorts of patterns,” he said. While this study doesn’t provide a personalized patient app, it should provide the tools for it, he explained.

Optimizing this work for false positive and false negatives is a part of this study. The researchers need to create the tools that can make predictions with minimal false positives and false negatives first and then hope it will be used to interact with patients.

In this type of artificial-intelligence driven work, researchers typically need about 500 words to come up with a conclusion about a person’s emotional state. A goal of this work is to get that number even lower.

Fotis Sotiropoulos, the Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, offered his enthusiastic support for this effort.

Schwartz is blazing a trail in advancing AI tools for tackling major health challenges,” Sotiropoulos said in a statement. “His work is an ingenious approach using data-science tools, smart-phones and social media postings to identify early signs of alcohol abuse and alcoholism and guide interventions.”

People from as far as Manhattan and as close as Centereach have been taking their vacations on Long Island, such as at the Fox & Owl Inn in Port Jefferson, instead of other states/countries where travel restrictions make it difficult. Photo from Rebecca Kassay

Residents of both Suffolk County and New York City have turned to local hotels and bed and breakfasts to enjoy time away from home amid limited travel options during the pandemic.

With out-of-state guests from numerous states limited in their travel to the area, corporate travel down considerably, and sports teams either shut down or playing without any fans, area hotels have still attracted guests from nearby towns and villages and from city residents disappointed with ongoing urban closures and eager to enjoy a natural setting.

People from as far as Manhattan and as close as Centereach have been taking their vacations on Long Island, such as at the Stony Brook Holiday Inn Express, instead of other states/countries where travel restrictions make it difficult. File photo

“It’s very different now,” said Jamie Ladone, sales executive at the Holiday Inn Express Stony Brook. “We’re not getting as many out-of-state guests,” but the hotel is finding people who are eager for a staycation.

Indeed, Emilie Zaniello and her family recently spent a weekend at the Holiday Inn, just 20 minutes from her home in Centereach

“We needed to get out of our element, to take a break from everyday life and the stresses right now,” said Zaniello, who stayed during a weekend with her husband John and their two children, 8-year-old Abigail, and 6-year-old John Robert.

The family felt “cooped up in the house” as their children didn’t have as much of an opportunity to do “normal, everyday things,” Zaniello said.

Abigail and John Robert enjoyed playing on the baseball field and the basketball court, while the family also booked time to go swimming.

“It just felt like a mini-vacation, where we didn’t have to go too far,” said Zaniello, who drove back and forth to her home to take care of the family’s two miniature dachshunds.

At the Holiday Inn, Suffolk residents have also enjoyed the indoor pool, outdoor patio, and volleyball and basketball courts, which families can use while maintaining social distancing, Ladone said. The hotel also has a putting green, horseshoes, and a baseball field and basketball court.

“We have people looking to spend quality time together like a family outdoors,” Ladone said.

The Holiday Inn has a meeting space upstairs with a seating capacity, under non-pandemic conditions, of 100. The hotel is hosting baby showers and corporate events outdoors on their patio.

The Holiday Inn has booked about 30 percent more outdoor parties than usual, Ladone said.

The Stony Brook hotel has also partnered with Spa Exotique, which offers massages or facials, and kayak packages with Stony Brook Harbor Kayak and Paddleboard.

Bed and Breakfast 

Bed and breakfasts in the area are also attracting attention from residents of Suffolk County and New York City.

At the Fox and Owl Inn in Port Jefferson, people are booking their rooms one to three weeks before they need them, reflecting the uncertainty about plans that might need to change amid fluid infection rates.

For the past two months, the Fox and Owl has been booking about 90 to 95 percent of their capacity, with a majority of the guests coming from New York City and Long Island rather than the usual far-flung locations across the country and world.

The bed and breakfast derived its name from “The Lord of the Rings” book series, which husband and wife owners Andrew Thomas and Rebecca Kassay enjoys. They each picked an animal that was native to the area and hoped to create a place that was akin to the respite the main characters felt when they visited an inn.

Kassay said the Inn has “kept up to date as far as the recommendations for cleaning and the response to the COVID-19.”

“It just felt like a mini-vacation, where we didn’t have to go too far.”

— Emilie Zaniello

The Fox and Owl is located in an 1850 Victorian home, which has large windows that Kassay keeps open as often as she can. Kassay and Thomas also use Lysol on surfaces regularly and ask their guests to wear masks in public.

While guests sit on sofas that are six feet apart, they have shared stories about their quarantine experiences and make predictions about what will happen next.

The Fox and Owl has three guest suites. Some family groups have booked the entire bed and breakfast, which is “really nice for families that are coming to visit other family members,” Kassay said. Groups of friends with similar quarantine habits who feel comfortable interacting with each other have also booked the entire Inn.

The Fox and Owl offers guests the use of a jacuzzi, which is complimentary with any booking. For an additional fee, the Inn provides S’Mores near the fire pit.

Kassay said she and Thomas appreciate that they can offer people an “escape and relief from the stress that everyone is handling.”

As the owner of a bed and breakfast, she said she has reflected on the challenge of remaining personable to guests even while wearing a mask. The daughter of a Sicilian mother, Kassay was raised to speak by using body language and by communicating with her hands as well as her words.

She noticed how guests have become “more expressive,” she said. “If you stop and look at people talking, there is more physicality to American’s interaction with one another.”

A resident of midtown, Mey, who preferred to use only her first name, said she and her boyfriend came to Port Jefferson to escape from the city and enjoy nature amid all the urban closures.

They planned to visit Port Jefferson for the day and wound up spending the night at the Fox and Owl Inn when they weren’t ready to drive back to Manhattan. Mey and her boyfriend enjoyed sitting on the porch, visiting a nearby park and eating ice cream.

“Port Jefferson has a lot of nature and the feeling of a vacation,” Mey said. The experience was “very chill.”

The Manhattanite enjoys attending Broadway shows when she is in the city, which are still closed.

The urban couple traveled to Long Island because they were “looking for something peaceful” and they “found it. Seeing green is better than seeing buildings.”

METRO photo
Daniel Dunaief

By Daniel Dunaief

A heaviness hovers in the air as we prepare to pack our daughter’s stuff into the car and drive her back to college, an environment fraught with new rules and anxiety. We realize this experiment in campus life, such as it is, might end in days or even a few weeks, as her school may pull the same rip chord it used in March.

While she is returning to campus, all but one of her classes is remote. The in-person class meets twice a week, so she is going back to a restricted college life for two hours a week of in-person learning.

Last year, with its jumble of emotions from taking her to college for the first time, seems so wonderfully innocent and low stress by comparison.

By taking her to college this week, she is already arriving on campus three weeks after classes began and is scheduled to return home before Thanksgiving. That means she’ll be on campus, at most, for two and a half months. That is two weeks longer than summer camp.

We want her to learn, have fun, meet new people and take advantage of college opportunities. Taking these goals one at a time, I’m not convinced that remote classes in which professors record lectures students can watch at their leisure provides the ideal academic experience.

How can they ask questions? How can they turn to the person sitting next to them, or, in the modern world, six seats away, and ask to repeat what they didn’t hear or to see if the professor might have misspoken?

College learning occurs on and off campus. In an ideal world, students not only learn from their professors and teaching assistants, but also from each other. They form study groups where they share notes and test each other.

They could share their screens and form virtual study groups. In these small groups, however, they can and do send private chats to other people and feel freer to respond to the beep or flash of light on another electronic device, distracting them from the group exercise.

The personal connection through the computer is also limited, as people can’t slap each other on the back or chase each other around a library during a much-needed break.

We also want her to have fun, which isn’t the top priority for schools desperate to stay alive financially while keeping the campus community healthy. Even with the most active measures to protect everyone, the virus finds ways to evade detection and to spread.

The virus has become the boogeyman of our childhood nightmares, but instead of lurking under the bed or in dark corners of the closet, it waits on door knobs, in airborne particles and on banisters.

To protect everyone, the school isn’t allowing students to visit other dorms. They are limited in social gatherings outside, where they have to be six feet apart and also need to wear masks.

In a recent email, my daughter’s school told her, “If you see something, say something.” Those words, which became the cultural norm after 9/11, suggest that careless students are the equivalent of viral terrorists. Perhaps a better approach would be to encourage students to model safe behavior and to protect themselves and others on campus.

To facilitate safer social interactions, schools might consider putting up tents, in which they place small circles on the floor that are six feet apart. Students could visit each other in these settings, where they can talk and laugh and see each other in person and wear that great blouse or cool shirt that doesn’t look as good on zoom.

Ultimately, the opportunities they have will depend on the ability of the school, working with students, to figure out what they can do and not what they can’t or shouldn’t. We hope the challenges and adversity of the current reality somehow bring our daughter figuratively closer to her new friends, at a safe social distance.

Hurricane Laura is expected to cut across the breadth of the U.S. and come at Long Island as a series of storms. PSEG LI said its ready for any cleanup afterwards. Image from NOAA

Amid numerous investigations about its failed communication systems and inaccurate estimated time to restore power after Tropical Storm Isaias, PSEG LI is returning to an earlier version of outage software.

Tropical Storm Isaias uprooted a tree in St. James. Photo by Rita J. Egan

The utility, which is overseen by the Long Island Power Authority, is rolling back from version 6.7, which was installed earlier this year, to version 5.5, according to an email from LIPA in response to TBR News Media’s questions.

This is one of several steps PSEG, under LIPA’s supervision, is taking to address any future storms that might hit Long Island.

“LIPA is currently conducting an end-to-end review to understand the root causes of the communications and restoration systems issues, including the outage management system and the various feeder systems,” LIPA representatives explained in its email.

The power authority also indicated that it was closely overseeing PSEG’s immediate, corrective actions through daily calls and reports and an independent review of system modifications and testing.

LIPA and Electeds Conduct Reviews

LIPA is planning to issue 30, 90, and 180-day reports to the LIPA Board of Trustees and the public.

The reviews include an evaluation of pre-storm readiness of the telecommunication systems, a root causes analysis of unprocessed calls and text message, and review of the design and implementation of outage management and restoration systems and processes and actionable recommendations on storm preparedness, system and management controls and approaches to increasing system reliability and performance.

“It’s good that they’re doing an outside report … It’s not going to help us now.”

– Jim Gaughran

While State Sen. Jim Gaughran (D-Northport) welcomed the review, his primary concern, he said, was whether the utility was prepared for the next storm, particularly in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Laura, which devastated parts of Louisiana.

“It’s good that they’re doing an outside report,” Gaughran said in an interview. “It’s not going to help us now. This is a crisis situation and you would think that they would have an emergency task force… that would come up with changes and implement them” within days of the response to a storm that knocked out power for more than a week to parts of Long Island.

PSEG said in an emailed statement that the company is “working diligently to be prepared for the next major weather event and ensure that our response to Tropical Storm Isaias was an anomaly.”

The utility company indicated it had made configuration and capacity changes to the phone system, rolled back the outage management system to a more “stable” version and put “processes in place to continuously monitor our IT systems for capacity and bottleneck issues.”

A tree lies across Old Post Road East in Mount Sinai after Tropical Storm Isais. Photo by Kyle Barr

While New York State Attorney General Letitia James is conducting her own investigation into the company’s response to the storm, LIPA indicated that the Department of Financial Services, in cooperation with the Department of Public Service, was also participating in a review.

The involvement in the DFS is “good,” said Gaughran, who has been a consistent critic of both LIPA and PSEG even before Tropical Storm Isaias. “The more the merrier.”

One of the questions Gaughran and other representatives asked about LIPA’s oversight of PSEG LI related to the timing and effectiveness of the most recent stress test. In response to a letter Gaughran and Assemblyman Fred Thiele, Jr. (D-Sag Harbor) sent to LIPA, CEO Thomas Falcone indicated that the outage management system was most recently stress tested in June of this year.

“Part of LIPA’s review includes the stress-testing procedures used in the past and improvements for the future,” Falcone said in his response.

Cost of the Cleanup

Senator Gaughran and Assemblyman Thiele said they are also focused on the source of any reimbursement the company receives in connection with costs related to the storm.

Long Island rate payers “shouldn’t be paying for the cost of out-of-town crews sitting around waiting to do work and not doing work because the management failed to communicate,” Gaughran said. The costs of bringing in those crews from out of state and feeding and housing them should be shared by shareholders of PSEG, Gaughran contended.

“I believe shareholders have to be responsible for at least any portion of the additional costs related to their incompetence and failure in dealing with the communication system,” he said. Had the communication system worked as it should, the time to restore power might have been cut down dramatically, Gaughran argued.

“LIPA retains a third-party auditor for storm recovery costs where federal funds are involved, as will likely be the case for Isaias,” Falcone said in the letter.

LIPA estimates that the cost of restoration, which involved over 6,000 personnel, was over $350 million, with $260 million eligible for FEMA reimbursement. The main driver of the costs, Falcone said in his letter, was the extensive damage to the electric grid, which occurred at over 20,000 locations.

Reiterating sentiments he shared during a virtual joint hearing of the New York State Senate and Assembly, Falcone said the system PSEG LI designed and implemented did “not meet the standards of our contract. LIPA retains all of its contractual rights and remedies and will pursue the appropriate course of action after the conclusion of the various investigations.”

“LIPA retains a third-party auditor for storm recovery costs where federal funds are involved, as will likely be the case for Isaias.”

Thomas Falcone

Gaughran said he would consider Falcone’s response to his letter and would likely respond with additional questions that address additional concerns.

“There are a lot of issues I hope” LIPA addresses, the state senator said, including why the company didn’t contract with workers from National Grid, who were already on Long Island.

“You had Long Islanders ready to work,” Gaughran said. “They could have been put into operation immediately.”

Gaughran doesn’t necessarily think LIPA needs to revoke its contract with PSEG LI. Rather, he wants to “get a system so the lights can go back on at a reasonable time.”

Ultimately, the state Senator believes the way LIPA oversees PSEG LI may not provide sufficient reassurance for residential and business customers.

Ultimately, Gaughran would like the legislature to revisit the structure of the agreement between LIPA and PSEG LI.

“This structure isn’t working,” Gaughran said.

In his letter to the politicians, Falcone agreed that “Long Islanders deserve better” than the response they got from PSEG LI after Isaias. “LIPA is working to ensure they get better.”

Ivar Strand Photo courtesy of BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Ivar Strand had to put on a suit at home to interview virtually for a new job.

In the midst of the pandemic, Brookhaven National Laboratory was looking for a Manager of Research Partnerships in the Strategic Partnership Program and, despite the fact that the lab was limiting the people who were on site, was moving forward to fill a job opening.

“It was a strange situation,” Strand said, but the job piqued his interest, particularly because he’d be working with Martin Schoonen, the leader of BNL’s Strategic Partnership Programs office and an associate laboratory director for environment, biology, nonproliferation and national security. Schoonen and Strand, who worked together at Stony Brook in the late 1990’s, have known each other for over 25 years.

While Strand worked at Stony Brook as an Assistant Vice President of Sponsored Programs, he had a visiting appointment at BNL for five years, from 2005 to 2010. Several of the staff at BNL “remembered who I was, which made the transition a little bit easier,” he said.

Strand most recently worked at Long Island University, where he was the Executive Director in the Office of Sponsored Projects.

Schoonen was pleased to welcome Strand to the BNL fold. “[He is] taking on a pivotal role to develop contractual arrangements with potential partners and assist with growing and diversifying the labs funding sources,” Schoonen said in a statement.

In effect, Strand is facilitating collaborations among institutions. He will facilitate not only the connections and collaborations, but also encourage broadening and deepening professional connections to create either project specific or ongoing strategic partnerships

Strand will work to increase the awareness of the capabilities BNL can provide to researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors. The main drawback in a job he started on May 26 has been that he hasn’t been able to “build face-to-face relationships,” he said. Speaking with people for the first time through web-based platforms is not the same as running into someone who is walking across the site.

Building the relationship with the Department of Energy also represents a new challenge for Strand, who has previously worked with educational institutions as well as with Northwell Health.

“I spent my whole career building partnerships at various research institutions,” he said. After facilitating those collaborations, Strand has entered into agreements and then moved one. At BNL, he has the added dynamic of “making sure it satisfies the requirements of the DOE.” The scope of his work comprises all the research funding coming into the lab outside of the direct money that comes from the DOE, which represents about 90 percent of the funds for research at the lab.

Some of these other initiatives are collaborative, which involve DOE funds that also have a requirement to find a company to contribute financially, such as the Technology Commercialization Fund.

Working with finance and departmental business managers, Strand oversees the non-direct DOE money that comes in. When educational institutions and companies participate, particularly to supply funding, Strand and the strategic partnership team become a part of the conversation.

BNL often competes against the other national labs for major projects. Once the government selects a winner, as it did for the construction of the Electron Ion Collider, the DOE often asks the lead on the project to tap into the expertise and talents of the other institutions. When BNL recently won the EIC contract over Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia, the DOE asked BNL to partner with Jefferson to build the facility. New York State originally agreed to contribute $100 million to the construction of the EIC. Strand said the lab is hopeful that the commitment would come through.

In addition to the scientific discoveries that the EIC will bring, it is also a construction project that will provide the state with jobs. “I’m involved in some of the discussions in order to provide information about the project,” Strand said.

The transition to a government lab will require Strand to maneuver through structured agreements from the DOE, which is a bit of a challenge. The DOE uses structured agreements, while educational institutions also do but often are willing to use the agreements the sponsors propose.

Strand is pleased that BNL recently received approval to participate in the Atom Consortium, which was started by Glaxo and the University of California at San Francisco. The negotiation had been going on for several years. “It allows us to enhance our big data computing capabilities and expertise,” he explained.

Strand is excited about rejoining BNL. “I’ve always wanted to work in the lab and understand how best to build collaborations under the government umbrella,” he said.

Strand hoped his unconventional approach to some of the partnership challenges will work in the context of the structured environment of a national laboratory.

Indeed, in 2007, when he was working at Stony Brook, the university received the funds to buy a supercomputer. The two institutions, however, had decided to house the supercomputer at BNL, which made it a “challenging transaction” for all parties. He and others had to help Stony Brook become an enlisted partner, which allowed BNL to house the supercomputer on site.

In the bigger picture, Strand said he and Schoonen are reviewing where the lab will be from a strategic perspective in five years. In addition to industry, they are looking to collaborate with other federal sponsors with whom they haven’t traditionally partnered. They have to make sure that these efforts conform with DOE’s growth agenda.

A first-generation American whose parents were born in Norway, Strand said his parents met in the United States. A resident of South Setauket, Strand lives with his wife Maritza, who is an implementation specialist for ADT payroll. A tennis player and golfer, Strand alternates visiting and hosting his brother, who lives in Norway and is a veterinarian.

Strand is looking forward to his ongoing collaborations with Schoonen. “Having worked with him in the past, I have a lot of respect” for Schoonen, Strand said. “I jumped at the chance to be reunited with him. He’s an unbelievably great guy to work for.”