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Daniel Dunaief

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Marci Lobel. Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

Pregnant women with access to the outdoors are less stressed during the pandemic.

In fact, according to an unpublished finding that isn’t yet peer reviewed, pregnant women who had outdoor access were 67 percent less likely to worry about contracting the virus and 63 percent less likely to feel stress about being unprepared for the birth.

Lobel with a recent doctoral student, Jennifer Nicolo-SantaBarbara.

Stony Brook University recently awarded a project led by Dr. Heidi Preis in the Department of Psychology, with co-Principal Investigators Dr. Marci Lobel in the Department of Psychology and Dr. Brittain Mahaffey in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health that explored the link between stress and pregnancy. The researchers are hoping to identify what helps pregnant women and what may make them more vulnerable to the impacts of stress.

Stony Brook provided a total of $398,200 in seed funding to 17 research projects in response to the pandemic. Researchers at Stony Brook had put together 63 submissions, using a peer review process to choose the projects to fund, including the COVID-19 Pregnancy Experiences (or COPE) Study. The funding, which is for one year, is designed to provide the kind of seed funding that will lead to further research and that other funding agencies will support.

The COPE study tapped into a global network of collaborators that Lobel, who is the Director of the Stress and Reproduction Lab at SBU, established over the past 30 years to compare the different factors that mitigate or exacerbate stress for pregnant women in Spain, Israel, Italy, Germany Poland and Switzerland.

“The biological impact of COVID-19 is getting the lion’s share of attention, as it should,” said Lobel. “We don’t yet know enough about how the psychological impact will affect vulnerable groups, like pregnant women.”

Indeed, Lobel has spent three decades studying the effect of stress and related psychological factors on pregnancy. In other studies, major stressors, such as earthquakes, ice storms, and periods of warfare, confirm the toxic impact of prenatal stress, particularly for preterm births and low birth weight, she said.

Lobel and her colleagues created a self-report instrument called the Pandemic-Related Pregnancy Stress Scale, or PREPS, in which women report their specific concerns or anxieties caused by COVID-19.

Throughout the United States, the team sought responses from about 4,500 women recruited through social media at the end of April and the beginning of May.

Marci Lobel with her family at Yosemite in 2016. The photo credit is: Photo courtesy of Marci Lobel.

Among the women in the study, just over half of them were pregnant with their first child. In many studies that predated the current work, including some from her own research group, Lobel said women pregnant with their first child had higher levels of stress.

In some preliminary findings, 21.7 percent of pregnant women in the study reported severe levels of anxiety. “I think that is higher than what we typically would find in a population study of pregnant women,” Lobel said.

Women with a history of interpersonal violence also reported higher levels of stress and those whose prenatal appointments were canceled or altered were 1.78 times more likely to experience high stress related to a lack of preparedness and 1.49 times more likely to experience high stress related to worries about perinatal infection.

Some women in the study have found ways to reduce the accumulating stress about the health care crisis. The techniques that work for some women, Lobel said, may not work for others, suggesting that stress relief is specific to the individual and is usually determined by the situation itself.

“I don’t recommend any particular way of coping,” Lobel said. “What works for one may not work for another. It’s good to have a tool kit with lots of ways of coping.”

Indeed, some of the techniques pregnant women have found helpful include meditation, prayer, and faith-based practices. Pregnant women have also benefited from social support, which is particularly important during the pandemic when some women may feel “literally and figuratively isolated from others,” Lobel said.

Of all the research Lobel has done, the one that has received the most attention and landed her in the bible for pregnant women, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” was a study on optimism. She found that women who were more optimistic had better birth outcomes due in part to the better are they took of their health during pregnancy.

Coping with stress by avoidance predicts increases in emotional distress, Lobel explained. This corroborates much research which shows that avoidance is usually an ineffective way to cope with stress, except in limited cases such as when a stressful situation is brief and uncontrollable.

When people avoid the things that bother them, they can do it cognitively or through alcohol, which is especially dangerous for pregnant women and their developing fetuses. Avoidance can also involve excessive sleeping, as pregnant women may decide they don’t want to deal with life and stay in bed all day.

The scientists plan to collect a second set of data from these women, who were recruited through social media and who represent a diverse socioeconomic background, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other factors, on July 15th.

Lobel said she already has some preliminary, unpublished findings from Poland, which are showing the same kinds of stressors and distress among pregnant women. Polish women have expressed stress related to worries about lack of preparation for birth during the pandemic and stress related to worries about infection.

Lobel said the researchers hope to explore a host of questions as they collect more information. They hope to look at obsessions and compulsions and would like to measure anger. They also will measure levels of depression and anxiety and will compare that to the norms for non-pregnant women.

On the other side of the stress meter, the group will study how being pregnant during the pandemic may help some women appreciate their pregnancy more. For some women, the pregnancy may give them strength to deal with the pandemic, as they focus on having a baby.

The researchers will also explore the level of control women feel over the outcome of their pregnancy and the health of their baby. Feeling in control can create a positive response associated with lower distress.

While Lobel and her colleagues won’t answer all these questions in a year, they hope their initial studies will lead to more funding and research. “Hopefully, we’ll get a [National Institutes of Health] grant to follow up these women for a couple of years to study them and their children to see if there are any developmental or mental or physical health effects” of the pandemic.

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After months in which COVID deaths robbed families throughout Suffolk County of grandparent, parents, siblings, sons and daughters, the county reported no deaths from the virus for the second time in three days.

“From where we’ve been to where we are today is a world of difference,” County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said on a daily conference call he’s conducted with reporters since the third week of March. “The last two out of three days is a good indicator of where we are and the positive direction we continue to move in.”

Bellone described the other numbers for the virus as “also very good.”

The number of new positive tests was 42, out of a total of 4,047. The positive tests represented about 1 percent of tests, which is about the recent rate. The total number of positive tests since the pandemic began in the county stands at 41,420.

The number of residents who have the antibody but haven’t had a positive test stands at 19,270.

The number of hospitalizations was one of the few figures that moved in an unfavorable direction, as seven additional people entered the hospital with COVID-19, bringing the total to 73.

The number of people in the Intensive Care Unit declined by one.

Hospital bed use was at 70 percent, with 57 percent of ICU beds occupied.

An additional six people were discharged from the hospital. The county distributed 34,000 pieces of personal protective equipment over the last day.

Finally, Bellone is hosting a webinar on July 7th at 10 am to provide information to residents interested in entering the food truck business.

“Outdoor dining has proven successful during the COVID-19 pandemic, and food trucks are uniquely positioned to adapt to the challenges posed by this crisis,” Bellone said in a statement.

Suffolk County currently has 228 mobile vending vehicles, which offer food, coffee and dessert. The webinar is a part of Suffolk Count’s Business Recovery Unit. Residents interested in attending the webinar can register here.

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Bethpage Ballpark in Central Islip. Photo from LI Ducks website

The Long Island Ducks will not take the field this season, as New York State wouldn’t allow the baseball team to allow fans to attend an abbreviated season.

While Major League Baseball teams, at least for now, can make a shortened season work without fans because of television and advertising revenue, the Ducks couldn’t make a fan-free season work.

“I’m disappointed the Ducks won’t be on the field,” County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said on his daily conference call with reporters. Bellone had hoped that the state would support capacity limits, especially in an outdoor environment which would lower the risk from the transmission of COVID-19.

Bellone said the state’s decision with the Ducks shouldn’t have any impact on youth sports, in which parents are hoping to watch their children return to fields after their sons and daughters spent months away from the competition, the teammates, and the opportunity to enjoy summer games and competition.

Viral Numbers

The number of residents who tested positive for the coronavirus was 46, bringing the total to 41,386. A total of 3,312 people were tested, which means 1.4% of the tests had a positive result, which is among the higher levels of positive tests in recent weeks.

While the percentage is higher than it’s been recently, Bellone said he doesn’t put too much stock in any one day’s results.

Hospitalizations declined by six, with 66 residents now hospitalized with COVID-19. That is the first time since March that the number of people battling against the virus in the hospital was below 70.

The number of people in the Intensive Care Unit with symptoms from the virus increased by one to 24.

Hospital capacity remained below pre-set caution levels. Overall hospital occupancy was at 67%, while ICU bed occupancy was at 59%.

Nine people were discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours.

After a day without any fatalities from complications related to COVID-19, two people died in the last day. The death toll from the coronavirus stands at 1,981.

The county distributed 5,000 pieces of personal protective equipment in the last 24 hours.

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For the first time since June 12, Suffolk County reported no deaths from COVID-19.

“I do hope and pray that it will not be another 17 days for me to be reporting zero deaths again,” County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said on his daily call with reporters. “Hopefully, this is the start of something we will continue to see.”

The total number of deaths from the virus in the county remained at 1,979.

The number of positive tests, meanwhile, was 33, bringing the total to 41,339. With 4,481 people receiving tests in the past day, the positive tests were among the lowest the county has had in weeks, at 0.7 percent.

The number of people who tested positive for the antibody who didn’t have a positive COVID-19 test was 19,074.

Hospitalizations continued to trend slightly lower. The number of people in the hospital overall fell by three to 72. The number of people in Intensive Care Units with COVID-19 also declined by three to 23.

Hospital bed occupancy was at 68 percent, down from 70 percent the day before. ICU bed occupancy was at 62 percent.

An additional 20 people were discharged from the hospital in the last day.

Separately, the county announced a plan, starting today, to walk back some protective measures put in place for Suffolk County Transit. In March, the county asked residents to use fast fare. Busses did not take cash, riders had to board from the back of the bus, and residents needed to leave the first few rows of the bus vacant to protect drivers.

Now that the county is in Phase 3, Suffolk County Transit has re-instituted front door boarding and will accept cash, even as it is encouraging riders to use the mobile app.

The county has provided protective barriers on all busses to keep the drivers safe from infection. Riders are still required to wear face coverings until further notice.

Finally, officers in the Third Precinct arrested Pablo Figuero, a convicted sex offender, last night at 10:20 pm. He was found in a parked car on Suffolk Avenue in Central Islip and was charged with Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the 7th Degree. He was taken for arraignment today and will be held in jail. Bellone said he is wanted out of New Mexico.
This post was updated at 4:30 p.m. Monday.

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Suffolk County continued to keep viral numbers low. The number of new cases in the last day was 53, bringing the total since the beginning of the COViD-19 epidemic to 41,306.

The number of people who have tested positive for the antibody was 18,970.

The hospitalization figures remained relatively flat. In hospitalizations as a whole, two people left the hospital. The total stands at 75.

The number of people in the Intensive Care Unit with the virus was 26, which is an increase of 1.

An additional 10 people were discharged from the hospital.

Capacity remained at safe levels, with hospital occupancy at 70 percent and ICU bed capacity at 63 percent.

One person died in the last day, bringing that total to 1,979.

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Kevin Reed. Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

At the beginning of this month, the North Atlantic started its annual hurricane season that will extend through the end of November.

Each year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offers a forecast in May for the coming season. This year, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center anticipates a 60 percent chance of an above-normal season. The Center anticipates 13 to 19 storms, although that number doesn’t indicate how many storms will make landfall.

These predictions have become the crystal ball through which forecasters and city planners prepare for a season that involves tracking disturbances that typically begin off the West coast of Africa and pick up energy and size as they travel west across the Atlantic towards Central America. While some storms travel back out to sea, others threaten landfall by moving up the Gulf Coast or along Atlantic Seaboard of the United States.

Kevin Reed, an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and Alyssa Stansfield, a graduate student in his lab, recently predicted the likely amount of rainfall from tropical cyclones.

Alyssa Stansfield at the 33rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in 2018. Photo by Arianna Varuolo-Clarke

 

Using climate change projection simulations, Reed and Stansfield came up with a good-news, bad-news scenario for the years 2070 through 2100. The good news in research they published in Geophysical Research Letters is they anticipate fewer hurricanes.

The bad news? The storms will likely have higher amounts of rain, with increased rain per hour.

“If you focus on storms that make landfall over the Eastern United States, they are more impactful from a rainfall standpoint,” Reed said. “The amount of rainfall per hour and the rainfall impact per year is expected to increase significantly in the future.”

In total, the amount of rainfall will be less because of the lower number of storms, although the intensity and overall precipitation will be sufficient to cause damaging rains and flooding.

Warmer oceans and the air above them will drive the increased rainfall, as these storms pass over higher sea surface temperatures where they can gain energy. Warmer, moist air gives the hurricanes more moisture to work with and therefore more potential rainfall.

“As the air gets warmer, it can hold more water in it,” Stansfield said. “There’s more potential rain in the air for the hurricanes before they make landfall.”

Stansfield said the predictions are consistent with what climatologists would expect, reflecting how the models line up with the theory behind them. She explored how climate change affects the size of storms in this paper, but she wants to do more research looking at hurricane size in the future.

“If hurricanes are larger, they will drop rainfall over a larger area,” which could increase the range of area over which policy makers might need to prepare for potential damage from flooding and high winds, Stansfield said.

While her models suggest that storms will be larger, she cautioned that the field hasn’t reached a consensus about the size of future storms. As for areas where there is greater consensus, such as the increased rainfall their models predict for storms at the end of the century, Stansfield suggested that the confidence in the community about their forecasts, which use different climate models, is becoming “more apparent as more modeling groups reach the same conclusion.”

Alyssa Stansfield at Sequoia National Park in 2018. Photo by Jess Stansfield

In explaining the expectations for higher rainfall in future storms, Reed said that even storms that had the same intensity as current hurricanes would have an increase in precipitation because of the availability of more moisture at the surface.

While storms in recent years, such as Hurricanes Harvey, Florence and Dorian dumped considerable rain in their path because they moved more slowly, effectively dumping rain over a longer period of time in any one area, it’s “unclear” whether future storms would move more slowly or stall over land.

Several factors might contribute to a decrease in the number of storms. For starters, an increase in wind sheer could disrupt the formation of some storms. Vertical wind sheer is caused when wind speed and direction changes with increasing altitude. Pre-hurricane conditions may also change due to internal variability and the randomness of the atmosphere, according to Reed.

Reed said the team chose to use climate models to make predictions for the end of the century because it is common in climate science for comparison to the recent historical record. They also used a 30 year period to limit some of the uncertainty due to internal variability of weather systems.

Stansfield, who is in her third year of graduate school and anticipates spending another two years at Stony Brook University before defending her graduate thesis, said she became interested in studying hurricanes in part because of the effects of Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Alyssa Stansfield at Yosemite in 2019. Photo by Kathy Stansfield

When she was younger, she and her father Greg used to go to the beach when a hurricane passed hundreds of miles off the coast, where she would see the impact of the storm in larger waves. At some point, she would like to fly in a hurricane hunter plane, traveling directly into a storm to track its speed and direction.

Stansfield said one of the more common misconceptions about hurricanes is that the category somehow determines their destructive power. Indeed, Superstorm Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane when it hit New York and yet it caused $65 billion in damage, making it the 4th costliest hurricane in the United States, according to the NOAA.

After Stansfield earns her PhD, she said she wants to continue studying hurricanes. One question that she’d like to address at some point is why there are between 80 to 90 hurricanes around the world each year. This has been the case for about 50 years, since satellite records began.

“That’s consistent every year,” she said. “We don’t know why that’s the number. There’s no theory behind it.” She suggested that was a “central question” that is unanswered in her field. 

Understanding what controls the number of hurricanes will inform predictions about how that number will change in response to climate change.

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County Executive Steve Bellone (D) reminded Suffolk County residents as they grapple with the mental health toll from the public health and economic crisis of the services that can help.

Residents can reach out to the Family Services League at FSL-LI.com. They can also call a hotline that is available 24 hours a day and seven days a week at (631) 952-3333.

Residents who know people who are struggling with their mental health or substance abuse that are exacerbated by COVID-19 should reach out to these services, Bellone urged.

As for the viral data, the numbers continued to move in a favorable direction for a region that is still recovering from the virus.

Over the last 24 hours, an additional 45 people tested positive, bringing the total to 41,253. These positive tests represented less than a percent of the total tests.

An additional 18,816 people tested positive for antibodies.

Hospitalizations remained steady, with one person leaving the Intensive Care Unit, bringing that total to 25.

Hospital occupancy was at 70 percent, while ICU occupancy was at 60 percent.

An additional three people died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total for the region to 1,978.

The county distributed 20,000 pieces of personal protective equipment in the last day.

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As the number of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in other parts of the country, such as Florida and Texas, surge to levels that put a strain on the health care system, County Executive Steve Bellone (D) appreciates the difficult and hard-fought effort that has put the county on the other side of the deadly viral curve.

“The numbers that we have right now relative to where we’ve been… are really outstanding,” Bellone said on his daily conference call with reporters.

Bellone empathized with the challenges other states and counties faced.

“To see it happening to other places around the country, it’s a terrible thing,” Bellone said.

Bellone urged residents to follow the same “common sense” things they have been doing, including wearing face coverings when they can’t socially distance, staying home when they’re not feeling well and washing their hands and using hand sanitizer.

Indeed, the numbers for the county continued to be well within the limits, even as the county entered the third day of the Phase 3 reopening.

An additional 57 people tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total to 41,208 since the pandemic started. The total number of tests administered in the county was 5,076, which means positive tests were around 1.1 percent.

The number of people who tested positive for the antibody, who didn’t have a previous COVID-19 test, was 18,669.

Hospitalizations declined by eight to 77. The number of people in the Intensive Care Unit increased by one to 26.

Hospital capacity was at 68 percent overall and 58 percent in the ICU.

An additional 10 people were discharged from the hospitals.

One person died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total killed from complications related to COVID-19 to 1,975.

The county distributed 12,000 pieces of personal protective equipment over the last day.

Bellone urged residents to participate in the Veteran Run Series, which has raised about $1 million this year. The third race, the Michael P. Murphy run around the lake, is this Saturday Residents interested in running can register at sufflkcountyveteransrunseries.com.

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Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn file photo

County Executive Steve Bellone (D) was pleased that the county legislature passed the Child Protective Transformation Act this week.

Created after the death of eight-year old Thomas Valva, who died in his father’s garage from hypothermia, the package of six bills creates new measures to strengthen the child protective system, the improve oversight and to institute safeguards to protect children.

“This will ensure that [Child Protective Services] never operates the same way again,” Bellone said on his daily conference call with reporters. “What happened to Thomas Valva can never happen again.”

The transformation act, which passed in the legislature June 23, puts in place measures to make sure the CPS is operating as efficiently and effectively as possible, Bellone suggested.

Bellone thanked Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket), Deputy County Executive Jon Kaiman and Deborah Thivierge, the Founder of the Elija School and the Elija farm for their help in this effort.

As for the viral figures, the numbers continue to remain within a safe range for the county.

The number of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours was 50, bringing the total to 41,151. The percentage of people who tested positive for the coronavirus was 0.9 percent.

The number of people with the antibody to the virus stands at 18,513.

Hospitalizations declined by three to 85, while the number of people in Intensive Care Unit beds declined by one to 25.

Hospital occupancy overall was at 69 percent, while the percent of occupied ICU beds was at 59 percent.

In the last day, 14 people have been discharged from hospitals in the county.

The number of deaths from complications related to COVID-19 increased by 2 to 1,974.

The county distributed 25,000 pieces of personal protective equipment in the last day.

Separately, the county is canceling the movies scheduled for the rest of this week because of a problem with the equipment that needs repair. The county hopes to have those movies back up and running by next week.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

This generation of college students have dealt with numerous shocks in their short lives. Most of them were born around the time of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. That event triggered several battles on foreign soil, led to the Department of Homeland Security, and created a world in which people took off their shoes at the airport and passed through metal detectors on the way in to concerts and sporting events.

As if that weren’t enough, this generation then had to deal with the 2008 financial crisis, when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and when life, for many, became considerably more challenging amid a painful decline in the subprime housing market.

Through their upbringing, they also heard about mass shootings, some of which occurred at school. They practiced shelter-in-place and had nightmares about killers roaming the same hallways where artwork depicting students’ families and the alphabet adorned the walls.

The contentious 2016 presidential election brought two largely unpopular choices onto center stage. After a bitter election fight, the country didn’t have much time to heal, as the Democrats and Republicans transformed into the Montagues and Capulets.

Indeed, while each side dug in deeply, their respective media supporters expressed nonstop outrage and acted dumbfounded by the misdirection and apparent idiocy of the leaders and their minions across the aisle.

Then 2020 happened. The virus has killed over 120,000 Americans, crippled economies, led to mass layoffs and unemployment and turned the hug and the handshake into bygone gestures from six months ago that somehow seem even longer ago. With the killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, many protesters weathered the viral storm that had kept them inside for months to express outrage at a system where equal protection under the law seemed like a distant ideal.

Now, these same students face the possibility of returning to school. Some colleges have told their students to return earlier than normal, to forego visits to friend’s dorms, and to wear masks and social distance.

It seems likely that many of these colleges’ students, who have a familiar youth-inspired independent streak, will defy these new rules, much the same way many in the general public, including President Donald Trump (R), shun the idea of wearing masks.

If  I were running a college, and I’m glad I’m not because I’m struggling to provide sound  advice to two teenagers, I would triple and quadruple my medical staff. I would urge regular testing and I would make sure my college had the best possible treatments and plans ready.

Fortunately, the treatments for the virus have improved from the beginning, as the medical community has raced to provide relief to those battling draining and debilitating symptoms that have lasted for weeks or even months.

When people do contract the virus, as they inevitably will at some of these schools, I would urge students to rally around each other, their professors and anyone else who contracted COVID-19.

Unfortunately, this generation has had to grow up rapidly, to see ways each of them can play a role in helping each other. Students may not only become involved in the standard blood drives; they may urge their peers to check for antibodies and to donate convalescent plasma, which may help save lives and ameliorate the worst of the viral symptoms.

The modern college student doesn’t have to look to distant shores to find people overwhelmed and in need of their youthful energy and good intentions.

Many college students want to be relevant and contribute. They can and will have ample opportunities, with their antibodies, with their understanding and empathy, and with their ongoing resilience in the face of a lifetime of challenges.

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