Emergency powers and the pandemic: Reflecting on state legislative reforms and the future of public health response.

The first 2 years of combatting the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated an unprecedented use of emergency powers. States responded with an equally unprecedented flurry of legislative changes to the legal underpinnings of emergency response and public health authorities. In this article, we provide a brief background on the framework and use of governors and state health officials' emergency powers. We then analyze several key themes, including both the enhancement and restriction of powers, emerging from emergency management and public health legislation introduced in state and territorial legislatures. During the 2020 and 2021 state and territorial legislative sessions, we tracked legislation related to the emergency powers of governors and state health officials. Legislators introduced hundreds of bills impacting these powers, some enhancing and others restricting emergency powers. Enhancements included increasing vaccine access and expanding the pool of eligible medical professions that could administer vaccinations, strengthening public health investigation and enforcement authority for state agencies, and preclusion of local orders by orders at the state level. Restrictions included establishing oversight mechanisms for executive actions, limits on the duration of the emergency, limiting the scope of emergency powers allowed during a declared emergency, and other restraints. By -describing these legislative trends, we hope to inform governors, state health officials, -policymakers, and emergency managers about how changes in the law may impact future public health and emergency response capabilities. Understanding this new legal landscape is critical to effectively preparing for future threats.

The mediating role of vaccine hesitancy in the relations of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and vaccination outcomes: Which dimensions matter?

COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs have a powerful detrimental influence on COVID-19 vaccine perceptions and behaviors. We investigate an expanded range of outcomes for COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and we test which vaccine hesitancy dimensions mediate these relations. Our results show that COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs relate to COVID-19 vaccination willingness and receipt, flu vaccination willingness and receipt, as well as vaccine word-of-mouth. Many of these relations are mediated by vaccine hesitancy dimensions that represent perceptions that vaccines pose health risks as well as perceptions that vaccines are not needed because the respondent is healthy. Our discussion identifies directions for future research.

Their Worlds Felt Smaller: Rebuilding Classroom Communities in Pandemic Times

Byrnside and Davis discuss how teachers can rebuild their classroom communities during the pandemic. The students' eagerness to distance themselves from their descriptions of adolescents initially caught them off guard. As a preservice teacher in an independent study clinical placement in the fall of 2021, they wanted to design a unit that would respond to the needs of these learners, especially after a year of tumultuous shifts between remote, hybrid, and in-person learning. As schools reopened, there was a need for students and teachers to understand anew what it means to take up work central to the English language arts classroom--critically reading and responding to texts and contexts--work that gains nuance in dialogic classrooms.

The Economic Accessibility of CO2 Sequestration through Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) in the US

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is one strategy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. To assess the potential scale and cost of CO2 sequestration from BECCS in the US, this analysis models carbon sequestration net of supply chain emissions and costs of biomass production, delivery, power generation, and CO2 capture and sequestration in saline formations. The analysis includes two biomass supply scenarios (near-term and long-term), two biomass logistics scenarios (conventional and pelletized), and two generation technologies (pulverized combustion and integrated gasification combined cycle). Results show marginal cost per tonne CO2 (accounting for costs of electricity and CO2 emissions of reference power generation scenarios) as a function of CO2 sequestered (simulating capture of up to 90% of total CO2 sequestration potential) and associated spatial distribution of resources and generation locations for the array of scenario options. Under a near-term scenario using up to 206 million tonnes per year of biomass, up to 181 million tonnes CO2 can be sequestered annually at scenario-average costs ranging from $62 to $137 per tonne CO2;under a long-term scenario using up to 740 million tonnes per year of biomass, up to 737 million tonnes CO2 can be sequestered annually at scenario-average costs ranging from $42 to $92 per tonne CO2. These estimates of CO2 sequestration potential may be reduced if future competing demand reduces resource availability or may be increased if displaced emissions from conventional power sources are included. Results suggest there are large-scale opportunities to implement BECCS at moderate cost in the US, particularly in the Midwest, Plains States, and Texas.