While people readily form and rely on trustworthiness impressions from faces, the question of whether these impressions are accurate remains debated. The present research examines whether having access to the facial appearance of counterparts provides a strategic advantage to participants when making trust decisions. Furthermore, we investigated whether people show above-chance accuracy in trustworthiness detection (a) when they make trust decisions vs. provide explicit trustworthiness ratings, (b) when judging male vs. female counterparts, and (c) when rating cropped images (with non-facial features removed) vs. uncropped images. Results showed that incentivized trust decisions (Study 1, n = 131) and predictions of counterparts’ trustworthiness (Study 2, n = 266) were unrelated to actual trustworthiness. Moreover, accuracy was not moderated by stimulus type (cropped vs. uncropped faces) or counterparts’ gender. Overall, these findings suggest that people are unable to detect the trustworthiness of strangers based on their facial appearance.

Bob May's limerick alludes to both the promises and dangers of characterising epidemic control by a single number. The basic reproduction number (R0) is the average number of infections produced by a single infectious person in a population with no immunity. R0 has a close relative named the effective reproduction number (R), which is the average number of infections produced by a single infected person in a population with partial immunity. In The Lancet Infectious Diseases, You Li and colleagues2Li Y Campbell H Kulkarni D et al.The temporal association of introducing and lifting non-pharmaceutical interventions with the time-varying reproduction number (R) of SARS-CoV-2: a modelling study across 131 countries.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online Oct 22.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30785-4Google Scholar estimate how the imposition and lifting of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) changed the R number for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in 131 countries in the first half of 2020.

Researchers looked at the devastating financial effect the pandemic has had on Americans, with Blacks, Latinos and children faring the worst.

The coronavirus remains active on human skin for nine hours, Japanese researchers have found, in a discovery they said showed the need for frequent hand washing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic

As of Oct 12, there have been 861 112 confirmed cases and 32 929 deaths due to COVID-19 in Spain. More than 63 000 health-care workers have been infected. Spain was one of the most affected countries during the first wave of COVID-19 (March to June), and it has now been hit hard again by a second wave of COVID-19 infections. While the reasons behind this poor outcome are still to be fully understood, Spain's COVID-19 crisis has magnified weaknesses in some parts of the health system and revealed complexities in the politics that shape the country.

Countries with the fastest-spiraling outbreaks are reentering lockdowns.

BackgroundEconomic recession might worsen health in low-income and middle-income countries with precarious job markets and weak social protection systems. Between 2014–16, a major economic crisis occurred in Brazil. We aimed to assess the association between economic recession and adult mortality in Brazil and to ascertain whether health and social welfare programmes in the country had a protective effect against the negative impact of this recession.MethodsIn this longitudinal analysis, we obtained data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health, the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics, the Ministry of Social Development and Fight Against Hunger, and the Information System for the Public Budget in Health to assess changes in state unemployment level and mortality among adults (aged ≥15 years) in Brazil between 2012 and 2017. Outcomes were municipal all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates for all adults and across population subgroups stratified by age, sex, and race. We used fixed-effect panel regression models with quarterly timepoints to assess the association between recession and changes in mortality. Mortality and unemployment rates were detrended using Hodrick–Prescott filters to assess cyclical variation and control for underlying trends. We tested interactions between unemployment and terciles of municipal social protection and health-care expenditure to assess whether the relationship between unemployment and mortality varied.FindingsBetween 2012 and 2017, 7 069 242 deaths were recorded among adults (aged ≥15 years) in 5565 municipalities in Brazil. During this time period, the mean crude municipal adult mortality rate increased by 8·0% from 143·1 deaths per 100 000 in 2012 to 154·5 deaths per 100 000 in 2017. An increase in unemployment rate of 1 percentage-point was associated with a 0·50 increase per 100 000 population per rter (95% CI 0·09–0·91) in all-cause mortality, mainly due to cancer and cardiovascular disease. Between 2012 and 2017, higher unemployment accounted for 31 415 excess deaths (95% CI 29 698–33 132). All-cause mortality increased among black or mixed race (pardo) Brazilians (a 0·46 increase [95% CI 0·15–0·80]), men (0·67 [0·22–1·13]), and individuals aged 30–59 years (0·43 [0·16–0·69] per 1 percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate. No significant association was identified between unemployment and all-cause mortality for white Brazilian, women, adolescents (aged 15–29 years), or older and retired individuals (aged ≥60 years). In municipalities with high expenditure on health and social protection programmes, no significant increases in recession-related mortality were observed.InterpretationThe Brazilian recession contributed to increases in mortality. However, health and social protection expenditure seemed to mitigate detrimental health effects, especially among vulnerable populations. This evidence provides support for stronger health and social protection systems globally.

Science has two stark problems: replication and innovation. Many scientific findings aren’t reproducible. That is to say, you can’t be sure that another study or experiment on the same question would get similar results. At the same time, the pace of scientific innovation could be slowing down. Does attempting to solve one problem make the other worse? Many have argued that policies seeking to avoid reproducibility issues will create a constrictive atmosphere that inhibits innovation and discovery.

More Hispanic workers were impacted by the coronavirus pandemic in food processing plants, manufacturing plants and agriculture workplaces in the US last spring than workers of other races or ethnicities, a team led by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.

How people respond to health threats can influence their own health and, when facing communal risks, even their community's health. We propose that people commonly respond to health threats by managing their emotions with cognitive strategies like reappraisal, which can reduce fear and protect mental health. However, because fear can also motivate health behaviors, reducing fear may also jeopardize health behaviors. In two diverse U.S. samples (N=1,241) tracked across three months, sequential and cross-lag panel mediation models indicated that reappraisal predicted lower fear about an ongoing health threat (COVID-19), and in turn, better mental health, but fewer recommended physical health behaviors. This trade-off was not inevitable, however: using reappraisal to increase socially-oriented positive emotions predicted better mental health without jeopardizing physical health behaviors. Examining the costs and benefits of how people cope with health threats is essential for promoting better health outcomes for individuals and communities.

President Trump, a congressman and conspiracy fantasists have repeated the myth. But three kinds of evidence point to more than 218,000 U.S. deaths

During COVID-19, draconian countermeasures forbidding non-essential human activities have been adopted worldwide, providing an unprecedented setup for testing sustainability policies. We unravel causal relationships among 16 environmental conditions and human activity variables and argue that, despite a measurable decrease in NO2 concentration due to human activities, locking down a region is insufficient to significantly reduce emissions. Policy strategies more effective than lockdowns must be considered for pollution control and climate change mitigation.

From Germany to India, researchers are grappling with how to run labs and lessons under extraordinary restrictions.

The UK’s largest scheme for tracking the spread of the coronavirus is at risk of providing a misleading picture of the epidemic, as a growing share of people invited to take part fail to respond or complete a test. The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) launched its survey in April to estimate how many people are infected with the virus each week. At first, it randomly sampled thousands of homes in England, later adding those in Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK government’s top scientific advisers consider it the gold standard for measuring the state of the epidemic because other methods such as testing can miss many cases. Households who respond to the invitation to take part are visited by a survey worker, who provides the tests for people to complete themselves. When the survey began, 51 per cent of English households invited to take part completed at least one test. However, that figure has now dropped to just 5 per cent.

33% of U.S. workers are always working remotely, 25% sometimes, 41% never 55% of workers are not concerned about exposure to COVID-19 at work About two-thirds of remote workers want to continue to work remotely

Promoting the concept of “herd immunity” as framed in a recently circulated document as an answer to the COVID-19 pandemic is inappropriate, irresponsible and ill-informed. “Community immunity,” or “herd immunity,” a goal of vaccination campaigns, should never come at the cost of planned exposure to infection of millions of additional people as well as the severe illness and preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. To assert that stepping away from the vigilance needed to control the spread of this novel coronavirus and that abdication of efforts to control a pandemic that has overwhelmed health systems worldwide is a “compassionate approach” is profoundly misleading.

The number of new coronavirus cases in the United States is surging once again after growth slowed in late summer. While the geography of the pandemic is now shifting to the Midwest and to more rural areas, cases are trending upward in most states, many of which are setting weekly records for new cases.

Development and implementation of risk prediction models to aid risk stratification and resource allocation could improve the current scenario. Clinical prediction models (CPMs) aim to predict an individual's expected outcome value, or an individual's risk of an outcome being present (diagnostic) or happening in the future (prognostic), based on sets of identified predictor variables [1, 2]. A plethora of such models have been described during the first wave of the Covid-19 epidemic: a recent “living” systematic review identified (at the time of writing) 145 CPMs focused on Covid-19 patients [3].Unfortunately, many of the existing Covid-19 CPMs have been identified to be at high risk of bias, due to poor reporting, over-estimation of predictive performance, and lack of external validation [3]. External validation, which is an important aspect during the development process of any CPM, can independently evaluate the model focusing on data independent to those data used to derive the model [1, 2]. Crucially, this step assesses the generalisability/transportability of the CPM into new populations before they are recommended for widespread clinical implementation.

John Ioannidis, of "Most Published Research Findings Are False" fame, has now had his paper on IFR published Let's do one, final, twitter peer-review on the study

This is not just for the mainstream media, but the academic research community that obsessed with fake news on social media, but barely explores mainstream news, especially TV, which includes about 85% of news consumption. Thread borrows liberally from my work with @duncanjwatts

Will the mainstream media try to balance the sheet by spreading anti-Biden propaganda in last 20 days? They have certainty not learned from their past mistakes and @NBCNews decided today to undermine spirit of debates. But, let's keep the pressure on them to do better this time.

Mainstream media has had a lot of bad coverage of Trump lately: terrible debate performance where he gave a shout-out to White Supremacists, diagnosis & subsequent hospitalization for COVID-19 spotlighting his personal and administration failures to contain the pandemic, etc.

Which brings US to today: This morning @maggieNYT of @nytimes amplified extremely suspect reporting on emails taken from Hunter Biden’s laptop, while Democratic member of Facebook’s Communication team issued a statement saying they will suppress the story

Journalists and editors—at least those not at Fox—tend to see themselves as detached observers of events whose job is simply to report them. They are actually active—and highly influential—participants in shaping public opinion through agenda setting and narrative construction.

(2) Mainstream media believes that social media is stealing their business, making them an appetizing target (which is partly true).

(1) Everyone agrees Russian propaganda is bad so it is easier to call it out. But, awkward mainstream media, which draw their sense of worth from providing equal validity to both sides and embracing the patriotic greatness of our institutions, to discuss their misinformation.

Too much effort has been put into finding where the Russians have seeded some really fake news that few will ever see, but too little effort has gone into how mainstream media actually has magnitudes more power to inform or misinform the public.

General public thinks that Clinton is a bad at IT Security & Trump is fine at IT Security because mainstream media *chose* to selectively promote anti-Clinton propaganda, while ignoring true issues w/ Trump. Their choices matter: IT Security won Trump 2016 election, not Pizzagate

Trump actually does have a big IT Security situation: not legal to hide government correspondence from public record AND between Trump’s unsecured cell phone & Jared’s use of open calling tools, highly probable that malicious actors hacked sensitive information from US.

Clinton actually did have a tiny IT Security situation: despite being legal and secure, she should not have run government emails through a private server. And, her campaign manager did get hacked by the Russians, in a completely separate incident.

When it comes to IT Security the mainstream media did not spread misinformation, but they made the general population misinformed.

Mainstream media's light handling of Trump’s *way worse* IT Security failures show that the issue is not inherently important, but that the mainstream media made it important for Clinton, while *choosing* to not make it important for Trump.

Mainstream media defines balance by falsely equating the competency, scruples, and policy merit of the two major party candidates: it was hard to bring Donald Trump up (dude is super incompetent, corrupt, policy was ill-defined and/or cruel), so they dragged Clinton down.

.@nytimes did not actually think Clinton had an IT Security problem that the American people needed to know in order to choose wisely in the 2016 election: expecting Clinton to win the election, they needed a story to show how “balanced” they were by bashing her.

One particular story was broke by @nytimes just a few month ago: Jared Kushner used http://FreeConferenceCall.com to run the US’ COVID-19 response. This tantalizing IT Security failure was noted in the 21st paragraph of an article that ran on the 14th page

There were numerous other egregious IT Security lapses by Trump Team that followed in 4 years of their rule (including Jared using WhatsApp to *potentially* greenlight Saudi Arabia murdering a US-based journalist), most of them flying under the radar of national mainstream news.

First vaccines will be in limited quantities and for those at greatest risk; Germany records its worst ever daily case toll

IMF says more must be done to tackle rising poverty, unemployment and inequality despite record public debts

Lasting symptoms may not be down to a single syndrome but several different ones

Review of reported neonatal cases finds most babies with virus contract it in hospital

According to the signatories of an open letter called the Great Barrington Declaration, lockdown measures are doing more harm than good and we should open up society and let the virus rip. OK, that is a bit of an exaggeration. The declaration – named after the US town where it was signed – advocates a strategy called “focused protection” under which the most vulnerable people shield and everybody else “should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal”. This will then allow herd immunity to build up. Advertisement googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('mpu-mid-article'); }); The declaration publicly exposed a scientific disagreement that has been simmering for months. On one side are mainstream scientists who reluctantly see restrictions on freedom as the only way to keep a lid on the pandemic while we wait for vaccines; on the other, the libertarians who see the damage done to economies and individual lives as too high a price.

England, Wales and Spain suffered the biggest increases in deaths by all causes during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic, while countries including New Zealand, Norway and Poland appear to have escaped relatively unscathed. The three worst-hit countries each saw around 100 “excess deaths” per 100,000 people between February and May, which researchers say was probably due to governments being slow to implement lockdowns and scale up testing and tracing.

Prominent scientists sign open letter saying strategy is ‘unsupported by evidence’

What does it do?You put in specialist measures of relative risk and get out clear, accessible absolute risks in the form of text, icon arrays and bar charts. Think of it as a fancy calculator.Who is it for?RealRisk is suitable for anyone working to communicate research findings from the medical & social sciences to a broad audience - journalists, press officers, healthcare professionals and others.What does it do?You put in specialist measures of relative risk and get out clear, accessible absolute risks in the form of text, icon arrays and bar charts. Think of it as a fancy calculator.Who is it for?RealRisk is suitable for anyone working to communicate research findings from the medical & social sciences to a broad audience - journalists, press officers, healthcare professionals and others.What do you need to get started?An original research paper - RealRisk can be used with any study which reports a relative risk Relative Risk (RR)In a research study, a risk is the probability of an outcome occurring in one group (e.g. the number participants having a heart attack over the total number of participants).A relative risk is the risk in the experimental group divided by the risk in a control or baseline group (also sometimes called the ‘Risk Ratio’).A relative risk greater than 1 means the outcome was more common in the experimental group than the control/baseline group, and a RR less than 1 means it was less common.Where do I find it?Relative Risks will normally be reported in the abstract of a paper and in the results section. They generally look like this: “RR 3.6” or sometimes “aRR 3.6”. Often, several RRs will be reported for different comparisons. For RealRisk, pick the RR most worth reporting.Close (RR), hazard ratio Hazard Ratio (HR)A hazard is the rate at which some outcome of interest occurs over a given period of time (e.g. heart attacks or cancer diagnoses per year).A hazard ratio is the hazard in an experimental group (exposed to the risk factor) divided by the hazard in a control or baseline group.A hazard ratio bigger than 1 means the outcome of interest has occurred at a higher rate in the experimental group than the control or baseline group, and a hazard ratio smaller than 1 means it’s occurred at a lower rate.Where do I find it?Hazard ratios will normally be reported in the abstract of a paper and/or in the results section. They generally look like this: “HR 3.6.”. Often, several HRs will be reported for different comparisons. For RealRisk, pick the HR most worth reporting.Close (HR) an odds ratio Odds Ratio (OR)In a research study, the odds of some outcome is the number of times it happened over the number of times it didn’t happen (e.g. the number of people who had heart attacks over the number who didn’t)An odds ratio is the ratio of two odds: the odds of the outcome of interest in the experimental group divided by the odds in a control or baseline group.An odds ratio greater than 1 means the outcome of interest (heart attacks or cancer diagnoses) was more common in the experimental group (usually the group exposed to the risk factor), and an OR below 1 means it was less common. Where do I find it?Odds ratios will normally be reported in the abstract of a paper and/or in the results section. They generally look like this: “OR 3.6” or sometimes “aOR 3.6”. Often, several ORs will be reported for different comparisons. For RealRisk, pick the OR most worth reporting.Close (OR) or a percentage change Percentage ChangeThis refers to a percentage increase or decrease as in, “Women taking HRT were 80% more likely to develop breast cancer” or “People who exercise are 70% less likely to be depressed”.For a percentage increase just type in the number e.g. 80%To indicate a percentage decrease add a minus sign, e.g -70%Close. (Click here for more)You will also need to find a baseline risk relevant to the study. Help is provided.

Pfizer announced this week that it has received FDA approval to enroll children as young as 12 years old in its COVID-19 vaccine trial. The expansion is aimed at understanding whether the vaccine would be safe and effective for adolescents.

Epidemiologists offer tips for U.S. voters and poll workers to limit their chances of getting infected

Empathy is an integral part of socio-emotional well-being, yet recent research has highlighted some of its downsides. Here we examine literature that establishes when, how much, and what aspects of empathy promote specific outcomes. After reviewing a theoretical framework which characterizes empathy as a suite of separable components, we examine evidence showing how dissociations of these components affect important socio-emotional outcomes and describe emerging evidence suggesting that these components can be independently and deliberately modulated. Finally, we advocate for a new approach to a multi-component view of empathy which accounts for the interrelations among components. This perspective advances scientific conceptualization of empathy and offers suggestions for tailoring empathy to help people realize their social, emotional, and occupational goals.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions of higher education had to close their campuses and shift to online education. Here, we investigate how stay-at-home orders impacted students. We investigated results obtained by 15,125 bachelor students at a large Dutch research university during a semester in which the campus was closed and all education had shifted online. Moreover, we surveyed 166 students of the bachelor of psychology program of the same university. Results showed that students rated online education as less satisfactory than campus-based education, and rated their own motivation as having gone down. This was reflected in a lower time investment: lectures and small-group meetings were attended less frequently, and student estimates of hours studied went down. Lower motivation predicted this drop in effort. Moreover, a drop in motivation was related to fewer credits being obtained during stay-at-home orders. However, on average students reported obtaining slightly more credits than before, which was indeed found in an analysis of administered credits. In a qualitative analysis of student comments, it was found that students missed social interactions, but reported being much more efficient during online education. It is concluded that whereas student satisfaction and motivation dropped during the shift to online education, increased efficiency meant results were not lower than they would normally have been.

This paper examines the geographic factors that are associated with the spread of COVID-19 in Sweden. The country is a useful case study to examine because it did not impose mandatory lockdowns, and thus we would expect the virus to spread in a more unimpeded way across communities. A growing body of research has examined the role of factors like density, household size, air connectivity, income, race and ethnicity, age, political affiliation, temperature and climate, and policy measure like lockdowns and physical distancing among others. The research examines the effects of some of these factors on the geographic variation of COVID-19 cases and on deaths, across both municipalities and neighborhoods. Our findings show that the geographic variation in COVID-19 is significantly but modestly associated with variables like density, population size, and the socio-economic characteristics of places, and somewhat more associated with variables for household size. What matters more is the presence of high-risk nursing homes and the onset of infections with places that were hit earlier by COVID-19 cases experiencing more severe outbreaks. Still, all these variables explain little of the geographic variation in COVID-19 across Sweden. There appears to be a high degree of randomness in the geographic variation of COVID-19 across Sweden and the degree to which some places were hit harder than others.

The government is paying individual private sector consultants million-pound wages to work on its test and trace system, according to documents seen by Sky News

Science is one of humanity's greatest inventions. Academia, on the other hand, is not. It is remarkable how successful science has been, given the often chaotic habits of scientists. In contrast to other fields, like say landscaping or software engineering, science as a profession is largely *unprofessional*—apprentice scientists are taught less about how to work responsibly than about how to earn promotions. This results in ubiquitous and costly errors. Software development has become indispensable to scientific work. I want to playfully ask how it can become even more useful by transferring some aspects of its professionalism, the day-to-day tracking and back-tracking and testing that is especially part of distributed, open-source software development. Science, after all, aspires to be distributed, open-source knowledge development.

Social and behavioural scientists have attempted to speak to the COVID-19 crisis. But is behavioural research on COVID-19 suitable for making policy decisions? We offer a taxonomy that lets our science advance in ‘evidence readiness levels’ to be suitable for policy. We caution practitioners to take extreme care translating our findings to applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used as a tool to support the fight against the viral pandemic that has affected the entire world since the beginning of 2020. The press and the scientific community are echoing the high hopes that data science and AI can be used to confront the coronavirus (D. Yakobovitch, How to fight the Coronavirus with AI and Data Science, Medium, 15 February 2020) and "fill in the blanks" still left by science (G. Ratnam, Can AI Fill in the Blanks About Coronavirus? Think So Experts, Government Technology, 17 March 2020).

Selina Rodgers, a health care assistant at St Luke's Hospice in Devon said: "We see a lot of death in what we do, but during this last six to seven months there's been more than ever.

Cambridge University study also suggests older people less likely to believe coronavirus misinformation

Background In the face of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19), people’s adherence to precautionary behavioral measures (e.g. social distancing) largely influences the effectiveness of those measures in containing the spread of the coronavirus. The present study aims at testing the applicability of the health belief model (HBM) and generalised social beliefs (i.e. social axioms) to explore strategies for promoting adherence to COVID‐19 precautionary measures. Methods We conducted a telephone survey with a two‐step stratified random sampling method and obtained a probability sample of 616 adults in Macao, China (18–87 years old; 60.9% women) in April 2020. Results Our participants showed stronger adherence to some COVID‐19 precautionary measures (e.g. face mask wearing; 96.4%) but not others (e.g. social distancing; 42.3%). Their adherence to those measures was found to be significantly associated with four HBM factors and two social axioms, after controlling for gender, age, and years of education. Conclusions The HBM and the generalised social beliefs of social cynicism and reward for application can be applied to understanding adherence to precautionary measures against COVID‐19. Strategies based on beliefs were proposed to facilitate the promotion of precautionary measures.

As of May 13, 2020, the number of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 (novel corona virus, COVID-19) infections has risen to 4 300 000 worldwide, with over 1 300 000 confirmed cases in the United States. Various prediction models of spread indicate more hospitalization, increased ventilator use, and the shifting of medical resources to most efficiently serve the patient’s needs. Additionally, mitigation strategies such as monitoring for symptoms, social distancing, safer at home, and the wearing of masks caused our institution to implement significant operational changes to our usual practice. This included screening patients and staff for symptoms, rescheduling routine medical visits, postponing procedures, converting face-to-face visits to telephone or video visits, and changing visitor visit policies. In this article, we describe the various ways we deployed empathic communication messaging and resources across the institution during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this commentary, we discuss the physiological effects of wearing masks for prolonged periods of time, including special considerations, such as mask wearing among those who engage in exercise training, and concerns for individuals with pre-existing chronic diseases. In healthy populations, wearing a mask does not appear to cause any harmful physiological alterations, and the potentially life-saving benefits of wearing face masks seem to outweigh the documented discomforts (e.g. headaches). However, there continues to be controversy over mask wearing in the United States, even though wearing a mask appears to have only minor physiological drawbacks. While there are minimal physiological impacts on wearing a mask, theoretical evidence suggests that there may be consequential psychological impacts of mask wearing on the basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. These psychological impacts may contribute to the controversy associated with wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. After we discuss the physiological impacts of mask wearing, we will discuss psychological effects associated with wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose Focussing on the early phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong, when the infection rate was relatively low, this paper aims to explore the role of social capital in fighting the novel coronavirus. Design/methodology/approach This is a discussion paper that draws evidence from current scholarly literature and other commentaries, government policies and the personal observation of the author. The main conceptual tool used in the study is Szreter and Woolcock (2004) three-dimensional framework of social capital. Findings This paper suggests that whilst the experience of fighting SARS as early as 2003 equipped Hong Kong people with adequate knowledge of virus prevention, efforts to control COVID-19 also benefited from social capital developed during the prolonged social protest since 2019. People belonging to the pro-democracy camp took the initiative to deliver facemasks and advocate hygiene measures in Hong Kong, demonstrating strong community mobilisation. This led to the emergence of bonding and bridging social capital (but not linking social capital) in local society, based substantially on similarity in political orientation. Originality/value The use of Szreter and Woolcock (2004) three-dimensional framework for examining social capital provides a new perspective on the contribution of social network analysis to coronavirus protective measures.

IntroductionNon-pharmaceutical measures to facilitate a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a disease caused by novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, are urgently needed. Using the World Health Organization (WHO) health emergency and disaster risk management (health-EDRM) framework, behavioural measures for droplet-borne communicable diseases and their enabling and limiting factors at various implementation levels were evaluated.Sources of dataKeyword search was conducted in PubMed, Google Scholar, Embase, Medline, Science Direct, WHO and CDC online publication databases. Using the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine review criteria, 10 bottom-up, non-pharmaceutical prevention measures from 104 English-language articles, which published between January 2000 and May 2020, were identified and examined.Areas of agreementEvidence-guided behavioural measures against transmission of COVID-19 in global at-risk communities were identified, including regular handwashing, wearing face masks and avoiding crowds and gatherings.Areas of concernStrong evidence-based systematic behavioural studies for COVID-19 prevention are lacking.Growing pointsVery limited research publications are available for non-pharmaceutical measures to facilitate pandemic response.Areas timely for researchResearch with strong implementation feasibility that targets resource-poor settings with low baseline health-EDRM capacity is urgently needed.

BackgroundIn East Asia, face masks are commonly worn to reduce viral spread. In Euope and North America, however, their use has been stigmatised for a long time, although this view has radically changed during the ongoing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. Notwithstanding this, it is still unclear whether face masks worn by COVID-19 carriers may indeed prevent viral transmission and environmental contamination. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of surgical face masks in filtering SARS-CoV-2. MethodsFour male patients with COVID-19 were recruited for the study. Two patients wore a surgical mask for 5 h, while two others did not. The spread of the virus in the environment was evaluated through the approved Allplex 2019-nCoV assay.ResultsIn the room with the two patients without surgical masks, the swab performed on the headboard and sides of the beds was positive for SARS-CoV-2 contamination. In the other room, where two patients were wearing surgical masks, all of the swabs obtained after 5 h tested negative.ConclusionsThe results of the current study add to the growing body of literature supporting the use of face masks as a measure to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by retaining potentially contagious droplets that can infect other people and/or contaminate surfaces. Based on the current evidence, face masks should therefore be considered a useful and low-cost device in addition to social distancing and hand hygiene during the postlockdown phase.

With lockdown restrictions over coronavirus disease 2019 being relaxed, airlines are returning to the skies. Published evidence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus 2 transmission on aircraft is limited, but in-flight transmission of respiratory infections such as tuberculosis, influenza and SARS has been well described. Risk factors include proximity to index patients and sitting in aisle seats. Personal protection on aircraft could be enhanced by always wearing a well-fitting face mask and face shield or sunglasses, wiping surfaces and hands with alcohol-based sanitizers, not touching the face, not queuing for washrooms, changing seats if nearby passengers are coughing and choosing a window rather than an aisle seat.

Recent popular press authors have proposed that men are less likely to wear face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate this notion in the current article by analyzing three extant datasets. We also assess the mediating effect of eight different face mask perceptions in the relation between gender and face mask wearing via the Face Mask Perceptions Scale. Across the three datasets, the sample-size weighted meta-analytic correlation between gender and face mask wearing was not statistically significant, and no face mask perception was a consistent mediator of this effect. Gender did have significant relations with two face mask perceptions, however. Men were more likely to perceive face masks as infringing on their independence, whereas women were more likely to perceive face masks as uncomfortable. Therefore, although gender does not relate to whether a person wears a face mask, it does relate to face mask perceptions. We offer several suggestions for research and practice from these results, such as the positioning of face mask wearing alongside passive health behaviors, the broader study of face mask perceptions' outcomes beyond face mask wearing, as well as the creation of interventions to target differing face mask perceptions across genders.

Background: Oncology patients have had to adapt to minimize the risks of contracting COVID-19. We assessed patient knowledge of COVID, and the impact of the pandemic on their behaviours, concerns and healthcare experience, to identify any further education/quality improvement needs. Methods: Following ethical approval, a 16 page survey was distributed to 120 oncology patients attending the day unit of a tertiary Irish cancer center for systemic anti-cancer therapy (May/June 2020). The Irish COVID rate during this period was 33.8 new cases/day (pop. 4.9 million). Results: 101 responses were received. Cancer types included breast (19%), gastrointestinal (29%), head and neck (11%), and lung (13%). 31% had been tested for COVID; just 1 patient was positive. 100% were aware of advice to “cocoon” and reported good understanding of this. 75% reported complete compliance, but of those, 73% were not social-distancing within their homes, 22% received visitors, and 36% continued to shop in-store; of these, 42% shopped as/more often than pre-COVID. Of the 51 patients regularly shopping, many were not using risk-reduction strategies e.g. social distancing (22%), mask-wearing (20%), using “priority shopping’ hours (31%), avoiding public transport (26%). 94% felt confident/very confident in recognizing COVID symptoms, but 66% did not recognize two or more key symptoms from a list of 10, most frequently aches/pains (58%), fatigue (55%), altered smell/taste (33%) and dyspnea (14%). The number recognized did not correlate with confidence (p = 0.9) or desire for more information about COVID (p = 0.9). 40% did not feel they were at higher risk of contracting COVID, while 15% thought they were no more likely to be very sick than an average person if infected. Many did not know that chemotherapy, steroids, radiation, and immunotherapy can impact morbidity/mortality in COVID (31%, 70%, 44% and 49% respectively). 46% were somewhat/very fearful of COVID, but this did not strongly predict for either protective (e.g. mask-wearing: OR 1.1, 95% CI 0.3-4.8 p = 0.9), or risk behaviors (e.g. continuing to shop frequently: OR 0.5, 95% CI 0.1-1.4 p = 0.2). 66% would like more cancer specific information, particularly about prevention (45%) and symptoms (33%), with a preference for written information (74%). Conclusions: Despite self-reported confidence in knowledge, patient’s self-assessments of their risk category and the preventative strategies they should use may be inaccurate. Increased education about risk, cocooning and symptom recognition is necessary.

While health authorities sounded early warnings concerning COVID-19 [1The LancetCOVID-19: too little, too late?.Lancet. 2020; 395: 755https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30522-5Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (34) Google Scholar], the United States (US) government practised “pandemic politics” and escalated menacing assaults on science, including repeated denials of epidemic principles of mitigation and containment. The first on December 31, 2019 was that the virus would not enter the US. A second on January 20, 2020 following introduction of the first US case from Wuhan, China was that “the virus would not spread.” A third on February 26 was that the 15 cases would “go away” when temperatures climbed [2Hennekens C.H. George S. Adirim T.A. Johnson H. Maki D.G. The emerging pandemic of coronavirus and the urgent need for public health leadership.Am J Med. 2020; 133: 648-650https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.03.001Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (2) Google Scholar]. A fourth is continued and repeated denials of clear benefits of masking [3Solano J.J. Maki D.G. Adirim T.A. Shih R.D. Hennekens C.H. Public health strategies contain and mitigate COVID-19: a tale of two democracies.Am J Med. 2020; ([published online ahead of print, 2020 Aug 15]) (S0002-9343(20)30699-9)https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.08.001Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (0) Google Scholar].

Mixed-method research to endorse methodological pluralism within educational technology research – easier said than done?

Research has many different purposes, so ordering journals on a single dimension is a mistake, even within a field or content area. Journals that produce research that may be super-important for people in sub-Saharan Africa may be of only marginal interest to people in the UK or Australia. A study that to basic researchers is fundamentally flawed due to a confound that prevent strong causal inference may be just what some policy-makers need who must act before waiting for a more perfect study. To avoid the academic cluster-fuck of the last few decades, we need to start acting like we believe this and support a more diverse universe of journals and other outlets.3 SciencePsychologyAcademiaJournalsOpen Access Journals

Scientists need to acknowledge that fact—and to act on it in these most dire of times

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) into crime-fighting and present new criminal landscapes in the Western Balkans Six (WB6) (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) at the beginning of the pandemic crisis. Design/methodology/approach The paper builds on the content analysis of legal acts, strategic documents, academic articles, media reporting, official documents, four semi-structured interviews with civil society organisations, two consultations with police officers and two consultations with civil society organisations. Findings In the first nine weeks of the spread of COVID-19, the WB6 experienced a small rise in the price of marijuana. The same applied to stimulant drugs like ecstasy and amphetamines. However, very little heroin was available. Prices of protective face masks, disinfectants and medicinal alcohol skyrocketed due to attempts at price gouging. There were cases of scams using mobile and digital technologies, as well as burglaries of newspaper or cigarette kiosks, shops, pharmacies and exchange offices. It was difficult to determine whether the smuggling of and trafficking in human beings experienced a decline or increase. No cases of sexual exploitation for providing online services were noted, although the number of calls made to organisations that assist in the area of human trafficking increased. People with drug and alcohol problems, persons living with HIV, those susceptible to stress, citizens with mental health problems, pensioners, the poor, the homeless and recently released prisoners were the biggest potential victims of crime at the onset of the crisis brought by the pandemic. Research limitations/implications The research findings are limited to specific forms of crime (illicit drug trade, economic crime, fraud, scams, theft, smuggling of and trafficking in human beings) in the WB6 and based on findings from four interviews and four consultations, together with available secondary data. Originality/value This is the first overview of criminal activities occurring in the WB6 during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cites lack of understanding of virus and lasting health effects

The COVID-19 pandemic's damage to education and the economy could reverse decades of progress on child marriage and pregnancy. Sophie Cousins reports.

The NIHR today issued guidance to protect both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 research during a ‘second wave’ of high COVID-19 activity.

Signal detection theory, speed–accuracy trade-offs, and attentional allocation trade-offs all describe trade-offs between different components of performance in a detection task; however, these phenomena have generally been considered independently and their relationships are unclear. In this article, we expand the classical signal detection model in a way that allows us to incorporate speed, accuracy, and attention into a single unifying framework. Classical signal detection theory generally assumes fixed overlapping distributions of the perceived stimuli generated by desirable and undesirable objects. The variability of these distributions is typically assumed to be attributable either to the true variation among objects or perceptual error. Our new framework considers how investment in learning about the signal being emitted by encountered objects (sampling) might reduce one component of this variability, namely that generated by perceptual error. First, we identify the optimal sampling strategy, based on the payoff-maximizing time or attention a receiver should allocate to a given object. Next, we show how this optimal strategy can vary with parameters such as the ratio of desirable to undesirable objects and the initial perceptual error. Finally, we highlight the consequences of these optimal sampling strategies, using Batesian mimicry as a central example. The implications of the ability of receivers to reduce perceptual error by allocating more time or attention are potentially far reaching. For instance, snap decisions by predators will arise when predators do not gain from allocating more time to make better informed decisions, and under some conditions, this behavior will allow more imperfect mimicry to persist.

Prof Nigel Harvey warns against using the umbrella term for different reasons for non-compliance with Covid-19 restrictions.

Researchers find Sars-CoV-2 survives longer at lower temperatures and lasts 10 days longer than influenza on some surfaces

The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest sudden crisis for Western democracies since the Second World War. Funded by 27.4 million DKK from the Carlsberg Foundation, the HOPE project examines the interrelationship between: the trajectory of the COVID-19 the decisions of governments and international organisations the decisions of media and social media landscapes citizens’ behavior and well-being

Although everyone has the potential to be misled by false information, online misinformation is not an equal opportunity aggressor. Some of us are more likely to believe misinformation than are others and serve as vectors by sharing it on social media. To effectively combat misinformation on social media, it is crucial to understand the underlying factors that lead certain people to believe and share false and misleading content online. A growing body of research has tackled this issue by investigating who is susceptible to online misinformation and under what circumstances. This literature can help shape future research and interventions to address health misinformation. We provide a brief overview of what we know about who is susceptible and what we still have to learn.

The ‘think-tank’ behind the Great Barrington Declaration is part-funded by right-wing American billionaire Charles Koch, reports Nafeez Ahmed

A small number of scientists argue that the best way to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic is to lock down older and sicker people while letting those who are young and healthy get infected. These scientists claim widespread infection will protect society as a whole by building herd immunity.This “herd immunity” strategy is not part of a legitimate scientific debate. It has been rejected by key scientific leaders in the US, UK, Germany, and World Health Organization. Proponents of “herd immunity” haven’t tried to address even basic questions about the strategy, such as how many households would need to be locked down or how many people would still get sick from endemic COVID-19 once herd immunity was achieved.

Doctors, scientists, and public health leaders are increasingly stepping into the fray and getting political, writes Abraar Karan

COVID-19 has caused a cycling boom as people use bikes instead of public transport. Governments have responded by introducing cycling initiatives and improving infrastructure. Finland has spent $7.76 per person where Spain has spent $0.17.

A new Scientific American piece suggests we need:A coordinated campaign of influencers supporting science and public health.An aggressive and transparent effort by social media companies working in cooperation with governments to remove markedly false information regarding COVID-19.Beyond debunking and removal of false information: a robust public messaging campaign that goes further than the government’s traditional one-way message. (ie social media are popular precisely because they are interactive)Detect, understand and expose COVID-19-related misinformation through data science and behavioral analytics.Match public health promises with the capabilities of a government that can deliver

This “infodemic” has to stop

US foreign policy on COVID-19 has failed. COVID-19 has shown the need to reframe global health in terms of solidarity, putting resources behind collective mobilisation of expertise from high-income countries and LMICs and building capacity to save lives worldwide. In 2019, the USA spent about US$8·9 billion, or 0·19% of the US federal budget, on pandemic-related global health programmes.9Kavanagh MM Thirumurthy H Katz R et al.Ending pandemics: US foreign policy to mitigate today's major killers, tomorrow's outbreaks, and the health impacts of climate change.J Int Aff. 2019; 73: 49Google Scholar That amount is clearly insufficient. Doubling pandemics spending, channelling it through high-impact multilateral and bilateral channels, and building a political strategy to increase the power of global health governance could be a game changer. The key first step, however, will be embracing a foreign policy rooted in solidarity and the shared self-interest laid bare under COVID-19.

The ‘Great Barrington declaration’ makes claims about herd immunity that its signatories have failed to back up

Yet Sweden adopted strikingly different policies from those of other European countries, out of a desire to avoid disrupting daily life—and perhaps the hope that, by paying an immediate price in illness, the country could achieve “herd immunity” and put the pandemic behind it. Swedish authorities actively discouraged people from wearing face masks, which they said would spread panic, are often worn the wrong way, and can provide a false sense of safety. Some doctors who insisted on wearing a mask at work have been reprimanded or even fired. Until last month, Sweden’s official policy stated people without obvious symptoms are very unlikely to spread the virus. So instead of being quarantined or asked to stay home, family members, colleagues, and classmates of confirmed cases had to attend school and show up for work, unless they had symptoms themselves. Testing in Sweden still lags behind many other countries, and in many districts infected people are expected to notify their own contacts—in contrast to, say, Germany and Norway, where small armies of contact tracers help track down people who may have been exposed.

Coronavirus cases in England have "increased rapidly", data shows, as ministers grapple with what to do next.

Behavioural economist Pete Lunn on how to renew the fight against coronavirus

As the U.S. heads toward the winter, the country is going round in circles, making the same conceptual errors that have plagued it since spring.

GPs have reported a substantial drop in the numbers they are seeing across the country

Countries such as Vietnam and New Zealand are reopening due to robust strategies. When will we learn from them?

The current phase of the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing countries to choose between two strategies: one based on individual responsibility, and the other on coercive measures—the carrot and stick of popular analogy.Coercive isolation might be justified during emergencies, but its effectiveness during a long-term management phase is unproven in liberal democracies. If isolation is imposed, people might either avoid testing and withhold contact information, or reject COVID-19 regulations entirely. In France, resistance to coercive interventions could plausibly fuse with protest movements such as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests).

The COVID-19 epidemic has impacted the population of Spain far more than most feared or projected. As of Sept 25, 2020, more than 700 000 individuals had tested positive, and more than 31 000 deaths with a positive test had been recorded.1Centro de Coordinación de Alertas y Emergencias SanitariasActualización no 215. Enfermedad por el coronavirus (COVID-19).https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov/documentos/Actualizacion_215_COVID-19.pdfDate: Sept 25, 2020Date accessed: September 29, 2020Google Scholar Earlier in this pandemic, the Spanish Ministry of Health provided data by age and sex for the whole country in its daily COVID-19 situation updates (in Adobe PDF format), as well as daily data on total hospitalisations, intensive care unit admissions, discharges, and deaths by region. However, since May 19, 2020, disaggregated data have not been provided in the daily updates.1Centro de Coordinación de Alertas y Emergencias SanitariasActualización no 215. Enfermedad por el coronavirus (COVID-19).https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov/documentos/Actualizacion_215_COVID-19.pdfDate: Sept 25, 2020Date accessed: September 29, 2020Google Scholar In recent months, data improvements have been made by the National Centre of Epidemiology (CNE), and open data on total counts by region are updated and revised daily.2Centro Nacional de EpidemiologíaDatos notificados a la Red Nacional de Vigilancia Epidemiológica (RENAVES).https://cnecovid.isciii.es/covid19/#documentaci%C3%B3n-y-datosDate: 2020Date accessed: September 29, 2020Google Scholar However, at the time of writing, age-specific data from the CNE is given only in weekly publications (as Adobe PDF files), without geographic detail or retrospective corrections, and with cumulative counts tabulated only from mid-May onwards. Therefore, properly merging age-specific time series after the first wave is difficult or impossible.

Using a large-​scale survey of U.S. consumers, we study how the large one-time transfers to in­di­vid­u­als from the CARES Act affected their con­sump­tion, saving and labor supply decisions. Most re­spon­dents report that they primarily saved or paid down debts with their transfers, with only about 15 percent reporting that they mostly spent it. When providing a detailed breakdown of how they used their checks, in­di­vid­u­als report having spent or planning to spend only around 40 percent of the total transfer on average. This rel­a­tively low rate of spending out of a one-time transfer is higher for those facing liquidity con­straints, who are out of the labor force, who live in larger house­holds, who are less educated and those who received smaller amounts. We find no mean­ing­ful effect on labor supply decisions from these transfer payments, except for twenty percent of the un­em­ployed who report that the stimulus payment made them search harder for a job.

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on em­ploy­ment and res­pi­ra­tory health for remote workers (i.e. those who can work from home) and non-​remote workers in the United States. Using a large, nationally-​representative, high-​frequency panel dataset from March through July of 2020, we show that job losses were up to three times as large for non-​remote workers. This gap is larger than the dif­fer­en­tial job losses for women, African Americans, Hispanics, or workers without college degrees. Non-​remote workers also ex­pe­ri­enced rel­a­tively worse res­pi­ra­tory health, which likely occurred because it was more difficult for non-​remote workers to protect them­selves. Grouping workers by pre-​pandemic household income shows that job losses and, to a lesser extent, health losses were highest among non-​remote workers from low-​income house­holds, ex­ac­er­bat­ing existing dis­par­i­ties. Finally, we show that lifting non-​essential business closures did not sub­stan­tially increase em­ploy­ment.

We study the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on college students’ government-​ and market-​attitudes using within-​subject com­par­isons of survey responses elicited before and after the onset of the pandemic. We find that support for markets sig­nif­i­cantly declines after the onset of the pandemic, with students less likely to think markets are efficient and more likely to think they can cause harm. Support sig­nif­i­cantly increases for bigger gov­ern­ment though this does not translate to increased support for specific re­dis­trib­u­tive policies (i.e., the minimum wage, food stamps, and taxes on estates or extremely high income), nor to increased support for the gov­ern­ment to play a role in the various specific ca­pac­i­ties listed in the survey (e.g., ensuring access to health­care, re­spond­ing to natural disasters, and helping people get out of poverty). Both con­tent­ment with and trust in gov­ern­ment sig­nif­i­cantly decrease after the onset of the pandemic. Subgroup analyses indicate these results are largely driven by more po­lit­i­cally pro­gres­sive students.

We discuss and review lit­er­a­ture on the macro­eco­nomic effects of epidemics and pandemics since the late 20th century. First, we cover the role of health in driving economic growth and well-​being and discuss standard frame­works for assessing the economic burden of in­fec­tious diseases. Second, we sketch a general the­o­ret­i­cal framework to evaluate the tradeoffs pol­i­cy­mak­ers must consider when ad­dress­ing in­fec­tious diseases and their macro­eco­nomic reper­cus­sions. In so doing, we emphasize the de­pen­dence of economic con­se­quences on (i) disease char­ac­ter­is­tics; (ii) in­equal­i­ties among in­di­vid­u­als in terms of sus­cep­ti­bil­ity, pref­er­ences, and income; and (iii) cross-​country het­ero­geneities in terms of their in­sti­tu­tional and macro­eco­nomic en­vi­ron­ments. Third, we study phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and non­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal policies aimed at mit­i­gat­ing and pre­vent­ing in­fec­tious diseases and their macro­eco­nomic reper­cus­sions. Fourth, we discuss the health toll and economic impacts of five in­fec­tious diseases: HIV/AIDS, malaria, tu­ber­cu­lo­sis, influenza, and COVID-19. Although major epidemics and pandemics can take an enormous human toll and impose a stag­ger­ing economic burden, early and targeted health and economic policy in­ter­ven­tions can often mitigate both to a sub­stan­tial degree.

We in­ves­ti­gate the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role played by credit con­straints in the trans­mis­sion mechanism, using a novel survey of ex­pec­ta­tions and plans of Italian firms, taken just before and after the outbreak. Most firms revise downward their ex­pec­ta­tions for sales, orders, em­ploy­ment, and in­vest­ment, while prices are expected to increase at a faster rate, with ge­o­graph­i­cal and sectoral het­ero­gene­ity in the size of the effects. Credit con­straints amplify the effects on factor demand and sales of the COVID-19 generated shocks. Credit-​constrained firms also expect to charge higher prices, relative to un­con­strained firms. The search for and avail­abil­ity of liquidity is a key de­ter­mi­nant of firms’ plans. Finally, both supply and demand shocks play a role in shaping firms’ ex­pec­ta­tions and plans, with supply shocks being slightly more important in the aggregate.

Our research estimates Covid-19 non-fatal economic losses in the U.S. using detailed data on cu­mu­la­tive cases and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions from January 22, 2020 to July 27, 2020, from the Centers for Disease Control and Pre­ven­tion (CDC). As of July 27, 2020, the cu­mu­la­tive confirmed number of cases was about 4.2 million with almost 300,000 of them entailing hos­pi­tal­iza­tions. Due to data col­lec­tion lim­i­ta­tions the confirmed totals reported by the CDC under-​count the actual number of cases and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions in the U.S. Using standard as­sump­tions provided by the CDC, we estimate that as of July 27, 2020, the actual number of cu­mu­la­tive Covid-19 cases in the U.S. is about 47 million with almost 1 million involving hos­pi­tal­iza­tions. Applying value per sta­tis­ti­cal life (VSL) and relative severity/injury estimates from the De­part­ment of Trans­porta­tion (DOT), we estimate an overall non-fatal un­ad­justed valuation of $2.2 trillion for the U.S. with a weighted average value of about $46,000 per case. This is almost 40% higher than the total valuation of $1.6 trillion (using about $11 million VSL from the DOT) for all ap­prox­i­mately 147,000 Covid-19 fa­tal­i­ties. We also show a variety of estimates that adjust the non-fatal val­u­a­tions by the dreaded and un­cer­tainty aspect of Covid-19, age, income, and a factor related to fatality cat­e­go­riza­tion. The ad­just­ments show current overall non-fatal val­u­a­tions ranging from about $1.5 trillion to about $9.6 trillion. Finally, we use CDC forecast data to estimate non-fatal val­u­a­tions through November 2020, and find that the overall cu­mu­la­tive valuation increases from about $2.2 trillion to about $5.7 trillion or to about 30 percent of GDP. Because of the larger numbers of cases involved our cal­cu­la­tions imply that non-fatal in­fec­tions are as eco­nom­i­cally serious in the aggregate as ul­ti­mately fatal in­fec­tions.

We propose a reweighting-​estimation-transformation (RWET) approach to estimate the impacts of COVID-19 on job postings in Australia. Contrary to the commonly used aggregation-​based method on counting data, our approach can be used in a rel­a­tively ‘thin’ market, such as Australia. In a thin market, the number of job postings is rel­a­tively small, and the share of empty cells increases sub­stan­tially when ag­gre­gat­ing the data into finer cat­e­gories. Using Aus­tralian job postings collected by Burning Glass Tech­nolo­gies and the RWET approach, our empirical evidence shows that the overall labour demand in Australia as of July 2020 is slowly re­cov­er­ing from its lowest 45 per cent dip at the beginning of May. Our results also suggest that the impacts of the pandemic are rel­a­tively evenly dis­trib­uted across skill levels, but vary sub­stan­tially across states, in­dus­tries and oc­cu­pa­tions. Our findings of the dynamics on the demand side of the labour market suggest that skill-​targeted policies might not be as effective as policies targeted at the state and industry levels to fa­cil­i­tate economic recovery.

This paper examines the impact of di­ag­nos­tic ef­fi­ciency on the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an exogenous policy on di­ag­nos­tic con­fir­ma­tion, we show that a one- day decrease in the time taken to confirm the first case in a city publicly led to 9.4% and 12.7% re­duc­tions in COVID-19 preva­lence and mortality over the sub­se­quent six months, re­spec­tively. The impact is larger for cities that are farther from the COVID-19 epicenter, are exposed to less migration, and have more re­spon­sive public health systems. Social dis­tanc­ing and a less burdened health system are likely the un­der­ly­ing mech­a­nisms, while the latter also explains the more profound impact on reducing deaths than reducing in­fec­tions.

This paper con­tributes to the lit­er­a­ture on public health com­mu­ni­ca­tion by studying how the framing of a message relaying the forecast impact of COVID-19 pre­ven­tion measures affects com­pli­ance behaviour amongst both the young and old. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample of survey re­spon­dents in the UK and US, along with selected re­spon­dents in Italy, were presented with forecasts for the number of deaths from COVID-19 in their countries with and without public adherence to various pre­ven­tive be­hav­iours. We ex­per­i­men­tally varied whether this in­for­ma­tion was presented in terms of likely deaths or lives saved. The lives saved frame increases reported pro­tec­tive be­hav­iours, but only amongst older re­spon­dents. We present evidence con­sis­tent with the hy­poth­e­sis that framing is likelier to affect decisions whose con­se­quences are felt by oneself (i.e. pro­tec­tive be­hav­iours by the elderly) rather than solely others (i.e. pro­tec­tive be­hav­iours amongst the young).

Ob­jec­tives – The growth of COVID-19 in­fec­tions in England raises questions about system vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Several factors that vary across ge­o­gra­phies, such as age, existing disease preva­lence, medical resource avail­abil­ity, and de­pri­va­tion, can trigger adverse effects on the National Health System during a pandemic. In this paper, we present data on these factors and combine them to create an index to show which areas are more exposed. This technique can help policy makers to moderate the impact of similar pandemics. Design – We combine several sources of data, which describe specific risk factors linked with the outbreak of a res­pi­ra­tory pathogen, that could leave local areas vul­ner­a­ble to the harmful con­se­quences of large-​scale outbreaks of con­ta­gious diseases. We combine these measures to generate an index of community-​level vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Setting – 191 Clinical Com­mis­sion­ing Groups (CCGs) in England. Main outcome measures – We merge 15 measures spatially to generate an index of community-​level vul­ner­a­bil­ity. These measures cover preva­lence rates of high-risk diseases; proxies for the at-risk pop­u­la­tion density; avail­abil­ity of staff and quality of health­care fa­cil­i­ties. Results – We find that 80% of CCGs that score in the highest quartile of vul­ner­a­bil­ity are located in the North of England (24 out of 30). Here, vul­ner­a­bil­ity stems from a faster rate of pop­u­la­tion ageing and from the wide­spread presence of un­der­ly­ing at-risk diseases. These same areas, es­pe­cially the North-​East Coast areas of Lan­cashire, also appear vul­ner­a­ble to adverse shocks to health­care supply due to tighter labour markets for health­care personnel. Im­por­tantly, our Index cor­re­lates with a measure of social de­pri­va­tion, in­di­cat­ing that these com­mu­ni­ties suffer from long-​standing lack of economic op­por­tu­ni­ties and are char­ac­terised by low public and private resource en­dow­ments. Con­clu­sions – Evidence-​based policy is crucial to mitigate the health impact of pandemics such as COVID-19. While current attention focuses on curbing rates of contagion, we introduce a vul­ner­a­bil­ity index combining data that can help policy makers identify the most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties. We find that this index is pos­i­tively cor­re­lated with COVID-19 deaths and it can thus be used to guide targeted capacity building. These results suggest that a stronger focus on deprived and vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties is needed to tackle future threats from emerging and re-​emerging in­fec­tious disease.

This paper uses a new field survey of low-wage areas of urban India to show that em­ploy­ment and earnings were decimated by the lockdown resulting from the Covid-19 crisis. It examines workers’ desire for a job guarantee in this setting. Workers who had a job guarantee before the crisis were rel­a­tively shielded by not being hit quite so hard in terms of the increased incidence of job loss or working zero hours and earnings losses. A stated choice ex­per­i­ment contained in the survey reveals evidence that low-wage workers are willing to give up around a quarter of their daily wage for a job guarantee. And direct survey questions cor­rob­o­rate this, with informal, young and female workers being most likely to want a job guarantee, and to want it even more due to the current crisis.

We explore impacts of the pandemic crisis and as­so­ci­ated re­stric­tions to economic activity on paid and unpaid work for men and women in the UK. Using data from the Covid-19 sup­ple­ment of Un­der­stand­ing Society, we find evidence that labour market outcomes of men and women were roughly equally affected at the extensive margin, as measured by the incidence of job loss or fur­lough­ing, but if anything women suffered smaller losses at the intensive margin, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing slightly smaller changes in hours and earnings. Within the household, women provided on average a larger share of increased childcare needs, but in an important share of house­holds fathers became the primary childcare providers. These dis­tri­b­u­tional con­se­quences of the pandemic may be important to un­der­stand its in­equal­ity legacy over the longer term.

We present findings from the first two waves of an in­no­v­a­tive, population-​representative, UK time-use diary survey conducted both pre- and mid-​lockdown, using an online diary in­stru­ment that proved both reliable and quick-​to-field. Combining diary in­for­ma­tion on activity, location, and co-​presence to estimate infection risks as­so­ci­ated with daily behavior, we show clear changes in such behavior related to infection risk between the pre- and mid-​lockdown periods: a sub­stan­tial reduction of time spent in those behaviors with the highest levels of risk, ac­com­pa­nied by an equiv­a­lent increase in low-risk behavior. Because, in general, a pop­u­la­tions’ time use changes rel­a­tively slowly, the be­hav­ioral changes revealed may be in­ter­preted directly as a con­se­quence of the UK COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ reg­u­la­tions. Sub­se­quent waves will reveal the be­hav­ioral con­se­quences of future changes in reg­u­la­tion.

Social pressure may have relevant con­se­quences in many contexts but it is hard to evaluate it em­pir­i­cally. In this paper we exploit a natural ex­per­i­ment in soccer to provide clear evidence of its effects. We aim to study how social pressure from the crowd in a stadium affects both players and referees. While in normal matches crowd support may be cor­re­lated to a host of variables affecting the outcome of interest, we exploit the fact that after the health emergency for the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, soccer matches in top European Leagues have been allowed only behind closed doors, that is, without spec­ta­tors in the stadiums. We use data of first and second division of 5 major European Leagues (Germany, Spain, England, Italy and Portugal) for the last 10 cham­pi­onships and compare several outcomes (de­ter­mined by players’ per­for­mance and referees’ decisions) of matches played with crowd support to the same outcomes when matches were played without crowd. We find con­sid­er­able effects of the pressure from the crowd: while with the support of the crowd a con­sid­er­able home advantage emerges in various measures of per­for­mance (points, goals, shots, etc.), this advantage is almost halved when matches are behind closed doors. Similar effects are found for the behavior of referees: decisions of fouls, yellow cards, red cards and penalties that tend to favor home teams in normal matches, are much more balanced without crowd pressing on referees. The evidence we provide strongly supports the idea that social pressure has intense effects on agents’ behavior. Keywords

The Covid-19 pandemic has induced worldwide natural ex­per­i­ments on the effects of crowds. We exploit one of these ex­per­i­ments currently taking place over several countries in almost identical settings: pro­fes­sional football matches played behind closed doors. We find large and sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant effects on the number of yellow cards issued by referees. Without a crowd, fewer cards were awarded to the away teams, reducing home advantage. These results have im­pli­ca­tions for the influence of social pressure and crowds on the neu­tral­ity of ref­er­ee­ing decisions.

We estimate the economic impact of South Korea’s targeted responses to the first large-​scale COVID-19 cluster in Seoul. We find that foot traffic and retail sales decreased only within a 300 meter radius of the cluster and recovered to its pre-​outbreak level after four weeks. The re­duc­tions appear to be driven by temporary business closures rather than the risk avoidance behavior of the citizens. Our results imply that less intense, but more targeted COVID-19 in­ter­ven­tions, such as pin-​pointed, temporary closures of busi­nesses, can be a low-cost al­ter­na­tive after lifting strict social dis­tanc­ing measures.

We document the trans­mis­sion of social dis­tanc­ing practices from the United States to Mexico along migrant networks during the early 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Using data on pre-​existing migrant con­nec­tions between Mexican and U.S. locations and mobile-​phone tracking data revealing social dis­tanc­ing behavior, we find larger declines in mobility in Mexican regions whose emigrants live in U.S. locations with stronger social dis­tanc­ing practices. We rule out con­found­ing pre-​trends and use a variety of controls and an in­stru­men­tal variables strategy based on U.S. stay-​at-home orders to rule out the potential influence of disease trans­mis­sion and migrant sorting between similar locations. Given this evidence, we conclude that our findings represent the effect of in­for­ma­tion trans­mis­sion between Mexican migrants living in the U.S. and residents of their home locations in Mexico. Our results demon­strate the im­por­tance of personal con­nec­tions when pol­i­cy­mak­ers seek to change fun­da­men­tal social behaviors.

With the COVID-19 outbreak imposing stay at home and social dis­tanc­ing policies, warnings about the impact of lockdown and its economic con­se­quences on domestic violence has surged. This paper dis­en­tan­gles the effect of forced co­ex­is­tence and economic stress on intimate partner violence. Using an online survey data set, we find a 23% increase of intimate partner violence during the lockdown. Our results indicate that the impact of economic con­se­quences is twice as large as the impact of lockdown. We also find a large increase of domestic violence when the relative position of the man worsens, es­pe­cially in contexts where that position was already being threat­ened. We view our results as con­sis­tent with the male backlash and emotional cue effects.

COVID-19 has affected daily life in un­prece­dented ways. Using a lon­gi­tu­di­nal dataset linking biometric and survey data from several cohorts of young adults before and during the pandemic (N=685), we document large dis­rup­tions to physical activity, sleep, time use, and mental health. At the onset of the pandemic, average steps decline from 9,400 to 4,600 steps per day, sleep increases by about 25-30 minutes per night, time spent so­cial­iz­ing declines by over half to less than 30 minutes, and screen time more than doubles to over 5 hours per day. The pro­por­tion of par­tic­i­pants at risk of clinical de­pres­sion increases to 65%, over twice the rate in the same pop­u­la­tion prior to the pandemic. Our analyses suggest that dis­rup­tion to physical activity is a leading risk factor for de­pres­sion during the pandemic. However, restora­tion of those habits–either naturally or through policy in­ter­ven­tion–has limited impact on restoring mental well-​being.

ECDC has launched a free, open source interactive tool to help with the automatised early detection of public health threats using Twitter data.

Report says recovery efforts are undermined by ministers’ tendency to over-promise and under-deliver

Doctors grapple for answers as more patients report post-coronavirus cognitive impairment

The fourth session of the COVID-19 and the Law series was a discussion on Elections, moderated by Charles Fried, Beneficial Professor of Law, and featuring - Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos; and - Ruth Greenwood, lecturer on law and co-director of Voting Rights and Redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center

People still going out even though they risk infecting others, advisers tell ministers

Today, the Commission publishes a further set of reports provided by the signatories of the Code of Practice on Disinformation as part of the COVID-19 monitoring and reporting programme set out in the Joint Communication “Tackling COVID-19 disinformation - Getting the facts right”.

There’s a lot of talk of scientists divided over Covid-19, but when you look at the evidence any so-called divide starts to evaporate

experts realise that even after knowing the risks and concerns, the people still refuse to abide by the rules laid down by the governmens. To combat this type of behavior, first they need to accept the fact that only telling people about the risk won’t give them the desired result. They need to approach the situation with different solutions and that’s where behavioral science comes into play.

Guided by the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model, this study aims to examine the key determinants that predispose individuals’ online information seeking behavior and prevention intent during the COVID-19 outbreak. Through an online survey with 741 respondents in China, results indicate that affective responses, informational subjective norms, and information insufficiency are positively related to online information seeking about COVID-19. Furthermore, online information seeking is positively associated with prevention intent, and attitude toward prevention partially mediates this association. Finally, theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed in the context of COVID-19.

This study investigates the long-term effectiveness of active psychological inoculation as a means to build resistance against misinformation. Using 3 longitudinal experiments (2 preregistered), we tested the effectiveness of Bad News, a real-world intervention in which participants develop resistance against misinformation through exposure to weakened doses of misinformation techniques. In 3 experiments (NExp1 = 151, NExp2 = 194, NExp3 = 170), participants played either Bad News (inoculation group) or Tetris (gamified control group) and rated the reliability of news headlines that either used a misinformation technique or not. We found that participants rate fake news as significantly less reliable after the intervention. In Experiment 1, we assessed participants at regular intervals to explore the longevity of this effect and found that the inoculation effect remains stable for at least 3 months. In Experiment 2, we sought to replicate these findings without regular testing and found significant decay over a 2-month time period so that the long-term inoculation effect was no longer significant. In Experiment 3, we replicated the inoculation effect and investigated whether long-term effects could be due to item-response memorization or the fake-to-real ratio of items presented, but found that this is not the case. We discuss implications for inoculation theory and psychological research on misinformation.

The present crisis continues to demand an all-out response from behavioural scientists if it is to be mastered with minimal damage. This means we, as the behavioural science community, need to think about how we can adapt to best support evidence-based policy in a rapidly changing, high-stakes environment. Following on from early thoughts on such a restructure in (Hahn et al. 2020), we created a transparent, digital online community for behavioural scientists, in the context of an integrated information environment, scibeh.org. The talk will describe the thinking behind this step, outline some of the features, and discuss what has and has not worked, along with the implications for future digital, online, science.

latest analysis & questions from the press & public.

First budget since pandemic began offers much-needed funds to universities and national science agency.

A quarter of Philadelphia residents know someone who has died of COVID-19, half the population has struggled to pay bills or has had other financial hardship, 40% have lost work or wages, and more than half worry they could catch the coronavirus at work. Those are some of the results of a new Pew survey of 1,025 Philadelphians about the unprecedented year and its overlapping pressures — the pandemic, racial justice protests, gun violence, and the economic downturn.

The U.S.’s economic scarring from the pandemic is much less severe than initially feared, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s economics team said in a note that offered an upbeat take on America’s situation.

Concerns about the safety and effectiveness of possible vaccine, pace of approval process

It kills more people than the flu, contrary to Trump’s claims, and also surpasses stroke, Alzheimer’s and diabetes

python-igraph 0.8.3, the third release the 0.8 series is now available. You can install it from PyPI 1 where we provide precompiled wheels for Python 3.6 to 3.9 on Linux, macOS and Windows. You can find the source code 1 if you want to compile it on your own.

The constituents of a complex system exchange information to function properly. Their signalling dynamics often leads to the appearance of emergent phenomena, such as phase transitions and collective behaviors. While information exchange has been widely modeled by means of distinct spreading processes -- such as continuous-time diffusion, random walks, synchronization and consensus -- on top of complex networks, a unified and physically-grounded framework to study information dynamics and gain insights about the macroscopic effects of microscopic interactions, is still eluding us. In this article, we present this framework in terms of a statistical field theory of information dynamics, unifying a range of dynamical processes governing the evolution of information on top of static or time varying structures. We show that information operators form a meaningful statistical ensemble and their superposition defines a density matrix that can be used for the analysis of complex dynamics. As a direct application, we show that the von Neumann entropy of the ensemble can be a measure of the functional diversity of complex systems, defined in terms of the functional differentiation of higher-order interactions among their components. Our results suggest that modularity and hierarchy, two key features of empirical complex systems -- from the human brain to social and urban networks -- play a key role to guarantee functional diversity and, consequently, are favored.

Fran Baum and Sharon Friel recently proposed the need for a social as well as a biological vaccine to solve the challenge of COVID-19. They argued in the Medical Journal of Australiathat we need to go beyond a biomedical vision for solving this syndemic. By a social vaccine, they mean “a metaphor designed to shift the dominant biomedical orientation of the health sector towards the underlying distal factors that cause disease and suffering”.

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the consequences of misinformation are a matter of life and death. Correcting misconceptions and false beliefs are important for injecting reliable information about the outbreak. Fact-checking organisations produce content with the aim of reducing misinformation spread, but our knowledge of its impact on misinformation is limited. In this paper, we explore the relation between misinformation and fact-checking spread during the Covid-19 pandemic. We specifically follow misinformation and fact-checks emerging from December 2019 to early May 2020. Through a combination of spread variance analysis, impulse response modelling and causal analysis, we show similarities in how misinformation and fact-checking information spread and that fact-checking information has a positive impact in reducing misinformation. However, we observe that its efficacy can be reduced, due to the general amount of online misinformation and the short-term spread of fact-checking information compared to misinformation