Pittsburgh, a sister city to Wuhan, China, saw only modest cases for months. In the last two weeks, cases are suddenly soaring.

It isn’t safe to reopen watering holes, nightclubs, and concert venues. Congress should pay to keep them closed.

Cirillo and Taleb [Nature Phys. 16, 606-613 (2020)] study the size of major epidemics in human history in terms of the number of fatalities. Using the figures from 72 epidemics, from the plague of Athens (429 BC) to the COVID-19 (2019-2020), they claim that the resulting fatality distribution is ``extremely fat-tailed'', i.e., asymptotically a power law. This has important consequences for risk, as the mean value of the fatality distribution becomes infinite. Reanalyzing the same data, we find that, although the data may be compatible with a power-law tail, these results are not conclusive, and other distributions, not fat-tailed, could explain the data equally well. Simulation of a log-normally distributed random variable provides synthetic data whose statistics are undistinguishable from the statistics of the empirical data.

Claim The Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, plans for the current rate of Covid-19 infections and deaths to continue. Conclusion This is a misunderstanding of what Professor Whitty said. He was talking about hygiene rules continuing, not levels of infection staying the same.

Insiders reveal that data collection was haphazard, as officials went against accepted practice and "buffed the system".

Historic data for the number of people tested for coronavirus (COVID-19) from 30 January to 27 May 2020, before the launch of NHS test and trace.

Politicians and pundits are acting like the city was destined for a tragedy. They’re wrong.

A quick hack of a function to add emojis to forest plots

The Ontario government announced today that many regions in the province will be allowed to move on to Stage 3 of reopening the economy as of Friday, July 17 at 12:01 a.m., but Toronto is one of the regions that will be required to remain in Stage 2 for now.

Many studies needed to quell this and future pandemics are not being done, and the chance is ebbing away.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez discussed the lack of federal guidance for regions seeing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases on Thursday, as local officials work to manage a second spike in the city's virus outbreak.

In January, after watching my hometown Wuhan crumble from afar as it grappled with the novel coronavirus, I thought I was better prepared for the pandemic than most people in the United States.Support our journalism. Subscribe today.arrow-rightLittle did I know that this country would struggle so much — or that six months later, I would contract the coronavirus, too.

Researchers question whether a mutated viral strain that infected more cells in a lab dish is necessarily more transmissible among humans

As the current pandemic makes us ponder the future of cities, a book examines past rises and falls.

Charity says monthly interactions rise from 30 to 1,000 and flag a coming ‘storm’

The COVID-19 global pandemic has the potential to change family life and the household division of labour in significant ways. We surveyed 1,249 mothers and fathers in Canada in May 2020 to understand potential pandemic related changes in housework and childcare.

This cross-national survey-based study examined in real time how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted food-centric matters in 1,732 Chinese and 1,547 U.S. households during the stay-at-home directives. Both cohorts reported increased efficiency in use of food, families spending more time cooking and eating together, and more prudent use of food with less waste. Food purchasing patterns shifted from frequent trips to the store to dramatic increases in online ordering. A small proportion (11% Chinese, 2% U.S. respondents) reported clinically significant weight gains of >4.5 kg. Household food insecurity worsened, with large increases in people worrying about or experiencing food shortage. Collective grocery-shopping experience by survey respondents indicated that the functional stability of food supply systems remained steady. All food types were somewhat available, except for noticeably higher prices widely reported by the Chinese cohort. This study offers insights into future food patterns and sheds light on long-term questions for additional research about how people make decisions and food behavioral changes at times of crisis and the consequences thereafter.

This study estimates cumulative infection rates from Covid-19 in Great Britain by geographical units and investigates spatial patterns in infection rates. We propose a model-based approach to calculate cumulative infection rates from data on observed and expected deaths from Covid-19. Our analysis of mortality data shows that between 5 and 6% of people in Great Britain were infected by Covid-19 by the last third of April 2020. It is unlikely that the infection rate was lower than 3% or higher than 12%. Secondly, England had higher infection rates than Scotland and Wales, although the differences between countries were not large. Thirdly, we observed a substantial variation in virus infection rates in Great Britain by geographical units. Estimated infection rates were highest in the capital city of London where more than 10% of the population might have been infected and also in other major urban regions, while the lowest were in small towns and rural areas. Finally, spatial regression analysis showed that the virus infection rates increased with the increasing population density of the area and the level of deprivation. The results suggest that people from lower socioeconomic groups in urban areas (including those with minority backgrounds) were most affected by the spread of coronavirus in March and April.

We conducted an audit study with 262 community pharmacies from seven municipalities in the Northeast of Colombia. In the study, a simulated client called and described a list of symptoms experienced by her brother, and asked the pharmacist for a recommendation. In our "common" condition, the symptoms were headache, sore throat, and fever. In our COVID condition, we added anosmia (i.e., the loss of smell) as a fourth symptom, allowing better discrimination with respect to other diseases. We find that mentioning anosmia induced a more cautious behavior among pharmacists. The probability that pharmacists recommend to register the case in the dedicated emergency line increased from 19.7 to 32.2 percent, whereas the probability that pharmacists make a prescription decreased from 69.7 to 51.5 percent. The seven selected municipalities were drawn from dengue endemic and non-endemic areas. Although we hypothesized that past experience with symptoms from the common condition would make harder to provide adequate recommendations in endemic areas, we did not find differences in behavior supporting this hypothesis.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rush to scientific and political judgments on the merits of hydroxychloroquine was fuelled by dubious papers which may have been published because the authors were not independent from the practices of the journals in which they appeared. This example leads us to consider a new type of illegitimate publishing entity, “self-promotion journals” which could be deployed to serve the instrumentalisation of productivity-based metrics, with a ripple effect on decisions about promotion, tenure, and grant funding.

Contact tracing is a fundamental public health intervention, and a mainstay in efforts to control and contain severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of writing, the pandemic has caused more than 13 million cases and more than 578 000 deaths.1Johns Hopkins University of MedicineCOVID-19 dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.htmlDate accessed: July 15, 2020Google Scholar Regions with the most successful containment to date have approached the pandemic with integrated measures that include cohesive leadership, effective communication, physical distancing, wearing of face coverings, improvements in the built environment, promotion of hand hygiene, and support for the staff, supplies, and systems needed to care for patients—with testing and contact tracing as cornerstones of the approach. Despite the emergence of some promising therapies2Sanders JM Monogue ML Jodlowski TZ Cutrell JB Pharmacologic treatments for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): a review.JAMA. 2020; 323: 1824-1836Google Scholar and work towards a future vaccine,3Lurie N Saville Hatchett R Halton J Developing Covid-19 vaccines at pandemic speed.N Engl J Med. 2020; 382: 1969-1973Crossref PubMed Scopus (54) Google Scholar basic public health approaches remain the best available prevention and control interventions at this time.

Belgium has the sad distinction of leading the world league table of deaths from COVID-19. At 843 deaths per million, Belgium is ahead of the UK (650 per million), Italy (576 per million), Sweden (537 per million), and France (458 per million). COVID-19 was first reported in Belgium on Feb 4, 2020, in a 54-year-old man who had been repatriated from Wuhan, China. Community transmission was confirmed in early March after holiday makers returned from school vacation breaks in northern Italy. The national sense of failure and anger is spurring a serious effort to initiate an international inquiry into the global response to the pandemic. Last week, Belgium's Chamber of Representatives took evidence in support of two resolutions. The first calls for an independent international investigation into the causes of the COVID-19 global crisis. The second calls for an examination of the part played by China in the pandemic's origin and evolution. The tone of the discussion was highly critical of China and WHO. Thierry Kellner lectures in the Department of Political Science at the Free University of Brussels. “Dark areas” of the pandemic response needed to be illuminated, he suggested. The world wants to know the influence of China on WHO. Kellner argued that China must engage with these questions or else the regime can never be trusted. And WHO? Kellner claimed that WHO's behaviour has led to widespread public distrust of the agency. Only a full and independent investigation would restore confidence in WHO.

We read with interest Stefan Lohse and colleagues' Correspondence about sample pooling for testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in asymptomatic people.1Lohse S Pfuhl T Berkó-Göttel B et al.Pooling of samples for testing for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic people.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online April 28.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30362-5Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar Some of the findings Lohse and colleagues report do not seem to be consistent with other research results2Yelin I Aharony N Shaer Tamar E et al.Evaluation of COVID-19 RT-qPCR test in multi-sample pools.Clin Infect Dis. 2020; (published online May 2.)DOI:10.1093/cid/ciaa531Crossref PubMed Google Scholar,  3Eis-Hübinger AM Hönemann M Wenzel JJ et al.Ad hoc laboratory-based surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 by real-time RT-PCR using minipools of RNA prepared from routine respiratory samples.J Clin Virol. 2020; 127104381Crossref Scopus (1) Google Scholar nor our experiences.

COVID-19 has not affected all scientists equally. A survey of principal investigators indicates that female scientists, those in the ‘bench sciences’ and, especially, scientists with young children experienced a substantial decline in time devoted to research. This could have important short- and longer-term effects on their careers, which institution leaders and funders need to address carefully.

Nucleic acid amplification tests are invaluable tools for rapid and accurate detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections,1D'Cruz RJ Currier AW Sampson VB Laboratory testing methods for novel severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2).Front Cell Dev Biol. 2020; 8: 468Crossref PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar,  2Shi J Han D Zhang R Li J Zhang R Molecular and serological assays for SARS-CoV-2: insights from genome and clinical characteristics.Clin Chem. 2020; (published online May 21.)https://doi:10.1093/clinchem/hvaa122Crossref Google Scholar but they are of limited use when identifying transmission events and infection clusters.3

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has advised people on Twitter that they can stop quarantining after travelling to England from certain foreign countries from 10 July. In one tweet, the FCO incorrectly suggested these rules apply to the whole UK. It has also been reported that transport minister Grant Shapps told BBC Breakfast on 3 July that, from 10 July onward, “you will be legal not to quarantine yourself.”  However, guidance published on the government’s official website by the Department for Transport (DfT) says that you must follow the rules that were in place on the date that you arrived in England. A spokesperson for the DfT confirmed that this is the correct guidance to follow. Since this story was published, the FCO has confirmed it has deleted one of the tweets and added corrections linking to the DfT guidance.

The clinical decision analysis (CDA) has used to overcome complexity and uncertainty in medical problems. The CDA is a tool allowing decision-makers to apply evidence-based medicine to make objective clinical decisions when faced with complex situations. The usefulness and limitation including six steps in conducting CDA were reviewed. The application of CDA results should be done under shared decision with patients’ value.

People need straightforward guidance or rules on coverings in England, say MPs

Exogenous threats pose a formidable coordination challenge to federations, as they compel governments at all levels to cooperate to prevent a collective risk. As the vertical fragmentation of powers complicates a coordinated response, we here argue that the central government becomes the focal point of the solution. In search of a more effective response against the threat, citizens coordinate their preferences around the centralization of authority boundaries in the federation. We test this argument using an on-line survey experiment in Spain, a country where the threat caused by COVID-19 has operated on top of non-negligible internal threats. The empirical analysis shows that exposure to vertical coordination failures prompt citizens to support a centralized redrawing of authority boundaries, though this effect is importantly conditioned by respondents’ ideology and territorial preferences. Our findings suggest that shocks may represent turning points for the stability of federations, as citizens demands for a redrawing of authority might be followed by beneficial or opportunistic adjustments of authority.

It is known that the new coronavirus (COVID-19) is disproportionately affecting the elderly, those with underlying medical conditions, and the poor. What is the effect of informing the public about these inequalities on people’s perceptions of threat and their sensitivity to the outbreak’s human toll? This study answers this question using a novel survey experiment and finds that emphasis on the unequal aspect of the pandemic, especially as it relates to the elderly and those with medical conditions, could be causing the public to become less concerned about the outbreak and its human toll. Discussion situates this finding in the literature on scientific communication and persuasion and explains why language that emphasizes the impact of the virus on all of us -- rather than singling out certain groups -- could be more effective in increasing caution among the general public and make them take the situation more seriously.

Eyewitness media was boosted by ubiquitous smartphones and social media use. User-generated content by non-professionals, or netizens, has shed light on issues they deem important by capturing and sharing footage appealing to their inner digital network and mainstream media. However, the influence that digital testimonials exerts on activism and indexing has been restricted to those possessing some media training. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a framework to guide vulnerable people experiencing harsh conditions to leverage the power of social media. The expectation is that such a guideline would help the most vulnerable draw the attention of other members of the community, authorities and mainstream media to the conditions they are in. The proposal of this framework is based on the theory of mediatized conflict and analysis of the hashtag #FallecidosCovid19Ec on Twitter. This hashtag helped organize scattered experiences, raise media attention and pressure officials to respond to urgent demands.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the sudden shift to online offerings of higher education courses that would typically be taught face-to-face, has university administrators, educators, and students alike scrambling to prepare. The pedagogical movement towards active learning has always found a friend in the natural sciences, with laboratory and field components being standard to many programs. For instructors of ecology and evolution, the shift to online-only learning planned for autumn 2020 imposes limitations. As a first-time instructor teaching a course on evolutionary processes at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak, concurrent with being a student of a mentored teaching course and doctoral student in evolutionary ecology, I offer my perspective as a learner and an educator to guide decision-making by instructors. I emphasize the need to consider accessibility, equity, and compassion and the importance of building trust and a safe learning environment in the absence of face-to-face instruction. I describe some evolution-related resources and approaches to assessment I applied in the pivot-to-online context of March 2020, including COVID-19 teaching tools. Finally, I encourage scholars of evolution and ecology to bridge in contemporary scholarship on pedagogy to help teach the next generation of biologists.

Background. As the Covid-19 pandemic has grown internationally, there has been an increased need for volunteers. This study aimed to identify the predictors of volunteering including demographic backgrounds, socio-economic characteristics, personality and psychosocial factors. Methods. Data were analysed from 31,890 adults in the UK COVID-19 Social Study run by University College London; a longitudinal study focusing on the psychological and social experiences of adults living in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. Tetrachoric factor analysis was applied to identify latent categories of voluntary work. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identity predictors for volunteering and change in volunteering behaviours since before lockdown. Results. Three types of volunteering during the pandemic were identified: formal volunteering, social action volunteering, and neighbourhood volunteering. Regression analysis showed that the pattern of voluntary work was structured by demographic backgrounds, socio-economic factors, personality and psychological factors. Conclusion. The predictors of volunteering during the pandemic may be slightly different from other non-emergency period.

One in every two Indian households continues to rely on highly-polluting solid fuels to meet their cooking and other energy demands. Recent evidence demonstrates that people suffering from preconditions associated with air pollution and those with short-term exposures to air pollution are highly susceptible to the novel Coronavirus infection and associated morbidity and mortality. And as for many Indians, especially those with pre-existing health conditions and the elderly, home-based isolation and confinement practices are likely to continue to prevent the infection, exposure to household air pollution may render such population groups more susceptible to COVID-19. This warrants caution and demands immediate and specific actions; which are discussed. To protect the health and wellbeing of millions of Indians, during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond, addressing household air pollution should be prioritized and aligned with long term environmental health initiatives in the country.

In low income and lower-middle income countries, data from civil registration systems do not allow monitoring excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rapid mobile phone surveys aimed at measuring mortality trends on a monthly basis are a realistic and safe option for filling that data gap. The data generated by mobile phone surveys can play a key role in better targeting areas or population groups most affected by the pandemic. They can also help monitor the impact of interventions and programs, and rapidly identify what works in mitigating the impact of COVID-19.

This study offers an overview on changes in fertility plan during the COVID-19 crisis of a representative sample of the young population (18-34) in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and UK. Data were collected between March 27 and April 7, 2020. Our results show that fertility plans have been negatively revised in all countries, but not in the same way. In Germany and France fertility plans changed moderately, with many people still planning or postponing their decision to have a child during the 2020. In Italy, instead, the proportion of abandoners is much higher than in other countries, while comparatively it shows a lower proportion of those deciding to postpone their plans. Moreover, the demographic characteristics of the individuals seem to be associated with fertility plans in different ways across countries. In Italy, abandoners are common among individuals younger than 30 and those without a tertiary education. In Germany, abandoners are slightly more prevalent in the regions most affected by the COVID-19. In UK, fertility plans have been most frequently abandoned by individuals that expect the worse impact of the crisis on their future income. Finally, in France and Spain we did not observe a clear pattern for revision of fertility plans. These results suggest that different mechanisms are at work, due to the different economic, demographic and policy pre-crisis background and post-crisis prospects. Low-fertility contexts, in particular, appear to be more at risk of a fertility loss due to the crisis.

The health crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak has global impacts on humanity and the economy. Such pandemic effects also influence human behaviour; issues of panic buying (overbuying) and noncompliance with government orders and law among individuals are evident. However, the underlying understanding of such behaviours due to the pandemic remains unclear. Therefore, this perspective paper adopts the social dilemma theory and microeconomics concepts to analyse and explain the effects of COVID-19 on social behavioural reactions. It attempts to address the questions of what and why are the behaviours of individuals shown during the coronavirus pandemic and showcase how the theory is associated with the current social phenomena. Real scenarios based on media reporting from the sociodemographic context of Malaysia, concerning the following issues; (i) competition over daily essentials; (ii) self-honesty of individuals; and (iii) adherence to government policies and measures enforcement (governance) were discussed. A conceptual framework was developed to illustrate interrelationships between social dilemma concepts and the phenomena. In essence, due to fear, uncertainty, and greed, self-interest and opportunistic (defective/unethical) behaviours of most individuals prevailing over societal collective interest amid the pandemic have been prevalently observed in the above instances, although a cooperative choice can eventually result in a better outcome for everyone. Not only do these non-cooperative behaviours of individuals create inconveniences, dissatisfactions, and other forms of negative externalities, they also incentivise others to act selfishly, if no restrictions are imposed, which may eventually cause government intervention failures. This paper demonstrates the relevancy of the social dilemmas theory in better understanding fundamental human behavioural reactions amid the health crisis and the importance of incorporating the findings into government policymaking. These sociopsychological considerations help the government formulate holistic measures, namely stringent sanctions and monitoring enforcement, as well as incentivising cooperative and compliant behaviours of the public, which then contribute to curbing the COVID-19 pandemic more effectively.

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is impacting health globally, whereas older adults are highly susceptible and more likely to have adverse health outcomes. In Bangladesh, the elderly population has been increasing over the past few decades, who often live with poor socioeconomic conditions and inadequate access to healthcare services. These disparities are likely to increase amid COVID-19, which may result in high mortality and morbidity among Bangladeshi older adults. We recommend that multifaceted interventions should be adopted for strengthening social care and health systems approach to ensure wellbeing, promote preventive measures, and facilitate access to healthcare among older adults in Bangladesh. Such multipronged measures would require policy-level commitment and collaborative efforts of health and social care providers and institutions to protect health and wellbeing among this vulnerable population during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the sixth in a series of ten factsheets based on an ongoing online panel survey of a representative sample of the UK population. The survey was designed by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford to collect data on how people navigate news and information during the coronavirus pandemic and was fielded by YouGov. Ten waves will be fielded at two-week intervals, top-line findings from each will be published soon after in a factsheet, with more in-depth analysis to follow. More details about the project and the methodology can be found on the project website. The survey is a mix of tracking questions and specific questions fielded only in some waves.

Indonesia has made several regulations to end the pandemic, including PSBB. This regulation is related to physical distancing in all sectors and activities, including religious activities. To strengthen this policy, MUI and other Islamic organizations have made fatwa and official statement about how worships, especially those which are done in groups should be conducted during this pandemic. But efforts made by government and other organizations are not enough to ensure society that these regulations will not affect their religiousity. This paper is a literature review aimed to describe and analyze religious-related cases of COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. It includes MUI, Muhammadiyah, and Nahdlatul Ulama responses (fatwa and official statement) to this issue and public responses as well. It also compared this case to vaccine hesitancy case, due to similarities between these two cases. Both of these cases are dealing with religious dogma as it affects the policies’ effectivity. Religious and community leaders are needed in this kind of cases in order to help government promote and educate people about health issues from religious perspectives. Moreover, some kinds of punishment made by government are needed to strengthen fatwas and rulings, as most of these religious opinions do not have legal enforcement.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic many countries implemented containment measures to reduce disease transmission. Studies using digital data sources show that the mobility of individuals was effectively reduced in multiple countries. However, it remains unclear whether these reductions caused deeper structural changes in mobility networks, and how such changes may affect dynamic processes on the network. Here we use movement data of mobile phone users to show that mobility in Germany has not only been reduced considerably: Lockdown measures caused substantial and lasting structural changes in the mobility network. We find that long-distance travel was reduced disproportionately strongly. The trimming of long-range network connectivity leads to a more local, clustered network and a moderation of the "small-world" effect. We demonstrate that these structural changes have a considerable effect on epidemic spreading processes by "flattening" the epidemic curve and delaying the spread to geographically distant regions.

Current surge that has mostly infected the young now shows signs of reaching more-vulnerable elderly

The current global health emergency has exposed the tendencies of some toward racism and xenophobia while also shedding light on health inequities in our society.

The panel explored how policy failures can often be linked to an inherent flaw or missed opportunity within the design of the policy itself, a lack of understanding of environmental, social and financial contexts or the failure of understanding and including the very people affected by these decisions which can in turn lead to feelings of inequality, disenfranchisement, stigma and populism. Special consideration was also given to how embedding psychological frameworks and approaches could  be used to mitigate and ideally avoid the unintended consequences that can arise from policy decisions that don’t connect with the people they affect.

The Europe Center at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) presents "How Different is Europe?" exploring how the coronavirus pandemic has affected Europe. Why have some countries been hit so hard, while others seemingly escape? How do we make sense of the very different government responses? This panel brings together experts from public health, health policy and political geography to discuss the lessons of the European experience with COVID-19, including Anna Grzymala-Busse, Scott Greer, Julie Lynch, Jonathan Rodden and Kathryn Stoner. FSI Director Michael McFaul offers welcome remarks.

As economies around the world have screeched to a halt because of COVID-19, coal has taken a hit—and air quality has improved accordingly. Global coal demand dropped 8% in the first quarter of 2020 relative to the same period last year, mainly due to the pandemic’s impact on China, which is by far the world’s largest consumer of coal. Because of the curtailment of transportation around the world, oil markets are now seeing even more dramatic impacts than coal markets. Join Frank Wolak and Mark Thurber from the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies as they assess whether the reduction in the role of coal and other fossil fuels is likely to be permanent, or whether they will emerge stronger than ever when the pandemic is over.

The coronavirus outbreak has brought with it a number of new ethical challenges for newsrooms and reporters. Social media users are sharing their experiences with the virus which can have real and damaging impact on their lives. There has been an uptick in conspiracy theories and misinformation as the world attempts to follow the ever-evolving science around the virus. And much of the misleading information is flourishing in private spaces that are difficult for researchers and reporters to monitor and even harder to trace. First Draft’s co-founder and US director Claire Wardle and ethics and standards editor Victoria Kwan discussed the tricky ethical terrain that is covering coronavirus in a recent webinar session on May 14. Read on for key takeaways from the session, watch the full webinar below or on our YouTube channel. 

This webinar will teach attendees the fundamentals of searching and understanding the Facebook Ad Library. We will help you understand what information you have access to, how to interpret it, and how it can be used to enrich reporting. This webinar is part of our series "Reporting on coronavirus".

With many confined to their homes and added financial and emotional stress, are people drinking alcohol more or less? Are bar closings and fewer social gatherings reducing alcohol intake? How are those with alcohol addiction adjusting to this new normal? Dr. Lara Ray Clinical psychologist Dr. Lara Ray runs the UCLA Addictions Lab, where her team works to better understand substance use disorders and identify promising interventions. She speaks with NPR correspondent and host of TED Talks Daily Elise Hu to discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis on our behaviors towards alcohol and how to get help if you need it.

Peter Kinderman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, former President of the British Psychological Society, and author of ‘A Manifesto for Mental Health’, argues for radical change in how we think about mental health.

The Covid-19 pandemic has revived questions on where security and health converge and where they might diverge. This panel draws on research in order to map some of the key areas at the intersection of health and security. Presentations in this panel will address responses to the pandemic in civil, military and conflict settings, exploring the significance of competing narratives on the origins of the virus and drawing lessons from the behavioural sciences and wargaming methods to inform responses to the pandemic.

They discussed the role and responsibilities of online platforms during the COVID-19 crisis management and future recovery stage. They debated the possible longer-term impact of the pandemic on the relationship between online platforms and governments, and what future governance and collaboration could look like.

Economists welcome the chance to see whether giving people cash to spend however they choose improves livelihoods.

The enrollment of new international students in America could reach its lowest point since the end of World War II, according to a new analysis. U.S. consulate closures, travel bans and other challenges mean that when U.S. university administrators open their doors in Fall 2020, they are unlikely to see many new faces from abroad. New information obtained from the State Department on consulate openings and administration policy may further discourage students and universities.

See our letter to government ministers asking government to embark on a better conversation with the public about Covid-19 risks.

At the time of writing, 11.5 million tests for Covid-19 have been carried out or posted in the UK.  Since March, the government has invited the country to judge its progress on these tests by announcing measurable targets. We have written about some of them before, but new data and new targets have since arrived. Here we attempt to describe exactly what was promised, and exactly what happened afterwards. Examining the government’s public statements, we’ve identified six distinct targets so far.

As conference cancellations cut revenue, some scholarly organizations are fighting to stay afloat.

Previous research has suggested that the Dark Triad traits and, specifically, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, are associated with a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. The current study (N = 203) aimed to replicate and extend the existing research by examining the relationship between the Dark Tetrad traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism—and a novel measure of COVID-19 conspiracist ideation. Machiavellian views and psychopathic antisociality were significant positive predictors of the tendency to believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, even when accounting for the participants’ knowledge about COVID-19. Overall, the results suggest that some (but not all) aspects of the Dark Tetrad are associated with COVID-19 conspiracist ideation.

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, religious gatherings have become intense hot spots for the spread of the virus. In this research, we focus on the religiosity of communities to examine whether religiosity helps or hinders adherence to mitigation policies such as shelter-in-place directives. Prior research makes opposing predictions as to the influence of religiosity. One stream predicts greater adherence because of rule-abiding norms and altruistic tendencies while another predicts lower adherence as a reaction against the restriction of personal and religious freedom. We used shelter-in-place directives as an intervention in a quasi-experiment to examine adherence over 30 days as a function of religiosity in the most populous metropolitan areas in the United States. When a shelter-in-place directive had not been imposed, religiosity did not affect people’s movements. However, when the directive was imposed, higher religiosity resulted in less adherence to shelter-in-place directives.

After a weekend of customers who pushed, shoved, and crowded around the taps, Johnny McFadden put an electric fence around the bar at the The Star Inn. (There's also a bright yellow sign that says "WARNING: Electric Fence.") "It's there for social distancing," McFadden told Cornwall Live. "Before the fence, people were not following social distancing and were doing as they pleased, but now people take heed to the guidance around social distancing. It's for everybody's benefit."

Work has become more personal, private, subjective, nomadic and never-ending. We no longer have the certainty of being told exactly what to do and how, and have to rely more on our own resources. As a result, work is moving from observable public spheres into the private and unseen.John Howkins, in conversation with John Davies, Research Fellow Economics, Nesta, argues that to thrive in the AI-defined era, we will need a mindset of deeply focused thinking and sharing; a process of creativity that combines emotional intelligence and collaboration. Is this invisible work the key to working alongside, rather than being replaced by AI?

Four charts show how pooling samples from many people can save time or resources.

Current Covid-19 cases among Florida long-term care residents jumped to 1,868, the most since the pandemic began.

Using hypothes.is, we are annotating a growing knowledge base where you can find a wide range of items ranging from tweets, newspaper and blog articles, reports to preprints and peer-reviewed articles. This video shows you what you can do with this tool.

Tracking how people move around urban areas can pinpoint where disease might transmit fastest and farthest.

We analyzed 5,484 close contacts of COVID-19 cases from Italy, all of them tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection. We found an infection fatality ratio of 2.2% (95%CI 1.69-2.81%) and identified male sex, age >70 years, cardiovascular comorbidities, and infection early in the epidemics as risk factors for death.

Global fatalities related to COVID-19 are expected to be high in 2020-21. Developing and delivering a vaccine may be the most likely way to end the pandemic. If it were possible to shorten this development time by weeks or months, this may have a significant effect on reducing deaths. Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials could take less long to conduct if they used human challenge methods – that is, deliberately infecting participants with COVID-19 following inoculation. This article analyses arguments for and against such methods and provides suggested broad guidelines for regulators, researchers and ethics committees when considering these matters. It concludes that it may be possible to maintain current ethical standards yet still permit human challenge trials in a context where delay is critical. The implications are that regulators and researchers need to work together now to design robust but short trials and streamline ethics approvals processes so that they are in place when applications for trials are made.

What lessons can we learn from behavioural science about how we act in a time of crisis characterised by great uncertainty? #LSECOVID19

We present a first approximation to the quantification of social representations about the COVID-19, using news comments. A web crawler was developed for constructing the dataset of reader’s comments. We detect relevant topics in the dataset using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, and analyze its evolution during time. Finally, we show a first prototype to the prediction of the majority topics, using FastText.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, face coverings and masks have become ubiquitous in some Asian countries, but the UK public has generally been more reluctant to adopt them. Now the law is about to change.

Around 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide celebrate in some extent the holy month of Ramadan during COVID-19 pandemic. Some increase their attendance worship sites and traditional dining in extended families, so infectious contact rates could increase. Moreover, fasting could increase the probability of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection. There are mitigation measures (e.g. Healthy Ramadan by WHO) applied to reduce the SARS-CoV-2 spread, however their real impact is still unknown. Multiple studies assessed observed effects of contact rates increase during holidays as Chinese New Year in January and Passover and Easter in April and their short-time effects on COVID-19 transmission dynamics. However, there are any quantitative attempts considering epidemiological consequences of the holy Ramadan (at least up to our knowledge and keywords search in various databases until the submission day). We analyze the fractions of Muslims and time series of COVID-19 daily incidence and cases numbers for 197 countries and territories. We found statistically significant positive link with proportion of Islam adherents with increase in normalized new cases of COVID-19 during 1-18 May 2020. Moreover, growth of incidences in May is statistically significantly greater than in a control (April).

Based on harmonized census data from 81 countries, we estimate how age and coresidence patterns shape the vulnerability of countries’ populations to outbreaks of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We estimate variation in deaths arising due to a simulated random infection of 10% of the population living in private households and subsequent within-household transmission of the virus. The age structures of European and North American countries increase their vulnerability to COVID-related deaths in general. The coresidence patterns of elderly persons in Africa and parts of Asia increase these countries’ vulnerability to deaths induced by within-household transmission of COVID-19. Southern European countries, which have aged populations and relatively high levels of intergenerational coresidence, are, all else equal, the most vulnerable to outbreaks of COVID-19. In a second step, we estimate to what extent avoiding primary infections for specific age groups would prevent subsequent deaths due to within-household transmission of the virus. Preventing primary infections among the elderly is the most effective in countries with small households and little intergenerational coresidence, such as France, whereas confining younger age groups can have a greater impact in countries with large and intergenerational households, such as Bangladesh.

This is a study of the effect of hydroxychloroquine as treatment of hospitalised patients with Covid-19. The endpoint was virus presence in nasopharyngeal swabs after six days. Consenting patients received hydroxycholoroquine, and in some cases azithromycin. A control group consisted of patients who were either from another centre, or declined this treatment. The reported results are that of twenty patients who were treated with hydroxychloroquine, 14 had negative swabs at day 6, as compared with two of 16 controls. The effect was stronger in those also receiving azithromycin, where six out of six had negative swabs at day 6. The authors conclude that hydroxychloroquine is efficient in clearing viral nasopharyngeal carriage of SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 patients in only three to six days, which is reinforced in those also using azithromycin.As outlined below, this study suffers from major methodological shortcomings which make it nearly if not completely uninformative. Hence, the tone of the report, in presenting this as evidence of an effect of hydroxychloroquine and even recommending its use, is not only unfounded, but, given the desperate demand for a treatment for Covid-19, coupled with the potentially serious side-effects of hydroxychloroquine, fully irresponsible.

Estrategias de alienación digital, alianzas de los Gobiernos con medios oficiales y datos inexactos en estadísticas del covid-19, fueron los temas base que destacaron los expertos en el Encuentro Virtual CONNECTAS que se llevó a cabo este miércoles 13 de mayo.

Purpose: Over the past several months, the coronavirus has infected nearly 2 million Americans and killed more than 100,000. Governors have issued stay-at-home orders, and prosecutors have filed criminal charges against individuals for defying those orders. And yet, many Americans have still refused to keep their distance from their fellow citizens, even if they had symptoms of infection. This study explores the underlying causes for those who intend to defy these norms. Methods: Using national-level data from a March 2020 survey of 989 Americans, we explore intentions to defy social distancing norms by testing an interactionist theory of foundation-based moral behavior in combination with faith in President Trump. The analysis controls for a range of variables, including measures of low self-control and deterrence. Results: Low self-control is the strongest predictor of defiance intentions. Consistent with interactionist theory, defiance intentions are significantly higher for those holding a specific faith in Trump and those endorsing binding foundation. Furthermore, the interaction of these two variables is significant and in the predicted direction. The results hold for two different measures of faith in Trump. Conclusions: Even with a strong effect for low self-control, faith in President Trump is a strong predictor of refusal to social distance, and its effect is largest among individuals high in binding foundations.

The COVID-19 environment, where the internet is the literal lifeline and livelihood of humanity, has exposed the chasm between those equipped for technological existence and those shocked by abrupt isolation. For archives, many institutions are on an unforgiving precipice of irrelevancy. The focus of this paper is not to iterate the necessity of archival theory but to examine the position of appraisal within a technologically-driven, internet society. Of significance to this evaluation is that organization, retrieval, and use of information have evolved, and users are central players in curation cycles. Also, of importance are those archives shifting to, and innovating, decentralized digital models - and thriving. A historical overview of both fields shows that appraisal falters in technical maturation and in response to changes in how society generates, captures, and retrieves information. There exist alternate paradigms for archival roles and appraisal, however, including recognizing that users derive the interpretation of information and that transdisciplinary archivists are vital. There are also developments in digital archives where access is the bedrock of the arrangement and description and the entire appraisal process.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic led to uncertainty and severe health and economic concerns, which may have impacted human-dog relationships. Our objectives were to investigate how people perceived and acted during the COVID-19 pandemic social isolation, in regards to dog adoption and abandonment; and to examine the bidirectional relationships between dog owners’ well-being to that of their dogs. Overall, according to our analysis, the stricter the social isolation became during the pandemic, the interest in dog adoption as well as adoption rate increased significantly, while abandonment did not change. Moreover, there was a clear association between individuals’ impaired quality of life and their perceptions of poorer life quality of their dogs as well as the development of new behavioral problems. These findings suggest potential benefits for human-dog relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic, in compliance with the One Welfare approach.

How can we explain the rise in diffuse political support during the Covid-19 pandemic? Recent research has argued that the lockdown measures generated political support. In contrast, I argue that the intensity of the pandemic rallied people around political institutions. Collective angst in the face of exponentially rising Covid-19 cases depresses the usual cognitive evaluations of institutions, and leads citizens to rally around existing intuitions as a lifebuoy. Using a representative Dutch household survey conducted over March 2020, I compare the lockdown effect to the dynamic of the pandemic. I find that the lockdown effect is driven by pre-existing time trends. Accounting for nonlinearities in time makes the lockdown effect disappear. In contrast, more flexible modelling techniques reveal a robust effect of Covid-19 infections on political trust. Moreover, I find that standard determinants of political trust – such as economic evaluations and social trust – lose explanatory power as the pandemic spreads. This speaks to an emotionally driven rally effect that pushes cognitive evaluations to the background.

Having first reached epidemic proportions in coastal metropolitan areas, COVID-19 has spread around the country. Reported case rates vary across counties from zero to 126 per thousand population (around a state prison in the rural county of Trousdale, Tennessee). Overall, rural counties are underrepresented relative to their share of the population, but a growing proportion of all daily cases and deaths have been reported in rural counties. This analysis uses daily reports for all counties to present the trends and distribution of COVID-19 cases and deaths in rural counties, from late March to May 21, 2020. I describe the relationship between population density and case rates in rural and non-rural counties. Then I focus on noteworthy outbreaks linked to prisons, meat and poultry plants, and nursing homes, many of which are linked to high concentrations of Hispanic, American Indian, and Black populations. The growing epidemic in rural counties is apparently driven by outbreaks concentrated in these institutional settings, which are conducive to transmission. The impact of the epidemic in rural areas may be heightened due to their weaker health infrastructure and more vulnerable populations, especially due to age, socioeconomic status, and health conditions. As a result, the epidemic may contribute to the ongoing decline of health, economic, and social conditions in rural areas.

This webpage is intended to serve as a resource to learn about Fielding School experts, events, and link to external sources with information regarding the novel coronavirus COVID-19.

Governments around the world restricted movement of people, using social distancing and lockdowns, to help stem the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We examine crime effects for one UK police force area in comparison to 5-year averages. There is variation in the onset of change by crime type, some declining from the WHO ‘global pandemic’ announcement of 11 March, others later. By one week after the 23 March lockdown, all recorded crime had declined 41%, with variation: shoplifting (-62%), theft (-52%), domestic abuse (-45%), theft from vehicle (-43%), assault (-36%), burglary dwelling (-25%) and burglary non-dwelling (-25%). We use Google Covid-19 Consumer Mobility Reports to calculate the mobility elasticity of crime for four crime types, finding shoplifting and other theft inelastic but responsive to reduced retail sector mobility (MEC = 0.84, 0.71 respectively), burglary dwelling elastic to increases in residential area mobility (-1), with assault inelastic but responsive to reduced workplace mobility (0.56). We theorise that crime rate changes were primarily caused by those in mobility, suggesting a mobility theory of crime change in the pandemic. We identify implications for crime theory, policy and future research.

All of the policies adopted or proposed so far to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus require immediate and extensive behavioral change. However, even when the benefit of the behavior change is supported by solid science, actually changing behavior is difficult. Doing so effectively requires an appreciation for how people learn behaviors, and translate information into action. Insights from the evolutionary human sciences can improve the behavioral change toolkit for researchers and policy makers. Specifically, effective behavior change policy should be based on an understanding of humans as a cultural and cooperative species. Socially transmitted information and culturally-informed motivations shape behavior change. The structure of social networks and how group identities map onto those networks in turn influence transmission dynamics. Information can spread from person to person, similar to the way diseases spread. Just as with disease, the epidemiology of information is subject to structural and behavioral influences on transmissibility. We show why and how 1) the pandemic poses several adaptive challenges with important tradeoffs, 2) people use social information to learn how to deal with these, and 3) people adopt social norms in a group-based context.

At present, the epidemic situation of COVID-19 is raging rampantly in the whole world, affecting the hearts of billions of people. In less than half a year, COVID-19 swept the world, seriously threatening the safety of all mankind. At the beginning, the epidemic was most serious in China. Under the strong command of the highest level of the Chinese government, the whole Chinese people United as one, and achieved initial results in the struggle against covid-19 with scientific prevention and control. Summarizing China's experience and lessons in combating the epidemic is undoubtedly very beneficial to the people of the world in jointly combating the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. The most important experience is: strong organizational leadership, enhanced cooperation with the WHO, the establishment of a national anti-epidemic headquarters, responsible for the command and control of human, financial and material resources throughout the country, and local officials at all levels in the front line of the epidemic. Heart to heart with the people, breathe together and share a common destiny. Prevention is the first, prevention and treatment are combined. The treatment emphasizes the combination of Chinese and Western medicine. The “Four Anti and Two Balances” advocated by Academician Li Lanjuan’s team, and the “Three Drugs and Three Formulas” recommended by Chinese medicine experts of the National and Health Commission, played a key role in improving the success rate of treatment. Establish fever clinics and establish square cabin hospital to eliminate infections in hospitals, emphasizing the protection of medical staff and avoiding cross-infection. Control the source of infection, try to achieve "four early", early detection, early isolation, early diagnosis and early treatment. "Four concentration", focus on patients, experts, resources and treatment. Take all measures to cut off the spread. Take all measures to protect susceptible people. Wearing masks, washing hands frequently, hot bathing, individual serving, home office, going out to maintain a social distance of more than one meter, eating nutritious foods rich in protein and vitamins, strengthening physical exercise and improving physical fitness are all effective ways to prevent COVID-19.

This report aims to provide basic facts about gender inequality in income, time use, and wellbeing before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. We compare employment, income, time use, and well-being figures reported before and during the lockdown period (late March to April 2020) of the same group of individuals by analyzing longitudinal data from the 2020 UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS) COVID study and the full UKHLS data. Earlier studies on the topic are based on cross-sectional data with different survey designs and sample selections. - Women undertake the major share of housework and childcare and form 80% of the health and social care workers who are more exposed to the virus, among people aged between 20 to 49. - There was a 30% reduction in paid work time for both women and men, and the percentage was 45% among non-key workers. Women and men experienced a similar amount (3-4 hours) of an increase in weekly housework hours. We also note a comparable reduction in monthly labour income for women and men. - Women, especially mothers experienced a more dramatic decline in well-being amid the COVID pandemic. - Single mothers fare the worst in the labour market, are the least likely to own a house, have a car in the household, and have the highest risk of depression, which makes them particularly vulnerable in the current circumstances. Single parents experience the largest 7% increase in the non-working rates during the lockdown period. - Childcare support is critical when the usual support networks, such as grandparents, friends, and neighbours, can no longer help with childcare, especially for mothers.

The higher education departments and bodies in India have been continuously advising on the intense use of technology for educating as the need of the hour when institutions are indefinitely shut off for COVID-19. But, I would differ on a point that in a digitally divided country like India such impulses may escalate the divide further. The regular discussions on the materiality of smartphone possession as the new mantra to bridge the digital divide in India failed to take note of its spatial and infrastructural dimensions in times of crisis. The letter views spatial distance from the core urban areas as the factor that determines the mobile network availability. In times of pandemic when the services are officially declared as deploring the divide gets intensified for students. Firstly, the failed attempts of a student to join online classes deprive her/his of parity vis-à-vis students having relatively better access to the internet. Secondly, coupled with the multiple apprehensions, this deprivation would add to her/his collapsing mental health.

The International Brain Laboratory (IBL) is a collaboration of ~20 laboratories dedicated to developing a standardized mouse decision-making behavior, coordinating measurements of neural activity across the mouse brain, and utilizing theoretical approaches to formalize the neural computations that support decision-making. In contrast to traditional neuroscientific practice, in which individual laboratories each probe different behaviors and record from a few select brain areas, IBL aims to deliver a high-throughput, high-density approach to behavioral and neural assays. This approach relies on a highly distributed, collaborative network of ~50 researchers—postdocs, graduate students, and scientific staff—who coordinate the intellectual, administrative, and sociological aspects of the project. In this article, we examine this network, extract some lessons learned, and consider how IBL may represent a template for other team-based approaches in neuroscience, and beyond.

Hector Aguilar-Carreno is working from home to direct his team’s promising work on a COVID-19 vaccine.

Coronavirus outbreaks are up to 20 times more likely in large care homes, according to a major study seen by the Guardian, prompting calls to divide them into “bubbles” before any second wave hits.

Study quality is emerging as an essential component of evidence syntheses and allows practitioners and policymakers to make informed decisions based on the quality of the evidence reviewed. Study quality is typically assessed by checklists of pre-determined quality criteria. Few study quality checklists have been systematically evaluated, and none have been developed specifically for survey studies in psychology. The present study addresses this evidence gap by developing the quality of survey studies in psychology (Q-SSP) checklist, using an expert-consensus method. An international panel of experts in psychology research and quality assessment (N = 53) evaluated the inclusion and importance of candidate quality items and offered commentary. The resulting checklist was used to evaluate a set of survey studies and inter-rater reliability of checklist scores was computed. A preliminary test of criterion validity of checklist scores was conducted using on a sample of survey studies with ‘known differences’ in study quality verified by experts. Experts exhibited high agreement on inclusion and importance ratings of the candidate items. Minor adjustments were made to the candidate items based on experts’ feedback. Inter-rater reliability of study quality scores using the checklist was high. Some evidence for criterion validity of scores using the checklist was obtained. Overall, we provide preliminary data to support the Q-SSP checklist as a potential means to evaluate the quality of survey studies in psychology. We recommend a large-scale study using the Q-SSP checklist to assess study quality in studies with known differences in quality verified by experts.

We use party-identifying language – like “Liberal Media” and “MAGA”– to identify Republican users on the investor social platform StockTwits. Using a difference-in-difference design, we find that the beliefs of partisan Republicans about equities remain relatively unfazed during the COVID-19 pandemic, while other users become considerably more pessimistic. In cross-sectional tests, we find Republicans become relatively more optimistic about stocks that suffered the most from COVID-19, but more pessimistic about Chinese stocks. Finally, stocks with the greatest partisan disagreement on StockTwits have significantly more trading in the broader market, which explains 20% of the increase in stock turnover during the pandemic.

The unprecedented growth of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) as a severe acute respiratory syndrome escalated to the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. It has created an unanticipated global public health crisis. The virus is spreading rapidly in India which poses serious threat to 135 crore population. Population density poses some unforeseen challenges to control the COVID-19 contagion. In times of crisis, data is crucial to understand the spatial relationship between density and the infection. The article study the district wise transmissions of the novel coronavirus in five south Indian states until 6th June 2020 and its relationship with the respective population density. The five states are purposefully selected for better healthcare infrastructure vis-à-vis other states in India. We observed that corona virus spread depends on the spatial distribution of population density in three states especially in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. The results indicate that the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis are likely to differ with demographic density. Policy initiatives aimed at reducing the health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic should understand how vulnerabilities cluster together across districts.

Objective Educational provision changed during the lockdown period of the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK (20th March to 31st May 2020) with schooling moving online. The Prime Minister announced a timetable for partial reopening of school on 10th May. With the return to partial schooling imminent, the views of year 10 and year 12 students were surveyed. Design Cross-sectional web-based survey disseminated via closed social media fora. Setting A structured questionnaire hosted on Google Forms™ and disseminated via two Facebook™ fora in the week prior to the original stated date of return to partial schooling for year 10 and year 12 students (20th to 27th May 2020). Participants United Kingdom school students in year 10 (age 14 to 15 years old) and year 12 (age 16 to 17 years old). Main outcome measures Views of year 10 and year 12 students on returning to schools with a focus on their opinions on government guidance, impact on their future, and how remote learning has impacted on their education. Results 1534 students (yr10 n= 1007 66%, yr12 n=527 34%) completed the questionnaire. Students were equally divided in opinion with 781 (51%) preferring to return to partial schooling with limited educational contact and 753 (49%) preferring to remain isolated at home with remote schooling, when an unsure option was removed. A majority (73%, n=1111) of students feel unsafe or unsure that Government guidelines will be enough to protect them from COVID-19 in a school environment. 79% (n=1205) of students felt that COVID-19 has impacted on their future. 15% (n=231) of students said they have had no additional support or guidance from their school during remote learning. Conclusions Year 10 and 12 school students were divided equally in their preferences about returning to partial school. Exploration of their uncertainty by thematic analysis revealed the source to be anxieties around safety. Students feel they are being put at risk and because guidelines will be impossible to enforce in a school environment. Some students recognised a need to return to education despite this perceived risk. An inequity in the standard of education was identified with 15% (n=231) of students reporting that they did not receive any support during the 87 days of lock down. School students expressed desire that their concerns be heard by the Government. Better consideration needs to be taken of the concerns of these year groups in the future.

COVID-19 pandemic is affecting negatively the tourism and hospitality industry. As people must avoid physical interaction, service robots can be a useful tool to ensure a high level of physical social distance during the epidemic. This paper discusses whether the application of service robots to provide physical distance in the tourism and hospitality context is going to be beneficial or there will be side effects as well. The paper posits that service robots create a technological shield between tourists and employees that increases the physical and emotional distance between them.

Do political and social features of states help explain the evolving distribution of reported Covid-19 deaths? We identify national-level political and social characteristics that past research suggests may help explain variation in a society's ability to respond to adverse shocks. We highlight four sets of arguments---focusing on (1) state capacity, (2) political institutions, (3) political priorities, and (4) social structures---and report on their evolving association with cumulative Covid-19 deaths. After accounting for a simple set of Lasso-chosen controls, we find that measures of government effectiveness, interpersonal and institutional trust, bureaucratic corruption and ethnic fragmentation are currently associated in theory-consistent directions. We do not, however, find associations between deaths and many other political and social variables that have received attention in public discussions, such as populist governments or women-led governments. Currently, the results suggest that state capacity is more important for explaining Covid-19 mortality than government accountability to citizens, with potential implications for how the disease progresses in high-income versus low-income countries. These patterns may change over time with the evolution of the pandemic, however. A dashboard with daily updates, extensions, and code is provided at https://wzb-ipi.github.io/corona/.

To limit the social, economic and psychological damage caused by strict social distancing interventions, many low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are seeking to ease restrictions. However, it is unknown what a ‘safe reopening’ entails in LMICs given suboptimal diagnostic and surveillance capabilities. Here we discuss three community-based public health measures (sustained mitigation, zonal lockdown and dynamic rolling lockdowns) which seek to adequately balance the public health and economic priorities. Each of these options have limitations and prerequisites that may be context-specific and should be considered before implementation, including implementation and maintenance costs, social and economic costs, context-specific epidemic growth and the existing health resources.

What will be political legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic? We find that epidemic exposure in an individual's impressionable years (ages 18 to 25) has a persistent negative effect on confidence in political institutions and leaders. We find similar negative effects on confidence in public health systems, suggesting that the loss of confidence in political leadership and institutions is associated with healthcare related policies at the time of the epidemic. In line with this argument, our results are mostly driven by individuals who experienced epidemics under weak governments with less capacity to act against the epidemic, disappointing their citizens. We provide evidence of this mechanism by showing that weak governments took longer to introduce policy interventions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. These results imply that the Coronavirus may leave behind a long-lasting political scar on the current young generation ("Generation Z").

This paper investigates the “cultural” transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.Using West Germany data we observe that in predominantly Catholic regions with stronger social and family ties, the spread and the resulting deaths per capita were much higher compared to non-Catholic ones at the NUTS-3 level. This finding could help explain the rapid spread and high death toll of the virus in some European countries compared to others in the initial stage. Looking at differences within a specific country in a well identified setting eliminates biases due to different social structures, healthcare systems, specific policies and measures, and testing procedures for the virus that can confound estimates and hinder comparability across countries. Further,we use individual level data as well as Apple mobility data to investigate potential mechanisms. The results highlight the cultural dimension of the spread and could suggest the implementation of targeted mitigation measures in light of disease outbreaks

In this commentary, we provide our ground-level observations of how the novel COVID-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses in our federal system to respond to local communities, particularly African Americans and Latina/os who live and work in the St. Louis region. It is based on a virtual town hall hosted by the Community Innovation and Action Center (CIAC) at the University of Missouri, St. Louis on April 18, 2020. Based on these initial public discussions, we use St. Louis as a lens for arguing that that government’s attenuated impact is not due to a natural disaster itself, but the inevitable result of race-based policies that had worked against African Americans over generations. The real failure involves our federalist system’s lack of a commitment to racial equity - when race no longer is used to predict life outcomes, and outcomes for all groups are improved - when designing the federal plan to respond to COVID-19 in local communities.

The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis have introduced manifold dislocations in Americans’ lives. Using novel survey data samples of SNAP recipients, we examine the socio-economic insecurities faced by low-income/benefits-eligible households during the early months of the crisis. Three repeated online surveys included measures of perceived and realized housing insecurity, food scarcity, new debt accrual, and recent job loss as indicators of Covid-induced shocks. Food insecurity and debt accrual worsened significantly over the course of April 2020. Job losses also compounded, albeit at a slower rate. The proportion of respondents reporting multiple types of precarity increased over the month. Compared to Latinx and White respondents, Black respondents were more likely to experience Covid-induced precarity across three out of four indicators, and they experienced more types simultaneously on average. The results provide early systematic evidence on the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis on poor Americans, and racial disparities therein.

This study analyses COVID-19 mortality at the local authority level in England. The dependent variable is the age-standardised COVID-19 mortality rate. Two separate analyses are reported: one using untransformed variables, and one using logged variables (where appropriate). In the former, five variables explain 73% of the variance in COVID-19 mortality rate: cumulative confirmed cases rate, population density, % black or Asian, average household size, and a deprivation index. In the latter, four variables explain 72% of the variance in log COVID-19 mortality rate: log cumulative confirmed cases rate, log % black or Asian, average household size, and the deprivation index. (A health index does not reach statistical significance in either analysis, most likely because it is somewhat crude and the dependent variable is age-standardised.) Cumulative confirmed cases rate, average household size and % black or Asian are the strongest and most consistent predictors of COVID-19 mortality.

In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, households throughout the world have to cope with negative shocks, either because of the disease or the various mitigation strategies that have caused massive unemployment and financial insecurity. Previous research has shown that negative shocks impair cognitive function and change risk, time and social preferences. In this study, we analyze the results of a longitudinal multi-country survey conducted in Italy (N=1,652), Spain (N=1,660) and the United Kingdom (N=1,578). We measure cognitive function using the Cognitive Reflection Test and preferences traits using an experimentally validated set of questions to assess the differences between people exposed to a shock compared to the rest of the sample. We measure four possible types of shocks: labor market shock, health shock, occurrence of stressful events, and mental health shock. Additionally, we randomly assign participants to groups with either a recall of negative events (more specifically, a mild reinforcement of stress or of fear/anxiety), or to a control group (to recall neutral or joyful memories), in order to assess whether or not stress and negative emotions drive a change in preferences. Results show that people affected by shocks performed worse in terms of cognitive functioning, are more risk loving, and are more prone to punish others (negative reciprocity). Data do not support the hypotheses that the result is driven by stress or by negative emotions.

The global pandemic has an inherently urban character. The UN-Habitat’s awareness of it has led to the publication of a Response Plan for mollification of the disease-induced externalities in the cities of the world. This article takes the UN-Habitat report as the premise to carry out an empirical investigation in the four metro cities of India. The report’s concern with the urban character of the pandemic has underlined the role of cities in disease transmission. In that wake, the study demarcates factors at the sub-city level that tend to jeopardize the two mandatory precautionary measures during COVID-19 – Social Distancing and Lockdown. It investigates those factors that bring deprived locales parallel to COVID-19 induced vulnerability. Secondly, UN-Habitat’s one of the major action areas is evidence-based knowledge creation through mapping and its analysis. In our study, we do it at a more granular scale than the city so a more nuanced understanding can be arrived at. Thus, in tune with the UN-habitat’s we have embarked on a detailed study of the four metro cities in India that are simultaneously the densest in the global south.

The narrative persists, but supporting evidence is weak at best.

Airborne transmission would mean there are certain solutions we really need to focus on.

A particularly “challenging” winter could bring a second wave of coronavirus infections that leads to around 120,000 deaths in UK hospitals, twice as many as the first wave, according to an estimate of a reasonable worst-case scenario.

COVID-19 has emerged as a multi-system disease with diverse clinical outcomes. But its complexity transcends the sophisticated biological machinery of the virus that causes it. COVID-19 has exposed fragile health systems, inept governments, and rivalry between nations, and led to the worst economic crisis in recent memory. It has hindered access to health care for the most vulnerable, and amplified health inequalities.

President Donald Trump participates in an event with students, teachers and administrators about how to safely re-open schools during the novel coronavirus pandemic at the White House on July 07, 2020

We flattened the curve, but there are worrying signs that infections could surge again

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has spurred scientific production in diverse fields of knowledge, including mental health. Yet, the quality of current research may be challenged by the urgent need to provide immediate results to understand and alleviate the consequences of the pandemic. This systematic review aims to examine compliance with basic methodological quality criteria and open science practices on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A systematic search was performed using PubMed and Scopus databases on the 13th of May. Empirical studies, published in peer-reviewed journals in English, between February and May 2020, were included. The dependent variable(s) required to be quantitative and related to mental health. Exclusion criteria included clinical pharmacological trials, and studies using psychophysiological or biological recordings. The study protocol was previously pre-registered in https://osf.io/bk3gw/. Findings: Twenty-eight studies were identified. More than 75% met the requirements related to reporting key methodological and statistical information. However, 89.3% used convenience samples and 92.86% lacked of a priori power analysis. There was low compliance with open science recommendations, such as pre-registration of studies (0%) and availability of databases (3.57%), which raise concerns about the validity, generalisability, and reproducibility of the findings. Interpretation: While the importance of offering rapid evidence-based responses to mitigate mental health problems stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic is undeniable, it should not be done at the expense of sacrificing scientific rigor. The results of this study may stimulate researchers and funding agencies to try to orchestrate efforts and resources and follow standard codes of good science.

Across two studies with more than 1,700 U.S. adults recruited online, we present evidence that people share false claims about COVID-19 partly because they simply fail to think sufficiently about whether or not the content is accurate when deciding what to share. In Study 1, participants were far worse at discerning between true and false content when deciding what they would share on social media relative to when they were asked directly about accuracy. Furthermore, greater cognitive reflection and science knowledge were associated with stronger discernment. In Study 2, we found that a simple accuracy reminder at the beginning of the study (i.e., judging the accuracy of a non-COVID-19-related headline) nearly tripled the level of truth discernment in participants’ subsequent sharing intentions. Our results, which mirror those found previously for political fake news, suggest that nudging people to think about accuracy is a simple way to improve choices about what to share on social media.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a global health crisis, making compliance with governmental policies and public health advice crucial in decreasing transmission rates. At the same time, we are faced with the rapid spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the predictive power of COVID-19 conspiracy theories in explaining the level of compliance with official COVID-19 guidelines, by including mediating roles of pseudoscientific information beliefs and trust in government officials. A total of 1882 participants provided sociodemographic information and completed all measures in the study. Multiple mediation analysis revealed a direct negative effect of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs on the compliance with the preventive measures. In addition, conspiracy beliefs were indirectly associated with compliance via trust in government officials. The present study builds upon emerging research showing that conspiracy beliefs have potentially significant social consequences. Practical implications of these findings are further discussed.

Noncompliance with social distancing during the early stage of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses a great challenge to the public health system. These noncompliance behaviors partly reflect people’s concerns for the inherent costs of social distancing while discounting its public health benefits. We propose that this oversight may be associated with the limitation in one’s mental capacity to simultaneously retain multiple pieces of information in working memory (WM) for rational decision making that leads to social-distancing compliance. We tested this hypothesis in 850 United States residents during the first 2 wk following the presidential declaration of national emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that participants’ social-distancing compliance at this initial stage could be predicted by individual differences in WM capacity, partly due to increased awareness of benefits over costs of social distancing among higher WM capacity individuals. Critically, the unique contribution of WM capacity to the individual differences in social-distancing compliance could not be explained by other psychological and socioeconomic factors (e.g., moods, personality, education, and income levels). Furthermore, the critical role of WM capacity in social-distancing compliance can be generalized to the compliance with another set of rules for social interactions, namely the fairness norm, in Western cultures. Collectively, our data reveal contributions of a core cognitive process underlying social-distancing compliance during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting a potential cognitive venue for developing strategies to mitigate a public health crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious problem all over the world in 2020. In this study, a large-scale online survey was conducted in Japan to explore the determinants of infection preventive behaviors. In addition, this survey collected data on various attitudes and behaviors in this pandemic situation, including optimistic/pessimistic views and information dissemination behavior on social networking sites (SNS). The results showed that the infection risk perception of self and others were both associated with the preventive behaviors, but the social pressure was not. The results were unclear in regard to optimistic/pessimistic views for infection risk perception and prospect for the end of coronavirus outbreak. Surprisingly, information spreading via SNS was negatively associated with knowledge of COVID-19, which calls attention to the credibility of information on SNS. In addition, subjective evaluation of achievement in regard to preventive behaviors was higher for self than for other people. This suggests that a self-enhancement tendency may contribute to the evaluation of preventive behaviors. Despite limitations such as employing a cross-sectional survey design and using data collected only in Japan, our study provides useful insights into the determinants of infection preventive behaviors, information dissemination, and the self-enhancement tendency in the evaluation of preventive behaviors. These findings should be useful in preventing the spread of COVID-19 around the world and in preparing for a possible future pandemic.

Fines of up to £100 could be handed out for non-compliance under measures to be announced on Tuesday

Commenting on Thalmayer et al. (2020), we provide broader analysis of the national institutional affiliations of authors (2,978), editors (286), and consulting editors (2,652) from seven (vs. six) APA journals that span over 40 (vs. 30) years. Using multilevel models, results showed that percentages of lead authors at American institutions decreased linearly and significantly and over time. Percentages of editors and consulting editors at American institutions also decreased significantly; however the effect for consulting editors was also quadratic—the linear decline accelerated over time. American psychology continues to internationalize, but not quickly enough.

Lack of participation in health promoting behaviors and participation in behaviors that contribute to health risks have been linked to health disparities observed among individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. This chapter presents a basic process model to summarize the effects of socio-structural variables linked to health disparities – socio-economic status, education, health literacy, ethnicity, and religiosity – on individuals’ beliefs and cognitions that determine behavior. Socio-structural characteristics were proposed to have a pervasive effect on individuals’ beliefs and other constructs from social cognition theories which impact their decisions to participate in prospective health behaviors and influence their health outcomes. The model provides a mechanistic explanation for health disparities among individuals from disadvantaged groups. A series of illustrative examples are presented of the application of the proposed model as a means to explain how characteristics linked to disadvantage relate to participation in health behaviors and outcomes via potentially modifiable mediating beliefs and social cognition constructs. Efforts to develop interventions targeting these modifiable beliefs will contribute to the enhancement of long-term global health and illness prevention.

The COVID-19 pandemic affects the whole world. Spain is one of the most affected nations. Prevention via information that fosters knowledge, reasonable concern, control and personal care is the most effective means to slow down the pandemic. In this intervention study we assessed extant knowledge, concern, control and care about the COVID-19 in 111 Spanish university teachers and students. Subsequently, we randomly assigned them to two groups. One group (n = 53) received uncertain information about the current measures of prevention whereas the other group (n = 58) received certain information. A group by time interaction revealed that the ‘certain information’ group reported immediately increased personal care about the pandemic. These findings suggest that measures known to be effective in COVID-19 prevention should be communicated with certainty (i.e. must be convincing) to influence people’s attitudes through the schematic organization of new information.

Mandatory and voluntary mask policies may have yet unknown social and behavioral consequences related to the effectiveness of the measure, stigmatization, and perceived fairness. Serial cross-sectional data (04/14-05/26/20) from nearly 7,000 German participants demonstrate that implementing a mandatory policy increased actual compliance despite moderate acceptance; mask wearing correlated positively with other protective behaviors. A preregistered experiment (n = 925) further indicates that a voluntary policy would likely lead to insufficient compliance, would be perceived as less fair, and could intensify stigmatization. A mandatory policy appears to be an effective, fair, and socially responsible solution to curb transmissions of airborne viruses.

Despite decades of expert warnings, the world was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic. Now experts worry about the impact of the pandemic on mental health and suicide risk, due to economic distress and isolation. But a surge in suicides is preventable if proper prevention measures are put in place.

Since the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in Germany, various lockdown measures were imposed across the country that likely had a large impact on psychological well-being. In the current study, we investigate depressive symptoms as depression is a leading contributor to the global burden of disease and potentially life-threatening. This study reports on a dataset that was collected between April 8 and June 1 2020 through an online survey in several German states. More than 2000 individuals took part in the survey measuring depressive symptoms (as defined in ICD-10). Similar to recent observations from Italy and China, severe depressive symptoms reported were relatively high. Especially younger adults and females reported more severe symptoms compared to other groups. In conclusion, we need to prepare for increased need of psychological services, availability and accessibility already parallel with imposing restrictive measures.

The unprecedented effort to minimize the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic introduces a new arena for human face recognition in which faces are partially occluded with masks. Here, we tested the extent to which face masks change the way faces are perceived. To this end, we evaluated face processing abilities for masked and unmasked faces in a large online sample of adult observers (n=496) using an adapted version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test, the most validated measure of face perception abilities in humans. As expected, a substantial decrease in performance was found for masked faces, along with a large increase in the proportion of individuals who exhibit a remarkable deficit in face perception. Unexpectedly, however, the inclusion of masks led to a qualitative change in the way masked faces are perceived. In particular, holistic processing, the hallmark of face perception, was severely impaired for masked faces. Similar changes were found when masks were included either during the study or the test phases of the experiment. Together, we provide robust evidence for qualitative alterations in the processing of masked faces that could have significant effects on daily activities and social interactions.