Sustained Online Amplification of COVID-19 Elites in the United States

Cities need to keep their youngest residents safe, healthy, and learning in their own neighborhoods, thanks to a pandemic that is putting roughly 80 percent of U.S. students on remote learning platforms — and a national group is offering a toolbox.

How to Remake Streets for Kids During COVID-19

A rush to return to pre-pandemic life means giving up chances to make necessary improvements to how cities work.

Let’s Not Go Back to ‘Normal’

Psychology researchers are rapidly adopting open science practices, yet clear guidelines on how to apply these practices to meta-analysis remain lacking. In this tutorial, we describe why open science is important in the context of meta-analysis in psychology, and suggest how to adopt the 3 main components of open science: preregistration, open materials, and open data. We first describe how to make the preregistration as thorough as possible—and how to handle deviations from the plan. We then focus on creating easy-to-read materials (e.g., search syntax, R scripts) to facilitate reproducibility and bolster the impact of a meta-analysis. Finally, we suggest how to organize data (e.g., literature search results, data extracted from studies) that are easy to share, interpret, and update as new studies emerge. For each step of the meta-analysis, we provide example templates, accompanied by brief video tutorials, and show how to integrate these practices into the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/q8stz/). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

10.1037/met0000351

Conducting a meta-analysis in the age of open science: Tools, tips, and practical recommendations.

Companies prepare plans for a more permanent flexible way of working following pandemic

Cities count cost of lasting exodus from offices

The researchers reported that Ab8 is "highly effective" in preventing and treating SARS-CoV-2 infection in mice and hamsters.

University Of Pittsburgh Scientists Discover Biomolecule That May Neutralize Coronavirus

We can't predict the future. But we know only fools repeat errors of the past over & over without giving consideration to the best evidence available. The next 2 weeks will fill in a lot of details. Be patient. Be vigilant. Be careful. #MaskUp #SocialDistance #TestTestTest 8/end

For those who think we are reopening too slow, look to Sweden: they are not relaxing measures until October. Their Universities remain in hybrid format. Or look to Israel, where they are on the cusp of a full lockdown after throwing caution to the wind. 7/8

College testing skews data. In NYS, Tompkins county(Ithaca/Cornell) is responsible for 0.5% of the population but 4% of the total testing. 0.2% positive rate. OTOH - Oswego (SUNY) -0.5% of pop is responsible for 0.5% of total testing with 5% positive rate. 6/8

We KNOW we have more college testing. We also know testing, overall, is trending lower = non-college-related testing is dropping sharply. Over the last 2 weeks many hot-spots have either already re-opened bars or have announced plans to do so. 5/8

Case counts continue to drift lower. But we have recent experience where average age of cases drifted lower when bars reopened & severe cases showed up much later. Florida, for instance, hit a low for positive rate in late May - 2 weeks later cases started to take off. 4/8

This is reducing the positive rate, giving us a less reliable indicator. We know from hospitalization and death data a lot about infections that happened in early to mid August, and that news is good. But what is happening NOW? I don't think we know enough. 3/8

The national figures that we have come to rely on are more reliable but subject to MUCH more challenging interpretation than at any time. A LARGE percent (20% of Illinois in this article) of current tests are from colleges doing MASSIVE testing, in some cases. 2/8

Thread/ Colleges, testing, & why we need caution. I am FAR LESS worried about the students. I worry about this - "One major risk is that infections could spread to at-risk faculty and staff and those in the surrounding community." 1/8

Our daily update is published. States reported 763k tests, 37k cases, and 663 COVID-19 deaths. Important caveat: this update does not include Texas’s daily data, which is still not in today.

The University of Illinois had a state-of-the-art reopening, and then the virus cases piled up.

It’s Hard to Keep a College Safe From Covid, Even With Mass Testing

10.31235/osf.io/8hp7m

Academia provides a valuable case study for evaluating the effects of social forces on workplace productivity, using a concrete measure of output: the scholarly paper. Many academics -- especially women -- have experienced unprecedented challenges to scholarly productivity with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we analyze the gender composition of over 450,000 authorships of scholarly preprints in the preprint repositories arXiv and bioRxiv from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis reveals that the underrepresentation of women scientists in the prestige last authorship position necessary for retention and promotion is only getting more inequitable. We find differences between the arXiv and bioRxiv repositories in how gender affects first, middle, and sole authorship submission rates before and during the pandemic. In a second contribution, we review existing research and theory that could explain the mechanisms behind this widening gender gap in productivity during COVID-19. Finally, we aggregate recommendations for institutional change that could help ameliorate challenges to women's productivity during the pandemic and beyond.

The Pandemic Penalty: The gendered effects of COVID-19 on scientific productivity

10.31235/osf.io/jwvsp

A survey experiment exposes treatment groups to four messages supporting future vaccination against COVID-19. These treatments emphasize either the risks of the virus or the safety of vaccination, to the respondent personally or to others. For a nationally representative sample, self-reported intent to vaccinate is not significantly different from the control for any message. However, there is a substantial divergence between white non-Hispanic respondents, whose response to all four treatments is close to zero, and non-white or His- panic respondents, whose intention to vaccinate is over 50% higher in response to a message emphasizing prosociality and the safety of others.

Heard immunity: effective persuasion for a future COVID-19 vaccine

UK trials of the Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccine have resumed after a brief pause, yet key details of the events have not been released

Coronavirus Vaccine U.K. Trial Restarts, But Scientists Question Lack of Transparency

there are some signs the economy might be recovering, but the truth is, we’re just beginning to understand the pandemic’s full impact, and we don’t yet know what the virus has in store for us. This is all complicated by the fact that we’re still figuring out how best to combat the pandemic. Without a vaccine readily available, it has been challenging to get people to engage in enough of the behaviors that can help slow the virus. Some policy makers have turned to social and behavioral scientists for guidance, which is encouraging because this doesn’t always happen. We’ve seen many universities ignore the warnings of behavioral scientists and reopen their campuses, only to have to quickly shut them back down. But this has also meant that there are a lot of new studies to wade through. In the field of psychology alone, between Feb. 10 and Aug. 30, 541 papers about COVID-19 were uploaded to the field’s primary preprint server, PsyArXiv. With so much research to wade through, it’s hard to know what to trust — and I say that as someone who makes a living researching what types of interventions motivate people to change their behaviors.

Why Coming Up With Effective Interventions To Address COVID-19 Is So Hard

The medical community has long acknowledged infection via speech-generated respiratory droplets, including droplet nuclei that might stay airborne for an extended time.5Gralton J Tovey E McLaws ML Rawlinson WD The role of particle size in aerosolised pathogen transmission: a review.J Infect. 2011; 62: 1-13Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (155) Google Scholar The importance of symptomless transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (ie, in the absence of coughing or sneezing), whether retrospectively identified as asymptomatic, presymptomatic, or even oligosymptomatic, has also been well established,6Greenhalgh T Face coverings for the public: laying straw men to rest.J Eval Clin Pract. 2020; 26: 1070-1077Crossref Scopus (3) Google Scholar,  7Oran DP Topol EJ Prevalence of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection: a narrative review.Ann Intern Med. 2020; 173: 362-367Crossref Scopus (23) Google Scholar despite claims to the contrary by Abbas and Pittet. With high viral titres in the oral fluid of such carriers well documented and a substantial proportion of speech droplets of oral fluid now shown to remain airborne for many minutes, inhalation of such particles represents a direct route to the nasopharynx. Retrospective analyses of indoor superspreader events further support the role of speech droplets in airborne transmission.

10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30726-X

SARS-CoV-2 transmission via speech-generated respiratory droplets

The new local lockdown restrictions mean most of the pubs and restaurants in the centre of Bolton are closed.The Elephant and Castle is a lone venue selling beer from a trestle table outside its front door, and there is a Greek restaurant with plastic screens in the entrance looking hopefully for takeaway customers.Many told us that the High Street was depressed before the coronavirus hit. The new restrictions have just made it worse.

Lockdown for a second time: 'It can't get any worse'

The Dunning-Kruger hypothesis states that the degree to which people can estimate their ability accurately depends, in part, upon possessing the ability in question. Consequently, people with lower levels of the ability tend to self-assess their ability less well than people who have relatively higher levels of the ability. The most common method used to test the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis involves plotting the self-assessed and objectively assessed means across four categories (quartiles) of objective ability. However, this method has been argued to be confounded by the better-than-average effect and regression toward the mean. In this investigation, it is argued that the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis can be tested validly with two inferential statistical techniques: the Glejser test of heteroscedasticity and nonlinear (quadratic) regression. On the basis of a sample of 929 general community participants who completed a self-assessment of intelligence and the Advanced Raven's Progressive Matrices, we failed to identify statistically significant heteroscedasticity, contrary to the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis. Additionally, the association between objectively measured intelligence and self-assessed intelligence was found to be essentially entirely linear, again, contrary to the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis. It is concluded that, although the phenomenon described by the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis may be to some degree plausible for some skills, the magnitude of the effect may be much smaller than reported previously.

10.1016/j.intell.2020.101449

The Dunning-Kruger effect is (mostly) a statistical artefact: Valid approaches to testing the hypothesis with individual differences data

10.31234/osf.io/up6c3

Due to the negative psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, it is necessary to study the factors that improve mental health. In this study, we evaluated changing income, frequency of going out, fear of COVID-19, depression, anxiety, stress, and ego-resiliency to investigate the main and moderating effects of ego-resiliency on psychological distress. We analyzed 222 Japanese samples from the dataset of Primary Survey in Japan (PSJ) in the Resilience to COVid-19 in Each Region (RE-COVER) project. The results showed significant main effects of ego-resiliency on depression (ΔR2 = .07, p < .01) and stress (ΔR2 = .02, p < .05), and interaction effect of going out and ego-resiliency on depression (β = .19, p < .01; ΔR2 = .05, p < .01). We also tested the significance of the moderating effect of ego-resiliency on the relationship between going out and depression. The simple slope of ego-resiliency was only significant for individuals with a low frequency of going out (β = -0.278, t (218) = -4.522, p < .001). Our findings provide empirical evidence on mental health associated with the COVID-19 pandemic among the Japanese population, proving that ego-resiliency functioned to cope with the specific stress associated with COVID-19 and promote adaptation.

The effect of ego-resiliency and COVID-19-related stress on mental health among the Japanese population

Tried to reproduce your graph with Estonian data - curiously similar (despite of the >100x smaller scale on the X-axis)

Crisis of replicability is one term that psychological scientists use for the current introspective phase we are in—I argue instead that we are going through a revolution analogous to a political revolution. Revolution 2.0 is an uprising focused on how we should be doing science now (i.e., in a 2.0 world). The precipitating events of the revolution have already been well-documented: failures to replicate, questionable research practices, fraud, etc. And the fact that none of these events is new to our field has also been well-documented. I suggest four interconnected reasons as to why this time is different: changing technology, changing demographics of researchers, limited resources, and misaligned incentives. I then describe two reasons why the revolution is more likely to catch on this time: technology (as part of the solution) and the fact that these concerns cut across social and life sciences—that is, we are not alone. Neither side in the revolution has behaved well, and each has characterized the other in extreme terms (although, of course, each has had a few extreme actors). Some suggested reforms are already taking hold (e.g., journals asking for more transparency in methods and analysis decisions; journals publishing replications) but the feared tyrannical requirements have, of course, not taken root (e.g., few journals require open data; there is no ban on exploratory analyses). Still, we have not yet made needed advances in the ways in which we accumulate, connect, and extract conclusions from our aggregated research. However, we are now ready to move forward by adopting incremental changes and by acknowledging the multiplicity of goals within psychological science.

10.1177/1745691615609918

A Short (Personal) Future History of Revolution 2.0

2009.05354

Observable social traits determine how we interact in society and remain pervasive even in our globalized world. While a popular hypothesis states that they may help promote cooperation, the alternative explanation that they facilitate coordination has gained ground in recent years. Here we explore this framework and present a model that investigates the role of ethnic markers in coordination games. We consider fixed markers characterizing agents that use reinforcement learning to update their strategies in the game. For a wide range of parameters, we observe the emergence of a collective equilibrium in which markers play an assorting role. However, if individuals are too conformists or greedy, markers fail to shape social interactions. These results extend and complement previous work focused on agent imitation and show that reinforcement learning is a good candidate to explain many instances of ethnic markers.

The emergence of segregation: from observable markers to group specific norms

10.1038/d41586-020-02610-z

Researchers have identified dozens of open-access journals that went offline between 2000 and 2019, and hundreds more that could be at risk.

More than 100 scientific journals have disappeared from the Internet

The pandemic has shown how a lack of solid statistics can be dangerous. But even with the firmest of evidence, we often end up ignoring the facts we don’t like. By Tim Harford

Facts v feelings: how to stop our emotions misleading us

Main points An estimated 39,700 people (95% credible interval: 29,300 to 52,700) within the community population in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19) during the most recent week, from 30 August to 5 September 2020, equating to around 1 in 1,400 people (95% credible interval: 1 in 1,900 to 1 in 1,000). The most recent modelled estimate suggests the number of infections has increased in recent weeks. In recent weeks, there has been an increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 aged 17 to 24 years and 25 to 34 years whereas the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 aged 50 years and over appears to be stable or declining. During the most recent week (30 August to 5 September 2020), we estimate there were around 0.58 (95% credible interval: 0.38 to 0.84) new COVID-19 infections for every 10,000 people per day in the community population in England, equating to around 3,200 new cases per day (95% credible interval: 2,000 to 4,600). Evidence suggests that the incidence rate for England has increased in recent weeks. During the most recent week (30 August to 5 September 2020), we estimate that 1,200 people in Wales had COVID-19 (95% credible interval: 300 to 2,800), which is around 1 in 2,600 people (95 % credible interval: 1 in 10,900 to 1 in 1,100).

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey pilot: England and Wales, 11 September 2020

During the period 22 August to 7 September 2020, SARS-CoV-2 virus was circulating with relatively low prevalence but that prevalence was increasing at an accelerating rate through the period of testing.

REACT-1: real-time assessment of community transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) in August 2020

Six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a pandemic, the virus is surging in many countries and some that had apparent success in suppressing initial outbreaks are also seeing infections rise again. However, the number of confirmed cases during the spring peak is likely to be an underestimate of the true level of infection, as widespread testing was not available in many countries earlier in the year.

Coronavirus: Six months after pandemic declared, where are the global hotspots?

COVID-19 #Coronavirus latest data visualized.

A recent poll showed that almost twice as many people in the United Kingdom would blame the public than the government for a second “wave” of covid-19 cases, shining a light on the perceptions of individual vs others’ responsibility for what may ultimately be individual behaviours. Now, recent government anti-obesity guidelines—driven apparently, by prime minister Boris Johnson’s alarm at the role his body weight may have played in the severity of his coronavirus—focus on “empowering” people to live healthily. This is welcome news but contains decades-old, subtle patterns observed in government policy and corporate practices: to divert responsibility away from those with the most power over the drivers of behaviour such as healthy eating or, now, having a family gathering.

Natalie Savona: Who is responsible for health behaviour?

Objective To compare the effects of treatments for coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19).Design Living systematic review and network meta-analysis.Data sources US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Research Articles Downloadable Database, which includes 25 electronic databases and six additional Chinese databases to 10 August 2020.Study selection Randomised clinical trials in which people with suspected, probable, or confirmed covid-19 were randomised to drug treatment or to standard care or placebo. Pairs of reviewers independently screened potentially eligible articles.Methods After duplicate data abstraction, a Bayesian network meta-analysis was conducted. Risk of bias of the included studies was assessed using a modification of the Cochrane risk of bias 2.0 tool, and the certainty of the evidence using the grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation (GRADE) approach. For each outcome, interventions were classified in groups from the most to the least beneficial or harmful following GRADE guidance.Results 35 trials with 16 588 patients met inclusion criteria; 12 (24.3%) trials and 6853 (41.3%) patients are new from the previous iteration. Twenty-seven randomised controlled trials were included in the analysis performed on 29 July 2020. Compared with standard care, glucocorticoids probably reduce death (risk difference 31 fewer per 1000 patients, 95% credible interval 55 fewer to 5 fewer, moderate certainty), mechanical ventilation (28 fewer per 1000 patients, 45 fewer to 9 fewer, moderate certainty), and duration of hospitalisation (mean difference −1.0 day, −1.4 to −0.6 days moderate certainty). The impact of remdesivir on mortality, mechanical ventilation, and length of hospital stay is uncertain, but it probably reduces duration of symptoms (−2.6 days −4.3 to −0.6 days, moderate certainty) and probably does not substantially increase adverse effects leading to drug discontinuation (3 more per 1000, 7 fewer to 43 more, moderate certainty). Hydroxychloroquine may not reduce risk of death (13 more per 1000, 15 fewer to 43 more, low certainty) or mechanical ventilation (19 more per 1000, 4 fewer to 45 more, moderate certainty). The certainty in effects for all other interventions was low or very low certainty.Conclusion Glucocorticoids probably reduce mortality and mechanical ventilation in patients with covid-19 compared with standard care, whereas hydroxychloroquine may not reduce either. The effectiveness of most interventions is uncertain because most of the randomised controlled trials so far have been small and have important limitations.

10.1136/bmj.m2980

Drug treatments for covid-19: living systematic review and network meta-analysis

Terms that used to be the preserve of scientists are suddenly being bandied around by politicians on national television, brought up over a coffee with friends, or appearing in the family WhatsApp group. Flattening the curve to the R number and contact tracing have all entered the general lexicon since SARS-CoV-2 emerged.

60 seconds on . . . jargon

10.1136/bmj.m3567

We found a high rate of trial multiplicity, particularly with chloroquines, which are being tested in 143 studies. Although these overlapping trials may afford opportunities for replication and validation, the high degree of multiplicity also enhances the likelihood of finding a positive result through chance alone, potentially resulting in widespread use of an ineffective and possibly hazardous intervention.

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.15100

Characteristics of the Multiplicity of Randomized Clinical Trials for Coronavirus Disease 2019 Launched During the Pandemic

Ramez Kouzy, MD, Joseph Abi Jaoude, MD, and Ethan Ludmir, MD join JAMA Network Open Digital Media Editor, Seth Trueger, MD, MPH, to discuss a systematic review that finds multiplicity of trials for #COVID19 offers replication & validation, but carries high risk of false positivity and competition for participants. Read the article here: https://ja.ma/2B21PJs.

#JNOLive | Multiplicity of Randomized Clinical Trials for Coronavirus Disease 2019

An artificial intelligence can adjust video footage in real time to make people appear to lip sync to any sound.

AI can edit video in real time to sync new audio to people's lips

10.31234/osf.io/gsem6

People are constantly bombarded with information they could use to adjust their beliefs. Here, we are interested in exploring the impact of social norms on belief update. To investigate, we recruited a sample of 200 Princeton University students, who first rated the accuracy of a set of statements (pre-test). They were then provided with relevant evidence either in favor or against the initial statements, and they were asked to rate how convincing each piece of evidence was. The evidence was randomly assigned to appear as normative or non-normative, and also randomly assigned to appear as anecdotal or scientific. Finally, participants rated the accuracy of the initial set of statements again (post-test). The results show that participants changed their beliefs more in line with the evidence, when the evidence was scientific compared to when it was anecdotal. More importantly to our primary inquiry, the results show that participants changed their beliefs more in line with the evidence when the evidence was portrayed as normative compared to when the evidence was portrayed as non-normative, pointing to the impactful influence social norms have on beliefs. Both effects were mediated by participants’ subjective evaluation of the convincingness of the evidence, indicating the mechanism by which evidence is selectively incorporated into belief systems.

The Impact of Social Norms on Belief Update

Whole Foods’ newest store doesn’t have any shoppers—and that’s the point.

The rise of ‘dark stores’—and how they could save struggling retail

Some additional info: We're looking whether approach-training changes behaviour to real spiders (2 groups) and my supervisor says they will ask us to check if a change in behaviour is mediated by a change in approach-bias (on a variation of the training task).

We're writing up a RR We have some analyses that are secondary to the RQs, but are likely to be conducted because reviewers will ask for them. We cannot afford enough participants for these to have sufficient power. Should we mention in Stage 1 anything about these analyses?

Hi @TwitterSupport--I'm an ID epi that does a lot of science communication. Most of the other amazing scientists I do this with are verified. It would be great if the people I'm communicating with could know my account is really me & really trustworthy. Can I get some help?

The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC’s scientific reports to health professionals.

Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19