Many owners face tough choices after a federal loan program and other government moves to bolster the economy have run their course.

Small-Business Failures Loom as Federal Aid Dries Up

10.1038/d41586-020-02495-y

Inequities and other social realities must be factored into diagnoses and tracing of COVID-19.

More testing alone will not get us out of this pandemic

10.31234/osf.io/5c769

With coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, healthcare and medical professions face challenging situations. High number of infected patients, scarce resources, and being vulnerable to the infection are among the reasons that may influence clinicians’ decision making and puts them in a moral situation. Furthermore, they may be carriers of coronavirus, resulting their social interactions to involve moral decision making. The aim of this study was to examine the moral decision making in clinicians during the COVID-19 pandemic and to find its relation to psychological, cognitive, and behavioral correlates. 193 clinicians who worked in hospitals allocated to coronavirus disease patients, participated in our study. We designed an online survey containing 8 dilemmas to test moral decision making in clinicians. Information on clinicians’ behavior, cognition and psychological state during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the degree of respect to social distancing, sources of stress, and dead cases of COVID-19 they confronted with were collected. The relation between these measures and moral decision making was assessed. Based on our results, clinicians’ most important source of stress was the infection of their families. There was a positive correlation between utilitarian responses and clinicians’ stress level, and number of dead cases they confronted with. Moreover, degree of utilitarian behavior was positively correlated to social distancing. Both age and sex contributed to individual differences in respecting social distancing, stress and utilitarian behavior. With increasing stress and encountering more deaths, clinicians tended to decide based on the outcome. Our results have critical implications in implementing policies for healthcare principals.

Moral decision making in healthcare and medical professions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Some six months after the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered universities and upended lives worldwide, a new set of practices has begun to take shape in psychological scientists’ research, teaching, and, for those who are still students, learning. Early this summer, APS surveyed the field to better understand the impact of the pandemic on labs and classrooms, as well as the strategies being used to overcome the challenges associated with moving research and learning from in-person laboratory settings and classrooms to online platforms.We received 611 responses from students, researchers, and faculty on every continent except Antarctica. The selection of experiences and insights reported here does not present a panacea for all challenges, or even a collection of scientifically supported advice. Rather, it represents a cross-section of personal stories that speak to the enormity of the challenges and potential solutions alike. We are grateful to those who shared, and we hope their insights will provide you with ideas, inspiration, and reassurance.

Working Around the Distance

10.31234/osf.io/4ctb7

The COVID-19 pandemic presents unique challenges for adolescents due to disruptions in school and social life. We compiled high schoolers’ open-ended responses to the following question: “What are your 3 biggest challenges right now?” (N=717). Using open and axial coding, we identified N=1902 thematic units (M=2.64, SD=.701) and 14 thematic categories, including mental health, physical health, family, friends, social connection and community, academics, missing important events, socioeconomic, routine, COVID rules and adjustment (e.g., social distancing), contraction/exposure to COVID, technology (e.g., screen time), and future plans. Adolescents most commonly reported challenges related to academics (23.7%), but also cited high numbers of challenges in mental (14.8%) and physical health (13.2%), and friend (11.4%) domains. These findings suggest that efforts should focus on helping adolescents cultivate academic skills needed during school closures, providing mental and physical health resources, and helping adolescents navigate their peer relationships in the short and long-term given ongoing remote education and social distancing due to the pandemic.

“I hate this”: A qualitative analysis of adolescents’ self-reported challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic

In this article, we argue for the general importance of normative theories of argument strength. We also provide some evidence based on our recent work on the fallacies as to why Bayesian probability might, in fact, be able to supply such an account. In the remainder of the article we discuss the general characteristics that make a specifically Bayesian approach desirable, and critically evaluate putative flaws of Bayesian probability that have been raised in the argumentation literature.

10.22329/il.v26i1.428

A Normative Theory of Argument Strength

Experts: COVID has robbed us of impromptu contacts that help keep us happy

The value of talking to strangers — and nodding acquaintances

ASAPbio Community Call August 2020

As the HSE can’t deliver our Stress Control classes in the community just now, Dr Jim White will, instead, live-stream the classes until December, free-of-charge. Click here to get all the dates. To find out more about Stress Control click here All you need to successfully complete this class is to watch each of the six sessions, read the booklets and use the relaxation and mindfulness. Click the button below to access our YouTube channel where the classes will be available to view at the scheduled times if you want to ‘attend’ the class and will remain online for 48 hours if you want to watch in your own time. Please subscribe to the YouTube page for session notifications.

Welcome to the online Stress Control class

I apologise for any misunderstanding. What I meant was we need to get back to “work as usual” - face to face contact where it is safe to do so as well as online teaching. Buckingham and all universities have been working exceptionally hard all summer to prepare for the new term.

I have always said I think a second wave quite likely. But I believe my own University in particular, but also the sector at large, is very well placed to manage if it occurs. We need to get back to work. The show goes on.

As some schools begin in-person classes, data compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics from the summer show that cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus have increased at a faster rate in children and teenagers than among the general public.

U.S. Coronavirus Rates Are Rising Fast Among Children

It shouldn’t be hard to know who to trust on coronavirus information. Trust people who’ve been consistently right over the last nine months. Don’t trust people who’ve been repeatedly, unapologetically wrong. That’s it.

universities and everything else, it becomes more and likely. 13. Yes, most of this is my own opinion, I genuinely hope I'm wrong about the winter...

is good for shielders, the elderly or the economy. 12. No, we can't say for certain that there will be resurgence of infections in the winter. However, without minimising community transmission over the summer combined with increased social mixing involving schools, pubs, work

protect you better. 10. Yes, you CAN get on top of this with non-pharmaceutical interventions combined with rigorous test, trace, isolate, test again... 11. If we don't get on top of it, we'll have cyclical limbo of local lockdowns and confused unlocking. I can't see how this

they are not a conspiracy and yes you should have it when its available. Antivax is an act of self-harm for humanity. 9. Yes, face masks worn properly do help limit spread. No, they won't protect you personally very well, but better than nothing. Surgical masks and respirators

7. Yes, kids can catch SARS2, no they don't often get very unwell, but yes they can certainly spread it. 8. No, we don't know whether any vaccine will work, but there are some amazing efforts ongoing. No, herd immunity is NOT a viable option and it hasn't happened anywhere. No,

pick up "dead RNA" as I've seen mentioned. Honestly... 6. Yes, the NHS is struggling to catch back up after the peak. This is NOT to do with being distracted, wrongly tasked, or overly cautious. It is due to being chronically underfunded and understaffed for a decade. Simple.

lower numbers in parts of UK keep it around 1 (or slightly higher in some parts). R0 is only 3 when you don't intervene! 4. No, the virus is not getting "weaker". It is infecting younger, healthier people better able to cope. 5. No, tests are not wildly inaccurate, they don't

2. Yes, there are fewer hospital cases and fatalities. This is proportionate to infections, plus more younger people infected. Care homes are better protected (finally) and most shielders did NOT pause, I suspect. 3. Cases are increasing, as is R0, but regional variation and

Upsetting to see so many half-truths, dismissive crap and bizarre media conspiracies floating around...sorry, have to get this off my chest. 1. No, of course there aren't as many infections as in spring. We had a lockdown, albeit truncated, and most people still distance...

10.31234/osf.io/wvyr7

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of all Americans, but the severity of the pandemic has been experienced unevenly across space and time. Some states saw sharp rises in COVID-19 cases in early March, whereas case counts rose much later in the rest of the country. In this article, we examine the relationship between exposure to COVID-19 and citizens’ views on what type of measures are required to deal with the crises, and how experience with and exposure to COVID-19 is associated with greater partisan polarization. We find consistent evidence of partisan divergence in pandemic response policy preferences across the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic: Republicans support national control measures whereas Democrats support welfare policies, and interparty differences grow over time. We find only limited evidence that exposure or experience moderates these partisan differences. Our findings are consistent with the view that Americans’ interpret the COVID-19 pandemic in fundamentally partisan manner, and that objective pandemic conditions play at most a minor role in shaping mass preferences.

Morbid Polarization: Exposure to COVID-19 and Partisan Disagreement about Pandemic Response

This talk will explore how social connection between scientists places soft but strong limits on what science can know and discover. This includes empirical demonstrations of how centralized networks of scientists decrease the truth value of collective certainty, how large teams shrink the search space of science, and how scientist flocking correlates investigations, slows discovery and limits the size of future understanding. I then explore the importance of research patterns and science policies that maintain productive disconnection between disciplines and networks to accelerate advance by increasing the value of ensembling and ultimate recombination.

James Evans: The social limits of scientific certainty

A growing body of research is raising concerns about the cardiac consequences of the coronavirus

COVID-19 Can Wreck Your Heart, Even if You Haven't Had Any Symptoms

Findings could enhance interview procedures and protocols and help everyday memory

Warning witnesses of the possibility of misinformation helps protect their memory accuracy

2008.13644

Assessing the resilience of a road network is instrumental to improve existing infrastructures and design new ones. Here we apply the optimal path crack model (OPC) to investigate the mobility of road networks and propose a new proxy for resilience of urban mobility. In contrast to static approaches, the OPC accounts for the dynamics of rerouting as a response to traffic jams. Precisely, one simulates a sequence of failures (cracks) at the most vulnerable segments of the optimal origin-destination paths that are capable to collapse the system. Our results with synthetic and real road networks reveal that their levels of disorder, fractions of unidirectional segments and spatial correlations can drastically affect the vulnerability to traffic congestion. By applying the OPC to downtown Boston and Manhattan, we found that Boston is significantly more vulnerable than Manhattan. This is compatible with the fact that Boston heads the list of American metropolitan areas with the highest average time waste in traffic. Moreover, our analysis discloses that the origin of this difference comes from the intrinsic spatial correlations of each road network. Finally, we argue that, due to their global influence, the most important cracks identified with OPC can be used to pinpoint potential small rerouting and structural changes in road networks that are capable to substantially improve urban mobility.

Cracking urban mobility

10.31234/osf.io/ygae5

On April 8th, 2020, the Chinese government lifted the lockdown and opened up public transportation in Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. After 76 days in lockdown, Wuhan residents were allowed to travel outside of the city and go back to work. Yet, given that there is still no vaccine for the virus, this leaves many doubting whether life will indeed go back to normal. The aim of this research was to track longitudinal changes in motivation for self-isolating, life structured, indicators of well-being and mental health after lockdown was lifted. We have recruited 462 participants in Wuhan, China, prior to lockdown lift between the 3rd and 7th of April, 2020 (Time 1), and have followed up with 292 returning participants between 18th and 22nd of April, 2020 (Time 2), 284 between 6th and 10th of May, 2020 (Time 3), and 279 between 25th and 29th of May, 2020 (Time 4). This 4-wave study used latent growth models to examine how Wuhan residents’ psychological experiences change (if at all) within the first two months after lockdown was lifted. The Stage 1 manuscript associated with this submission received in-principle acceptance (IPA) on 2 June 2020. Following IPA, the accepted Stage 1 version of the manuscript was preregistered on the OSF at https://osf.io/g2t3b. This preregistration was performed prior to data analysis. Generally, our study found that: 1) a majority of people still continue to value self-isolation after lockdown was lifted; 2) by the end of lockdown, people perceived gradual return to normalcy and restored structure of everyday life; 3) the psychological well-being slightly improved after lockdown was lifted; 4) people who utilized problem-solving and help-seeking as coping strategies during lockdown had better well-being and mental health by the end of the lockdown; 5) those who experienced more disruptions in daily life during lockdown would display more indicators of psychological ill-being by the end of the lockdown.

A COVID-19 descriptive study of life after lockdown in Wuhan, China

Considerable amount of laboratory and survey‐based research finds that people show disproportional compassionate and affective response to the scope of human mortality risk. According to research on “psychic numbing,” it is often the case that the more who die, the less we care. In the present article, we examine the extent of this phenomenon in verbal behavior, using large corpora of natural language to quantify the affective reactions to loss of life. We analyze valence, arousal, and specific emotional content of over 100,000 mentions of death in news articles and social media posts, and find that language shows an increase in valence (i.e., decreased negative affect) and a decrease in arousal when describing mortality of larger numbers of people. These patterns are most clearly reflected in specific emotions of joy and (in a reverse fashion) of fear and anger. Our results showcase a novel methodology for studying affective decision making, and highlight the robustness and real‐world relevance of psychic numbing. They also offer new insights regarding the psychological underpinnings of psychic numbing, as well as possible interventions for reducing psychic numbing and overcoming social and psychological barriers to action in the face of the world's most serious threats.

10.1111/risa.13582

The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Evidence from Natural Language Analysis of Online News Articles and Social Media Posts

To my mind the utility of a concept in science depends on whether it supports interesting generalisations. It might be that this could turn out to be the case for "behavioural fatigue", but at the moment the concept strikes me as too vague. Does it mean more than "people stop doing something"?Unless it's made more precise, I think it's unlikely to have much scientific value, because there will be so many different reasons (in terms of causes and mechanisms) for a behavioural response to falter.

The Slippery Slope Framework of tax compliance postulates that citizens’ compliance depends on the power of the authorities to enforce compliance and/or trust in the authorities and voluntary cooperation. While trust is widely recognized as a strong determinant of cooperation, empirical evidence is less clear on power: severe fines may lead towards compliance or even have the opposite effect. We propose a thorough investigation of the nature of power (coercive versus legitimate) within the theoretical framework of tax compliance to shed light on the ambiguous results and to clarify the complex relation between power and trust. We use structural equation modeling to test the assumptions of the Slippery Slope Framework by taking into account coercive power and legitimate power on a sample of N = 389 self-employed Italian taxpayers and entrepreneurs. We found evidence that trust is positively related to voluntary tax compliance. Trust was found to be negatively related to coercive power and positively related to legitimate power. Both coercive power and legitimate power were correlated with enforced compliance. However, the effect of enforced compliance leads to increased evasion. The results evidence the multifaceted nature of power and trust and their relation with tax compliance, and the importance of power and trust in political regulatory strategies.

10.1016/j.joep.2012.11.007

Powerful authorities and trusting citizens: The Slippery Slope Framework and tax compliance in Italy

10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100464

BackgroundA country level exploratory analysis was conducted to assess the impact of timing and type of national health policy/actions undertaken towards COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes.MethodsInformation on COVID-19 policies and health outcomes were extracted from websites and country specific sources. Data collection included the government's action, level of national preparedness, and country specific socioeconomic factors. Data was collected from the top 50 countries ranked by number of cases. Multivariable negative binomial regression was used to identify factors associated with COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes.• View related content for this articleFindingsIncreasing COVID-19 caseloads were associated with countries with higher obesity (adjusted rate ratio [RR]=1.06; 95%CI: 1.01–1.11), median population age (RR=1.10; 95%CI: 1.05–1.15) and longer time to border closures from the first reported case (RR=1.04; 95%CI: 1.01–1.08). Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence (RR=1.12; 95%CI: 1.06–1.19) and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) (RR=1.03; 95%CI: 1.00–1.06). Reduced income dispersion reduced mortality (RR=0.88; 95%CI: 0.83–0.93) and the number of critical cases (RR=0.92; 95% CI: 0.87–0.97). Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people. However, full lockdowns (RR=2.47: 95%CI: 1.08–5.64) and reduced country vulnerability to biological threats (i.e. high scores on the global health security scale for risk environment) (RR=1.55; 95%CI: 1.13–2.12) were significantly associated with increased patient recovery rates.InterpretationIn this exploratory analysis, low levels of national preparedness, scale of testing and population characteristics were associated with increased national case load and overall mortality.

A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes

to clarify, the poll will not decide on policy advice, but rather on the science. However, as the tool is for deciding policy relevant science questions, it is likely that those questions will typically be quite concrete, and, as a result, quite close to the policy decision.

New research project on managing disagreement

Here a quick post describing a study we have been setting up (it's not too late for feedback!). Since the beginning of the pandemic, I've been thinking about how we should manage scientific disagreements. Clearly, there are probably many 'theoretical' disagreements that can just be suppressed for purposes of policy advice, because rival frameworks make identical (or virtually identical) predictions in a specific, concrete real world case. But there will be some where predictions (and hence guidance) diverges. How can we as scientists deal with that in a way that is useful for policy makers and supports a robust evidence-based response.

many academics are already dealing with reduced funding, higher course loads, massive student loan debt, low morale, refusals to deal with misconduct and systemic racism, institutional and societal devaluing of their labor, and uncertainty about the future of their discipline and their profession at large. Higher ed has been struggling, destablized, kneecapped, exploitative, however generous or ungenerous you want to be, for a very long time. And COVID-19 has made it impossible to deny or ignore the fissures that threaten the foundation of the enterprise as a whole.

between f**ked and a hard place

The return to workplaces issue, just like the schools, is a perfect example of how we currently have to turn *everything* into a fight. When there are valid & powerful arguments on both ‘sides’, clarity & leadership are crucial. Sadly, our leaders prefer to foment the fighting.

With schedules rewritten as we were asked to stay home, our hectic lives were upended in lockdown as life ‘slowed down’ for millions. While enforced and unplanned, many took the positives from adapting to a slower pace of life, and Tweeted an intention to stay in the ‘slow lane’ in the future.

Embracing the slowdown

10.1038/s41597-020-00610-2

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked unprecedented public health and social measures (PHSM) by national and local governments, including border restrictions, school closures, mandatory facemask use and stay at home orders. Quantifying the effectiveness of these interventions in reducing disease transmission is key to rational policy making in response to the current and future pandemics. In order to estimate the effectiveness of these interventions, detailed descriptions of their timelines, scale and scope are needed. The Health Intervention Tracking for COVID-19 (HIT-COVID) is a curated and standardized global database that catalogues the implementation and relaxation of COVID-19 related PHSM. With a team of over 200 volunteer contributors, we assembled policy timelines for a range of key PHSM aimed at reducing COVID-19 risk for the national and first administrative levels (e.g. provinces and states) globally, including details such as the degree of implementation and targeted populations. We continue to maintain and adapt this database to the changing COVID-19 landscape so it can serve as a resource for researchers and policymakers alike.

HIT-COVID, a global database tracking public health interventions to COVID-19

Epidemiologists are often confronted with datasets to analyse which contain measurement error due to, for instance, mistaken data entries, inaccurate recordings and measurement instrument or procedural errors. If the effect of measurement error is misjudged, the data analyses are hampered and the validity of the study’s inferences may be affected. In this paper, we describe five myths that contribute to misjudgments about measurement error, regarding expected structure, impact and solutions to mitigate the problems resulting from mismeasurements. The aim is to clarify these measurement error misconceptions. We show that the influence of measurement error in an epidemiological data analysis can play out in ways that go beyond simple heuristics, such as heuristics about whether or not to expect attenuation of the effect estimates. Whereas we encourage epidemiologists to deliberate about the structure and potential impact of measurement error in their analyses, we also recommend exercising restraint when making claims about the magnitude or even direction of effect of measurement error if not accompanied by statistical measurement error corrections or quantitative bias analysis. Suggestions for alleviating the problems or investigating the structure and magnitude of measurement error are given.

10.1093/ije/dyz251

Reflection on modern methods: five myths about measurement error in epidemiological research

10.31234/osf.io/ubwxv

Introduction The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 coupled with inefficient testing capacities in Bangladesh has resulted in a number of deaths from COVID-19-like symptoms that have no official test results. Insufficient test sites and healthcare facilities catered to COVID-19 has led to feelings of fear and frustration in those who are sick. This study was the first study which explored the mental health of adults with the most common COVID-19-like symptoms in Bangladesh. Methods This retrospective case control study gathered data via an online survey to explore the mental health of Bangladeshi adults with symptoms akin to COVID-19. Level of stress, anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms were measured with the DASS-21. Chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression was performed to examine the association of variables. Results The prevalence rates of anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms of overall population were 26.9% and 52.0% respectively and 55.6% reported mild to extremely severe levels of stress. Multivariate logistic regression determined that respondents with COVID-19-like symptoms (case) reported higher odds for stress level (AOR: 2.043; CI: 1.51-2.76), anxiety symptoms (AOR: 2.770; CI: 2.04-3.77) and depressive symptoms (AOR: 1.482; CI: 1.12-1.96) than asymptomatic respondents (control). Conclusion Patients with symptoms like those of COVID-19 should be prioritized in the healthcare setting in order to reduce mental health difficulties throughout the pandemic.

Mental health difficulties of adults with COVID-19-like symptoms in Bangladesh: a case control-study

BackgroundAchieving universal health coverage (UHC) involves all people receiving the health services they need, of high quality, without experiencing financial hardship. Making progress towards UHC is a policy priority for both countries and global institutions, as highlighted by the agenda of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO's Thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW13). Measuring effective coverage at the health-system level is important for understanding whether health services are aligned with countries' health profiles and are of sufficient quality to produce health gains for populations of all ages.MethodsBased on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, we assessed UHC effective coverage for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019. Drawing from a measurement framework developed through WHO's GPW13 consultation, we mapped 23 effective coverage indicators to a matrix representing health service types (eg, promotion, prevention, and treatment) and five population-age groups spanning from reproductive and newborn to older adults (≥65 years). Effective coverage indicators were based on intervention coverage or outcome-based measures such as mortality-to-incidence ratios to approximate access to quality care; outcome-based measures were transformed to values on a scale of 0–100 based on the 2·5th and 97·5th percentile of location-year values. We constructed the UHC effective coverage index by weighting each effective coverage indicator relative to its associated potential health gains, as measured by disability-adjusted life-years for each location-year and population-age group. For three tests of validity (content, known-groups, and convergent), UHC effective coverage index performance was generally better than that of other UHC service coverage indices from WHO (ie, the current metric for SDG indicator 3.8.1 on UHC service coverage), the World Bank, and GBD 2017. We quantified frontiers of UHC effective coverage performance on the basis of pooled health spending per capita, representing UHC effective coverage index levels achieved in 2019 relative to country-level government health spending, prepaid private expenditures, and development assistance for health. To assess current trajectories towards the GPW13 UHC billion target—1 billion more people benefiting from UHC by 2023—we estimated additional population equivalents with UHC effective coverage from 2018 to 2023.FindingsGlobally, performance on the UHC effective coverage index improved from 45·8 (95% uncertainty interval 44·2–47·5) in 1990 to 60·3 (58·7–61·9) in 2019, yet country-level UHC effective coverage in 2019 still spanned from 95 or higher in Japan and Iceland to lower than 25 in Somalia and the Central African Republic. Since 2010, sub-Saharan Africa showed accelerated gains on the UHC effective coverage index (at an average increase of 2·6% [1·9–3·3] per year up to 2019); by contrast, most other GBD super-regions had slowed rates of progress in 2010–2019 relative to 1990–2010. Many countries showed lagging performance on effective coverage indicators for non-communicable diseases relative to those for communicable diseases and maternal and child health, despite non-communicable diseases accounting for a greater proportion of potential health gains in 2019, suggesting that many health systems are not keeping pace with the rising non-communicable disease burden and associated population health needs. In 2019, the UHC effective coverage index was associated with pooled health spending per capita (r=0·79), although countries across the development spectrum had much lower UHC effective coverage than is potentially achievable relative to their health spending. Under maximum efficiency of translating health spending into UHC effective coverage performance, countries would need to reach $1398 pooled health spending per capita (US$ adjusted for purchasing power parity) in order to achieve 80 on the UHC effective coverage index. From 2018 to 2023, an estimated 388·9 million (358·6–421·3) more population equivalents would have UHC effective coverage, falling well short of the GPW13 target of 1 billion more people benefiting from UHC during this time. Current projections point to an estimated 3·1 billion (3·0–3·2) population equivalents still lacking UHC effective coverage in 2023, with nearly a third (968·1 million [903·5–1040·3]) residing in south Asia.InterpretationThe present study demonstrates the utility of measuring effective coverage and its role in supporting improved health outcomes for all people—the ultimate goal of UHC and its achievement. Global ambitions to accelerate progress on UHC service coverage are increasingly unlikely unless concerted action on non-communicable diseases occurs and countries can better translate health spending into improved performance. Focusing on effective coverage and accounting for the world's evolving health needs lays the groundwork for better understanding how close—or how far—all populations are in benefiting from UHC.

10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30750-9

Measuring universal health coverage based on an index of effective coverage of health services in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Behavioral immune tradeoffs: Interpersonal value relaxes social pathogen avoidance

10.31234/osf.io/ec8uw

Behavioral immune system research has illuminated how people detect and avoid signs of infectious disease. But how do we regulate exposure to pathogens that produce no symptoms in their hosts? This manuscript tests the proposition that estimates of interpersonal value are used for this task. Three studies (N = 1694), each conducted using U.S. samples, are consistent with this proposition: people are less averse to engaging in infection-risky acts not only with friends relative to foes, but also with honest and agreeable strangers relative to dishonest and disagreeable ones. Further, a continuous measure of how much a person values a target covaries with comfort with infection-risky acts with that target, even within relationship categories. Findings indicate that social prophylactic motivations arise not only from cues to infectiousness, but also interpersonal value. Consequently, pathogen transmission within social networks might be exacerbated by relaxed contamination aversions with highly valued social partners.

GDP growth in the euro area and EU: In the second quarter 2020, still marked by COVID-19 containment measures in most Member States, seasonally adjusted GDP decreased by 12.1% in the euro area and by 11.7% in the EU compared with the previous quarter, according to a flash estimate published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. These were by far the sharpest declines observed since time series started in 1995. In the first quarter of 2020, GDP had decreased by 3.6% in the euro area and by 3.2% in the EU.

GDP and employment flash estimates for the second quarter of 2020: GDP down by 12.1% and employment down by 2.8% in the euro area

Many unknowns exist about human immune responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. SARS-CoV-2 reactive CD4+ T cells have been reported in unexposed individuals, suggesting pre-existing cross-reactive T cell memory in 20-50% of people. However, the source of those T cells has been speculative. Using human blood samples derived before the SARS-CoV-2 virus was discovered in 2019, we mapped 142 T cell epitopes across the SARS-CoV-2 genome to facilitate precise interrogation of the SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cell repertoire. We demonstrate a range of pre-existing memory CD4+ T cells that are cross-reactive with comparable affinity to SARS-CoV-2 and the common cold coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, or HCoV-HKU1. Thus, variegated T cell memory to coronaviruses that cause the common cold may underlie at least some of the extensive heterogeneity observed in COVID-19 disease.

10.1126/science.abd3871

Selective and cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes in unexposed humans

Can kids go back to crowded schools? Is it safe to eat dinner with friends? Use this mathematical model to help provide some clues.

Measure the risk of airborne COVID-19 in your office, classroom, or bus ride

If someone asks: What's the evidence for mask wearing? Here is a list of *SEVENTY* papers, including reviews/meta-analysis and individual studies, in reverse chronological order. Includes 31 from 2020 alone (!!). META = meta-analysis or systematic review.

#MASKUP THREAD