10.31235/osf.io/uf3zn

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused significant challenges for health system all over the globe but also fueled the surge of numerous rumors, hoaxes and misinformation, regarding etiology, outcomes, prevention, and cure of the disease. This misinformation are masking healthy behaviors and promoting erroneous practices that increase the spread of the virus and ultimately result in poor physical and mental health outcomes among individuals. Myriad incidents of mishaps caused by these rumors was reported across the world. To address this issue the frontline healthcare providers should be equipped with the most recent research findings and accurate information. The mass media, health care organization, community-based organizations, and other important stakeholders should build strategic partnerships and launch common platforms in disseminating authentic public health messages. Advanced technologies like natural language processing or data mining approaches should be applied in detection and removal online content with no scientific basis from all social media platforms. Those involved with the spread of such rumors should be brought to justice. Telemedicine based care should be established at a large scale to prevent depletion of limited resources.

Impact of rumors or misinformation on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in social media

10.31235/osf.io/2hx6f

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 will have a massive impact upon travel, tourism, and hospitality globally. With a massive reduction in tourism globally because of the health crisis, the industry will likely have to plan a recovery and rebuilding of the industry. Part and parcel of the reorganization will involve increasingly depending upon automation technologies. In this article, we discuss how the virus has impacted upon the global industry and discuss how automation technologies will be implemented into the industry to ensure a vibrant return to a strong tourism economy. We expect that employers and industry will look differently upon many automation technologies and implement these technologies into their operations to ensure a return to a situation in which tourism can take place in ways that ensure the biosecurity of travellers and ensure that the industry’s operations return to be able to work in profitable ways.

Biosecurity, automation technologies and economic resilience of travel, tourism and hospitality companies

10.31235/osf.io/jr7eq

Leaders with a full understanding of their responsibilities make use of strategic communication and their credibility to reduce uncertainties in times of crisis

Brief Communication Analysis of Brazilian Presidency during COVID-19

10.31235/osf.io/4739g

The new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has not yet reached its peak of infections in Brazil. Yet it has already caused significant disruptions to the life of people across the country. The higher rate of confirmed cases and deaths have so far been concentrated in urban areas. However, it is only a matter of weeks for this lethal virus to reach remote and poor areas in the rural part of the country. When this happens, it will wreak havoc. This paper thus proposes a policy deriving from a risk assessment for local leaders from these areas. The expectation is that this strategy designed for impoverished and deprived areas can contribute to reduce the risk of the horrendous effects that this pathogen can have in these vulnerable communities and their fragile economies.

Reducing the Risks of New Coronavirus in Vulnerable Areas in Brazil

Orion is an open-source tool to monitor and measure progress in science. Orion depends on a flexible data collection, enrichment, and analysis system that enables users to create and explore research databases. In more detail, researchers can choose an academic journal, conference or thematic topic and collect all the relevant documents from Microsoft Academic Graph. Along with every document, Orion retrieves its DOI, citations, publication year, publisher, title and abstract, fields of study, authors and their affiliations. This collection is enriched with metadata from other sources; we geocode institutional affiliations and infer authors’ gender with Google Places API and GenderAPI respectively. Lastly, Orion measures the research specialisation and interdisciplinarity as well as the gender diversity of countries and institutions.Orion also has a semantic search engine that enables researchers to retrieve relevant cuts of the rich and content-specific database they created. Users can query Orion with anything between one or two words (for example, gene editing) and a blogpost they read online. Orion uses modern machine learning methods to find a numerical representation of the users’ query and search for its closest matches in a high-dimensional, academic publication space. This flexibility can be powerful; researchers can query Orion with an abstract of their previous work, policymakers could use a news article or the executive the summary of a white paper.

Orion: An open-source tool for the science of science

10.31235/osf.io/wygpk

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has critically impacted global health systems and economies, especially in developing countries. Those countries have been struggling to address the preexisting burden of diseases with limited resources, which will become even more challenging during COVID-19. The economic implications related to COVID-19 in those countries include a high cost of care, market failures in pluralistic health systems, high out-of-pocket expenses, the added burden of noncommunicable diseases, missed economic opportunities, and socioeconomic consequences like unemployment and poverty. It is essential to assess the prevalent gaps, mobilize resources, strengthen health systems financing and leadership, enhance research capacities informing evidence-based policymaking, and foster effective partnerships for addressing health and economic disparities due to COVID-19.

Economic Impacts of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in Developing Countries

10.31235/osf.io/dkusw

The COVID-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world governments are making use of exceptional powers to enforce lockdowns, often sacrificing civil liberties and profoundly altering the pre-existing power balance, which nurtures fears of an authoritarian turn. Relief packages to mitigate the economic consequences of the lockdowns are being discussed, and there is little doubt that the forthcoming recession will have important distributive consequences. In this paper we study citizens' responses to these democratic dilemmas. We present results from a set of survey experiments run in Spain from March 20 to March 28, together with longitudinal evidence from a panel survey fielded right before and after the virus outbreak. Our findings reveal a strong preference for a national as opposed to a European/international response. The national bias is much stronger for the COVID-19 crisis than for other global problems, such as climate change or international terrorism. We also find widespread demand for strong leadership, willingness to give up individual freedom, and a sharp increase in support for technocratic governance. As such, we document the initial switch in mass public preferences towards technocratic and authoritarian government caused by the pandemic. We discuss to what extent this crisis may contribute to a shift towards a new, self-enforcing political equilibrium.

Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Spain

The explosively expanding COVID-19 pandemic urges the development of safe, efficacious and fast-acting vaccines to quench the unrestrained spread of SARS-CoV-2. Several promising vaccine platforms, developed in recent years, are leveraged for a rapid emergency response to COVID-191. We employed the live-attenuated yellow fever 17D (YF17D) vaccine as a vector to express the prefusion form of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike antigen. In mice, the vaccine candidate, tentatively named YF-S0, induces high levels of SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies and a favorable Th1 cell-mediated immune response. In a stringent hamster SARS-CoV-2 challenge model2, vaccine candidate YF-S0 prevents infection with SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, a single dose confers protection from lung disease in most vaccinated animals even within 10 days. These results warrant further development of YF-S0 as a potent SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate.

10.1101/2020.07.08.193045

A single-dose live-attenuated YF17D-vectored SARS-CoV2 vaccine candidate

SARS-CoV2 infection is typically very mild and often asymptomatic in children. A complication is the rare Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) associated with COVID-19, presenting 4-6 weeks after infection as high fever and organ dysfunction and strongly elevated markers of inflammation. The pathogenesis is unclear but has overlapping features with Kawasaki disease suggestive of vasculitis and a likely autoimmune etiology. We apply systems-level analyses of blood immune cells, cytokines and autoantibodies in healthy children, children with Kawasaki disease enrolled prior to COVID-19, children infected with SARS-CoV2 and children presenting with MIS-C. We find that the inflammatory response in MIS-C differs from the cytokine storm of severe acute COVID-19, is more similar to Kawasaki disease, but also differ from this with respect to T-cell subsets, IL-17A and biomarkers associated with arterial damage. Finally, autoantibody profiling suggests endoglin, an endothelial glycoprotein as one of several candidate targets of autoantibodies in MIS-C.

10.1101/2020.07.08.20148353

The Immunology of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children with COVID-19

Background: Asymptomatic or subclinical SARS-CoV-2 infections are often unreported, which means that confirmed case counts may not accurately reflect underlying epidemic dynamics. Understanding the level of ascertainment (the ratio of confirmed symptomatic cases to the true number of symptomatic individuals) and undetected epidemic progression is crucial to informing COVID-19 response planning, including the introduction and relaxation of control measures. Estimating case ascertainment over time allows for accurate estimates of specific outcomes such as seroprevalence, which is essential for planning control measures. Methods: Using reported data on COVID-19 cases and fatalities globally, we estimated the proportion of symptomatic cases (i.e. any person with any of fever >= to 37.5C, cough, shortness of breath, sudden onset of anosmia, ageusia or dysgeusia illness) that were reported in 210 countries and territories, given those countries had experienced more than ten deaths. We used published estimates of the case fatality ratio (CFR) as an assumed baseline. We then calculated the ratio of this baseline CFR to an estimated local delay-adjusted CFR to estimate the level of under-ascertainment in a particular location. We then fit a Bayesian Gaussian process model to estimate the temporal pattern of under-ascertainment. Results: We estimate that, during March 2020, the median percentage of symptomatic cases detected across the 84 countries which experienced more than ten deaths ranged from 2.38% (Bangladesh) to 99.6% (Chile). Across the ten countries with the highest number of total confirmed cases as of 6th July 2020, we estimated that the peak number of symptomatic cases ranged from 1.4 times (Chile) to 17.8 times (France) larger than reported. Comparing our model with national and regional seroprevalence data where available, we find that our estimates are consistent with observed values. Finally, we estimated seroprevalence for each country. Despite low case detection in some countries, our results that adjust for this still suggest that all countries have had only a small fraction of their populations infected as of July 2020. Conclusions: We found substantial under-ascertainment of symptomatic cases, particularly at the peak of the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, in many countries. Reported case counts will therefore likely underestimate the rate of outbreak growth initially and underestimate the decline in the later stages of an epidemic. Although there was considerable under-reporting in many locations, our estimates were consistent with emerging serological data, suggesting that the proportion of each country's population infected with SARS-CoV-2 worldwide is generally low.

10.1101/2020.07.07.20148460

Reconstructing the global dynamics of under-ascertained COVID-19 cases and infections

10.1371/journal.pone.0235654

On 3 April 2020, the Director-General of the WHO stated: “[COVID-19] is much more than a health crisis. We are all aware of the profound social and economic consequences of the pandemic (WHO, 2020)”. Such consequences are the result of counter-measures such as lockdowns, and world-wide reductions in production and consumption, amplified by cascading impacts through international supply chains. Using a global multi-regional macro-economic model, we capture direct and indirect spill-over effects in terms of social and economic losses, as well as environmental effects of the pandemic. Based on information as of May 2020, we show that global consumption losses amount to 3.8$tr, triggering significant job (147 million full-time equivalent) and income (2.1$tr) losses. Global atmospheric emissions are reduced by 2.5Gt of greenhouse gases, 0.6Mt of PM2.5, and 5.1Mt of SO2 and NOx. While Asia, Europe and the USA have been the most directly impacted regions, and transport and tourism the immediately hit sectors, the indirect effects transmitted along international supply chains are being felt across the entire world economy. These ripple effects highlight the intrinsic link between socio-economic and environmental dimensions, and emphasise the challenge of addressing unsustainable global patterns. How humanity reacts to this crisis will define the post-pandemic world.

Global socio-economic losses and environmental gains from the Coronavirus pandemic

COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, is a virulent pneumonia, with >4,000,000 confirmed cases worldwide and >290,000 deaths as of May 15, 2020. It is critical that vaccines and therapeutics be developed very rapidly. Mice, the ideal animal for assessing such interventions, are resistant to SARS-CoV-2. Here, we overcome this difficulty by exogenous delivery of human ACE2 with a replication-deficient adenovirus (Ad5-hACE2). Ad5-hACE2-sensitized mice developed pneumonia characterized by weight loss, severe pulmonary pathology, and high-titer virus replication in lungs. Type I interferon, T cells, and, most importantly, signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) are critical for virus clearance and disease resolution in these mice. Ad5-hACE2-transduced mice enabled rapid assessments of a vaccine candidate, of human convalescent plasma, and of two antiviral therapies (poly I:C and remdesivir). In summary, we describe a murine model of broad and immediate utility to investigate COVID-19 pathogenesis and to evaluate new therapies and vaccines.

10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.010

Generation of a Broadly Useful Model for COVID-19 Pathogenesis, Vaccination, and Treatment

Antibody (Ab) responses to SARS-CoV-2 can be detected in most infected individuals 10-15 days following the onset of COVID-19 symptoms. However, due to the recent emergence of this virus in the human population it is not yet known how long these Ab responses will be maintained or whether they will provide protection from re-infection. Using sequential serum samples collected up to 94 days post onset of symptoms (POS) from 65 RT-qPCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals, we show seroconversion in >95% of cases and neutralizing antibody (nAb) responses when sampled beyond 8 days POS. We demonstrate that the magnitude of the nAb response is dependent upon the disease severity, but this does not affect the kinetics of the nAb response. Declining nAb titres were observed during the follow up period. Whilst some individuals with high peak ID50 (>10,000) maintained titres >1,000 at >60 days POS, some with lower peak ID50 had titres approaching baseline within the follow up period. A similar decline in nAb titres was also observed in a cohort of seropositive healthcare workers from Guy′s and St Thomas′ Hospitals. We suggest that this transient nAb response is a feature shared by both a SARS-CoV-2 infection that causes low disease severity and the circulating seasonal coronaviruses that are associated with common colds. This study has important implications when considering widespread serological testing, Ab protection against re-infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the durability of vaccine protection.

10.1101/2020.07.09.20148429

Longitudinal evaluation and decline of antibody responses in SARS-CoV-2 infection

The use of face masks in public settings has been widely recommended by public health officials during the current COVID-19 pandemic. The masks help mitigate the risk of cross-infection via respiratory droplets; however, there are no specific guidelines on mask materials and designs that are most effective in minimizing droplet dispersal. While there have been prior studies on the performance of medical-grade masks, there are insufficient data on cloth-based coverings, which are being used by a vast majority of the general public. We use qualitative visualizations of emulated coughs and sneezes to examine how material- and design-choices impact the extent to which droplet-laden respiratory jets are blocked. Loosely folded face masks and bandana-style coverings provide minimal stopping-capability for the smallest aerosolized respiratory droplets. Well-fitted homemade masks with multiple layers of quilting fabric, and off-the-shelf cone style masks, proved to be the most effective in reducing droplet dispersal. These masks were able to curtail the speed and range of the respiratory jets significantly, albeit with some leakage through the mask material and from small gaps along the edges. Importantly, uncovered emulated coughs were able to travel notably farther than the currently recommended 6-ft distancing guideline. We outline the procedure for setting up simple visualization experiments using easily available materials, which may help healthcare professionals, medical researchers, and manufacturers in assessing the effectiveness of face masks and other personal protective equipment qualitatively.

10.1063/5.0016018

Visualizing the effectiveness of face masks in obstructing respiratory jets

Many recent COVID-19 series have reported arterial or venous thrombosis (stroke, pulmonary embolism, etc.) [1, 2]. Here, we report a case of COVID-19 associated cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) with dramatic evolution.

10.1186/s13054-020-03131-x

COVID-19-associated acute cerebral venous thrombosis: clinical, CT, MRI and EEG features

The mega-resort will welcome back visitors on Saturday even as coronavirus cases in Florida remain high. In doing so, Disney steps into a politicized debate.

Disney World Draws Excitement and Incredulity as Reopening Nears

“I’m actually really worried about indoor transmission.”

Why extreme heat is so alarming for the fight against Covid-19

10.1038/d41586-020-02058-1

Governments are starting to change policies amid concerns that tiny droplets can carry SARS-CoV-2. And after months of denying the importance of this, the World Health Organization is reconsidering its stance.

Mounting evidence suggests coronavirus is airborne — but health advice has not caught up

Emerging cases of Covid-19 reinfection suggest herd immunity could be wishful thinking.

My patient caught Covid-19 twice. So long to herd immunity hopes?

If you were infected with the novel coronavirus, a new study suggests that your immunity to the virus could decline within months.The study, released on the pre-print medical server medrxiv.org on Saturday, suggests that antibody responses start to decline after 20 to 30 days following the first time showing symptoms of Covid-19. The study also found the severity of symptoms can determine the magnitude of the antibody response.

Natural immunity to Covid-19 could decline within months, UK study suggests

10.31235/osf.io/9gpw8

More recently, COVID-19 infection is advancing fast towards different settings. Regions with a high burden of infectious diseases such as HIV, malaria, and dengue including Latin America and Africa are experiencing an increasing number of confirmed cases and deaths. Since the age structure and the distribution of relevant co-morbidities varies substantially by country, the risk profile for COVID-19 could be very different in countries with high prevalence of individuals living with HIV.

Vulnerable groups at increased risk of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa: The case of the HIV population

10.31235/osf.io/9pn27

The Policing the Pandemic Mapping Project was launched on 4 April, 2020 to track and visualize these massive and extraordinary expansions of police power and the unequal patterns of enforcement they are likely to produce. In doing so, we hope that we can bring to light patterns of police intervention, to help understand who is being targeted, what justifications are being used by police, and how marginalized people are being impacted. More broadly, we hope the project will inform a larger conversation about the role of policing in society, to scrutinize public health and police collaboration, and to focus attention toward the harms of criminalization. Having an understanding of these patterns in coming weeks will help inform approaches to actively resist the logic and practices of policing crisis and disease, rather than allow them to become widespread and normalized. Through the acts of identifying, reporting, and visualizing events related to the policing of COVID-19, the project offers a living repository of publicly accessible data that can be used by activists, academics, journalists, and community members to analyze, discuss, and challenge the policing of disease. We encourage all people to use the data available through this project in any way they wish.

Policing the Pandemic: Tracking the Policing of Covid-19 across Canada

10.31235/osf.io/uwdr6

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic exposed the inadequacy of infectious disease surveillance throughout the US and other countries. Isolation and contact tracing to identify all infected people are key public health interventions necessary to control infectious disease outbreaks. However, these activities are dependent upon the surveillance platform to identify infections quickly. A robust surveillance platform can also reinforce community adherence to behavioral interventions such as social distancing. In situations where contact tracing is feasible, all suspected cases and contacts of confirmed cases must be tested for a SARS-CoV-2 infection and effectively isolated. At the community level wastewater surveillance can identify areas where transmission is or is not occurring, and genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 can help to elucidate the intensity of transmission independent of the number of known cases and hospitalizations. State and county public health departments should improve the infectious disease surveillance platform whilst the public is practicing social distancing. These enhanced surveillance activities are necessary to contain the epidemic once the curve has been sufficiently flattened in highly burdened areas, and to prevent escalation in areas where transmission is minimal.

A review of infectious disease surveillance to inform public health action against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

10.31235/osf.io/h6z4f

In public health crises, the media and governments routinely share statistical analyses with the public. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the tool most commonly used to convey statistical information about the spread of the virus has been time-series graphs about the cumulative number of cases. When drawing such graphs, analysts have to make design decisions which can have dramatic effects on citizens’ interpretations. Plotting the COVID-19 progression on a linear scale highlights an exponential “explosion” in the number of cases, whereas plotting the number of cases on a logarithmic scale produces a line with a modest-looking slope. Even if the two graphs display the exact same information, differences in visual design may lead people to different substantive conclusions. In this study, we measure the causal effect of different visualization design choices on Canadians’ views about the crisis. We report results from a survey experiment conducted in April 2020 with a sample of 2500 respondents. We find that no matter how the information is presented, Canadians are united in supporting drastic confinement measures and in accepting that these measures will not be removed soon.

Logarithmic vs. Linear Visualizations of COVID-19 Cases Do Not Affect Citizens’ Support for Confinement

10.31235/osf.io/a32r7

What is the impact of a global health crisis on political behavior? We study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on electoral choice based on the case of Germany, one of the countries most heavily affected by the crisis. Our data come from the German state of Bavaria, where local elections were held right at the beginning of the pandemic. The elections took place early during the outbreak when there was still substantial variation in the extent to which individual counties and municipalities were affected by the outbreak. This variation provides a unique opportunity to study the causal impact of an event that would shortly after grow into an all-encompassing epidemic. We provide evidence that shows that the disease spread across the state in a mostly haphazard fashion. This lack of a discernible pattern coupled with within-county estimation of effects and a difference-in-differences strategy allow us to causally asses the effect of the spreading of the virus on electoral outcomes. Our results show that the crisis strongly and consistently benefited the dominant regional party, the CSU, and its candidates. For 3 known cases per 100,000 inhabitants, vote shares increased by about 4 percent. We explain our findings with a strategic-alignment mechanism, whereby voters vote into power candidates that they deem most likely to be able to solicit support from higher levels of government. Our findings emphasize the merit of forward-looking theories of voting and provide insights on the functioning of democracy during times of crisis.

Voting at the dawn of a global pandemic

10.31235/osf.io/cfw8x

Having geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Vietnam was expected to have a high risk of transmission. However, as of 4 April 2020, in comparison to attempts to containing the disease around the world, responses from Vietnam are seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis.

Policy response, social media and science journalism for the sustainability of the public health system amid the COVID-19 outbreak: The Vietnam lessons

10.31235/osf.io/e2hfa

Background: A wide spectrum of indicators has been postulated to associate with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-2019) cases. Among which were demographic profile, latitude, humidity, temperature, and ozone concentration. Despite obtaining significant results, there is still a dearth of research exploring other substantial determinants of Covid-2019 cases. The Philippine government is currently challenged to address issues pertaining to poverty and substinence. Empirical evidence of these studies suggests how identification of potential indicators could aid in the formulation of targeted strategies to mitigate future health problems. In this study, seven socio-economic indicators were associated with Covid-2019 cases across 17 regions in the Philippines. This is a retrospective study utilizing readily accessible public data in the analysis. Socio-economic indicators used were poverty incidence, magnitude of poor families, substinence incidence, and magnitude of substinence poor population. In addition, the income, expenditure, and savings recorded per Philippine region were taken for the analysis. A single Philippine region was the sampling unit; hence, a total of 17 regions were assessed. Covid-2019 cases as of April 7, 2020 were considered for the analysis. Descriptive statistics, Kendall rank correlation, and stepwise regression were used to determine if the seven socio-economic indicators were associated with Covid-2019 cases. Substinence incidence and income were retained for the regression model, which explained 87.2 percent of the variance in the Covid-2019 cases (R2 = .872). The results indicated that for every 1,000 PhP increase in income, there was a decrease of 3.99 Covid-2019 cases in each Philippine region. Meanwhile, for every 1.0 percent increase in substinence incidence, there was an increase of 3.34 Covid-2019 cases in each Philippine region. High income and low substinence incidence are associated with significant reductions in Covid-2019 cases across the 17 regions of the Philippines. This provides additional knowledge to policy makers and health officials in formulating targeted strategies to regions that could potentially record high number of Covid-2019 cases in the future. Early identification of these high-risk regions would warrant prompt preventive measures. Given the seasonal and recurring nature of Covid-2019 with respect to previous outbreaks, it is essential for the Philippine government to formulate directed policies and innovate programs that would decrease substinence and increase income. Concerted multi-region efforts should be made to prepare for possible infection outbreaks in the future. Additional studies could be explored in the future to capture significant changes in the socio-economic indicators.

Do socio-economic indicators associate with COVID-2019 cases? Findings from a Philippine study

10.31235/osf.io/b5zae

The present document provides the take of innovation economists on the current pandemic. It is addressed to the general public and focuses on questions related to the Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) ecosystem. It does not present new research findings. Instead, it provides a reading of current real-world developments using economic reasoning and relying on existing economic research. The first part of the report explains the root causes for a general underinvestment in Research and Development (R&D), with a particular focus on vaccines. These causes include an insufficient demand for vaccines in normal times and the very characteristics of R&D. Governments can intervene to mitigate these problems, but government intervention comes with its own set of issues. We discuss three of them, namely free riding, setting research priorities, and acting on scientific knowledge. The second part discusses several aspects related to current STI policy reactions. First, we observe a sizable shift of funds towards research on SARS-CoV-2. Aren’t we wasting money by allocating so much of it on one single scientific problem? Using the concept of the ‘elasticity of science,’ we argue that we are far from a situation where additional funding would represent a waste of money. Second, we also observe an unprecedented level of cooperation among researchers but also an intense competition to find therapeutic solutions and vaccines. We seek to make sense of this apparent antonymy, highlighting how both cooperative and competitive forces might accelerate research. Third, we focus on one policy tool, namely patents, and we discuss whether the existence of patents hampers the search for a solution. We argue that it might, but we provide ways in which patents can be beneficial. They can accelerate research (such as through patent pools) or ensure greater access to innovations (such as with compulsory licensing). Fourth, we notice that the whole STI ecosystem has been rapidly refocusing on SARS-CoV-2 in a way similar to mission-oriented R&D (MOR) programs such as the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. We highlight the fundamental differences between MOR and the present situation. Today’s response is characterized by a proliferation of a wide range of innovative solutions offered by a complex set of institutions and actors with great intellectual freedom and decentralized competition. The third part of the report assesses some potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We firstly discuss its impact on R&D investment. We explain how innovation might be negatively affected by a prolonged economic downturn and highlight the crucial role of stimulus packages in confronting the recession. We also address the influence of the crisis on ICT, arguing that it has been a formidable catalyst for ICT adoption. Next, we focus on clean technologies, another major societal challenge besides the pandemic. There are strong reasons for why cleantech investment may suffer. However, the crisis also offers significant opportunities to accelerate the green transition. Finally, we focus on open science, in particular on open access and open data. The current crisis could be a catalyst for the adoption of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Data Practices. The last part of the report offers some concluding thoughts. The STI policy response cannot be limited to the urgent need for ‘technological fixes.’ A second line of response involves the production of new knowledge to prevent outbreaks (ex-ante) or mitigate their effects (ex-post). Furthermore, the current crisis is a reminder that all branches of science matter. The pandemic has many facets, and a significant number of scientific disciplines can contribute to dealing with it. We conclude with a forward-looking note, arguing that the most substantial impact of the pandemic may lie outside of the public health realm or the science system. It offers a unique opportunity to adapt the set of rules that govern our society.

COVID-19_Insights from Innovation Economists

10.31235/osf.io/y3nsa

This paper proposes a communication method to improve decision and policymaking under uncertain scenarios. The motivation for elaborating such a method is the absence of clarity, prioritization criteria and critical thinking in considerations made by the Brazilian federal government during the ongoing response to the epidemic of COVID-19 in the country. The expectation is that the implementation of this method would help national leaders more easily assess the significance of evidence-based practices and anecdata to the decisions they are urged to make under significant time and resource constraints.

Governance in Crisis: Institutionalizing Reflective Report to Guide Decision Making Under Uncertainty

10.31235/osf.io/n93w2

Value of statistical life (VSL) analysis is common place in policy circles to evaluate the effectiveness of policy. As I show using a novel survey experiment with United States' state legislators, actual use of VSL analysis faces several problems. Firstly, policy preferences are inelastic, unchanging, regardless of the cost. Secondly, policy preferences are determined in large by actors' party ID. This means that VSL analysis, in practice, will either encourage policies that are too risky to too risk adverse.

How Do Legislators Value Constituent’s (Statistical) Lives? COVID-19, Partisanship, and Value of a Statistical Life Analysis

10.31235/osf.io/a8r3p

In recent weeks, several academic and journalistic outlets have documented widespread misinformation about the origins and potential treatment for COVID-19. This misinformation could have important public health consequences if misinformed people are less likely to heed the advice of public health experts. While some have anecdotally tied the prevalence of misinformation to misleading or inaccurate media coverage of the pandemic in its early stages, few have rigorously tested this claim empirically. In this paper, we report the results of an automated content analysis showing that right-leaning news outlets (e.g., Fox News, Breitbart) were more than 2.5 times more likely than mainstream outlets to discuss COVID-19 misinformation during the early stages of the U.S. pandemic response. In a nationally representative survey (N = 8,914) conducted from 3/10-3/16, we then show that people who consumed more right-leaning news during this timeframe were more than twice as likely to endorse COVID-related misinformation. Alarmingly, survey data further suggest that misinformation endorsement has negative public health consequences, as misinformed people are more likely to believe that the CDC is exaggerating COVID-related health risks.

How Right-Leaning Media Coverage of COVID-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic

10.31235/osf.io/xcm7y

This paper presents a preliminary inquiry into the democratic role of trust in the management of epidemic crises, by shedding some light on one dimension political theory has systematically neglected, which is trust of elites in citizens. The paper proceeds as follows. After an introduction, the first section distinguishes two dimensions of political trust. I then proceed to explain why elites’ trust in citizens is as important as citizens’ trust in elites for the democratic quality of a regime. The following section discusses in further details the democratic implications of elites’ trust in citizens. The fourth and last section introduces the idea of democratic experiments as opportunities to reinforce elites’ trust in citizens.

Out of the lockdown: democratic trust in the management of epidemic crises

10.31235/osf.io/65pgr

The present document provides the take of innovation economists on the current pandemic. It is addressed to the general public and focuses on questions related to the Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) ecosystem. It does not present new research findings. Instead, it provides a reading of current real-world developments using economic reasoning and relying on existing economic research. The first part of the report explains the root causes for a general underinvestment in Research and Development (R&D), with a particular focus on vaccines. These causes include an insufficient demand for vaccines in normal times and the very characteristics of R&D. Governments can intervene to mitigate these problems, but government intervention comes with its own set of issues. We discuss three of them, namely free riding, setting research priorities, and acting on scientific knowledge. The second part discusses several aspects related to current STI policy reactions. First, we observe a sizable shift of funds towards research on SARS-CoV-2. Aren’t we wasting money by allocating so much of it on one single scientific problem? Using the concept of the ‘elasticity of science,’ we argue that we are far from a situation where additional funding would represent a waste of money. Second, we also observe an unprecedented level of cooperation among researchers but also an intense competition to find therapeutic solutions and vaccines. We seek to make sense of this apparent antonymy, highlighting how both cooperative and competitive forces might accelerate research. Third, we focus on one policy tool, namely patents, and we discuss whether the existence of patents hampers the search for a solution. We argue that it might, but we provide ways in which patents can be beneficial. They can accelerate research (such as through patent pools) or ensure greater access to innovations (such as with compulsory licensing). Fourth, we notice that the whole STI ecosystem has been rapidly refocusing on SARS-CoV-2 in a way similar to mission-oriented R&D (MOR) programs such as the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. We highlight the fundamental differences between MOR and the present situation. Today’s response is characterized by a proliferation of a wide range of innovative solutions offered by a complex set of institutions and actors with great intellectual freedom and decentralized competition. The third part of the report assesses some potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We firstly discuss its impact on R&D investment. We explain how innovation might be negatively affected by a prolonged economic downturn and highlight the crucial role of stimulus packages in confronting the recession. We also address the influence of the crisis on ICT, arguing that it has been a formidable catalyst for ICT adoption. Next, we focus on clean technologies, another major societal challenge besides the pandemic. There are strong reasons for why cleantech investment may suffer. However, the crisis also offers significant opportunities to accelerate the green transition. Finally, we focus on open science, in particular on open access and open data. The current crisis could be a catalyst for the adoption of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Data Practices. The last part of the report offers some concluding thoughts. The STI policy response cannot be limited to the urgent need for ‘technological fixes.’ A second line of response involves the production of new knowledge to prevent outbreaks (ex-ante) or mitigate their effects (ex-post). Furthermore, the current crisis is a reminder that all branches of science matter. The pandemic has many facets, and a significant number of scientific disciplines can contribute to dealing with it. We conclude with a forward-looking note, arguing that the most substantial impact of the pandemic may lie outside of the public health realm or the science system. It offers a unique opportunity to adapt the set of rules that govern our society.

COVID-19: Insights from Innovation Economists (with French executive summary)

10.31235/osf.io/bfvxt

Since death rates from the COVID-19 are highest among the oldest, the impact of the current pandemic in a given society depends to a large extent on the share of elderly persons and their living arrangements. Whereas the former is well known, the latter is not. Arguably, contagion itself and the severity of its symptoms are likely to vary among elderly persons living alone, co-residing with family members or dwelling in institutions. Arguments in favour and against the premise that single-living elderly are better able to self-isolate can be made. Long-term care facilities have worsened the effects of the epidemic because they have often become death traps in some but not all countries. Once contagion takes place, living arrangements can make a huge difference in the way the disease can be managed by the individual, his family and society. Properly understanding the dynamics of contagion and the handling of the disease in terms of living arrangements of elderly people is essential for effectively tackling future outbreaks of similar epidemics.

The COVID-19 pandemic in an aging world

10.31235/osf.io/v3g5d

In the face of an emerging and novel pandemic, perceptions of its danger and probability of being affected can influence how an individual take precautionary actions. We performed an exploratory study to examine how travellers perceive the risk-related to COVID-19 and how the outbreak has affected their commuting and non-commuting travel activities. Building on previous studies, we propose a working hypothesis of personal risk perception and trip adjustment decision and collect information to preliminary check our hypothesis. We report on our work, and the results of an online survey carried out between March 12-19, 2020, which collected 71 responds from countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East in this working paper. Our results illustrate how the respondents altered their travel, their rationales, the precautionary actions they took, their foremost concerns, the sources of information they based their decisions on, and how useful they found teleconference as an alternative. Also, we observed their risk-related perception concerning the proposed model. We found several potential correlations and some regional and country variations but were unable to draw any definitive conclusion due to the limited sample size. We share our preliminary results here for discussion purposes.

An exploratory survey on the perceived risk of COVID-19 and travelling

10.31235/osf.io/7pykj

During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, citizens and governments across the globe relied heavily on the legacy media: Not only to inform people about fast-paced developments in the midst of a crisis, but also to stimulate compliance with strict interventions. Prospect theory postulates that gain versus loss framing may affect preferences for different interventions. In a conceptual replication of Tversky and Kahneman’s seminal prospect theory, findings from surveys in the US and the Netherlands (N = 1,121) demonstrate that gain frames of the coronavirus promote support for risk-aversive interventions, whereas loss frames result in more support for risk-seeking alternatives. Beyond these preferences, gain frames yield slightly more support for strict interventions such as a lockdown than loss frames. Loss frames elicit stronger negative emotions, such as frustration and powerlessness. The experience of powerlessness, in turn, mediates the effects of loss versus gain frames on support for stricter interventions. Together, these findings indicate that framing the pandemic in terms of gains may be most effective in promoting support for the strict preventative measures that have been taken throughout the globe.

Prospect Theory in Times of a Pandemic: The Effects of Gain versus Loss Framing on Policy Preferences and Emotional Responses During the 2020 Coronavirus Outbreak

10.31235/osf.io/wdr5v

The increasing trend of environmental disaster due to changing climate has escalated the occurrence of Tsunami, Forest fire, Flood, Epidemics and other extreme health and environmental and hazardous events across the globe. Establishment of effective and transparent communication during the crisis phase is extremely important to reduce the after-effects of the events. In recent times, fake news or news with fabricated content have emerged as major threats of communications during and and post -disaster phase. The present study critically evaluates the nature and consequences of fake news spread during the four major environmental disasters in recent era (Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Keralan Flood, Amazon Forest Fire and African Ebola Epidemic) and prepared a framework for present COVID-19 Pandemic. The criticality and potential threat created by the fake news have been quantified and analyzed through the timeline of news spreading. It has been observed that the adverse impact related to the African Ebola Epidemic was highest due to its multiple fake news origin sites, both online and offline propagation methods, well fabricated content and relatively low effort on containment. However the COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing disaster expected to have a long- drawn impact covering most countries in the world with combined consequences hence it tends to overtake all other events. Policy recommendations have been prepared to combat the spreading of fake news during the present and future environmental disasters. The importance of the study relies on the fact that the number of environmental disasters will increase in future and strategy for risk communication during the time is still not explored adequately. In addition the study will contribute significantly for understanding the present status of information paradigm for COVID-19 and helps in preparing region-specific real-time contingency measures for effective risk communication.

Fake news in the time of environmental disaster: Preparing framework for COVID-19

10.31235/osf.io/scnza

The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak that emerged from Wuhan, China in 2020 has seen unprecedented restrictions on civilian populations in many countries in the attempt to curtail the spread of the pandemic. A recently developed model of general collective intelligence predicts the properties of group decision-making systems that are required to optimize collective outcomes, along with predicting that authoritarian systems of decision-making might tend to be restricted to non-optimal group outcomes in ways that are somewhat hidden in that they require an understanding of this new and relatively unknown model of general collective intelligence. In light of this model of general collective intelligence, the economic restrictions imposed to combat the pandemic take on a new light, since these restrictions have not only resulted in economic lockdowns for some countries, but in some cases have also effectively imposed martial law. The hidden cost of this reduction in civil liberties is explored from the perspective of the cost of an authoritarian decision-making system resulting in non-optimal group outcomes as theorized by this model of general collective intelligence, using models of government inefficiency to assess the cost of those non-optimal group outcomes, and therefore the hidden cost of reduced civil liberties.

COVID-19 and The Hidden Cost of Reduced Civil Liberties

10.31235/osf.io/uyzxe

As the Covid-19 crisis deepens, some researchers have argued for the widespread routine use of face masks in community settings, despite acknowledged gaps in the evidence base for the effectiveness of such a measure. We argue that such calls are premature, and risk neglecting important potential harms and negative consequences, known and unknown. We identify potential unintended consequences at multiple levels, from individual-behavioural to macrosocial, and suggest that it is far from clear that the benefits of widespread uptake of face masks, whether encouraged or enforced by public authorities, outweigh the downsides. Finally, we make the case for caution in communicating unequivocal messages about the scientific evidence for face mask use to policy, practitioner and public audiences, given continued scientific disagreement on the question.

Face masks for the public during Covid-19: an appeal for caution in policy

10.31235/osf.io/69hqx

Taiwan and Vietnam have taken successful measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 at the early stages. Many authors attributed the successful policies to the lessons learned by these countries during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2002.(Ohara, 2004) This manuscript provides a summary of recent early-stage policies that were successful in mitigating the spread and creating resilience against the negative consequences of COVID-19 in Taiwan and Vietnam. Crucially, these policies go beyond and complement social isolation. As social isolation is expected to have a negative socio-economic impact on the population and adherence is likely to decrease with time(Armitage and Nellums, 2020; Weems et al., 2020), it is important to consider a broad range of policies to promote a steady control of the COVID-19 spread. Initially, we provide a brief introduction to some general concepts related to COVID-19. Thereafter, we introduce a concise review of policies and their dates relative to the first detection case in Taiwan and Vietnam as well as doing a comparative analysis.

Comparing public policy implementation in Taiwan and Vietnam in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak: a review

10.31235/osf.io/2r9mu

Anecdotal evidence suggests the elite may be more likely to contract an infectious disease during a pandemic, especially earlier on. In this paper, I propose general patterns for how the elite may experience contact differently and then utilizing mathematical models, simulate how those general patterns may affect infection rates among the elite and general population during a pandemic.

Considering Elite Network Patterns in Application to Infectious Disease Spread