PRINCIPIA: a Decentralized Peer-Review Ecosystem

Videos of talks from July's eBridges conference on "SOCIETY, PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR DURING AND POST COVID-19 LOCKDOWN" are now all available here:

The transition to online schooling and stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic required at least one adult in the home to focus on the children — helping them with schoolwork and supervising them all day. While there was no immediate impact on detachment or unemployment, working mothers in states with early stay-at-home orders and school closures were 53.2% more likely to take leave from their jobs than working mothers in states where closures happened later, according to new research by the U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Reserve.

Working Moms Bear Brunt of Home Schooling While Working During COVID-19

Calling on retired lawyers! Law students! Bored lawyers! We at @GoodLawProject need your help with some research... we are working on what will be (well, if we win it) seminal litigation to establish the precautionary principle as a freestanding part of E&W common law!

Kids and covid 1. On the rise as proportion of total infections

With the global pandemic compelling us to remain at a distance, it is timely to consider if we may experience a reversal of trends concentrating population and earnings in large cities. Indeed, both policymakers and businesses (perhaps inspired by Churchill’s advice to “never let a good crisis go to waste”) should be asking some questions: What long-lasting structural changes can we expect to result from this pandemic shock? How will those structural changes affect the value we derive from clustering together despite the congestion costs of city living? And what implications do these resulting effects have for where businesses and workers choose to locate, and hence the productivity of and income earned for work done in big cities as compared to less populous places?

Agglomeration in a Time of Coronavirus: Will Working-From-Home Close the Mega City / Outland Divide?

Ellie Murray has spent countless hours of this pandemic providing high quality information on COVID-19 - this AMA is a great opportunity

Erik, as people inside and outside Sweden continue to grapple with what exactly the Swedish strategy might have been, there are two aspects that have seemed potentially troubling to me (and only more so in light of the FOI email releases):

can I ask, though: schooling was mandatory- were you still meant to go to school when there was an infected household member? or were you specifically *barred* from going to school or work if there was an infected household member? sources would be much appreciated!

"There's no explicit ban on working/going to school when you have an infected family member, that's true." that seems very odd! but, together with the mandatory school policy, if there is *no ban* on going to school, isn't going to school *effectively mandated* in these circs?

I'm familiar with those constraints/arguments- but keeping family members of infected individuals isolated is one of the most basic public health measure - it surely would be legal to mandate, particularly given the role pre/asymptomatic spread? no?

As severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 continues to spread worldwide, there have been increasing reports from Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America describing children and adolescents with COVID-19-associated multisystem inflammatory conditions. However, the association between multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and COVID-19 is still unknown. We review the epidemiology, causes, clinical features, and current treatment protocols for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents associated with COVID-19. We also discuss the possible underlying pathophysiological mechanisms for COVID-19-induced inflammatory processes, which can lead to organ damage in paediatric patients who are severely ill. These insights provide evidence for the need to develop a clear case definition and treatment protocol for this new condition and also shed light on future therapeutic interventions and the potential for vaccine development.

COVID-19 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents

what I am getting at (ex lawyer here, sorry) is that given the conjunction of mandatory schooling and explicit statement that it is ok to go to school if infected it is the *legal* default that the child has to *go to school* (unless an exception is applied for and granted)!?

but that then does not sound to me like a disease control policy- it makes no sense in that way. It would make sense, though, if your goal is to build herd immunity via the least vulnerable.. to be honest, I'm surprised it's actually legal as a policy (has it been challenged?)

It’s almost like bringing college kids back to campus is an exceptionally poor idea that we shouldn’t be trying right now

With so much information available about the severity of the coronavirus and the need to follow guidelines, some people still refuse to accept reality. The denial manifests itself in many ways, whether that be refusing to wear a mask or attending large gatherings. Using denial as a coping mechanism is not always a bad choice. Short-term, it gives someone the time to adjust to a situation. When it becomes a long-term crutch and puts others in harm's way, it can be dangerou

Pandemic denial: Why some people can't accept Covid-19's realities

RT @devisridhar: Not good, if true: “contaminated food put in cold storage could be a potential source of transmission.” https://t.co/0PnN5…

With the onset of COVID-19, many research labs have had to shut down and temporarily suspend their research efforts. Months later, labs are slowly beginning to reopen, but have had to make adaptations to their research methods in response to the pandemic. This webinar will present ways to get your research project back on track. Our panelists will describe how they were able to successfully recover from delays and lab closures by having a solid lab reopening plan; changing research protocols; taking into account the stressors that a pandemic has had on research participants; and finding creative ways to get back to data collection.

Adapting your research methods in response to COVID-19

The Covid-19 pandemic is reshaping almost every aspect of our society, including our health care systems. In this global emergency, in which the coronavirus continues its inexorable spread with a disproportional impact on communities of color, the urgent search for effective therapeutics and an effective vaccine has led to unprecedented collaborations between health care and drug companies, academic researchers, nonprofits and governments. Even so, some stresses to this collaborative approach are evident, mostly from governments eager to secure first for their domestic populations treatments and potential vaccines.

Register today

During the covid-19 pandemic we've been bombarded with stats – making it more important than ever to understand what the numbers can and can't tell us

David Spiegelhalter: How to be a coronavirus statistics sleuth

Coronavirus Timeline/Overview By The Numbers Latest Coverage News Campus City Obituaries Sports Ice Hockey Basketball Soccer Field Hockey Lacrosse Softball Cross Country Track and Field Club Sports Columnists Features Community Business Science Arts Opinion Columns Editorial Comics Letters to Editor Op-Ed Blogs The Now Boston Hockey Blog Full Court Press Podcasts East to West Terrier Hockey Talk Clout Chasing Photo Video Campus, News Boston University instates policy to issue degrees to students after death, starting this Fall August 12, 2020 12:48 pm by Angela Yang Students who die while attending Boston University will be able to undergo an official process to obtain a posthumous degree, starting this Fall. The University released the policy June 12, but did not make an announcement or notify the BU community otherwise.

Boston University instates policy to issue degrees to students after death, starting this Fall

Hmmm....these two decisions seem connected somehow

Trust in scientific findings and experts, but, rationally, not in what experts tell us to do .t3_i4cxtz ._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }

Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) is a po­ten­tially powerful tool in the fight against the COVID- 19 pandemic. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, there has been a scramble to use AI. This article provides an early, and nec­es­sar­ily selective review, dis­cussing the con­tri­bu­tion of AI to the fight against COVID-19, as well as the current con­straints on these con­tri­bu­tions. Six areas where AI can con­tribute to the fight against COVID-19 are discussed, namely i) early warnings and alerts, ii) tracking and pre­dic­tion, iii) data dash­boards, iv) diagnosis and prognosis, v) treat­ments and cures, and vi) social control. It is concluded that AI has not yet been impactful against COVID-19. Its use is hampered by a lack of data, and by too much data. Over­com­ing these con­straints will require a careful balance between data privacy and public health, and rigorous human-AI in­ter­ac­tion. It is unlikely that these will be addressed in time to be of much help during the present pandemic. In the meantime, extensive gathering of di­ag­nos­tic data on who is in­fec­tious will be essential to save lives, train AI, and limit economic damages.

Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence against COVID-19: An Early Review

Food pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion is essential for human well-​being, but the food sector has ex­pe­ri­enced a number of dif­fi­cul­ties main­tain­ing worker health and pro­duc­tiv­ity during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine em­ploy­ment status changes of persons recently employed in the U.S. food sector with a focus on food man­u­fac­tur­ing and grocery stores. We find that the pandemic sig­nif­i­cantly reduced the prob­a­bil­ity of continued active em­ploy­ment for previous workers in both food man­u­fac­tur­ing and grocery stores. Individual-​level analysis confirms that the COVID-19 infection rate in an in­di­vid­ual’s local labor market is a strong and sig­nif­i­cant factor. The em­ploy­ment changes are not just due to un­em­ploy­ment during facility closures. Previous workers in­creas­ingly exit the labor force as the severity of the COVID-19 infection rate in their local area worsens. The con­sid­er­able risk of infection drives many previous food sector workers to stop working al­to­gether. Main­tain­ing worker health and safety is essential for a stable food supply.

COVID-19 Em­ploy­ment Status Impacts on Food Sector Workers

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, gov­ern­ments around the world have provided a massive fiscal and monetary stimulus. While this policy is welcome in the short run, it does not address the un­der­ly­ing problem in the medium and long run. The reason is that the pandemic has not given rise to a gen­er­al­ized shortfall in aggregate demand. Rather, it has generated a Great Economic Mismatch, char­ac­ter­ized by deficient demand for things requiring close physical in­ter­ac­tions among people and deficient supply of things com­pat­i­ble with social dis­tanc­ing, where ap­pro­pri­ate. Expansive macro­eco­nomic policy can stimulate aggregate demand, but when social dis­tanc­ing is enforced, it will not stimulate pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion whenever this demand is satisfied through phys­i­cally in­ter­ac­tive ac­tiv­i­ties. To overcome the Great Economic Mismatch, “readap­ta­tion policies” are called for. In the medium run, these policies promote a redi­rec­tion of resources to ac­tiv­i­ties com­pat­i­ble with social dis­tanc­ing; the long run, these policies make economies more resilient to un­fore­seen shocks that generate a Great Economic Mismatch. Once the pandemic is over, a more profound re­think­ing of decision making – in public policy, business and civil society – is called for. First, decision makers will need to sup­ple­ment the current focus on economic ef­fi­ciency by greater emphasis on economic re­silience. Second, economic policies and business strate­gies will need to focus less on in­cen­tives for selfish in­di­vid­u­als and more on the mo­bi­liza­tion of people’s prosocial motives. Finally, to encourage people around the world to cooperate globally in tackling global problems, policy makers at local, national and global levels will need to encourage people around the world to cooperate globally in tackling global problems, with the aid of two powerful tools that humans through­out history have used to co­or­di­nate their efforts: identity-​shaping nar­ra­tives and in­sti­tu­tions of multi-​level gov­er­nance.

The Socio-​Economics of Pandemics Policy

Disease spread is in part a function of in­di­vid­ual behavior. We examine the factors pre­dict­ing in­di­vid­ual behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States using novel data collected by Belot et al. (2020). Among other factors, we show that people with lower income, less flexible work arrange­ments (e.g., an inability to tele-work) and lack of outside space at home are less likely to engage in behaviors, such as social dis­tanc­ing, that limit the spread of disease. We also find evidence that region, gender and beliefs predict behavior. Broadly, our findings align with typical re­la­tion­ships between health and socio-​economic status. Moreover, they suggest that the burden of measures designed to stem the pandemic are unevenly dis­trib­uted across socio-​demographic groups in ways that affect behavior and thus po­ten­tially the spread of illness. Policies that assume otherwise are unlikely to be effective or sus­tain­able.

Socio-​Demographic Factors As­so­ci­ated with Self-​Protecting Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic

We in­ves­ti­gate the impacts of COVID-19 on domestic violence and family stress. Our empirical analysis relies on a unique online survey, Canadian Per­spec­tive Survey Series, that allow us to dis­en­tan­gle the mech­a­nisms through which COVID-19 may affect family stress and domestic violence. We find no evidence that em­ploy­ment status and work arrange­ments are related to higher self-​reported levels of family stress and violence in the home due to con­fine­ment, sug­gest­ing that remote working on a large scale does not lead to family violence. In contrast, we find that the inability to meet financial oblig­a­tions and main­tain­ing social ties sig­nif­i­cantly increase reported family stress and domestic violence. These findings are con­sis­tent with two al­ter­na­tive mech­a­nisms: social isolation and decreased bar­gain­ing power for women. Last, we provide sug­ges­tive evidence that receiving financial relief does not mitigate the effect of financial worries on domestic violence and family stress. We conclude that targeted programs sup­port­ing victims of domestic violence may be more effective.

COVID-19, Family Stress and Domestic Violence: Remote Work, Isolation and Bar­gain­ing Power

Worries about the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant mothers and their offspring are wide-​spread. As a com­par­i­son, the Spanish Flu pandemic had dev­as­tat­ing health impacts on pregnant mothers and in-utero exposure to influenza is known to have negative short- and long-term con­se­quences for children. The existing evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic, however, allows for cautious optimism about the impacts of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their children.

Pregnancy during the Pandemic

This review of UK economic policy responses to the Covid-19 crisis iden­ti­fies serious problems with existing measures. We describe al­ter­na­tive policies which could alleviate hardship, protect business from de­struc­tion in the growing de­pres­sion, fa­cil­i­tate recovery with full em­ploy­ment in a Green New Deal, and re­dis­trib­ute income and power with economic democracy in the workplace. Only such policies can ensure high quality work for all, the natural rights of self-​determination at work, and equitable sharing of the surplus that is produced by all employees as in­ten­tional agents. The proposed reforms are opposed by the strong vested interests which currently hold most power, so mo­bil­is­ing popular support and achieving real change will require a long struggle, just as attaining political democracy a century ago did.

Economic Policy Response to the Pandemic: From COVID-19 Emergency to Economic Democracy

In an effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe adopted social dis­tanc­ing measures. Previous studies have relied on the ge­o­graph­i­cal and temporal variation in the adoption of non-​pharmaceutical in­ter­ven­tions (NPIs) to show that early adoption of NPIs is cor­re­lated to lower infection and mortality rates. However, due to the non-​random adoption of NPIs, the findings may not be in­ter­preted as causal. We address this lim­i­ta­tion using a different source of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion –namely, the regional variation in the placement on the pandemic curve at the time of a na­tion­wide lockdown. Our results reveal how, relative to regions for which the lockdown arrived 10+ days after the pandemic’s outbreak, regions where the outbreak had just started were able to lower their daily fatality rate by 2.5 deaths per 100,000 in­hab­i­tants. We also provide sug­ges­tive evidence of contagion de­cel­er­a­tion as the main mechanism behind the ef­fec­tive­ness of the early adoption of NPIs in lowering the death rate, rather than increased health­care capacity.

Timing is Every­thing when Fighting a Pandemic: COVID-19 Mortality in Spain

Both the White House and state governors have ex­plic­itly linked thresh­olds of reduced COVID-19 case growth to the lifting of statewide shelter-​in-place orders (SIPOs). This “hardwired” policy en­do­gene­ity creates empirical chal­lenges in credibly isolating the causal effect of lifting a statewide SIPO on COVID-19-related health. To break this si­mul­tane­ity problem, the current study exploits a unique natural ex­per­i­ment generated by a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision. On May 13, 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court abolished the state’s “Safer at Home” order, ruling that the Wisconsin De­part­ment of Health Services un­con­sti­tu­tion­ally usurped leg­isla­tive authority to review COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions. We cap­i­tal­ize on this sudden, dramatic, and largely unan­tic­i­pated ter­mi­na­tion of a statewide SIPO to estimate its effect on social dis­tanc­ing and COVID-19 case growth. Using a synthetic control design, we find no evidence that the repeal of the state SIPO impacted social dis­tanc­ing, COVID-19 cases, or COVID-19-related mortality during the fortnight following enactment. Estimated effects were eco­nom­i­cally small and nowhere near sta­tis­ti­cally different from zero. We conclude that the impact of shelter-​in-place orders is likely not symmetric across enactment and lifting of the orders.

Did the Wisconsin Supreme Court Restart a COVID-19 Epidemic? Evidence from a Natural Ex­per­i­ment

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in income and em­ploy­ment loss in many countries around the world. Yet, hardly any formal study exists on household finance and future economic ex­pec­ta­tions in poorer countries. To fill in this gap, we im­ple­mented and analyzed a web-based rapid as­sess­ment survey im­me­di­ately after the removal of lockdown measures in Vietnam, a lower-​middle-income country that has received wide­spread recog­ni­tion for its suc­cess­ful fight against the pandemic. We find that having a job is strongly and pos­i­tively as­so­ci­ated with better finance and more income and savings, as well as more optimism about the re­silience of the economy. Further dis­ag­gre­gat­ing em­ploy­ment into different types of jobs such as self-​employment and jobs with permanent and short-​term contracts, we find those with permanent job contracts to be more strongly as­so­ci­ated with better as­sess­ments and fewer job worries. In­di­vid­u­als with good health and higher ed­u­ca­tional levels also have more positive eval­u­a­tions for their current and future finance. These findings are relevant for post-​outbreak economic policies, es­pe­cially regarding the labor market in a de­vel­op­ing country context

Turning Vietnam’s COVID-19 Success into Economic Recovery: A Job-​Focused Analysis of In­di­vid­ual As­sess­ments on Their Finance and the Economy

The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence of Early-​Stage Losses from the April 2020 Current Pop­u­la­tion Survey

We model the evolution of the number of in­di­vid­u­als that are reported to be sick with COVID-19 in Germany. Our the­o­ret­i­cal framework builds on a con­tin­u­ous time Markov chain with four states: healthy without infection, sick, healthy after recovery or after infection but without symptoms and dead. Our quan­ti­ta­tive solution matches the number of sick in­di­vid­u­als up to the most recent ob­ser­va­tion and ends with a share of sick in­di­vid­u­als following from infection rates and sickness prob­a­bil­i­ties. We employ this framework to study inter alia the expected peak of the number of sick in­di­vid­u­als in a scenario without public reg­u­la­tion of social contacts. We also study the effects of public reg­u­la­tions. For all scenarios we report the expected end of the CoV-2 epidemic

Pro­ject­ing the Spread of COVID-19 for Germany

We study how in­ten­tions to comply with the self-​isolation re­stric­tions enacted in Italy in response to the COVID-19 crisis respond to the length of their possible extension. Based on a survey of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample of Italian residents (N=894), we find that re­spon­dents who are pos­i­tively surprised by a given hy­po­thet­i­cal extension (i.e. the extension is shorter than what they expected) are more willing to increase their self-​isolation. In contrast, negative surprises (ex­ten­sions longer than expected) relate with a lower will­ing­ness to comply. In a context where in­di­vid­ual com­pli­ance has col­lec­tive benefits, but full en­force­ment is costly and con­tro­ver­sial, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and per­sua­sion have a fun­da­men­tal role. Our findings provide insights to public au­thor­i­ties on how to announce lockdown measures and manage people’s ex­pec­ta­tions.

Com­pli­ance with COVID-19 Social-​Distancing Measures in Italy: The Role of Ex­pec­ta­tions and Duration

The COVID19 crisis has hit labor markets. School and child-​care closures have put families with children in chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions. We look at Germany and quantify the macro­eco­nomic im­por­tance of working parents. We document that 26 percent of the German workforce have children aged 14 or younger and estimate that 11 percent of workers and 8 percent of all working hours are affected if schools and child-​care centers remain closed. In most European countries, the share of affected working hours is even higher. Policies to restart the economy have to ac­com­mo­date the concerns of these families.

The Short-Run Macro Im­pli­ca­tions of School and Child-​Care Closures

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought havocs on economies around the world. Yet, barely any evidence currently exists on the dis­tri­b­u­tional impacts of the pandemic. We provide the first study that offers new the­o­ret­i­cal and empirical evidence on the dis­tri­b­u­tional impacts of the pandemic on different income groups in a multi-​country setting. Analyzing rich individual-​level data from a six-​country survey, we find that while the outbreak has no impacts on household income losses, it results in a 65-percent reduction in the expected own labor income for the second-​poorest income quintile. The impacts of the pandemic are most no­tice­able in terms of savings, with all the four poorer income quintiles suffering reduced savings ranging between 5 and 7 percent compared to the richest income quintile. The poor are also less likely to change their behaviors, both in terms of immediate pre­ven­tion measures against COVID-19 and healthy ac­tiv­i­ties. We also find countries to exhibit het­ero­ge­neous impacts. The United Kingdom has the least household income loss and expected labor income loss, and the most savings. Japanese are least likely to adapt be­hav­ioral changes, but Chinese, Italians, and South Koreans wash their hands and wear a mask more often than Americans.

Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Dis­pro­por­tion­ately Affect the Poor? Evidence from a Six-​Country Survey

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

The Political Scar of Epidemics

We study the gender dimension of oc­cu­pa­tional exposure to con­ta­gious diseases spread by the res­pi­ra­tory or close-​contact route. We show that in Europe, women are more exposed to contagion, as they are more likely than men to work in oc­cu­pa­tions that require contact with diseases, frequent contact with clients, and high levels of physical proximity at work. Women are also more likely than men to be unable to work from home, which con­tributes to their increased exposure. Gender is a more important factor in workers’ exposure to contagion than their education or age. This gender dif­fer­ence in exposure can be largely at­trib­uted to patterns of sectoral seg­re­ga­tion, and to the seg­re­ga­tion of women within sectors into oc­cu­pa­tions that require more in­ter­per­sonal in­ter­ac­tions. While workers in Southern European countries are the most exposed to contagion, the gender dif­fer­ences in exposure are greatest in the Nordic and Con­ti­nen­tal European countries.

The Gender Dimension of Oc­cu­pa­tional Exposure to Contagion in Europe

Using a survey module ad­min­is­tered in late March 2020, we analyze how working hours change under the social dis­tanc­ing reg­u­la­tions enacted to fight the CoViD-19 pandemic. We study the Nether­lands, which are a pro­to­typ­i­cal Western European country, both in terms of its welfare system and its response to the pandemic. We show that total hours decline and more so for the self-​employed and those with lower ed­u­ca­tional degrees. The education gradient appears because workers with a tertiary degree work a much higher number of hours from home. The strength of this effect is dampened by the gov­ern­ment defining some workers to be essential for the working of the economy. Across sectors, we show that there are two clusters: One dominated by office-​type oc­cu­pa­tions with high shares of academics, home-​office hours, and low fractions of essential workers; and one where manual tasks and social in­ter­ac­tions are prevalent with low shares of academics, home office hours, and often high shares of essential workers. Short-​term ex­pec­ta­tions show that workers expect current patterns to prevail and that they expect a lot from gov­ern­ment support schemes. In par­tic­u­lar, many workers expect to keep their jobs in early June due to gov­ern­ment support and the expected un­em­ploy­ment response is far lower than in the U.S. or the U.K..

Labour Supply in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence on Hours, Home Office, and Ex­pec­ta­tions

Short-​Term Impact of COVID-19 on Con­sump­tion and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Singapore

Capital income subsidies, and reliance on indirect con­sump­tion taxes have created an in­creas­ingly re­gres­sive overall tax system in the UK, US and elsewhere, with pro­por­tion­ately much greater impact on the poor than on the rich, and welfare cuts under ten years of austerity have had the largest impact on the most vul­ner­a­ble and poorest, now magnified by the Covid-19 pandemic. We show how a pro­gres­sive wealth tax combined with a uniform, linear tax on all incomes and a modest basic income, with no ex­emp­tions or reliefs and no indirect taxes except excise taxes such as fuel duties, could be highly pro­gres­sive overall, as well as much fairer and simpler than the present system. Such reform would render the economy much more resilient, and po­ten­tially dev­as­tat­ing economic con­se­quences of the pandemic could be mitigated by an emergency basic income and sus­pen­sion of rental payments.

Reforming Tax and Welfare: Social Justice and Recovery after the Pandemic

Age, Death Risk, and the Design of an Exit Strategy: A Guide for Pol­i­cy­mak­ers and for Citizens Who Want to Stay Alive

Some com­men­ta­tors argue for a fairly general release from COVID-19 lockdown. That has a troubling flaw. It ignores the fatality risks that will then be faced by citizens in midlife and older. This paper provides in­for­ma­tion on the strong age-​pattern in the risk of death from three countries (China, Italy, the UK). If politi­cians want an imminent removal of the lockdown, the safest approach in our judgment would be a rolling age-​release strategy combined with the current principle of social dis­tanc­ing. But even if that is not the policy adopted, citizens need to be shown graphs of the kind in this paper. Honest guidance ought to be given to those in midlife and beyond. Gov­ern­ments have to allow people to un­der­stand their personal risk after any release from lockdown.

In­no­va­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Media in Virtual Teams – An Ex­per­i­men­tal Study

Prosocial Behavior in the Time of COVID-19: The Effect of Private and Public Role Models

While degraded trust and cohesion within a country are often shown to have large so­cioe­co­nomic impacts, they can also have dramatic con­se­quences when com­pli­ance is required for col­lec­tive survival. We il­lus­trate this point in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. Policy responses all over the world aim to reduce social in­ter­ac­tion and limit contagion. Using data on human mobility and political trust at regional level in Europe, we examine whether the com­pli­ance to these con­tain­ment policies depends on the level of trust in policy makers prior to the crisis. Using a double dif­fer­ence approach around the time of lockdown an­nounce­ments, we find that high-​trust regions decrease their mobility related to non-​necessary ac­tiv­i­ties sig­nif­i­cantly more than low-trust regions. We also exploit country and time variation in treatment using the daily strict­ness of national policies. The ef­fi­ciency of policy strin­gency in terms of mobility reduction sig­nif­i­cantly increases with trust. The trust effect is nonlinear and increases with the degree of strin­gency. We assess how the impact of trust on mobility po­ten­tially trans­lates in terms of mortality growth rate.

Trust and Com­pli­ance to Public Health Policies in Times of COVID-19

COVID-19, Lockdowns and Well-​Being: Evidence from Google Trends

Studies from around the world suggest that success depends on class size, distancing, the age of the students, and how prevalent the virus is locally.

Some Countries Reopened Schools. What Did They Learn About Kids and Covid?

10.1038/d41586-020-02288-3

The pandemic is sabotaging the careers of researchers from under-represented groups, but institutions can help to staunch the outflow.

‘It’s like we’re going back 30 years’: how the coronavirus is gutting diversity in science

10.31222/osf.io/2kam7

Following testing in clinical trials, the use of remdesivir for treatment of COVID-19 has been authorized for use in parts of the world, including the USA and Europe. These early authorizations were largely based on results from two clinical trials. A third study published by Wang et al. was deemed inconclusive. We demonstrate the utility of Bayesian reanalyses in the context of non-significant results like the Wang et al. trial. Results of a reanalysis of the three trials show ambiguous evidence for the primary outcome of clinical improvement and moderate evidence against efficacy of remdesivir for the secondary outcome of mortality rate. We recommend that regulatory bodies take all available evidence into account for endorsement decisions.

Rethinking Remdesivir for COVID-19: A Bayesian Reanalysis of Trial Findings

arXiv:2007.14596

The most basic level of human interaction is that which happens at close proximity: conversations, physical commerce, education, sports, entertainment and transportation, are all activities that are possible through close proximity without the use of technology. The way in which people physically interact is a major component in the complexity found in human societies. Mexico City, the largest city in Mexico, is as well one of the largest cities in the world, with over 9 million inhabitants and concentrating the vast majority of government and business centers. Reconstructing the set of physical interactions between its inhabitants could lead to a better understanding of the city's complexity. Such contact network can be used for applications that range from urban planning to the spread of infectious agents. In this work, we used anonymized location data from mobile devices (cellphones) collected in the month of February 2020 to reconstruct contact networks for several days, based on physical proximity of these devices. We found that contact networks in Mexico City are very sparse, with a heavy tailed degree distribution, characterized by a largest connected component that contains between 1010 and 20%20\% of devices. We found that, while network topologies are different each day, there is no consistent difference in these between weekdays and weekends. We present this results along with the release of an anonymized network reconstructed with data from Februrary 18th, 2020, as the first description of a contact network of Mexico City

The Contact Network of Mexico City

/10.1037/bul0000030

From Primed Concepts to Action: A Meta-Analysis of the BehavioralEffects of Incidentally Presented Words

10.31234/osf.io/vhkwc

The sensible and conflicting scenario of the pandemic postulated many challenges to societies around the world in 2020. Part of this problem refers to how the differences between politics and science are not comprehended in their particularities. The recognition of limits and power of science and politics can not only contribute to reaching the actions and strategies facing novel coronavirus but also optimized many domains of societies post-pandemic.

Coronavirus misinformation and the political scenario: the science cannot be ‘another’ barrier

10.31234/osf.io/ncwez

By many accounts politics is becoming more polarized, yielding dire consequences for democracy and trust in government. Yet a growing body of research on “false polarization” finds that perceptions of “what the other side believes” are inaccurate–specifically, overly pessimistic–and that these inaccuracies exacerbate intergroup conflict. Through a review of existing work and a reanalysis of published data, we (i) develop a typology of the disparate phenomena that are labeled “polarization,” (ii) use that typology to understand when polarization is “false,” and (iii) identify when false polarization gives rise to true polarization (e.g., extreme issue attitudes and prejudice). We further suggest that a specific psychological domain is ideal for developing corrective interventions: meta-perception, one’s judgment of how they are perceived by others. We review evidence indicating that correcting meta-perception inaccuracies is effective at reducing intergroup conflict, and discuss methods for precisely measuring meta-perception accuracy. We argue that the reputational nature of meta-perception provides a motivational mechanism by which individuals are sensitive to the truth, even when those truths pertain to the “other side.” We conclude by discussing how these insights can be integrated into existing research across multiple disciplines seeking to understand polarization and its negative consequences.

Understanding and Combating False Polarization

10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30585-5

In their Comment, the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) clinical characterisation group outline how harmonisation of clinical characterisation studies is achieved through their collaborative resource-sharing and data-sharing platform.1ISARIC clinical characterisation groupGlobal outbreak research: harmony not hegemony.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; 20: 770-772Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar We fully agree with both the importance of international harmonisation and the authors' approach. Yet, in our opinion, they could have expressed more clearly how important harmonisation is to use resources in research responsibly and efficiently.

Harmonisation preserves research resources

10.31234/osf.io/tqfrw

Background Conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID-19 are wide-spread and have even been propagated by highly ranked state officials and politicians in the U.S. Health authorities have cautioned that such theories, although not questioning the existence of the pandemic, may increase the spread of the virus by reducing people’s efforts to socially distance. Methods We test this proposition empirically using longitudinal survey data collected at five time points during the early outbreak of the virus in the U.S. (N = 403). Results Multivariate growth curve analyses showed that, although conspiracy beliefs decreased and social distancing increased over time, people holding more conspiracy beliefs at the beginning of the pandemic showed the lowest increase in social distancing. Moreover, cross-lagged analyses demonstrated that people who reported more conspiracy beliefs at any wave tended to report less social distancing at the following wave. Conclusions Our findings show that COVID-19 conspiracy theories pose a significant threat to public health as they may reduce adherence to social distancing measures. Keywords Conspiracy theories, COVID-19, social distancing, longitudinal

Belief in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Reduces Social Distancing over Time

RT @ChathamHouse: ‘We may have a vaccine in the next 12 months...And already we are seeing the rise of an anti-vaccination movement...'

10.31234/osf.io/edh2s

Transparency is indispensable for accuracy and correction in science, and is discussed frequently in the credibility revolution. A less often mentioned aspect of credibility is the need for intellectual humility: When scientific communication is overconfident or contains too many exaggerations, the field stands to lose its credibility, even if the methods and statistics underlying the research are sound. We argue that intellectual humility is given a great deal of lip service, but is too rarely valued - we may say that we as scientists ought to be intellectually humble, but our actions as a field suggest that this is not a priority. Although we acknowledge that intellectual humility is presented as a widely accepted scientific norm, we argue that current research practice does not actually incentivize intellectual humility. A promising solution could be to use our roles as reviewers to incentivize authors putting the flaws and uncertainty in their work front and center, thus giving their critics ammunition to find their errors. We describe several ways reviewers (and authors) can contribute to increasing humility in practice, instead of passively waiting for the system to change

Hoekstra & Vazire (2020), Intellectual humility is central to science

Since early in the pandemic, professional sports leagues have been sponsoring and participating in COVID-19 studies, offering large populations and needed funding to help researchers learn more about a disease threatening both public health and the leagues' operations. As new studies launch with the National Basketball Association (NBA) returning to action soon, experts are simultaneously applauding the leagues' involvement while questioning their motives and citing glaring limitations.

Sports Leagues' COVID-19 Research: Who Will It Help?