10.31234/osf.io/whdm2

Here, I present the Hindi version of the COVID Stress Scale (Taylor et al., 2020). Given the relevance in providing regional translations for psychological questionnaires for carrying out psychological surveys for every geographical location sans linguistic barriers and obtaining relevant insights for future public policy-making, the COVID Stress Scale has been translated into the language Hindi - the primary national language for country India.

COVID19 Stress Scale - Hindi Version

From MetroCards to million-dollar lotteries, desperate states are offering incentives to residents who get their shot

States Are One-Upping Each Other with Vaccine Rewards — But Will It Work?

A new study suggests delaying the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine improves an important part of the immune response in older recipients.

In-Depth: Delaying the second COVID-19 vaccine dose has benefits and drawbacks

This time last year, the United States seemed stuck on a COVID-19 plateau. Although 1,300 Americans were dying from the disease every day, states had begun to reopen in a patchwork fashion, and an anxious nation was looking ahead to an uncertain summer. Twelve months later, the situation is very different. Cases are falling quickly. About half as many people are dying every day. Several vaccines were developed faster than experts had dared to predict, and proved to be more effective than they had dared to hope. Despite a shaky start, the vaccination campaign has been successful, and almost half of the country has received at least one shot, including 85 percent of people older than 65. As the pandemic rages on elsewhere in the world, the U.S. is eyeing a summer of reconnection and rejuvenation.

What Happens When Americans Can Finally Exhale

In some of these countries where geography imbued its people with a false sense of security and insulation, lawmakers tried to close their countries from the dangerous world that lay beyond their literal shores. Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand have all been the lockdown media’s darlings, as if what these countries experienced – comparatively low infections and deaths – stemmed from wise policy choices that were equally available to the world’s transportation hubs (London, New York) or highly connected countries with next to no ability to restrict movement across borders (U.K., European Union member states or the states of the United States). 

The Inevitable Yo-Yo Ride of Pandemic Fortresses

A new rodent model of COVID-19 promises an easier and quicker way to test treatments and vaccines.

Mice with severe COVID symptoms could speed vaccine effort

A new variant stealthily took hold on two continents, highlighting the need for global genomic surveillance.

How a worrisome coronavirus variant spread unnoticed

The number of people infected with the coronavirus in England has fallen by half since the end of March. These findings from the Imperial College London-led REACT study are based on over 127,000 home swab tests taken between 15th April and 3rd May. The results show that 0.1% of the population is currently infected, or 1 in 1,000. This compares with the study’s previous testing round when 0.2% or 1 in 500 had the virus as of 30th March.

Coronavirus infections have fallen to 1 in 1000 in England - REACT study

In today's much-discussed @nytimes story from @apoorva_nyc (https://nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-herd-immunity-vaccine.html…) there is a graph that I find quite problematic. It purports to show county-level data about vaccine hesitancy.

Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.

Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

10.31234/osf.io/nkxqr

COVID-19 has brought an epidemic of information which has produced detrimental mental health effects for young people. This systematic review protocol outlines the approach to investigating the available literature which assesses the relationship between COVID-19 related news and mental health outcomes in young people.

COVID-19 news distress in youth: A systematic review protocol

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has concluded that there is a possible link between rare but severe cases of blood clots (VITT) and the COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. As the COVID-19 epidemic in Denmark is currently under control, and the vaccination rollout is progressing satisfactorily with other available vaccines, the Danish Health Authority has decided to continue the national vaccination campaign without the COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.

The Danish COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues without the COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson

With all due respect to @NateSilver538, he is not an expert on the psychology of vaccine confidence. He is a poll aggregator and political pundit. He is not an infectious disease specialist, epidemiologist, vaccinologist, virologist, immunologist, or behavioral scientist.

New international study reveals one in every 13 COVID-related deaths results in a child under 18 years of age losing a parent.

Nearly 40,000 kids in the U.S. who lost a parent to COVID-19 need immediate support

Americans are inundated by news about the staggering half-million lives that have been lost to covid-19. But the story is bigger than just who dies. Each death casts a shadow on those left behind.For every 13 covid-19 deaths, one child under the age of 18 loses a parent. In research published by JAMA Pediatrics, we estimate that about 40,000 children in the United States have lost a parent to covid-19 since February 2020. Three-quarters of those children were adolescents, and one quarter were children younger than 10.

Opinion: Covid-19 has killed the parents of thousands of children. We must support them.

10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.0161

The scale of COVID-19 mortality in the United States, including among prime-age adults, merits efforts to continuously track how many children are affected by parental death. Children who lose a parent are at elevated risk of traumatic grief, depression, poor educational outcomes, and unintentional death or suicide, and these consequences can persist into adulthood.1 Sudden parental death, such as that occurring owing to COVID-19, can be particularly traumatizing for children and leave families ill prepared to navigate its consequences. Moreover, COVID-19 losses are occurring at a time of social isolation, institutional strain, and economic hardship, potentially leaving bereaved children without the supports they need.

Estimates and Projections of COVID-19 and Parental Death in the US

10.1101/2021.03.31.21254687

Background: How SARS-CoV-2 infectivity varies with viral load is incompletely understood. Whether rapid point-of-care antigen lateral flow devices (LFDs) detect most potential transmission sources despite imperfect sensitivity is unknown. Methods: We combined SARS-CoV-2 testing and contact tracing data from England between 01-September-2020 and 28-February-2021. We used multivariable logistic regression to investigate relationships between PCR-confirmed infection in contacts of community-diagnosed cases and index case viral load, S gene target failure (proxy for B.1.1.7 infection), demographics, SARS-CoV-2 incidence, social deprivation, and contact event type. We used LFD performance to simulate the proportion of cases with a PCR-positive contact expected to be detected using one of four LFDs. Results: 231,498/2,474,066 (9%) contacts of 1,064,004 index cases tested PCR-positive. PCR-positive results in contacts independently increased with higher case viral loads (lower Ct values) e.g., 11.7%(95%CI 11.5-12.0%) at Ct=15 and 4.5%(4.4-4.6%) at Ct=30. B.1.1.7 infection increased PCR-positive results by ~50%, (e.g. 1.55-fold, 95%CI 1.49-1.61, at Ct=20). PCR-positive results were most common in household contacts (at Ct=20.1, 8.7%[95%CI 8.6-8.9%]), followed by household visitors (7.1%[6.8-7.3%]), contacts at events/activities (5.2%[4.9-5.4%]), work/education (4.6%[4.4-4.8%]), and least common after outdoor contact (2.9%[2.3-3.8%]). Contacts of children were the least likely to test positive, particularly following contact outdoors or at work/education. The most and least sensitive LFDs would detect 89.5%(89.4-89.6%) and 83.0%(82.8-83.1%) of cases with PCR-positive contacts respectively. Conclusions: SARS-CoV-2 infectivity varies by case viral load, contact event type, and age. Those with high viral loads are the most infectious. B.1.1.7 increased transmission by ~50%. The best performing LFDs detect most infectious cases.

SARS-CoV-2 infectivity by viral load, S gene variants and demographic factors and the utility of lateral flow devices to prevent transmission

Europe’s drug regulator has denied it has already established a causal connection between the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and a rare blood clotting syndrome, after a senior official from the agency said there was a link.

EU drug agency denies already finding causal link between AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots

A year into the pandemic, Louis Appleby looks at the evidence on suicide rates Not a week passes without a story in the press about the impact of covid-19 on suicide. Claims on social media seem to appear daily. A year into the pandemic, what is the evidence? The short answer is that there has been little effect. But it’s more complex than that, as it always is with suicide statistics.

Louis Appleby: What has been the effect of covid-19 on suicide rates?

10.1103/PhysRevX.10.041042

In recent years, social media has become an important platform for political discourse, being a site of both political conversations between voters and political advertisements from campaigns. While their individual influences on public discourse are well documented, the interplay between individual-level cognitive biases, social influence processes, dueling campaign efforts, and social media platforms remains unexamined. We introduce an agent-based model that integrates these dynamics and illustrates how their combination can lead to the formation of echo chambers. We find that the range of political viewpoints that individuals are willing to consider is a key determinant in the formation of polarized networks and the emergence of echo chambers and show that aggressive political campaigns can have counterproductive outcomes by radicalizing supporters and alienating moderates. Our model results demonstrate how certain elements of public discourse and political polarization can be understood as the result of an interactive process of shifting individual opinions, evolving social networks, and political campaigns. We also introduce a dynamic empirical case, retweet networks from the final stage of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, to show how our proposed model can be calibrated with real-world behavior.

Public Discourse and Social Network Echo Chambers Driven by Socio-Cognitive Biases

10.1136/bmj.m4509

Objective To estimate the infection fatality risk for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), based on deaths with confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) and excess deaths from all causes.Design Nationwide seroepidemiological study.Setting First wave of covid-19 pandemic in Spain.Participants Community dwelling individuals of all ages.Main outcome measures The main outcome measure was overall, and age and sex specific, infection fatality risk for SARS-CoV-2 (the number of covid-19 deaths and excess deaths divided by the estimated number of SARS-CoV-2 infections) in the community dwelling Spanish population. Deaths with laboratory confirmed covid-19 were obtained from the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network (RENAVE) and excess all cause deaths from the Monitoring Mortality System (MoMo), up to 15 July 2020. SARS-CoV-2 infections in Spain were derived from the estimated seroprevalence by a chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay for IgG antibodies in 61 098 participants in the ENE-COVID nationwide seroepidemiological survey between 27 April and 22 June 2020.Results The overall infection fatality risk was 0.8% (19 228 of 2.3 million infected individuals, 95% confidence interval 0.8% to 0.9%) for confirmed covid-19 deaths and 1.1% (24 778 of 2.3 million infected individuals, 1.0% to 1.2%) for excess deaths. The infection fatality risk was 1.1% (95% confidence interval 1.0% to 1.2%) to 1.4% (1.3% to 1.5%) in men and 0.6% (0.5% to 0.6%) to 0.8% (0.7% to 0.8%) in women. The infection fatality risk increased sharply after age 50, ranging from 11.6% (8.1% to 16.5%) to 16.4% (11.4% to 23.2%) in men aged 80 or more and from 4.6% (3.4% to 6.3%) to 6.5% (4.7% to 8.8%) in women aged 80 or more.Conclusion The increase in SARS-CoV-2 infection fatality risk after age 50 appeared to be more noticeable in men than in women. Based on the results of this study, fatality from covid-19 was greater than that reported for other common respiratory diseases, such as seasonal influenza.

CCBYNC Open access Research Infection fatality risk for SARS-CoV-2 in community dwelling population of Spain: nationwide seroepidemiological study

France’s coronavirus test positivity rate, at 11.1 percent, is nearly four times that of New York City.And yet schools across France have remained open during the latest lockdown, in sharp contrast to New York City, which closed schools after its average test positivity rate climbed to 3 percent before abruptly deciding to reopen elementary schools over the weekend.

France has kept schools open without driving up infections, and other news from around the world.

Some really great resources & discussions in this thread. The tl;dr is (1) yes, the vaccine trials included some people who had previously had COVID; and (2) in general vaccination plans will include those who have previously been sick/infected. Thanks all!

Good question for immunologists like @michaelmina_lab @VirusesImmunity and @PeterHotez.

10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30252-7

Planetary health sees neoliberal capitalism as a key mediator of socioecological crises, a position that is echoed in much COVID-19 commentary. In this Personal View, I set out an economic theory that emphasises some of the ways in which neoliberal capitalism's conceptualisation of value has mediated responses to COVID-19. Using the intersection of ecological, feminist, and Marxist economics, I develop an analysis of neoliberal capitalism as a specific historical form of the economy. I identify the accumulation of exchange value as a central tendency of neoliberal capitalism and argue that this tendency creates barriers to the production of other forms of value. I then analyse the implications of this tendency in the context of responses to COVID-19. I argue that resources and labour flow to the production of exchange value, at the expense of production of other value forms. Consequently, the global capitalist economy has unprecedented productive capacity but uses little of this capacity to create the conditions that improve and maintain people's health. To be more resilient to coming crises, academics, policy makers, and activists should do theoretical work that enables global economies to recognise multiple forms of value and political work that embeds these theories in societal institutions.

Neoliberal economics, planetary health, and the COVID-19 pandemic: a Marxist ecofeminist analysis

NEW THREAD: possible development of anti-Syncytin responses after immunization with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-coding mRNA vaccines, based on a "homologous" region shared between these proteins.

Share of unemployed who have been out of work at least 27 weeks (i.e., the "long-term unemployed")

% change in employment of parents since Feb (not seasonally adjusted) https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/04/november-jobs-report-slowdown-economy-recovery

Also, FWIW, Trump is still on track to be the first president since modern employment statistics began to leave office with fewer jobs than existed at his inauguration.

That's just raw numbers of jobs, by the way. Does not account for growth in population over a three-year period, which would imply we need more jobs than we had pre-pandemic.

If the November pace of job growth continues, it will take *more than three years* before we recover all the jobs lost in the spring.

The jobs hole remains very, very deep. Today, the U.S. economy still has a greater jobs deficit than was the case at the very worst point of every previous postwar recession, including the Great Recession

By early June, scarred and battered, Europe was emerging from the depths of its fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Strict lockdowns in most countries had lifted health care systems off their knees, just as the United States and others were fighting record caseloads. The weather was warming up, the European Union was encouraging borders to reopen and Europeans were desperate for a break. They paid dearly for it. A devastating second wave has forced reluctant governments back into lockdowns or restrictions and inflicted new scars on European economies. The optimism of the summer is gone, replaced with the realization that loosening precautions led to thousands of deaths just months before vaccines may arrive.

Europe’s Deadly Second Wave:How Did It Happen Again?

As we closed last year (and the last decade), we put out a call to help us imagine the next decade of behavioral science. We asked you to share your hopes and fears, predictions and warnings, open questions and big ideas.  We received over 120 submissions from behavioral scientists around the world. We picked the most thought-provoking submissions and curated them below.

Imagining the Next Decade of Behavioral Science

10.1126/sciadv.abd4201

Social and political polarization is an important source of conflict in many societies. Understanding its causes has become a priority of scholars across disciplines. We demonstrate that shifts in socialization strategies analogous to political polarization can arise as a locally beneficial response to both rising wealth inequality and economic decline. In many contexts, interaction with diverse out-groups confers benefits from innovation and exploration greater than those that arise from interacting exclusively with a homogeneous in-group. However, when the economic environment favors risk aversion, a strategy of seeking lower-risk in-group interactions can be important to maintaining individual solvency. Our model shows that under conditions of economic decline or increasing inequality, some members of the population benefit from adopting a risk-averse, in-group favoring strategy. Moreover, we show that such in-group polarization can spread rapidly to the whole population and persist even when the conditions that produced it have reversed.

Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline

In the spring, when the toll from COVID-19 passed the grim milestone of 100,000 American deaths, its geographic reach had been largely concentrated. Most deaths had occurred in a small number of metropolitan areas around the U.S., especially the New York City area. Today, with the death toll from COVID-19 approaching 300,000, and the number of deaths occurring each day matching or exceeding the peaks seen in the spring, the pandemic has become truly national in scope. In the nearly nine months since the coronavirus outbreak was declared a national emergency, almost every part of the country has been directly affected by the loss of life resulting from the virus.

The Changing Geography of COVID-19 in the U.S.

10.1136/bmj.m4787

Lateral flow devices for asymptomatic mass testing are proving controversial.1 At the heart of the matter is a flawed process, with the decision to implement society-wide “Moonshot” testing made before robust field evaluations of the tests were completed.2 Subsequent selective emphasis of unrealistic performance estimates3 has caused confusion. Little surprise we are now in a mess.

Lateral flow tests cannot rule out SARS-CoV-2 infection

A person with the virus who, say, has lunch with friends is a witness to an event in which the virus was possibly transmitted, and a suspect who might have transmitted it to others. Our new paper in PoPS @lorraine_hope @rachelz @drayeshaverrall and Jamie Robertson

10.31234/osf.io/hrfyk

Objective: To investigate the perception and adherence to mitigation measures during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Slovenia by examining their trends across several sociodemographic categories and personality dimensions. Methods: Descriptive and correlative analyses were used to examine which sociodemographic and personality factors were associated with participants’ attitudes and adherence to measures. Results: More than 90% of participants considered the following four measures as important and practiced them always/often: keeping a safe interpersonal distance, regular and thorough hand washing/disinfection, adherence to the rules of cough hygiene, and regular indoor ventilation. The strongest predictors of confidence in the preventive measures and their implementation were the participants’ concern of infection and concern of infecting their loved ones, followed by gender (with higher measure adherence in women) and age (with higher measure adherence in participants under 30 and over 60 years of age). Education, settlement size, field and type of employment, household type, own medical problems, and the age and health of the participants’ loved ones had a smaller influence on the perceived importance and implementation of guidelines. Adherence to measures was positively related to the participants’ score in conscientiousness and, in lesser extent, openness. Agreeableness, energy, and emotional stability correlated positively with adherence to basic guidelines. Conclusions: Study provides information useful for developing and adapting future public health policies and interventions in Slovenia.

ADHERENCE TO COVID-19 MITIGATION MEASURES IN SLOVENIA: THE ROLE OF SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC AND PERSONALITY FACTORS

Everyone has heard about doctors and nurses catching Covid-19 but some of the worst affected hospital staff have been cleaners and porters. Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary tells the story of a cleaner who became ill, and is now stricken with guilt for taking the virus home

Coronavirus doctor's diary: Karen caught Covid - and took it home

The infamous retracted Hydroxychloroquire Lancet article? Cited.... 883 TIMES

Governor of Amazonas says situation critical as alarming details emerge about breakdown of health system in state capital Manaus

Covid eruption in Brazil's largest state leaves health workers begging for help

Lord Sumption tells cancer campaigner her life is 'less valuable' https://dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-2334660/Video-Lord-Sumption-tells-cancer-sufferer-life-valuable.html… via @MailOnline 4/4

Have I got this wrong? Is U.K. law different? How could a senior judge assert this? all insight welcome. 3/4

I have always understood the premise that all lives are of equal value to be a defining feature of Western democracy. Enshrined e.g., in Art 1 of the German constitution. Conversely, I've taken it to be a defining feature of fascism that this premise is rejected. 2/4

Calling lawyers, historians, and political scientists. A thread on the value of life. I'm still stunned by Lord Sumption, ex-judge on UK's Supreme Court, now anti-lockdown campaigner, publicly stating that the life of a woman with stage 4 bowel cancer was "less valuable" 1/4

10.31234/osf.io/8nraq

Background: The fundamental challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic may have lasting negative effects on the quality of mental health worldwide. Resilience is considered an important protective factor in reducing the risk of psychopathology in the face of various adverse events, such as the ongoing health crisis. The aims of the current study were to: (1) evaluate the predictive utility of resilience in accounting for positive and negative moods, substance use, depression and anxiety; and (2) compare negative and positive moods experienced before the pandemic to emotions reported during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria, when the country still had low prevalence of infections and fatalities. Methods: 179 Bulgarian participants completed the international online Minnesota Global Survey on Stress and Resilience in the Face of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), which included measures of resilience, depression and anxiety, substance use, positive and negative moods experienced both before and during the COVID-19 outbreak. Results: Resilience predicted higher levels of positive affect and lower anxiety, depression, and negative mood during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in Bulgaria. A significant increase was found in negative mood and a corresponding decrease in positive mood in the time since COVID-19 began spreading compared to before the pandemic. Conclusions: Results suggest that the initial wave of the COVID-19 crisis impacted individuals’ well-being, even in countries with relatively low prevalence of COVID-19 and associated fatalities. In this challenging global setting, resilience may serve as a buffer against negative emotional states and psychological distress.

Resilience, mood, and mental health outcomes during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria