The Biden administration will offer $250 million in federal grants to community organizations working to combat inequities in the response to the coronavirus, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Monday.

Biden admin to allocate $250 million to help address COVID response inequities

The data science revolution is finally enabling the development of large-scale data-driven models that provide real- or near-real-time forecasts and risk analysis for infectious disease threats. These models also provide rationales and quantitative analysis to support policy making decisions and intervention plans. At the same time, the non-incremental advance of the field presents a broad range of challenges: algorithmic (multiscale constitutive equations, scalability, parallelization), real time integration of novel digital data streams (social networks, participatory platform, human mobility etc.). I will review and discuss recent results and challenges in the area, and focus on ongoing work aimed at responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Event: Alessandro Vespignani on Computational Epidemiology at the Time of COVID-19

In times of crisis, great leaders step up. So how did the class of 2020 fare?

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4728

The covid-19 yearbook: world leaders edition

Target issue: The COVID-19 crisis has seen a sea change in the adoption of openly accessible research outputs (see, for e.g., here and here). However, rapid production and sharing of new research is not without its drawbacks. As pre-prints become better cited—not just among researchers, but in the public media—there is increasing risk of spreading misinformation from unreliable work (e.g., this retracted pre-print. How do we ensure reliable research is rapidly disseminated?

Workshop hackathon: Optimising research dissemination and curation

If you think you can make your own clear-headed choice about whether Christmas gathering is safe, think twice. We judge risk partly in proportion to the amount of freedom we're given. We think, "If Christmas is allowed, it must be safe." We all do it. We are lousy risk assessors.

If that's what the Government is hearing from its scientists, HOW can it justify its policy of Covid Secret Santa?

Wow. SAGE scientist Prof Andrew Hayward on Newsnight unequivocal: "I won't be getting my family together for Christmas." Young people and old people together a recipe for disaster/snatching defeat from jaws of victory/wait till Easter and have a proper get-together. #Newsnight

Pfizer and Moderna will make billions from vaccines — luckily for us all

Should Big Pharma profit from Covid?

The USA's failure to contain COVID-19 has been spectacular from every angle. Looked at as a case of mass non-adherence to medical advice, however, it's unique in modern history. Never before have so many citizens had so much access to information and simultaneously protested public health recommendations with such full-throated denial of the medical facts.The media has covered psychological denial as a cause of non-adherence to public health recommendations for COVID-19, climate change, and other risks,1Friedman L Covid, climate, and denial.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/climate/covid-climate-and-denialDate: Oct 7, 2020Date accessed: October 13, 2020Google Scholar but public health officials have not, to date, employed the concept in a systematic way, if at all. We propose it is time that public health officials add the study and treatment of psychological denial to their toolkit for combatting medical non-adherence. To do that, we suggest a new partnership between the fields of experimental psychology, public health, and psychoanalysis—the field that first postulated defence mechanisms like denial, and still the only field that attempts to treat them.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32172-3

Psychoanalysis in combatting mass non-adherence to medical advice

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Preliminary data from a study conducted at the University of Oxford indicates that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC is effective against the P1, or Brazilian, variant, a source with knowledge of the study told Reuters on Friday.

Exclusive: Oxford study indicates AstraZeneca effective against Brazil variant, source says

One giant psychology experiment explains why many people seem like they don’t care about the deaths of the elderly.

A Failure of Empathy Led to 200,000 Deaths. It Has Deep Roots.

The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has had wide ranging impacts on societies across the globe. In the absence of a vaccine, governments have implemented a range of measures to tackle the pandemic, generally focused on reducing transmission of the virus through: isolating those with diagnosed or suspected COVID-19, increasing ‘social distancing’ (e.g. working from home, restricting non-essential travel and limiting groups gathering in public venues), and enhancing hygiene procedures (such as the wearing of face masks). Existing evidence suggest the measures could have large impacts on infection rates and, subsequently, on reducing overall mortality [1Chu D.K. Akl E.A. Duda S. et al.Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Lancet. 2020; 395: 1973-1987Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (497) Google Scholar]. However, each of these measures requires citizens to make changes to their usual behaviour, sometimes at considerable personal cost. Though some measures have the force of law, in democratic societies unwilling to exercise authoritarian power, compliance requires voluntary cooperation. Yet, ensuring high levels of compliance has been a challenge. To manage the pandemic effectively, it is vital that we understand the factors that drive compliance; especially those factors that could be modifiable.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2021.100061

Predictors of self-reported adherence to COVID-19 guidelines. A longitudinal observational study of 51,600 UK adults

A doctor who is skeptical of coronavirus vaccines and promotes the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 will be the lead witness at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday, prompting criticism from Democrats who say Republicans should not give a platform to someone who promotes conspiracy theories.

An anti-vaccine activist has been invited to testify before a Senate committee.

Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. But the surge is worst now in places where leaders neglected to keep up forceful virus containment efforts or failed to implement basic measures like mask mandates in the first place, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the University of Oxford. Using an index that tracks policy responses to the pandemic, these charts show the number of new virus cases and hospitalizations in each state relative to the state’s recent containment measures.

States That Imposed Few Restrictions Now Have the Worst Outbreaks

The New York City "Open Culture" program will offer artists of all kinds to move the stage to the street and other public spaces. It's like an open streets program for the arts.

Arts Performances Take to the Streets

I’m getting individual permission from everyone sending me pics of their food boxes in my DMs to repost them here but without identifying information because I try to be responsible with this large platform and there are ~children~ involved here. Disclaimer done, now get angry.

I’m getting individual permission from everyone sending me pics of their food boxes in my DMs to repost them here but without identifying information because I try to be responsible with this large platform and there are ~children~ involved here. Disclaimer done, now get angry.

One year ago tonight, in front of millions of loyal viewers, Fox's @SeanHannity accused the media of "scaring the living hell out of people" about the coronavirus and said "I see it, again, as like, let's bludgeon Trump with this new hoax."

The great news about RNA vaccines is that they can easily be reprogrammed. Even after we defeat covid-19, new viruses will come along. When that happens, it will take only days to code a new RNA sequence to make a vaccine to target the new threat. Tools made with RNA will enable us both to edit our genetic material and to devise easily reprogrammable vaccines.It’s been a miserable pandemic amid an annus horribilis. It’s nice that both appear to be ending with RNA — the fundamental molecule that probably spawned the existence of life on our planet a few billion years ago — giving birth to a new era of biotechnology.

I was part of a trial for Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine. It’s a miracle for genetic medicine.

Media: worst ever week for Test & Trace; they only reached 59.9% of identified contacts. But the % reached went up this week for contacts managed by local health protection teams AND for contacts not managed by them (What used to be called 'complex' and 'non-complex' cases.) How?

7-day moving average for #CovidUK deaths is now 200 deaths per day. That’s 1400 deaths in the last week. In Sep when CSA Vallance said we need to stop increase to avoid “200 deaths per day in Nov” many doubted/mocked him as a ‘scaremonger’. Deaths still rising & not in Nov yet..

The impact of a new Covid vaccine will kick in significantly over summer and life should be back to normal by next winter, one of its creators has said.Prof Ugur Sahin, BioNTech co-founder, also raised hopes the jab could halve transmission of the virus, resulting in a "dramatic reduction in cases".

Covid-19: Normal life back next winter, says vaccine creator

In 2020, the World Health Organization has characterized COVID-19, a disease caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as a pandemic. Although a few vaccines and drugs have been approved to, respectively, prevent or treat the disease, several clinical trials are still ongoing to test new vaccines or drugs to mitigate the burden of the pandemic. Few studies have shown the role of host genetics in disease prognosis and drug response highlighting the importance of diverse participation in COVID-19 clinical trials. The goal of this study is to assess public attitudes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan toward participating in COVID-19 clinical trials and to identify the factors that may influence their attitude.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.608959

Factors Influencing Participation in COVID-19 Clinical Trials: A Multi-National Study

Follow the link https://vimeo.com/474660108 to watch a recording of the recent seminar by @JohnSMcConnell, Editor of @TheLancetInfDis -- "#COVID-19: reality and misinformation"

Spanish Flu of 1918 had idiots: "Authorities shut down businesses & some people complained about having to wear masks".  Covid 2021: We have usforthem . #masksinclass

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84092-1

A recent mathematical model has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing COVID-19 transmission. The second wave of cases in Europe, in regions that were considered as COVID-19 controlled, may raise some concerns. Our objective was to assess the association between staying at home (%) and the reduction/increase in the number of deaths due to COVID-19 in several regions in the world. In this ecological study, data from www.google.com/covid19/mobility/, ourworldindata.org and covid.saude.gov.br were combined. Countries with > 100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of ≥ 67 were included. Data were preprocessed and analyzed using the difference between number of deaths/million between 2 regions and the difference between the percentage of staying at home. The analysis was performed using linear regression with special attention to residual analysis. After preprocessing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis. Only 63 (1.6%) comparisons were significant. With our results, we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34.

Stay-at-home policy is a case of exception fallacy: an internet-based ecological study