In response to COVID-19, dramatic safer-​at-home policies were im­ple­mented. The un­der­stand­ing of their impacts on social dis­tanc­ing, travel and pollution is in its infancy. We pair a differences-​in-differences framework and synthetic control methods with rich cellular tracking and high frequency air pollution data. We find that state and U.S. county safer-​at-home policies are suc­cess­ful in en­cour­ag­ing social distance; beginning the day of the policy trips outside the home are sharply decreased while time in residence rises sharply. With less vehicle traffic, we find: a 50% reduction in vehicular col­li­sions; an ap­prox­i­mately 25% reduction in Par­tic­u­late Matter (PM2.5) con­cen­tra­tions; and a reduction of the incidence of county-​days with an air quality index of code yellow or above by two-​thirds. We calculate that the benefits from avoided car col­li­sions could range from $7 billion to $24 billion while the benefits from reduced pollution could range from $650 million to $13.8 billion.

On the Effects of COVID-19 Safer-​At-Home Policies on Social Dis­tanc­ing, Car Crashes and Pollution

Ag­gres­sive behavior against out-group members often rises during periods of economic hardship and health pandemics. Here, we test the wide­spread concern that the Covid-19 crisis may fuel hostility against people from other nations or ethnic mi­nori­ties. Using a con­trolled money-​burning task, we elicited hostile behavior among a na­tion­ally rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample (n=2,186) in the Czech Republic, at a time when the entire pop­u­la­tion was under lockdown. We provide causal evidence that ex­oge­nously elevating salience of the Covid-19 crisis magnifies hostility against for­eign­ers. This be­hav­ioral response is similar across various de­mo­graphic sub-​groups. The results un­der­score the im­por­tance of not inflaming anti-​foreigner sen­ti­ments and suggest that efforts to restore in­ter­na­tional trade and co­op­er­a­tion will need to address both social and economic damage.

COVID-19 Crisis Fuels Hostility against For­eign­ers

Six-​Country Survey on COVID-19

This paper presents a new data set collected on rep­re­sen­ta­tive samples across 6 countries: China, South Korea, Japan, Italy, the UK and the four largest states in the US. The in­for­ma­tion collected relates to work and living sit­u­a­tions, income, behavior (such as social-​distancing, hand-​washing and wearing a face mask), beliefs about the Covid 19 pandemic and exposure to the virus, socio-​demographic char­ac­ter­is­tics and pre-​pandemic health char­ac­ter­is­tics. In each country, the samples are na­tion­ally rep­re­sen­ta­tive along three di­men­sions: age, gender, and household income, and in the US, it is also rep­re­sen­ta­tive for race. The data were collected in the third week of April 2020. The data set could be used for multiple purposes, including cal­i­brat­ing certain pa­ra­me­ters used in economic and epi­demi­o­log­i­cal models, or for doc­u­ment­ing the impact of the crisis on in­di­vid­u­als, both in financial and psy­cho­log­i­cal terms, and for un­der­stand­ing the scope for policy in­ter­ven­tion by doc­u­ment­ing how people have adjusted their behavior as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and their per­cep­tions regarding the measures im­ple­mented in their countries. The data is publicly available.

Coronavirus remains top global concern in May, according to a monthly Ipsos poll. But unemployment takes the place of COVID-19 as the chief worry in six countries. Concern about joblessness spikes to five-year high.

Unemployment worries spike around the world as coronavirus remains top global concern

“Waste warriors” need immediate protection during the COVID-19 crisis. And a longer-term plan to formalize the sector must get underway. The post-COVID world offers an opportunity to add value to our economies and planet through comprehensive waste management approaches – all of which start with the people who work (often informally) in the sector.

COVID-19 is a threat to waste pickers. Here's how to help them

10.31234/osf.io/3ywkc

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been stuck indoors with their partners for months. Having a supportive partner is likely to be especially important during this time where access to outside sources of support is limited. Individuals have to continue to work on goals and tasks while dealing with demands caused by the pandemic. The present mixed-methods study aimed to investigate how partner support is associated with goal outcomes during COVID-19. The quantitative participants (n = 200) completed a daily diary for a week and weekly longitudinal reports for a month and 48 participants attended a semi-structured interview. The quantitative results showed that higher relational catalyst support was associated with better goal outcomes; qualitative analyses revealed partners use direct and indirect forms of emotional and instrumental support toward goal pursuit. Across both forms of data, participants’ resilience in the face of the pandemic was evident.

Partner Support and Goal Outcomes during COVID-19: A Mixed Methods Study

Patients will face much longer waits for procedures as hospitals operate at a predicted 40% of capacity

It'll take four years for NHS to recover from Covid-19, health chiefs warn

Tens of thousands flock to beaches and illegal street parties after restrictions eased, causing chaotic scenes

Ministers ignored police chiefs' warning over risks of lifting lockdown in England

Survey shows people want to continue with more fulfilling and family-friendly work environments

Only 13% of UK working parents want to go back to ‘the old normal’

A doctor describes her experience of working in the test and trace service

Test and trace: it didn’t have to be this way

RT @subatomicdoc: Amazing what a difference four weeks makes since Memorial Day Weekend in #COVID19 New cases/day by U.S. region, adjusted…

https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30264-3

The risk of severe COVID-19 if an individual becomes infected is known to be higher in older individuals and those with underlying health conditions. Understanding the number of individuals at increased risk of severe COVID-19 and how this varies between countries should inform the design of possible strategies to shield or vaccinate those at highest risk.

Global, regional, and national estimates of the population at increased risk of severe COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions in 2020: a modelling study

UNESCO has produced a report on the  COVID-19 Educational Disruption and Response. The main points are:‘Most governments around the world have temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.’‘These nationwide closures are impacting almost 70% of the world’s student population.’ That’s 1,214,075,186 affected learners.More than 190 countries have closed schools for over two months  – 90% of the world’s student population. School closures occurred rapidly, however, when it comes to their reopening, many countries are undecided on when, and how, and with a considerable degree of uncertainty on the way forward. According to UNESCO: ‘100 countries have not yet announced a date for schools to reopen, 65 have plans for partial or full reopening, while 32 will end the academic year online.’<img class="size-full wp-image-17649 aligncenter" src="https://www.cebm.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Schools.jpg" alt="" width="590" height="436" srcset="https://www.cebm.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Schools.jpg 590w, https://www.cebm.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Schools-300x222.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px" />In a pandemic, the proportion of deaths among the young should increase, but this has not been the case.  A review of 72,314 cases in China showed less than 1% were in children younger than 10. Out of 16,749 hospital admissions in the UK, only 239 patients (2.0%) were under 18 years and 139 patients (1.1%) were under 5 years old. In Italy, three deaths have been recorded in the age group 0- to 19 years. In under 45-year olds, ONS data in England and Wales reveals that 384 (1.2%) deaths have occurred out of 33,365 COVID cases with   only two deaths in under 14-year-olds.From March to mid-April this year, nine students and nine staff from 15 New South Wales Schools in Australia had confirmed COVID-19.  735 students and 128 staff were in close contacts – no teacher or staff contracted COVID-19 and only one primary and one high school child may have contracted COVID-19.A French study that identified secondary cases linked to the index case reported  that one symptomatic child, visited three different schools but did not transmit the disease despite close interactions.The risks of COVID transmission in children are low. Going forward, we will badly need their future knowledge. Children’s education and their wellbeing is –  and should be – a priority. Prolonged lockdown of schools penalises an entire global cohort. It incentivises excessive reliance on electronic means of communication and a sedentary lifestyle.  

COVID-19: Have we forgotten our children in all this?

How to bootstrap confidence intervals of regression coefficients in JASP. #stats #openSource

But if we look at fraction of tests that are positive we see a very strong signal in which ages 0 to 17 are nearly flat through time while 50 and over show a strong decrease in test positivity from April to June going from over 25% to 4-5% who test positive. 7/10

t's difficult to quantify this, but it looks like infections may have declined more in vulnerable older individuals. This is possibly contributing to declining daily deaths. Though it's also possible that improvements to clinical care have lead to better patient outcomes. 8/10

Here, I downloaded COVIDView data and slightly prettified their plots. If we look at testing in commercial labs, we see that across confirmed cases, there are slightly more cases in the 0 to 49 year demographic than there were in April. 6/10

In the past 7 weeks, daily confirmed cases have decreased to ~80% of their April 30 value, while daily deaths have decreased to ~35% of their April 30 value. Figure from @nytimes. 2/10

A small follow up to the "long plateau" assessment of the #COVID19 epidemic. When I tweeted this on April 30, we had ~30k daily confirmed cases and ~2000 daily deaths. This last week, we had ~24k daily confirmed cases and ~700 daily deaths. 1/10

10.31234/osf.io/h4p9e

The impact factor has been criticized on several fronts, including that the distribution of citations to journal articles is heavily skewed. We nuance these critiques and show that the number of citations an article receives is significantly predicted by journal impact factor. Thus, impact factor can be used as a reasonably good proxy of article quality.

In praise of the impact factor

A public health institute confirmed the rate was now far above what is needed to contain the outbreak over the longer term.

Coronavirus: R number jumps to 1.79 in Germany after abattoir outbreak

The rush to procure AI technologies during COVID-19 has revealed key governance gaps. Such gaps, if not addressed, could lead to a range of problems, from incorrect diagnoses to eroded public trust.

How COVID-19 revealed 3 critical AI procurement blindspots that could put lives at risk

10.1038/d41586-020-01839-y

Richard Horton skewers leaders in two of the richest, most powerful and scientifically advanced countries for getting it so wrong.

Scathing COVID-19 book from Lancet editor — rushed but useful

Numbers speak louder than words. What's the UK overall objective & which model to adopt? To be like Sweden (relaxed approach), like Germany (full control of the virus), or like NZ (eliminate it). Thanks for great website @Ian_Campbell_ https://iancampbell.co.uk/covid-19.php

RT @AmanpourCoPBS: "Spending in the U.S. as measured by credit cards has fallen by about 30 percent...which, just to be clear, is the bigge…

10.1257/aer.20151193

201511932855Virtual Classrooms: How Online College Courses Affect Student Success†

Online college courses are a rapidly expanding feature of higher education, yet little research identifies their effects relative to tradi-tional in-person classes. Using an instrumental variables approach,we find that taking a course online, instead of in-person, reduces stu-dent success and progress in college. Grades are lower both for the course taken online and in future courses. Students are less likely to remain enrolled at the university. These estimates are local average treatment effects for students with access to both online and in-per-son options; for other students, online classes may be the only option for accessing college-level courses.

RT @AlistairHaimes: @d_spiegel ONS have now published 5-year averages by place of death, helps to put the numbers in context https://t.co/Y…

ACM Collective Intelligence 2020​June 18, 2020

1/4 Here are animated GIFs on #COVID cases per 100k in by county type. Although #urban has a larger share of cases nationally, when you look at individual states, trends change. #Thread

The last few months have convinced me of something: that MANY scientists are worryingly naive about the spread / consequences of their work. They misunderstand their own authority, and blunder into public life enormous and confused, like elephants who can't find their car keys.

From a behavioural angle, I would be asking how plausible is it for people to actually follow the rule even if we all want to. Psychophysics probably can shed some light on this—how good are people at perceiving how far things are away from themselves? (Research similar to this one may be relevant to understanding whether people over- or under-estimate how far they are keeping.)I also imagine that actually, people's perception of distance would be different depending on whether they are indoors or outdoors (and possibly more contextual factors—I think the gaze perception literature has much to offer here, especially those who may have tested this extensively for the purpose of virtual reality research!)

Scibeh’s first Policy Problem Challenge: Relaxing the 2 m social distancing rule.

We use the synthetic control method to analyze the effect of face masks on the spread of Covid-19 in Germany. Our identification approach exploits regional variation in the point in time when face masks became compulsory. Depending on the region we analyse, we find that face masks reduced the cumulative number of registered Covid-19 cases between 2.3% and 13% over a period of 10 days after they became compulsory. Assessing the credibility of the various estimates, we conclude that face masks reduce the daily growth rate of reported infections by around 40%.

Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach

No appeasement of bad faith actors

A dysfunctional political, media and educational system is a big part of the COVID problems in the UK, USA and Brazil. Unfortunately that is a part that science cannot change by itself.

News of the city’s death has been greatly exaggerated. Instead, it might be about to get a lot younger.

Coronavirus won’t be the end of big cities

10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30440-0

To make clinical and biological observations within a timeframe that is likely to benefit patients during disease outbreaks, coordination of global research must match the speed of spread of novel pathogens. Time is short. Circumstances call for international collaboration to understand, treat, and prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Global outbreak research: harmony not hegemony

10.1126/scitranslmed.abc1931

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the need for different types of diagnostics, comparative validation of new tests, faster approval by federal agencies, and rapid production of test kits to meet global demands. In this Perspective, we discuss the utility and challenges of current diagnostics for COVID-19.

COVID-19 diagnostics in context

Yesterday saw by far the highest ever use of London @SantanderCycles and possibly highest volume of cycling ever seen in the capital. Circumstances may be exceptional, but it's significant that many will have experienced for the first time, a new way of moving through a city.

From stockpiling toilet roll to spending £3,000 on wine, supermarket workers have had to cope with a panicking public – while finding themselves unexpectedly on the frontline

'People were like animals!' How supermarket staff watched the coronavirus crisis unfold

San Francisco merchants battered by the coronavirus pandemic will soon be able to apply for free, fast-tracked permits to use portions of outdoor public spaces — sidewalks, streets, parks and plazas — for business activities. The new Shared Spaces Program represents the latest city initiative to support a gradual increase of economic activity while balancing mandates around social distancing, which remains crucial for stopping the spread of the virus until a vaccine is developed.

San Francisco plans to offer sidewalks, streets, public spaces for business activity

Control of COVID-19 requires the ability to detect asymptomatic and mild infections, that would not present to healthcare and would otherwise remain undetected through existing surveillance systems. This is important to determine the true number of infections within the general population to understand transmission, to inform control measures such as social distancing and school closures and to provide a denominator for the estimation of severity measures such as infection fatality and infection hospitalisation ratios. A number of serological collections have been established by PHE to provide an age-stratified geographically representative sample across England over time. These include samples from healthy adult blood donors, supplied by the NHS Blood and Transplant (NHS BT). Donor samples from different geographic regions (approximately 1000 samples per region) in England are tested each week. The results presented here are based on testing using the Euroimmun assay.

Research and analysis Sero-surveillance of COVID-19

Around the United States, states are easing the restrictions imposed to slow the spread of COVID-19. We asked Yale SOM’s Dr. Howard Forman if these moves are premature and what is needed for Americans to return to school and work safely.

Is It Time to Reopen?

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered every aspect of American life, from health and work to education and exercise. Over the long term, warns the American Psychological Association, the negative mental health effects of the coronavirus will be serious and long-lasting. To better understand how individuals are coping with the extreme stress of this crisis, APA has adapted its annual Stress in America poll into a monthly analysis of stressors and stress levels. Taking a monthly “pulse” to understand how individuals are processing these extreme events will help health leaders and policymakers better align advice and resources to address these evolving mental health needs. The Harris Poll conducted this survey on behalf of APA from April 24 to May 4, 2020; the online survey included 3,013 adults age 18+ who reside in the United States.

Stress in America™ 2020 Stress in the Time of COVID-19, Volume One