scholarly journals Challenges in control of COVID-19: short doubling time and long delay to effect of interventions

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1829) ◽  
pp. 20200264
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Pellis ◽  
Francesca Scarabel ◽  
Helena B. Stage ◽  
Christopher E. Overton ◽  
Lauren H. K. Chappell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Limited Data ◽  
Outbreak Response ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Reproduction Numbers ◽  
The Media ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Short Doubling Time

Early assessments of the growth rate of COVID-19 were subject to significant uncertainty, as expected with limited data and difficulties in case ascertainment, but as cases were recorded in multiple countries, more robust inferences could be made. Using multiple countries, data streams and methods, we estimated that, when unconstrained, European COVID-19 confirmed cases doubled on average every 3 days (range 2.2–4.3 days) and Italian hospital and intensive care unit admissions every 2–3 days; values that are significantly lower than the 5–7 days dominating the early published literature. Furthermore, we showed that the impact of physical distancing interventions was typically not seen until at least 9 days after implementation, during which time confirmed cases could grow eightfold. We argue that such temporal patterns are more critical than precise estimates of the time-insensitive basic reproduction number R 0 for initiating interventions, and that the combination of fast growth and long detection delays explains the struggle in countries' outbreak response better than large values of R 0 alone. One year on from first reporting these results, reproduction numbers continue to dominate the media and public discourse, but robust estimates of unconstrained growth remain essential for planning worst-case scenarios, and detection delays are still key in informing the relaxation and re-implementation of interventions. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Modelling that shaped the early COVID-19 pandemic response in the UK’.

scholarly journals Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement: Effects on Finance, Policy and Public Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Bergman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
Finance Industry ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

The fossil fuel divestment movement campaigns for removing investments from fossil fuel companies as a strategy to combat climate change. It is a bottom-up movement, largely based in university student groups, although it has rapidly spread to other institutions. Divestment has been criticised for its naiveté and hard-line stance and dismissed as having little impact on fossil fuel finance. I analyse the impact of divestment through reviewing academic and grey literature, complemented by interviews with activists and financial actors, using a theoretical framework that draws on social movement theory. While the direct impacts of divestment are small, the indirect impacts, in terms of public discourse shift, are significant. Divestment has put questions of finance and climate change on the agenda and played a part in changing discourse around the legitimacy, reputation and viability of the fossil fuel industry. This cultural impact contributed to changes in the finance industry through new demands by shareholders and investors and to changes in political discourse, such as rethinking the notion of ‘fiduciary duty.’ Finally, divestment had significant impact on its participants in terms of empowerment and played a part in the revitalisation of the environmental movement in the UK and elsewhere.

scholarly journals 1628 Vaccination for Safe Surgery During The SARS-Cov-2 Pandemic: Modelling Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Elective Surgery ◽  
Risk Difference ◽  
Cancer Surgery ◽  
Number Needed To Treat ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Registration Data ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Introduction Compared to the general population, in the postoperative period, surgical patients are both at increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and increased mortality in the event of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This study modelled the impact of preoperative vaccination of patients aged ≥70 years having elective inpatient surgery. Method The primary outcome was the number needed to treat (NNT) to prevent one death over one year following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. Postoperative SARS-CoV-2 incidence and adjusted mortality risk difference for SARS-CoV-2 infection were estimated from the prospective GlobalSurg-CovidSurg Week study (90,146 elective surgery patients across 1,595 hospitals in 115 countries), were used to estimate lives saved by vaccination in the first 30 postoperative days. SARS-CoV-2 case and death registration data from the Office for National Statistics was used to estimate NNTs for the general population. Best and worst-case scenarios were used to describe uncertainty around estimates. Results Among patients aged ≥70 years undergoing any type of surgery, NNT was estimated to be 332 (best case: 213; worst case: 690). NNT was lower in the cancer surgery subgroup (245 [150-545]). This was more favourable than the NNT for vaccination of the general population aged ≥70 (588 [403-1032]). Globally, vaccinating elective surgery patients aged ≥70 years preoperatively was projected to save 27,356 lives in one year compared to vaccinating the same patients after surgery. Conclusions Preoperative pathways should be set up for the vaccination of patients aged ≥70. In settings with limited vaccine availability, elective cancer surgery patients should be prioritised for vaccination.

scholarly journals Defending the media from itself: Reforming media regulations to minimise the impact of misinformation

European View ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-219
Author(s):  
Juha-Pekka Nurvala ◽  
Amelia Buckell
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Behavioural Changes ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that media regulations on correcting incorrect articles are in dire need of reform due to technological and behavioural changes. By using case studies from the UK, the authors demonstrate the huge difference between the number of people who were reached by the original article before the Independent Press Standards Organisation (the regulator in the UK) ruled it incorrect and the number reached by the correction or corrected article. The authors argue that media regulations must be reformed to ensure that corrections reach the same people as the original incorrect article to avoid misinformation impacting peoples’ decision-making, and that reforms must include social media platforms and search engines.

scholarly journals Saints and Slackers: Challenging Discourses about the Decline of Domestic Cooking

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Meah ◽  
Matt Watson
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Food Hygiene ◽  
Cooking Skills ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Food Borne ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Life Course

Amidst growing concern about both nutrition and food safety, anxiety about a loss of everyday cooking skills is a common part of public discourse. Within both the media and academia, it is widely perceived that there has been an erosion of the skills held by previous generations with the development of convenience foods and kitchen technologies cited as culpable in ‘deskilling’ current and future generations. These discourses are paralleled in policy concerns, where the incidence of indigenous food-borne disease in the UK has led to the emergence of an understanding of consumer behaviour, within the food industry and among food scientists, based on assumptions about consumer ‘ignorance’ and poor food hygiene knowledge and cooking skills. These assumptions are accompanied by perceptions of a loss of ‘common-sense’ understandings about the spoilage and storage characteristics of food, supposedly characteristic of earlier generations. The complexity of cooking skills immediately invites closer attention to discourses of their assumed decline. This paper draws upon early findings from a current qualitative research project which focuses on patterns of continuity and change in families’ domestic kitchen practices across three generations. Drawing mainly upon two family case studies, the data presented problematise assumptions that earlier generations were paragons of virtue in the context of both food hygiene and cooking. In taking a broader, life-course perspective, we highlight the absence of linearity in participants’ engagement with cooking as they move between different transitional points throughout the life-course.

Lithological controls on soil formation rates and the implications for soil sustainability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Evans ◽  
John Quinton ◽  
Andrew Tye ◽  
Angel Rodes ◽  
Jessica Davies ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Erosion ◽  
Soil Formation ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Radionuclide Analysis ◽  
Rock Types ◽  
Soil Sustainability ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cosmogenic Radionuclide

<p>Soils deliver multiple ecosystem services and their long-term sustainability is fundamentally determined by the rates at which they form and erode. Our knowledge and understanding of soil formation is not commensurate with that of soil erosion, but developments in cosmogenic radionuclide analysis have enabled soil scientists to more accurately constrain the rates at which soils form from bedrock. To date, all three major rock types – igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic lithologies – have been examined in such work. Soil formation rates have been measured and compared between these rock types but the impact of rock characteristics such as mineralogy or porosity on soil formation rates has seldom been explored. In this UK-based study, we addressed this knowledge gap by using cosmogenic radionuclide analysis to investigate whether the lithological variability of sandstone governs pedogenesis. Soil formation rates from two arable hillslopes underlain by different types of arenite sandstone were calculated. Rates ranged from 0.090 to 0.193 mm yr<sup>-1</sup> and although the sandstones differed in porosity, no significant differences in soil formation rates were found between them. On the contrary, these rates significantly differed from those measured at two other sandstone-based sites in the UK, and with the rates compiled in global inventory of cosmogenic studies on sandstone-based soils. We suggest that this is due to the absence of matrix and the greater porosities exhibited at our UK sites in comparison to the matrix-abundant, less porous wackes that have been studied previously. We then used soil formation rates to calculate first-order soil lifespans for both of our hillslopes. In a worst case scenario, the lifespan of the A horizon at one of our sites could be eroded in less than 40 years, with bedrock exposure occurring in less than 190 years.  This underlines the urgency required in ameliorating rates of soil erosion. However, we also demonstrate the importance of measuring soil erosion and formation in parallel, at the site of interest, rather than calculating a mean rate from the literature, as we demonstrate soil formation rates can vary significantly among variants of the same rock type.</p><p> </p>

Suicide by burning as an epidemic phenomenon: an analysis of 82 deaths and inquests in England and Wales in 1978–9

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 735-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Ashton ◽  
Stuart Donnan
Keyword(s):  
Index Case ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Death Certificates ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Code Of Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media ◽  
One Year ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk

SynopsisAn epidemic of suicide by burning in England and Wales occurred during the one-year period October 1978 to October 1979, following a widely publicized political suicide. For the 82 cases, death certificates were obtained and coroners' inquest reports sought. The victims were predominantly young single men or older married women; both groups had strong psychiatric histories; and there were no suicides which had political overtones, apart from the index case. Compared with suicides by this method in the past, a higher proportion of victims were born in the UK. It is proposed that a code of practice for the reporting of suicides by the media is required.

scholarly journals Freedom of Expression in the UK and Protection of Privacy in Human Rights: Princess Diana’s Case as an Example

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 192-203
Author(s):  
Araz Ramazan Ahmad ◽  
Nazakat Hussein Hamasaeed ◽  
Muhammad Saud
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Media Law ◽  
Content Analysis Method ◽  
Right Of Privacy ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Right Of Privacy ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact

This paper mainly aims to argue the research questions “what is the right of privacy?, how the article 8 protected privacy in Act 1998 and to deliberate the case of princes Diana Between the freedom of expression and protect the privacy?. Hence, to discourse the impact of the media Law in dealing  with freedom of expression and the right of privacy.  This paper will argues the concept of the Freedom of expression which is one of the most fundamental aspect of the individuals rights that enjoy in everyday life. It is fundamental to the existence of democracy and the respect of human dignity in the community. On the other hand, the paper will explore the impact on media law and some examples of rich figure, media celebrity and famous, which they complaining of the media invasion of privacy will be explained, and then how the Court treated with Princess Diana’s case in the viewpoint of privacy and freedom of excretion concepts. The paper mainly depends on the content analysis method for analysing legal documentation of the articles related to the freedom of expression, also it depends on the case-study method for its sample which is Princess Diana’s case.

scholarly journals The Effectiveness of E-Recruitment Method Through Social Media (Case Study at Pt Es Teh Tndonesia Makmur - West Java)

2021 ◽  
Vol 317 ◽  
pp. 05012
Author(s):  
Jazimatul Husna ◽  
Salsabila Sadiqin ◽  
Yahya Muhaimin ◽  
Fitriyana ◽  
Roisatul Wahdiyah
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Job Applicants ◽  
Recruitment Process ◽  
Recruitment Method ◽  
Recruitment Methods ◽  
The Media ◽  
Recruitment System ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Impact

Several companies have reduced mass recovery efforts and in-person discussions for the Covid-19 pandemic password, one of which is PT Es Teh Indonesia Makmur. This study aims to: (1) Know the media for posting jobs and the application of the recruitment process through social media, including the stages and qualifications and competencies required at PT Es Teh Indonesia Makmur (2) Knowing the effectiveness of recruitment methods through social media to reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic era and explains the comparison of the E-Recruitment method with the offline recruitment method at PT Es Teh Indonesia Makmur. The effectiveness of the Recruitment Method through social media by studying library data and observations shows that the electronic recruitment system for the workforce is suitable to be used to facilitate and improve human resource management in the Covid-19 Pandemic era. An increase in competent job applicants supports this, and PT Es Teh Indonesia Makmur is known to all circles to open job vacancies for more than 150 outlets in less than one year.

scholarly journals Constructing Women’s Leadership Representation in the UK Press During a Time of Financial Crisis: Gender capitals and dialectical tensions

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Elliott ◽  
Valerie Stead
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
The Media ◽  
Underrepresentation Of Women ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Gender Capital

A continuing challenge for organizations is the persistent underrepresentation of women in senior roles, which gained a particular prominence during the global financial crisis (GFC). The GFC has raised questions regarding the forms of leadership that allowed the crisis to happen and alternative proposals regarding how future crises might be avoided. Within this context women’s leadership has been positioned as an ethical alternative to styles of masculinist leadership that led to the crisis in the first place. Through a multimodal discursive analysis this article examines the socio-cultural assumptions sustaining the gendering of leadership in the popular press to critically analyse how women’s leadership is represented during the GFC of 2008–2012. Highlighting the media’s portrayal of women’s leadership as a gendered field of activity where different forms of gender capital come into play, we identify three sets of dialectics: women as leaders and women as feminine, women as credible leaders and women as lacking in credibility, and women as victims and women as their own worst enemies. Together, the dialectics work together to form a discursive pattern framed by a male leadership model that narrates the promise of women leaders, yet the disappointment that they are not men. Our study extends understandings regarding how female and feminine forms of gender capital operate dialectically, where the media employs feminine capital to promote women’s positioning as leaders yet also leverages female capital as a constraint. We propose that this understanding can be of value to organizations to understand the impact and influence of discourse on efforts to promote women into leadership roles.

Capturing Carbon Dioxide: The Feasibility of Re-Using Existing Pipeline Infrastructure to Transport Anthropogenic CO2

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Seevam ◽  
Julia Race ◽  
Martin Downie ◽  
Julian Barnett ◽  
Russell Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Feasibility ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Anthropogenic Co2 ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

Climate change has been attributed to green house gases, with carbon dioxide (CO2) being the main contributor. Sixty to seventy percent of carbon dioxide emissions originate from fossil fuel power plants. Power companies in the UK, along with oil and gas field operators, are proposing to capture this anthropogenic CO2 and either store it in depleted reservoirs or saline aquifers (carbon capture and storage, CCS), or use it for ‘Enhanced Oil Recovery’ (EOR) in depleting oil and gas fields. This would involve extensive onshore and offshore pipeline systems. The decline of oil and gas production of reservoirs beyond economic feasibility will require the decommissioning onshore and offshore facilities post-production. This creates a possible opportunity for using existing pipeline infrastructure. Conversions of pipelines from natural gas service to CO2 service for EOR have been done in the United States. However, the differing sources of CO2 and the differing requirements for EOR and CCS play a significant part in allowing the re-use of existing infrastructure. The effect of compositions, the phase of transportation, the original pipeline specifications, and also the pipeline route require major studies prior to allowing re-use. This paper will first review the requirements for specifying the purity of the CO2 for CCS and to highlight the implications that the presence of impurities and the current water specifications for pipelines has on the phase diagram and the associated physical properties of the CO2 stream. A ‘best’ and ‘worst’ case impurity specification will be identified. Then an analysis on the impact and subsequent validation, of equations of state based on available experimental data on the phase modelling of anthropogenic CO2 is presented. A case study involving an existing 300km gas pipeline in the National Transmission System (NTS) in the UK is then modelled, to demonstrate the feasibility of using this pipeline to transport anthropogenic CO2. The various issues involved for the selected ‘best’ and ‘worst’ case specification are also covered. This is then followed by an investigation of the options for transport in the ‘gas’ phase and ‘supercritical’ phases, and also identifying the limitations on re-using pipeline infrastructure for CCS.

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