scholarly journals Effectiveness of personal protective health behaviour against COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chon Fu Lio ◽  
Hou Hon Cheong ◽  
Chin Ion Lei ◽  
Iek Long Lo ◽  
Lan Yao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Health Behaviour ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Duration Of Protection

Abstract Background Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a pandemic, and over 80 million cases and over 1.8 million deaths were reported in 2020. This highly contagious virus is spread primarily via respiratory droplets from face-to-face contact and contaminated surfaces as well as potential aerosol spread. Over half of transmissions occur from presymptomatic and asymptomatic carriers. Although several vaccines are currently available for emergency use, there are uncertainties regarding the duration of protection and the efficacy of preventing asymptomatic spread. Thus, personal protective health behaviour and measures against COVID-19 are still widely recommended after immunization. This study aimed to clarify the efficacy of these measures, and the results may provide valuable guidance to policymakers to educate the general public about how to reduce the individual-level risk of COVID-19 infection. Methods This case-control study enrolled 24 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients from Centro Hospitalar Conde de São Januário (C.H.C.S.J.), which was the only hospital designated to manage COVID-19 patients in Macao SAR, China, and 1113 control participants who completed a 14-day mandatory quarantine in 12 designated hotels due to returning from high-risk countries between 17 March and 15 April 2020. A questionnaire was developed to extract demographic information, contact history, and personal health behaviour. Results Participants primarily came from the United Kingdom (33.2%), followed by the United States (10.5%) and Portugal (10.2%). Independent factors for COVID-19 infection were having physical contact with confirmed/suspected COVID-19 patients (adjusted OR, 12.108 [95% CI, 3.380–43.376], P < 0.005), participating in high-risk gathering activities (adjusted OR, 1.129 [95% CI, 1.048–1.216], P < 0.005), handwashing after outdoor activity (adjusted OR, 0.021 [95% CI, 0.003–0.134], P < 0.005), handwashing before touching the mouth and nose area (adjusted OR, 0.303 [95% CI, 0.114–0.808], P < 0.05), and wearing a mask whenever outdoors (adjusted OR, 0.307 [95% CI, 0.109–0.867], P < 0.05). The daily count of handwashing remained similar between groups. Only 31.6% of participants had a sufficient 20-s handwashing duration. Conclusions Participating in high-risk gatherings, wearing a mask whenever outdoors, and practising hand hygiene at key times should be advocated to the public to mitigate COVID-19 infection.

On the Issues Surrounding Economic Voting

1987 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN R. HIBBING
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Economic Voting ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Election Results ◽  
The Individual

This is an analysis of the effects of economic factors on voting behavior in the United Kingdom. Aggregate- and individual-level data are used. When the results are compared to findings generated by the United States case, some intriguing differences appear. To mention just two examples, unemployment and inflation seem to be much more important in the United Kingdom than in the United States, and changes in real per capita income are positively related to election results in the United States and negatively related in the United Kingdom. More generally, while the aggregate results are strong and the individual-level results weak in the United States, in the United Kingdom the situation is practically reversed.

scholarly journals Income-Related Health Inequalities in Korea

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byung Chul Ahn ◽  
Katrin Engelhardt ◽  
Hyojee Joung
Keyword(s):  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Household Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grouped Data ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Health And Nutrition ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Western Germany ◽  
The Individual

Data from the 2001 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the ill health concentration index (CI) were used to examine income-related health inequalities among Koreans. Participants (>19 years old) were requested to provide information regarding monthly household income, expenditures, subjective living conditions, and health status. Ill health was determined both subjectively through self-rated health (SRH) scores and objectively through the number of diseases (ND). At the individual level, the CIs for SRH and ND were -0.147 and -0.093, respectively; age—gender adjusted CIs were -0.065 and -0.071, respectively. These values remained unchanged when estimating CI for grouped data. These results indicate that ill health was more pronounced among lower income groups in Korea. However, avoidable health inequality in Korea was smaller than in the United Kingdom and the United States, larger than in Sweden, Eastern Germany, Finland, and Western Germany, and roughly equal to the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.

A Discussion of Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird’s Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-210
Author(s):  
Michael Leo Owens
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Behavioral Norm ◽  
Black Political Behavior

Charge: As Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird note, collectively more than 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats according to surveys, and no Republican presidential candidate has won more than 13% of the Black vote since 1968. This is true despite the fact that at the individual level many African Americans are increasingly politically moderate and even conservative. Against this backdrop, what explains the enduring nature of African American support for the Democratic Party? In Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, White and Laird answer this question by developing the concept of “racialized social constraint,” a unifying behavioral norm meant to empower African Americans as a group and developed through a shared history of struggle against oppression and for freedom and equality. White and Laird consider the historical development of this norm, how it is enforced, and its efficacy both in creating party loyalty and as a path to Black political power in the United States. On the cusp of perhaps the most consequential presidential election in American history, one for which African American turnout was crucial, we asked a range of leading political scientists to assess the relative strengths, weaknesses, and ramifications of this argument.

scholarly journals Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerardo Chowell ◽  
Sushma Dahal ◽  
Raquel Bono ◽  
Kenji Mizumoto
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Contact Network ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Testing Strategies ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

AbstractTo ensure the safe operation of schools, workplaces, nursing homes, and other businesses during COVID-19 pandemic there is an urgent need to develop cost-effective public health strategies. Here we focus on the cruise industry which was hit early by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 40 cruise ships reporting COVID-19 infections. We apply mathematical modeling to assess the impact of testing strategies together with social distancing protocols on the spread of the novel coronavirus during ocean cruises using an individual-level stochastic model of the transmission dynamics of COVID-19. We model the contact network, the potential importation of cases arising during shore excursions, the temporal course of infectivity at the individual level, the effects of social distancing strategies, different testing scenarios characterized by the test’s sensitivity profile, and testing frequency. Our findings indicate that PCR testing at embarkation and daily testing of all individuals aboard, together with increased social distancing and other public health measures, should allow for rapid detection and isolation of COVID-19 infections and dramatically reducing the probability of onboard COVID-19 community spread. In contrast, relying only on PCR testing at embarkation would not be sufficient to avert outbreaks, even when implementing substantial levels of social distancing measures.

Waking Up in the Poll Booth

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-910
Author(s):  
Robert E. Goodin ◽  
James Mahmud Rice
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Panel Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Waking Up

Judging from Gallup Polls in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, opinion often changes during an election campaign. Come election day itself, however, opinion often reverts back nearer to where it was before the campaign began. That that happens even in Australia, where voting is compulsory and turnout is near-universal, suggests that differential turnout among those who have and have not been influenced by the campaign is not the whole story. Inspection of individual-level panel data from 1987 and 2005 British General Elections confirms that between 3 and 5 percent of voters switch voting intentions during the campaign, only to switch back toward their original intentions on election day. One explanation, we suggest, is that people become more responsible when stepping into the poll booth: when voting they reflect back on the government's whole time in office, rather than just responding (as when talking to pollsters) to the noise of the past few days' campaigning. Inspection of Gallup Polls for UK snap elections suggests that this effect is even stronger in elections that were in that sense unanticipated.

Canada’s changing innovation landscape

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Razib Alam ◽  
Bonwoo Koo ◽  
Brian Paul Cozzarin
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Destination Country ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Patent Classification ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Our objective is to study Canada’s patenting activity over time in aggregate terms by destination country, by assignee and destination country, and by diversification by country of destination. We collect bibliographic patent data from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We identify 19,957 matched Canada–US patents, 34,032 Canada-only patents, and 43,656 US-only patents from 1980 to 2014. Telecommunications dominates in terms of International Patent Classification technologies for US-only and Canada–US patents. At the firm level, the greatest number of matched Canada–US patents were granted in the field of telecommunications, at the university level in pharmaceuticals, at the government level in control and instrumentation technology, and at the individual level in civil engineering. We use entropy to quantify technological diversification and find that diversification indices decline over time for Canada and the USA; however, all US indices decline at a faster rate.

scholarly journals Two Grand Old Ladies Face to Face: The United Kingdom and the United States of America Constitutions Compared

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Patrono ◽  
Justin O Frosini
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty

This article discusses the Constitution of the United Kingdom and then draws some comparisons between it and the Constitution of the United States of America. It touches on issues such as how the United Kingdom's commitment to parliamentary sovereignty has been affected by the country's relationship with the European Union.

scholarly journals THE ECO-SOCIO-ECONOMIC LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD COUNTRIES – A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT PROPOSAL

2020 ◽  
Vol XXII (3) ◽  
pp. 86-96
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Gromada ◽  
Marcin Wysokiński ◽  
Magdalena Golonko ◽  
Paulina Trębska
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
South American ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Social And Economic Development ◽  
Socio Economic Development ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
The Individual

The main purpose of the article was to assess the eco-socio-economic development of world countries. For this purpose, the Comprehensive Eco-Socio-Economic Development Index (CESEDI) was proposed and used. The proposed measure is based on a dozen or so indicators recognized and used in the literature for assessing countries in terms of their social, economic and environmental achievements. An attempt was made to include most of the elements necessary for the safe, healthy and happy life of citizens of the studied countries. The article presents world leaders, based on the CESEDI. Moreover, the individual components of the CESEDI and their level in the analyzed countries are presented. It was found, inter alia, that 18 out of 20 countries with the highest CESEDI are European countries. The ranking leaders were highly developed Scandinavian countries (Norway, Denmark, Finland) and Switzerland. The countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania) took high positions in the ranking, ahead of such countries as Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States. Research results indicate that European and South American countries are, on average, more developed in terms of ecological, social and economic development than countries in the rest of the world.

The Power of Polls?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Roy ◽  
Shane P. Singh ◽  
Patrick Fournier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
The United States ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Public opinion polls have become increasingly prominent during elections, but how they affect voting behaviour remains uncertain. In this work, we estimate the effects of poll exposure using an experimental design in which we randomly assign the availability of polls to participants in simulated election campaigns. We draw upon results from ten independent experiments conducted across six countries on four continents (Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) to examine how polls affect the amount of information individuals seek and the votes that they cast. We further assess how poll effects differ according to individual-level factors, such as partisanship and political sophistication, and the content included in polls and how it is presented. Our work provides a comprehensive assessment of the power of polls and the implications for poll reporting in contemporary elections.

Cardiovascular risk estimation at the individual level

ESC CardioMed ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 846-863
Author(s):  
Yvo M. Smulders ◽  
Marie-Therese Cooney ◽  
Ian Graham
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Cardiovascular Risk ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Risk Estimation ◽  
Pharmacological Therapy ◽  
Cardiovascular Risks ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Very High ◽  
Cardiovascular Risk Estimation

The absolute benefit of any measure to prevent cardiovascular disease, be it lifestyle improvement or pharmacological therapy, depends on the baseline cardiovascular risk. This risk cannot be assessed exactly, but only be estimated because many known risk determinants cannot be accounted for in existing risk scoring systems, and because the application to an individual of risk estimates derived from populations is imprecise. Several cardiovascular risk estimation methods are available, and the European Society of Cardiology has favoured the European-based Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) system as a basis for their cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines. SCORE estimates absolute 10-year cardiovascular mortality risk. In specific circumstances, estimation of relative risk, risk age, or lifetime risk may be considered. High- and very-high-risk population are defined by SCORE risks greater than 5% and greater than 10%, respectively, or by clinical conditions conferring (very) high risk, such as existing cardiovascular disease or chronic kidney disease. The role of additional risk information on top of the information entered in SCORE is generally limited. In particular, markers of early cardiovascular damage should be collected and interpreted with caution. Absolute cardiovascular risks in young and elderly individuals are almost always low or very high, respectively, and the options for appropriate interpretation and management of these risks are discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document