scholarly journals It's Not the Flu: Popular Perceptions of the Impact of COVID-19 in the U.S.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Niemi ◽  
Kevin M. Kniffin ◽  
John M. Doris
Keyword(s):  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Severe Disease ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Automobile Accidents ◽  
The Public ◽  
Seasonal Flu ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Testing Protocols

Messaging from U.S. authorities about COVID-19 has been widely divergent. This research aims to clarify popular perceptions of the COVID-19 threat and its effects on victims. In four studies with over 4,100 U.S. participants, we consistently found that people perceive the threat of COVID-19 to be substantially greater than that of several other causes of death to which it has recently been compared, including the seasonal flu and automobile accidents. Participants were less willing to help COVID-19 victims, who they considered riskier to help, more contaminated, and more responsible for their condition. Additionally, politics and demographic factors predicted attitudes about victims of COVID-19 above and beyond moral values; whereas attitudes about the other kinds of victims were primarily predicted by moral values. The results indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as an exceptionally severe disease threat, and despite prosocial inclinations, do not feel safe offering assistance to COVID-19 sufferers. This research has urgent applied significance: the findings are relevant to public health efforts and related marketing campaigns working to address extended damage to society and the economy from the pandemic. In particular, efforts to educate the public about the health impacts of COVID-19, encourage compliance with testing protocols and contact tracing, and support safe, prosocial decision-making and risk assessment, will all benefit from awareness of these findings. The results also suggest approaches, such as engaging people's stable values rather than their politicized perspectives on COVID-19, that may reduce stigma and promote cooperation in response to pandemic threats.

scholarly journals It’s Not the Flu: Popular perceptions of the impact of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Niemi ◽  
Kevin M Kniffin ◽  
John M. Doris
Keyword(s):  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Severe Disease ◽  
Demographic Factors ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
The Other ◽  
Automobile Accidents ◽  
Seasonal Flu ◽  
The Impact

Messaging from authorities about COVID-19 has been widely divergent. This research aims to clarify popular perceptions of the threat of COVID-19 and its effects on victims. In four studies with over 4,100 U.S. participants, we consistently found that people perceive the threat of COVID-19 to be substantially greater than that of several other causes of death to which it has recently been compared, including the seasonal flu and automobile accidents. Participants were less willing to help COVID-19 victims, who they considered riskier to help, more contaminated, and more responsible for their condition. Additionally, politics and demographic factors predicted attitudes about victims of COVID-19 above and beyond moral values; whereas attitudes about the other kinds of victims were primarily predicted by moral values. The results indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as an exceptionally severe disease threat, and despite prosocial inclinations, do not feel safe offering assistance to COVID-19 sufferers.

scholarly journals It’s Not the Flu: Popular perceptions of the impact of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Niemi ◽  
Kevin Kniffin ◽  
John M. Doris
Keyword(s):  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Severe Disease ◽  
Demographic Factors ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
The Other ◽  
Automobile Accidents ◽  
Seasonal Flu ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Messaging from authorities about COVID-19 has been widely divergent. This research aims to clarify popular perceptions of the threat of COVID-19 and its effects on victims. In four studies with over 4,100 U.S. participants, we consistently found that people perceive the threat of COVID-19 to be substantially greater than that of several other causes of death to which it has recently been compared, including the seasonal flu and automobile accidents. Participants were less willing to help COVID-19 victims, who they considered riskier to help, more contaminated, and more responsible for their condition. Additionally, politics and demographic factors predicted attitudes about victims of COVID-19 above and beyond moral values; whereas attitudes about the other kinds of victims were primarily predicted by moral values. The results indicate that people perceive COVID-19 as an exceptionally severe disease threat, and despite prosocial inclinations, do not feel safe offering assistance to COVID-19 sufferers.

scholarly journals Impact of contact tracing on COVID-19 mortality: An impact evaluation using surveillance data from Colombia

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0246987
Author(s):  
Andres I. Vecino-Ortiz ◽  
Juliana Villanueva Congote ◽  
Silvana Zapata Bedoya ◽  
Zulma M. Cucunuba
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Fixed Effects Model ◽  
Surveillance Strategy ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
The Public ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Crucial Part

Background Contact tracing is a crucial part of the public health surveillance toolkit. However, it is labor-intensive and costly to carry it out. Some countries have faced challenges implementing contact tracing, and no impact evaluations using empirical data have assessed its impact on COVID-19 mortality. This study assesses the impact of contact tracing in a middle-income country, providing data to support the expansion and optimization of contact tracing strategies to improve infection control. Methods We obtained publicly available data on all confirmed COVID-19 cases in Colombia between March 2 and June 16, 2020. (N = 54,931 cases over 135 days of observation). As suggested by WHO guidelines, we proxied contact tracing performance as the proportion of cases identified through contact tracing out of all cases identified. We calculated the daily proportion of cases identified through contact tracing across 37 geographical units (32 departments and five districts). Further, we used a sequential log-log fixed-effects model to estimate the 21-days, 28-days, 42-days, and 56-days lagged impact of the proportion of cases identified through contact tracing on daily COVID-19 mortality. Both the proportion of cases identified through contact tracing and the daily number of COVID-19 deaths are smoothed using 7-day moving averages. Models control for the prevalence of active cases, second-degree polynomials, and mobility indices. Robustness checks to include supply-side variables were performed. Results We found that a 10 percent increase in the proportion of cases identified through contact tracing is related to COVID-19 mortality reductions between 0.8% and 3.4%. Our models explain between 47%-70% of the variance in mortality. Results are robust to changes of specification and inclusion of supply-side variables. Conclusion Contact tracing is instrumental in containing infectious diseases. Its prioritization as a surveillance strategy will substantially impact reducing deaths while minimizing the impact on the fragile economic systems of lower and middle-income countries. This study provides lessons for other LMIC.

scholarly journals A modelling framework to assess the likely effectiveness of facemasks in combination with ‘lock-down’ in managing the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 476 (2238) ◽  
pp. 20200376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard O. J. H. Stutt ◽  
Renata Retkute ◽  
Michael Bradley ◽  
Christopher A. Gilligan ◽  
John Colvin
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Lower Efficiency ◽  
The Public ◽  
Molecular Tests ◽  
Modelling Framework ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Impact

COVID-19 is characterized by an infectious pre-symptomatic period, when newly infected individuals can unwittingly infect others. We are interested in what benefits facemasks could offer as a non-pharmaceutical intervention, especially in the settings where high-technology interventions, such as contact tracing using mobile apps or rapid case detection via molecular tests, are not sustainable. Here, we report the results of two mathematical models and show that facemask use by the public could make a major contribution to reducing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our intention is to provide a simple modelling framework to examine the dynamics of COVID-19 epidemics when facemasks are worn by the public, with or without imposed ‘lock-down’ periods. Our results are illustrated for a number of plausible values for parameter ranges describing epidemiological processes and mechanistic properties of facemasks, in the absence of current measurements for these values. We show that, when facemasks are used by the public all the time (not just from when symptoms first appear), the effective reproduction number, R e , can be decreased below 1, leading to the mitigation of epidemic spread. Under certain conditions, when lock-down periods are implemented in combination with 100% facemask use, there is vastly less disease spread, secondary and tertiary waves are flattened and the epidemic is brought under control. The effect occurs even when it is assumed that facemasks are only 50% effective at capturing exhaled virus inoculum with an equal or lower efficiency on inhalation. Facemask use by the public has been suggested to be ineffective because wearers may touch their faces more often, thus increasing the probability of contracting COVID-19. For completeness, our models show that facemask adoption provides population-level benefits, even in circumstances where wearers are placed at increased risk. At the time of writing, facemask use by the public has not been recommended in many countries, but a recommendation for wearing face-coverings has just been announced for Scotland. Even if facemask use began after the start of the first lock-down period, our results show that benefits could still accrue by reducing the risk of the occurrence of further COVID-19 waves. We examine the effects of different rates of facemask adoption without lock-down periods and show that, even at lower levels of adoption, benefits accrue to the facemask wearers. These analyses may explain why some countries, where adoption of facemask use by the public is around 100%, have experienced significantly lower rates of COVID-19 spread and associated deaths. We conclude that facemask use by the public, when used in combination with physical distancing or periods of lock-down, may provide an acceptable way of managing the COVID-19 pandemic and re-opening economic activity. These results are relevant to the developed as well as the developing world, where large numbers of people are resource poor, but fabrication of home-made, effective facemasks is possible. A key message from our analyses to aid the widespread adoption of facemasks would be: ‘my mask protects you, your mask protects me’.

scholarly journals Representations of Free-Living and Unrestrained Dogs as an Emerging Public Health Issue in Australian Newspapers

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 5807
Author(s):  
Chris Degeling ◽  
Julie Hall ◽  
Lily M. van Eeden ◽  
Summer M. Finlay ◽  
Suk Maya Gurung ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Free Living ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Risks ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Well Being

That dogs can live and breed as free-living animals contributes to public health risks including zoonotic transmission, dog bites, and compromising people’s sense of safety in public spaces. In Australia, free-living dog populations are comprised of domestic dogs, dingoes, and dog–dingo hybrids, and are described using various terms (for example, stray or community), depending on social or geographic context. Urban expansion and regional migration mean that risks associated with contact between humans and free-living dogs are increasing. Public health authorities, local governments, and community organisations have called for transdisciplinary partnerships to address dog-related health risks with a sustainable long-term approach. Values pluralism and a lack of sustained community engagement in affected areas have meant that the outcome of such efforts to date has been mixed. To identify ideas in public circulation about the impact of unrestrained and free-living dogs on human health and well-being, and understand the framework through which these animals are problematised and solutions are proposed in public discourse, we systematically examined coverage of these issues in print media. Our analyses indicate that reporting in Australian newspapers tends to frame the public health impacts of free-living dogs as problems of public order requiring direct government action to re-establish control. The public health impacts of free-living dog populations in Australia have complex causes that intersect at the nexus between human and canine behaviour, agricultural and land management practices, local bylaws, and efforts to conserve ecological systems. Placing responsibility on governments limits opportunities for greater community involvement in developing integrated One Health approaches. Better-quality evidence of the impacts of dog populations on community health and well-being, and broad community support are needed to reshape public debates on animal control, which, ultimately, will promote more effective approaches to mitigate dog-related public health risks at the human–animal–environment interface.

scholarly journals The impact of digital contact tracing on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic - a comprehensive modelling study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina R Pollmann ◽  
Julia Pollmann ◽  
Christoph Wiesinger ◽  
Christian Haack ◽  
Lolian Shtembari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Monte Carlo ◽  
Stochastic Models ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Reproductive Number ◽  
Random Testing ◽  
Deterministic Models ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Testing Protocols

Contact tracing is one of several strategies employed in many countries to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Digital contact tracing (DCT) uses tools such as cell-phone applications to improve tracing speed and reach. We model the impact of DCT on the spread of the virus for a large epidemiological parameter space consistent with current literature on SARS-CoV-2. We also model DCT in combination with random testing (RT) and social distancing (SD). Modelling is done with two independently developed individual-based (stochastic) models that use the Monte Carlo technique, benchmarked against each other and against two types of deterministic models. For current best estimates of the number of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers (approximately 40\%), their contagiousness (similar to that of symptomatic carriers), the reproductive number before interventions (R0 at least 3) we find that DCT must be combined with other interventions such as SD and/or RT to push the reproductive number below one. At least 60\% of the population would have to use the DCT system for its effect to become significant. On its own, DCT cannot bring the reproductive number below 1 unless nearly the entire population uses the DCT system and follows quarantining and testing protocols strictly. For lower uptake of the DCT system, DCT still reduces the number of people that become infected. When DCT is deployed in a population with an ongoing outbreak where O(0.1\%) of the population have already been infected, the gains of the DCT intervention come at the cost of requiring up to 15% of the population to be quarantined (in response to being traced) on average each day for the duration of the epidemic, even when there is sufficient testing capability to test every traced person.

scholarly journals Massive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Testing on Rural Communities in Manabi Province (Ecuador) Reveals Severe COVID-19 Outbreaks

2021 ◽  
Vol 104 (4) ◽  
pp. 1493-1494
Author(s):  
Esteban Ortiz-Prado ◽  
Aquiles R. Henriquez-Trujillo ◽  
Ismar A. Rivera-Olivero ◽  
Byron Freire-Paspuel ◽  
Alexander Paolo Vallejo-Janeta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Rt Pcr ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Infrastructure ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Public Health Authorities ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTRural communities from Latin America are particularly susceptible to develop serious outbreaks of infectious diseases. Inadequate diagnosis and poor health infrastructure jeopardize proper contact tracing and other actions to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in the region. We herein describe the preliminary data of our ongoing fieldwork of massive testing among nonhospitalized rural population in Manabi Province of the coastal region of Ecuador. A total of 1,479 people from six different rural communities were tested for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR following the CDC protocol; 350 individuals tested positive, resulting in an overall attack rate of 23.7% for SARS-CoV-2 infection. This ultrahigh prevalence must urge to the public health authorities from Ecuador to take immediate actions to counteract this dramatic scenario in Manabi Province and to improve SARS-CoV-2 testing countrywide.

scholarly journals STUDI KOMPARASI PEMIKIRAN ULAMA BADIUZZAMAN SAID NURSI DAN KITAB TA’LIM MUTA’ALIM TERHADAP PENDIDIKAN AKHLAK GENERASI MUDA

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-39
Author(s):  
Naela Maghfiroh
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Study Research ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Said Nursi

This research is motivated by the impact of moral education of the younger generation which is starting to become the public spotlight due to abandoning moral values. So the writer is interested in studying the concept of moral education according to the cleric Badiuzzaman Said Nursi and the Book byTa'lim Muta'alim by the scholar Sheikh al-Zarnuzi. This study uses the type of literature study research. The approach used in this research is a historical approach. The method used to analyze the content is (content analysis). The purpose of this study is to find out how the concept of moral education according to the cleric Badiuzzaman Said Nursi and Kitab Ta'lim Muta'alim, and to find out the comparison of the concept of thought according to the cleric Badiuzzaman Said Nursi and the Kitab Ta'lim Muta'alim to the moral education of the younger generation.

scholarly journals The impact of digital contact tracing on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic—a comprehensive modelling study

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina R. Pollmann ◽  
Stefan Schönert ◽  
Johannes Müller ◽  
Julia Pollmann ◽  
Elisa Resconi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Monte Carlo ◽  
Stochastic Models ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Reproductive Number ◽  
Random Testing ◽  
Deterministic Models ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Testing Protocols

AbstractContact tracing is one of several strategies employed in many countries to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Digital contact tracing (DCT) uses tools such as cell-phone applications to improve tracing speed and reach. We model the impact of DCT on the spread of the virus for a large epidemiological parameter space consistent with current literature on SARS-CoV-2. We also model DCT in combination with random testing (RT) and social distancing (SD).Modelling is done with two independently developed individual-based (stochastic) models that use the Monte Carlo technique, benchmarked against each other and against two types of deterministic models.For current best estimates of the number of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers (approximately 40%), their contagiousness (similar to that of symptomatic carriers), the reproductive number before interventions (${R_{0}}$ R 0 at least 3) we find that DCT must be combined with other interventions such as SD and/or RT to push the reproductive number below one. At least 60% of the population would have to use the DCT system for its effect to become significant. On its own, DCT cannot bring the reproductive number below 1 unless nearly the entire population uses the DCT system and follows quarantining and testing protocols strictly. For lower uptake of the DCT system, DCT still reduces the number of people that become infected.When DCT is deployed in a population with an ongoing outbreak where $\mathcal{O}$ O (0.1%) of the population have already been infected, the gains of the DCT intervention come at the cost of requiring up to 15% of the population to be quarantined (in response to being traced) on average each day for the duration of the epidemic, even when there is sufficient testing capability to test every traced person.

Testing more and earlier = better control of the epidemic and lower social costs.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bono Rossello ◽  
Matthias Pezzutto ◽  
Ignazio Castagliuolo ◽  
Luca Schenato ◽  
Emanuele Garone
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Beneficial Effect ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Stochastic Cellular Automata ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Fast Decision ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract In this note we explore the effect of the number of daily tests on an epidemics control policy purely based on testing and selective quarantine, and the impact of these actions depending on the time their application starts. Surprisingly, the results not only confirm that increasing the number of tests lowers the number of infected individuals, but also that it has a very beneficial effect limiting the number of quarantined individuals, and thus the socio-economical costs of the epidemics. The results also show that the timing in the application of the measures is as important as the measures themselves. The results suggest that fast decision making and investments to increase testing capabilities are highly rewarded not only from the public health viewpoint, but also from the socio-economical one. The study is carried out in simulation using stochastic cellular automata representing a community of 50'000 individuals. The selection of the tested individuals is carried out based on a contact tracing strategy focused on the closer contacts.

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