Dimensional Meta-Analysis of Trust: Implications for Covid-19 Communication

The objective of this work is to review citizen confidence regarding government action in situations of risk and contingency such as the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. A documentary, meta-analytic and retrospective study was carried out with a selection of sources indexed to international repositories, considering the period from 2010 to 2020, although the research design limited the results to the research scenario, suggesting the extension of the work towards the relationship between trust and microfinance in the framework of local development.

Lawful Trojan Horse

News outlets don't usually report on training methods in counter-cyberterrorism, particularly lawful trojan attacks. Instead they describe recent cyberterrorist attacks, or threats, or laws and regulations concerning internet privacy or identity theft. Yet Europe is looking to do just that to head-off the next major cyberattack by creating rules for how member states should react and respond. Several news outlets, for example, reported that Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) were using a Trojan Horse to access the smartphone data of suspected individuals before the information was encrypted. Although the urge to strike back may be palpable, hacking-back can put power back into the hands of the suspect. The consensus now is that government action is preferable to hacking-back at attackers.

Knowledge, Attitude & Practices towards Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Affordable and sustainable access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is a key public health issue and focus of Sustainable Development Goals. Literature showed that households having prior knowledge and an acceptable attitude towards WASH practices have less number of diseases. The main objective of the study was to explore the level of respondents' knowledge, attitude and practices towards safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Conditions in South Punjab, Pakistan. The study was mixed-method research. SPSS also applied, and results demonstrate that there was very lack of knowledge about safe WASH practices; the majority of respondents have a traditional attitude. Whereas only 27.3% of respondents have always access to safe drinking water, 96% of respondents were not using any domestic water treatment method, 22.9% were defecating in the open, and the percentage of always handwashing with soap was found to only 29.6%. Social Mobilization programs along with government action to ensure safe WASH conditions are recommended.

Predictors of hurricane evacuation decisions: A meta-analysis

We systematically review and meta-analyze quantitative prediction models for hurricane evacuation decisions. Drawing on data from 33 prediction models and 29,873 households, we estimate distributions of effects on evacuation decisions for 25 predictors. Mobile home occupancy, evacuation orders, and having an evacuation plan showed the largest positive effects on evacuation, whereas increased age and Black race showed the largest negative effects. These results highlight the importance of both social-economic-structural factors and government action, such as evacuation orders, for enabling evacuation behaviors. Moderator analyses showed that models built using real-hurricane decisions showed larger effects than models of hypothetical decisions, especially for the strongest predictors. Additionally, models in Florida had more consistent results than for other U.S. states, and models with a larger number of covariates showed smaller effect sizes than models with fewer covariates. Importantly, our study improves methodologically and inferentially over previous reviews of this literature.

Nutrition Accountability through Sub-National Scorecards in Tanzania – Policy Innovations and Field Realities

Over the past decade, the Government of Tanzania has paid increasing attention to accountability in its nutrition policies. This has coincided with the introduction of truly innovative efforts to advance and monitor government action towards and accountability for nutrition at subnational level. A multisectoral nutrition scorecard (MNS) has been rolled out across all districts in the country, with quarterly updates on district performance. Moreover, a Nutrition Compact instrument was introduced to incentivise senior civil servants within regional and district administrations to advance efforts to promote nutrition. This paper explores how the government has used these initiatives to give accountability a particular form and meaning, pertinent to context. The paper analyses a series of policy documents and complements analysis this with field-based interviews with local officials across five regions. We find that the MNS and Compact are designed predominantly for internal purposes of government. This renders ‘accountability tools’ largely in the service of a centralised state, advancing vertical accountability. Such a narrow framing and design inhibits the potential of these instruments for galvanising social accountability, whereby citizens can hold public service providers and subnational government actors to account directly.

Desafios do Tempo Imediato: a Educação Brasileira em Tempos de Pandemia

ResumoEste trabalho analisa a legislação federal emitida durante a pandemia da Covid-19 para fornecer subsídios acerca das implicações deste momento nas práticas educativas e na vida escolar. Para tanto, foram consultados o Diário Oficial da União e o acervo do Conselho Nacional de Educação, de forma virtual, permitindo localizar portarias, pareceres e demais normativas que regulamentaram as ações durante este momento. Assim, a pesquisa possui abordagem documental, qualitativa e bibliográfica, analisando a documentação à luz do referencial teórico da história do tempo imediato e das concepções de ensino presencial, remoto e não presencial. O estudo aponta alguns entendimentos sobre a ação governamental no período, a qual ocorreu de forma lenta e aquém do esperado diante da gravidade da pandemia. Palavras-chave: História. Ensino. Legislação Federal de Ensino. AbstractThis paper analyzes the federal legislation issued during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide information about the implications of this moment for educational practices and school life. Therefore, the Brazilian Federal Gazette and the collection of the National Council of Education were consulted, virtually, allowing to find ordinances, opinions and other regulations that regulated the actions during this moment. Thus, the research has a documentary, qualitative and bibliographic approach, analyzing the documentation in the light of the theoretical framework of the immediate time history and the concepts of in-person, remote and not-in-person teaching. The study points out some understandings about government action in the period, which took place slowly and below expectations due to the seriousness of the pandemic. Keywords: History. Teaching. Federal Teaching Legislation.

Likelihood of infecting or getting infected with COVID-19 as a function of vaccination status, as investigated with a stochastic model for New Zealand (Aotearoa)

Aim: The New Zealand government is transitioning from the Alert Level framework, which relies on government action and population level controls, to the COVID-19 Protection Framework, which relies on vaccination rates and allows for greater freedoms (for the vaccinated). As restrictions are eased, there is significant interest in understanding the relative risk of spreading COVID-19 posed by unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals. Methods: A stochastic branching process model is used to simulate the spread of COVID-19 for outbreaks seeded by unvaccinated or vaccinated individuals. The likelihood of infecting or getting infected with COVID-19 is calculated based on vaccination status. Results: A vaccinated traveler infected with COVID-19 is 9x less likely to seed an outbreak than an unvaccinated traveler infected with COVID-19. For a vaccination rate of 50%, unvaccinated individuals are responsible for 87% of all infections whereas 3% of infections are from vaccinated to vaccinated. When normalized by population, a vaccinated individual is 6.8x more likely to be infected by an unvaccinated individual than by a vaccinated individual. For a total population vaccination rate of 78.7%, which is equivalent to the 90% vaccination target for the eligible population (over 12 years old), this means that vaccinated individuals are 1.9x more likely to be infected by an unvaccinated individual than by a vaccinated, even though there are 3.7x more vaccinated individuals in the population. Conclusions: This work demonstrates that most new infections are caused by unvaccinated individuals. These simulations illustrate the importance of vaccination in stopping individuals from becoming infected with COVID-19 and in preventing onward transmission.

Politics, Power and a Pandemic: Searching for Information and Accountability During a Twitter Infodemic

During the early weeks of the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, society was battling an infodemic–defined as a “tsunami” of online misinformation. Through the lens of mediatization theory, this article examines 800,000 tweets to understand social media information and misinformation related to the COVID-19. Through multi-layered analysis, this article details prominent key words discussed on Twitter connected to pandemic trending hashtags in early-to-mid March 2020: #Covid19 and #Coronavirus. The most prominent word themes included: novelty of this virus and associated uncertainty and the spread of misinformation; severity and widespread reach of the virus; call for collective action; and expectations relative to government action. The article explains these findings through mediatization theory, applying how technology influences social media discussions.

The Knife Edge Election of 2020: American Politics Between Washington, Kabul, and Weimar

This paper analyzes the 2020 election, focusing on voters, not political money, and emphasizing the importance of economic geography. Drawing extensively on county election returns, it analyzes how spatial factors combined with industrial structures to shape the outcome. It treats COVID 19’s role at length. The paper reviews studies suggesting that COVID 19 did not matter much, but then sets out a new approach indicating it mattered a great deal. The study analyzes the impact on the vote not only of unemployment but differences in income and industry structures, along with demographic factors, including religion, ethnicity, and race. It also studies how the waves of wildcat strikes and social protests that punctuated 2020 affected the vote in specific areas. Trump’s very controversial trade policies and his little discussed farm policies receive detailed attention. The paper concludes with a look at how political money helped make the results of the Congressional election different from the Presidential race. It also highlights the continuing importance of private equity and energy sectors opposed to government action to reverse climate change as conservative forces in (especially) the Republican Party, together with agricultural interests.

The importance of politics on precautionary principles’ implementation in the environmental sector: cases and examples of Indonesia and Australia

The United Nations’ arrangement to establish the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992 can be perceived as an effort to enforce sustainability efforts in the environmental sector. The declaration’s main principles are about the interdependent and indivisible relations between peace, development, and environmental protection. The Rio Declaration also mentions the term precautionary principle that could be implemented by the industrial actors in the countries but not limited to them. Countries that put ratification on it are directly binding to hold the mandate as one of the main actors in control of environmental protection. This study attempted to examine some countries’ government action toward formulation and implementation of environmental policy regarding the precautionary principle as the embodiment of the Rio Declaration 1992. This study will use descriptive qualitative methodology with data based on cases in Indonesia and Australia. The findings will explain the direct and indirect correlations within the government and industrial actors about the precautionary principle in the action. In addition, the result of this study indicates how politics plays a powerful role in the implementation of the precautionary principle.