The COVID-19 pandemic threatens millions of lives, and an effective response will require individuals to take costly and difficult measures to slow the rate of transmission. Yet it is unclear how to best motivate preventative actions, which can be conceptualized as either self-interested or cooperative efforts. Should public health messaging focus on the benefits of prevention to individuals, society, or both? We shed light on this question across two studies conducted online via Amazon Mechanical Turk (total n = 2176 Americans) during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic reaching the United States. We investigated the effects of three treatments, consisting of a written appeal and a flier, on intentions to engage in coronavirus prevention behaviors. We presented identical information across treatments, but varied our framing to emphasize the personal, public, or both personal and public benefits of prevention behaviors. We found evidence for the power of prosocial framing: the Public treatment was more effective than the Personal treatment, and the Personal+Public treatment was no more effective than the pure Public treatment. Our results thus suggest that emphasizing the public benefits of prevention efforts may be an effective pandemic response strategy.

Decentralized Privacy-PreservingProximity TracingOverview of Data Protection and Security

2ThereisgrowingpoliticalandepidemiologicalinterestindeployingtechnologicalapproachestohelpindividualsandcountriesnavigatetheCOVID-19pandemic.Oneapproachhasbeentomakeuseoflow-poweredBluetoothsensorsonsmartphonestoinformuserswhentheyhavebeenincontactwithindividualswhohavesincetestedpositive,andtosupportepidemiologistswithmodellingefforts.However,someinfrastructuresthatcanenableproportionateproximitytracingmayfailtoprotectdata,orbemisusedorextendedfarbeyondtheirinitialpurposeandbeyondthelifetimeofthecrisis.Thisisallthemoreimportantgiventhetrulyglobalnatureofthischallengeandthefactthatthepandemiccrossesacrossbordersandjurisdictionswithdifferentlevelsoffundamentalrightsguarantees or in times where many governments are functioning under rules of exception.Designswithcentralizedcomponents,whereasingleactor,suchasaserverorastate,canlearnagreatdealaboutindividualsandcommunities,needspecificattentionbecauseiftheyareattacked,compromisedorrepurposed,theycancreategreaterharm.Inordertoaddresstheseissues,weinsteadrealisethesametaskusingadecentralizeddesignthatdoesnotrequirethecentralizedcollectionandprocessingofinformationonusers.​Suchadesignbuildsonstrong,mathematicallyprovablesupportforprivacyanddataprotectiongoals,minimisesthedatarequiredtowhatisnecessaryforthetasksenvisaged,andpreventsfunctioncreep,forexampleforlawenforcementorintelligencepurposes,bystrictly limiting how the system can be repurposed with cryptographic methods.

Planned study: inoculating against COVID-19 misinformation

I've been developing a study into inoculating people against climate misinformation with my colleagues Emily Vraga and Sojung Kim. At the 11th hour before fielding the experiment, we've changed it to test inoculation against COVID-19 misinformation.

.@ThreeLittleMigs and I are polishing a health behavior for @PsySciAcc's COVID project. We expect to reach thousands of participants all over the world. We want our survey to be useful to epidemiologists. Would any epidemiologists be willing to give us feedback? DM me if so!

an interesting source of statistics, both on COVID-19 and other issues that help provide some context to numbersWorldometer - real time world statisticsLive world statistics on population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health.worldometers.info

This is a new online peer-reviewed Review to disseminate emerging scholarly work on the Covid-19 epidemic. Very quickly after the onset of the epidemic a large number of policy papers have been written by economic scholars, many of which have appeared on VoxEU. This has been enormously helpful to improve our understanding of policy options. The next step requires more formal investigations, based on explicit theory and/or empirical evidence. This is what Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers aims to provide.

New CEPR publication: Covid Economics, Vetted and Real-Time Papers

EUvsVirus Hackathon to develop innovative solutions and overcome coronavirus-related challenges

To complement hackathons taking place at global and member state level, the European Commission - in close collaboration with EU member states – will host a pan-European hackathon to connect civil society, innovators, partners and buyers across Europe to develop innovative solutions to coronavirus. The #EUvsVirus Hackathon will take place on 24, 25 and 26 April and address approximately 20 imminent coronavirus challenges (e.g. fast production of equipment, scaling up production capabilities, knowledge and solutions transfer from one country to another), to be quickly developed and deployed across the EU Single Market. Challenges to be hacked, and the opening of registration to hack the challenges, will be announced soon.

Measuring Levels of Activity in aChanging City

A Study Using Cellphone Data Streams

Understanding and Exploring Network Epidemiology in the Time of Coronavirus (#Net_COVID) is a special online workshop series presented by the University of Maryland’s COMBINE program in network biology in partnership with Vermont’s Complex Systems Center. 

Les informations contenues dans le présent règlement sont conformes auxtermesgénérauxdu document de référence de l’ANRS intitulé "Modalités d’organisation administrative, scientifique et financière de l’ANRS" (MOASF), portant règlement financier des aides à la recherche allouées par l'ANRS, auquel vous pouvez vous référer sur le site internet de l’ANRS ou dans la rubrique "Documents de référence" de la plateforme de gestion des appels à projets

Règlement de l’appelà projets flash COVID-19 SUD de l’ANRS

Uniting for greater action on global mental health

We provide advocacy, campaigning and financial support to global institutions, businesses, communities and individual changemakers seeking greater action on global mental health.

The Lancet Voice Old age and COVID-19

Much of the discourse on COVID-19 has been about older people being at high risk. The Lancet Voice speaks to Professor Thomas Scharf, president of The British Society of Gerontology about how COVID-19 is affecting age discrimination and loneliness.

By using clean disposable tissue we could prevent our bare hands from touching our eyes, nose and mouth.

Opinion| Get rid of that tricky habit of touching your face

MODELING COVID-19 IN THE UNITED STATES

The social distancing projections assume that "stay-at-home" orders and mitigation policies are extended for the entire period of time considered here.

A recipe for moving your physical lab to the online lab

As I write this post, the coronavirus continues to spread across the world. In response, governments have put in place recommendations to self-isolate, create social (physical) distancing, or imposed flat-out lockdowns. One obvious implication for psychological researchers is that we can no longer conduct experiments face-to-face in our labs. Many of us have therefore been migrating our experiments online.

Feelings of loneliness can have a negative impact on mental and physical health.

Public Engagement in Emergency Preparedness and Response: Ethical Perspectives in Public Health Practice

Public engagement plays a necessary and central role in addressing the ethical dimensions of emergency preparedness and response in public health practice, hereafter referred to simply as emergency preparedness. Public health officials, as government authorities and as health professionals, have the responsibility to actively seek and provide opportunities for public engagement in emergency preparedness policy-making and practices (Stern & Fineberg, 1966). Public engagement should take place in at least two ways: deliberation about the societal values and ethical tensions underlying emergency preparedness and consultation about the ethical aspects of specific emergency preparedness programs and activities. The primary role for public engagement in emergency preparedness is grounded in a number of ethical principles, such as fairness, utility, and respect for individual interests. These principles animate the practice of public health and are enumerated in the Principles of the Ethical Practice of Public Health (also referred to as the Public Health Code of Ethics, or the Code) (Public Health Leadership Society, 2002). Engaging all stakeholders in the community, including vulnerable populations at risk of bearing disproportionate burdens during an emergency, for example, is an expression of government’s commitment to fairness that lays the (p. 156) foundation for the trust and collective action needed in emergency preparedness.

10.1093/med/9780190270742.003.0005

earn MoreWe all want to know how the coronavirus pandemic ends. How do we cope with uncertainty?Alia E. Dastagir USA TODAYPublished 2:09 PM EDT Apr 4, 2020No one knows how this ends. The uncertainty may be as unsettling as the virus itself. As the U.S. imposes restrictions to save lives during the global coronavirus pandemic, people are agonizing over one question: When will "normal" life resume?People want to know when they can touch again and whisper closely. When they can walk not on quiet trails but through the hum of a crowd – bumping shoulders, inhal

Research that has explored public enthusiasm for cancer screening has suggested that the public may be overly enthusiastic about being screened with certain tests, and this has been attributed, in part, to lack of knowledge about the risks and benefits. In this article the authors considered the possibility that some people may be enthusiastic about screening even when they are informed and also accept that the test unquestionably does not save lives. Two studies were conducted, one that involved a nationally representative U.S. sample and another that involved an online convenience sample. All participants were asked whether they would want to receive a hypothetical screening test for breast (women) or prostate (men) cancer that does not reduce the chance of cancer death or extend the length of life. Over half of participants wanted to receive the described screening test. Many people did not believe that cancer screening might not save lives, yet screening preferences were not due to disbelief alone. Results further suggested that cancer worry, reassurance, and a desire for health information explained variance in preferences for unbeneficial screening, adjusting for beliefs about screening benefits, perceptions of screening risks, family history, perceptions of cancer risk, and demographics.

Finally journal editors are losing their lock on scholarship- COVID19 is speeding this up. @elife will "make the posting of preprints to bioRxiv or medRxiv the default for all eLife submissions" @eLife ahead of the pack; the leaders are @Meta_Psy and other small journals. @SciBeh

We're working hard at the moment to scale up our attempts to detect COVID-19 disinformation, online manipulation, attacks on public health officials and miracle cures. If you've come across this kind of stuff, I'd really appreciate hearing about it.

Jeder zweite Deutsche würde Handy-Tracking von Infizierten dulden

Corona-Infizierte und deren Kontaktpersonen rasch aufzuspüren, gilt als zentrale Maßnahme zur Eindämmung des Virus. Die Hälfte der Deutschen würde dafür Handy-Ortung dulden. Ein Konzept gibt es schon.

COVID-19 Resource Hub

As the virus continues to sweep across the world, we have put together essential resources for those interested in tackling the coronavirus infodemic. On this page, you can find information on what the online platforms are doing to combat coronavirus mis— and disinformation. You can find content on the narratives, trends, and strategies defining the infodemic, whether that’s via our weekly Disinfo Updates or research. Moreover, we have dedicated sections on free tools to use, commentary on the infodemic, as well as its impact on our societies. 

What emerging research on and resources about COVID-19 misinformation is out there?

Emerging research on and resources about COVID-19 misinformation?

Inoculation Against Misinformation A crisis on the scale of the coronavirus pandemic brings with it an unprecedented deluge of falsehoods, unfounded rumor and speculation, and snake oil profiteering. There is, as yet, no vaccine for the coronavirus, but we can inoculate ourselves from misinformation. The Center for Inquiry, drawing upon our unique expertise from our Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, is ready to do what we do best: confront and expose pseudoscience and misinformation.  This is our effort to collect, curate, and communicate the most relevant and useful science and reality-based resources for information regarding the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, from CFI’s own platforms and all around the web, focusing on material that separates fact from fiction and scientific theory from conspiracy theory.  Please, take advantage of these resources and share them with family and friends so we can slow the spread of misinformation just like we’re trying to slow the spread of the virus. No matter your belief system or political affiliation, we are all in this together.  Your help in advancing reason, science, and humanist compassion is more important than it has ever been. We can’t do this kind of work without your support. Donate now, and be a part of the solution. 

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCE CENTER

The independent, expert fact-checking service for Coronavirus (COVID-19). Sourced from WHO, UK and other official government advice.

Infotagion seeks to fight the disinformation contagion about COVID-19. Disinformation about this deadly virus can spread just as far and fast as the real thing – harming you and those you love. So we’re fighting back, giving everyone the opportunity to flag false and misleading content, while highlighting trustworthy and sourced information.

The equality and human rights impacts of Covid-19

At Equally Ours, we as a network are committed to working together with compassion to tackle the increasing challenges to equality and human rights. With the global outbreak of Covid-19, the novel coronavirus, those challenges have become yet more serious and complex. Together with our policy and research networks and the wider voluntary sector, we are working to highlight the equality and human rights impacts of the coronavirus. We can provide essential intelligence about the issues and problems that people and communities are facing due to the virus, and help to find compassionate solutions.

On this page, we present the 6-day forecasts of COVID-19 case counts by country based on a novel epidemiological model that integrates the effect of population behavior changes due to government measures and social distancing.

Forecasts by Country

Coronavirus statistics: what can we trust and what should we ignore?

The flurry of figures, graphs and projections surrounding the pandemic is confusing. Two experts guide us through the maze

Deaths involving COVID-19, England and Wales: deaths occurring in March 2020

Number of deaths registered each month in England and Wales, including deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by age, sex and region.

Active and inactive quarantine in epidemic spreading on adaptive activity-driven networks

We consider an epidemic process on adaptive activity-driven temporal networks, with adaptive behaviour modelled as a change in activity and attractiveness due to infection. By using a mean-field approach, we derive an analytical estimate of the epidemic threshold for SIS and SIR epidemic models for a general adaptive strategy, which strongly depends on the correlations between activity and attractiveness in the susceptible and infected states. We focus on a strong adaptive behaviour, implementing two types of quarantine inspired by recent real case studies: an active quarantine, in which the population compensates the loss of links rewiring the ineffective connections towards non-quarantining nodes, and an inactive quarantine, in which the links with quarantined nodes are not rewired. Both strategies feature the same epidemic threshold but they strongly differ in the dynamics of active phase. We show that the active quarantine is extremely less effective in reducing the impact of the epidemic in the active phase compared to the inactive one, and that in SIR model a late adoption of measures requires inactive quarantine to reach containment.

2004.07902v1

Social distancing in Italy one month into the lockdown

The mitigation measures enacted as part of the response to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented in their breadth and societal burden. A major challenge in this situation is to quantitatively assess the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions like mobility restrictions and social distancing, to better understand the ensuing reduction of mobility flows, individual mobility changes, and impact on contact patterns. Here, we report preliminary results on tackling the above challenges by using de-identified, large-scale data from a location intelligence company, Cuebiq, that has instrumented smartphone apps with high-accuracy location-data collection software.

10.1016/j.puhe.2020.04.009

ObjectiveWith the current SARS-CoV2 outbreak, countless tests need to be performed on potential symptomatic individuals, contacts and travellers. The gold standard is a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)–based system taking several hours to confirm positivity. For effective public health containment measures, this time span is too long. We therefore evaluated a rapid test in a high-prevalence community setting.Study designThirty-nine randomly selected individuals at a COVID-19 screening centre were simultaneously tested via qPCR and a rapid test. Ten previously diagnosed individuals with known SARS-CoV-2 infection were also analysed.MethodsThe evaluated rapid test is an IgG/IgM–based test for SARS-CoV-2 with a time to result of 20 min. Two drops of blood are needed for the test performance.ResultsOf 49 individuals, 22 tested positive by repeated qPCR. In contrast, the rapid test detected only eight of those positive correctly (sensitivity: 36.4%). Of the 27 qPCR-negative individuals, 24 were detected correctly (specificity: 88.9%).ConclusionGiven the low sensitivity, we recommend not to rely on an antibody-based rapid test for public health measures such as community screenings.

Rapid point-of-care testing for SARS-CoV-2 in a community screening setting shows low sensitivity

Crisis Knowledge Management: Establishing an augmented online eco-system to foster the decentralized consolidation of behavioral science knowledge on COVID–19

At a time when we are all thinking about how best to respond to the present global crisis, it seems timely to think also about how we, as the Cognitive Science community, can be most effective. What kind of science can we do, and how should we go about doing it? Our team set out to create the infrastructure necessary for crisis knowledge management.

COVID-19: how you can help COVID-19 research is moving at a rapid pace and we’re calling on everyone in Publons' reviewer community to help. Your review of one or more of these papers will help researchers understand the work that can be trusted and built on.The table below contains papers and pre-prints we've identified as being on the frontier of COVID-19 research. While still under development, this table enables researchers to quickly find, review and screen papers depending on their area of expertise.Add your review using our special guidelines (this is important to ensure COVID-19 researchers can rapidly assess your review) or score a paper today. Click on a paper's title to find links to the full text and to Publons' post-publication review form.For information about who can comment and how we screen and curate COVID-19 reviews, click here to read our guide.

COVID-19 related publications

The Power of Altruism

Why it matters even more in times of crisis.

10.1101/2020.03.31.20049023

Quantifying the impact of physical distance measures on the transmission of COVID-19 in the UK

Background: To mitigate and slow the spread of COVID-19, many countries have adopted unprecedented physical distancing policies, including the UK. We evaluate whether these measures might be sufficient to control the epidemic by estimating their impact on the reproduction number (R0, the average number of secondary cases generated per case). Methods: We asked a representative sample of UK adults about their contact patterns on the previous day. The questionnaire documents the age and location of contacts and as well as a measure of their intimacy (whether physical contact was made or not). In addition, we asked about adherence to different physical distancing measures. The first surveys were sent on Tuesday 24th March, one day after a “lockdown” was implemented across the UK. We compared measured contact patterns during the lockdown to patterns of social contact made during a non-epidemic period. By comparing these, we estimated the change in reproduction number as a consequence of the physical distancing measures imposed. We used a meta-analysis of published estimates to inform our estimates of the reproduction number before interventions were put in place. Findings: We found a 73% reduction in the average daily number of contacts observed per participant (from 10.2 to 2.9). This would be sufficient to reduce R0 from 2.6 prior to lockdown to 0.62 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.37 - 0.89) after the lockdown, based on all types of contact and 0.37 (95% CI = 0.22 - 0.53) for physical contacts only. Interpretation: The physical distancing measures adopted by the UK public have substantially reduced contact levels and will likely lead to a substantial impact and a decline in cases in the coming weeks. However, this projected decline in incidence will not occur immediately as there are significant delays between infection, the onset of symptomatic disease and hospitalisation, as well as further delays to these events being reported. Tracking behavioural change can give a more rapid assessment of the impact of physical distancing measures than routine epidemiological surveillance.

Exceptional Flash Call for Proposals

Mitigating risk in the wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic

How to improve adherence with quarantine: Rapid review of the evidence

10.1016/j.puhe.2020.03.007

ObjectivesThe January 2020 outbreak of coronavirus has once again thrown the vexed issue of quarantine into the spotlight, with many countries asking their citizens to ‘self-isolate’ if they have potentially come into contact with the infection. However, adhering to quarantine is difficult. Decisions on how to apply quarantine should be based on the best available evidence to increase the likelihood of people adhering to protocols. We conducted a rapid review to identify factors associated with adherence to quarantine during infectious disease outbreaks.Study designRapid evidence review.MethodsWe searched Medline, PsycINFO and Web of Science for published literature on the reasons for and factors associated with adherence to quarantine during an infectious disease outbreak.ResultsWe found 3163 papers and included 14 in the review. Adherence to quarantine ranged from as little as 0 up to 92.8%. The main factors which influenced or were associated with adherence decisions were the knowledge people had about the disease and quarantine procedure, social norms, perceived benefits of quarantine and perceived risk of the disease, as well as practical issues such as running out of supplies or the financial consequences of being out of work.ConclusionsPeople vary in their adherence to quarantine during infectious disease outbreaks. To improve this, public health officials should provide a timely, clear rationale for quarantine and information about protocols; emphasise social norms to encourage this altruistic behaviour; increase the perceived benefit that engaging in quarantine will have on public health; and ensure that sufficient supplies of food, medication and other essentials are provided.

Health Security & Pandemics

How can communities around the world prepare for, detect, and respond to emerging pandemics and health security threats?

Predictive Mathematical Models of the COVID-19 Pandemic