For weeks, the public messages about vaccines have been more negative than the facts warrant. Now we are seeing the cost: A large percentage of Americans wouldn't take a vaccine if offered one.

Is this lockdown 3.0 as tough as lockdown 1? Here are a few pieces of data from the @IndependentSage briefing which suggest that despite tackling a much more transmissible virus, lockdown is less strict, which might explain why we are only just keeping on top of cases.

In fall of 2019, exactly zero scientists were studying COVID‑19, because no one knew the disease existed. The coronavirus that causes it, SARS‑CoV‑2, had only recently jumped into humans and had been neither identified nor named. But by the end of March 2020, it had spread to more than 170 countries, sickened more than 750,000 people, and triggered the biggest pivot in the history of modern science. Thousands of researchers dropped whatever intellectual puzzles had previously consumed their curiosity and began working on the pandemic instead. In mere months, science became thoroughly COVID-ized.

How Science Beat the Virus

The growing body of research on interdisciplinarity has encouraged a more in depth analysis of the relations that hold among academic disciplines. In particular, the incursion of one scientific discipline into another discipline’s traditional domain, also known as scientific imperialism, has been a matter of increasing debate.

Scientific Imperialism Exploring the Boundaries of Interdisciplinarity

Even though conspiracy theorieslook like they are based on arguments, people’sreasons for believingin them tend to be psychological. For example, they may feel the needfor certainty, control, belonging ormeaning. This is why facts alone can’t usuallyalter someone’s beliefs. You also need to address the feelings that push someone towards a conspiracy theory.

Tips oncountering conspiracy theoriesandmisinformation

Preprints have been growing in popularity and visibility across many disciplines and communities — all the more so during the COVID19 pandemic, with rapid publication of early research on everything from vaccine development to economic impacts. While preprints have been widely adopted in some disciplines, there are still concerns about their quality and reliability, especially when they can be readily accessed by policy-makers and the public who may not yet fully understand their limitiations. This session brings together three experts — from Africa, Latin America, and the US — to discuss the challenges and opportunities of preprints for researchers and non-researchers alike.

NISO Plus 2021

Periodic reminder that in terms of outcomes, Swedish corona policy is thoroughly average in EU comparison – not exactly a model to be emulated by the rest of the world, nor a crime against humanity that should be prosecuted in the Hague.

Vaccine efficacy in blocking infection & transmission (I think) We can now estimate the (minimum) reduction in transmission from the Moderna vaccine. Thread tl;dr Moderna vaccine blocks >90% (87-93%) of infections & 91% (89-94%) of transmission. *Critiques welcome!

These interim recommendations apply to AZD1222 (ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]) vaccine against COVID-19 developed by Oxford University (United Kingdom) and AstraZeneca as well as to ChAdOx1-S [recombinant] vaccines against COVID-19 produced by other manufacturers that rely on the AstraZeneca core clinical data, following demonstrated equivalence in their regulatory review and once emergency use listing (EUL) has been obtained from WHO.

Interim recommendations for use of the AZD1222 (ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]) vaccine against COVID-19 developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca

I've spoken to 2,000+ companies over the last 12 months about their plans for remote work going forward Here are a few things I've learned

This report looks at attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccine in 15 countries between November 2020 and mid-January 2021. Countries included are Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The total sample is of ~13,500 people.

Covid-19:Globalattitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccine

Every policy has direct and indirect effects of intended and unintended consequences. Policies that require people to stay at home to reduce the morbidity and mortality from Covid-19 will have effects beyond the virus. For example, they will adversely affect mental health and economic prospects for many. They will also affect people’s willingness and ability to access health and social services. This is likely to result in increases in morbidity and mortality from otherwise curable diseases, such as cancer, acute myocardial infarction and stroke. A comparison between Covid-19 deaths prevented and excess cancer deaths caused shows it is possible that preventing Covid-19 deaths through lockdowns might result in more life-years being lost than saved.

Life-Years and Lockdowns: Estimating the Effects on Covid-19 and Cancer Outcomes from the UK’s Response to the Pandemic