November 28, 2020 (American Journal of Infection Control)

Readability, content, and quality of COVID-19 patient education materials from academic medical centers in the United States

Jessica Kruse, Paloma Toledo, Tayler B. Belton.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2020.11.023

Kruse et al evaluate the readability, content, and quality of web-based patient education materials (PEMs) on COVID-19 from U.S. academic medical centers. Readability of COVID-19 PEMs was calculated using three validated indices. The content was evaluated using a scoring matrix based on materials available on the Center for Disease Control website. The mean readability was above the recommended 6th-grade reading level. This study shows the importance to provide readable patient education materials on COVID-19 to effectively disseminate accurate information and facilitate patients’ understanding of the pandemic.

 

 

November 23, 2020 (Journal of Pastoral Care & Counselling)

The COVID-19 Context Calls for a Broader Range of Healthcare Chaplaincy Models: An Exploratory Translational Study Utilizing Evolutionary Psychology and Social Neuroscience Loneliness Research

Ann K. Riggs

https://doi.org/10.1177/1542305020962417

Shifts in chaplain requests from patients and families and lack of engagement by staff in now-traditional support forms in the COVID-19 context suggest that new insights and resourcing are needed. This study suggests that the evolutionary psychology of Dunbar and the social neuroscience of Cacioppo,  and their concerns for human loneliness offer potential for use in developing effective healthcare chaplaincy practice.

 

 

November 17, 2020 (Best Practice & Research Clinical Anaesthesiology)

Economic Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Health Care Facilities and Systems: International Perspectives

Alan D. Kaye, Chikezie N. Okeagu, Alex D. Pham et al.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpa.2020.11.009

The World Bank projects that global growth is shrinking by almost 8% with poorer countries feeling most of the impact, and the United Nations projects that it will cost the global economy around 2 trillion dollars in 2020. Overall, a lack of preparedness was a major contributor to the struggles experienced by healthcare facilities around the world. Items such as personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers, hospital equipment, sanitizing supplies, toilet paper, and water were in short supply. The authors discuss the economic impact of COVID-19 on US and international hospitals, healthcare facilities and surgery.

 

 

November 17, 2020 (International Sociology)

Psychology and politics of COVID-19 misinfodemics: Why and how do people believe in misinfodemics?

Sonia Mukhtar

https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580920948807

The author reviews COVID-related misinfodemics from articles in PubMed, EMBASE, Google Scholar and Elsevier. She examines the mechanisms,  structure, prevalence, predictive factors, effects, responses and potential curtailing strategies of misinfodemics of COVID-19. She shows the relationship  with psychological and ideological motivations that have implications for the development of strategies to overcome the negative consequences on public health.

 

 

November 16, 2020 (Technological Forecasting and Social Change)

Impact of COVID-19 on the travel and tourism industry

Marinko Skare, Domingo Riberio Soriano, Malgorzata Porada-Rochon.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120469

The authors measure the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry using panel structural vector auto-regression (PSVAR) on data from 1995 to 2019 in 185 countries and system dynamic modelling.  Past pandemic crises operated mostly through idiosyncratic shocks' channels, exposing domestic tourism sectors to large adverse shocks. Once domestic shocks perished (zero infection cases), inbound arrivals revived immediately. The pandemic is different and recovery of the tourism industry worldwide will take more time than the average expected recovery period of 10 months. Private and public policy support must be coordinated to assure recovery of the travel tourism sector during 2020–2021. Tourism managers must carefully assess the effects of epidemics on business and develop new risk management methods to deal with the crisis.

 

 

November 16, 2020 (Telematics and Informatics)

Broadband and economic growth in China: An empirical study during the COVID-19 pandemic period

Xiaoqun Zhang

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2020.101533

Dr Zhang proposed an economic model that describes the special role of broadband in economic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Empirical research was conducted using the data of China to investigate how broadband affected China’s economic growth during this period. The findings showed broadband alleviated China’s economic losses during the first few months of 2020 when the new coronavirus spread across the country, and broadband affected China’s economic growth. These findings have policy implications for China as well as other countries.

 

 

November 14, 2020 (Medical Anthropology)

Plague Masks: The Visual Emergence of Anti-Epidemic Personal Protection Equipment

Christos Lynteris

https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2017.1423072

Lynteris examines face masks through a historical anthropological approach of their invention during the 1910–11 Manchurian plague outbreak. He argues that they should be taken seriously and shows that their emergence was rooted in their role as transformative agents of medical reason.

 

 

November 11, 2020 (Critical Sociology)

Human Rights-inspired Governmentality: COVID-19 through a Human Dignity Perspective

Enzo Colombo

https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920520971846

The paper aims to reconstruct the debate over the pandemic in Italy to highlight the logic of the discourse that guided the various voices. The two governmentalities that have monopolized the public and political debate are biomedical and economic. The former brought the defence of biological life (zoé) as the ultimate element of truth and legitimacy of the government’s action. The latter, based on the “true” justification upon a careful cost-benefit calculation and the protection of the interests of homo oeconomicus. The debate lacked a “social” perspective capable of placing dignity and human rights as a guide for intervention. What has been lost by limiting the question to a choice between defending life or defending economic interests? A form of discrimination and lack of protection for specific sectors of society, in particular the marginal ones has emerged.

 

 

November 3, 2020 (Research in Globalization)

A sudden change of pedagogy in education driven by COVID-19: Perspectives and evaluation from a developing country

Temitayo Deborah Oyedotun

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resglo.2020.100029

The sudden transition to online pedagogy as a result of COVID-19 in developing countries has revealed some inequalities and challenges, as well as benefits. These challenges and inequalities have now become the new realities in the educational sector of developing countries. She proposes a new approach to our education sector.

 

 

November 3, 2020 (Media International Australia)

The role of government’s ‘Owned Media’ in fostering cultural inclusion: a case study of the NSW Department of Education’s online and social media during COVID-19

Lauren Gorfinkel, Tanya Muscat, Sue Ollerhead et al.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X20968291

This article examines how the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education in Australia, has engaged with key stakeholders at a time when home–school communications have been heavily impacted by COVID-19.

It focuses on how the Department has invited engagement among its culturally and linguistically diverse stakeholders. It gives examples of the practice by the Department and suggestions for further research that may help to reveal best practices for multicultural and multilingual government–stakeholder engagement.

 

 

November 3, 2020 (Research in Globalization)

Sudden change of pedagogy in education driven by COVID-19: Perspectives and evaluation from a developing country

Temitayo Deborah Oyedotun.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resglo.2020.100029

The sudden transition to online pedagogy as a result of COVID-19 in developing countries has revealed some inequalities and challenges, as well as benefits. These challenges and inequalities have now become the new realities in the educational sector. The author suggests that the challenges presented by the new approach can be mitigated while we come to terms with the disruptions introduced by COVID-19 to our education sector.

 

 

November 3, 2020 (Explorations in Economic History)

Disease, downturns, and wellbeing: Economic history and the long-run impacts of COVID-19

Vellore Arthi & John Parman.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2020.101381

The authors review the evidence on the long term effects on health, labour, and human capital of both historical pandemics (with a focus on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic) and historical recessions (with a focus on the Great Depression). They discuss how past crises can tell us what to look for, what to prepare for, and what data we should collect now.

 

 

November 2, 2020 (Journal of Computational Social Science)

Partisan public health: how does political ideology influence support for COVID-19 related misinformation?

Nicholas Francis Havey

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-020-00089-2

This study analyzes over 4000 tweets related to six misinformation topics about the pandemic: the use of hydroxychloroquine as treatment, the use of bleach as a preventative measure, Bill Gates intentionally causing the virus, the Chinese Communist Party intentionally causing the virus, and the Deep State causing the virus to ruin the economy and threaten President Trump’s reelection chances. Pandemic misinformation has been associated with decreased compliance with public health recommendations and evidence from the current pandemic indicates that adherence to public health recommendations is divided. This study suggests that the political and informational polarization fuelled by social media platforms such as Twitter may have serious consequences for public health。

 

 

November 2, 2020 (International Journal of Hospitality Management)

The effect of COVID-19 pandemic on domestic tourism: A DEMATEL method analysis on quarantine decisions

Fatma Altuntas & Mehmet Sahin Gok.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102719

We lack the knowledge on making the right quarantine decisions to reduce the negative effect of a pandemic on the hospitality industry. This study uses a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method to help in quarantine decisions. One of the critical hospitality industry indicators is the inter-regional travel flow between regions for local tourism. The findings indicate that Istanbul has an impact on Turkey and it might be adopted to prepare the hospitality industry during the pandemic.

​

​