A Year of Pandemic: Psychological Effects in Spanish Children from 3 to 11 Years of Age

BACKGROUND: After the lockdown, schools adopted measures to avoid infection, which changed pre-pandemic routines. We evaluated whether the new school conditions constituted a stress factor for children or contributed to their recovery after the impact of the lockdown period. METHOD: Participants included 291 families with children between 3 and 11 years of age. The children were assessed by parents through the Child and Adolescent Assessment System (SENA) at three time points: T1 (before COVID-19 confinement), T2 (after the children had spent between 4 and 6 weeks confined), and T3 (one year after the beginning of the pandemic). RESULTS: For Preschoolers, no statistical differences were found in any scale or time point. For primary-school children, the differences between T1 and T3 were not significant. Comparisons between T2 and T3 showed significant differences in Willingness to study, Emotional regulation and Hyperactivity and impulsivity. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that returning to school might have improved some dimensions of primary-school children's well-being. However, it seems that neither the confinement nor the restrictive measures have had a negative effect on our sample. To interpret these findings, we discuss the psychological factors of protection and vulnerability.

Media Trust and the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Analysis of Short-Term Trust Changes, Their Ideological Drivers and Consequences in Switzerland

We analyze short-term media trust changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, their ideological drivers and consequences based on panel data in German-speaking Switzerland. We thereby differentiate trust in political information from different types of traditional and non-traditional media. COVID-19 serves as a natural experiment, in which citizens' media trust at the outbreak of the crisis is compared with the same variables after the severe lockdown measures were lifted. Our data reveal that (1) media trust is consequential as it is associated with people's willingness to follow Covid-19 regulations;(2) media trust changes during the pandemic, with trust levels for most media decreasing, with the exception of public service broadcasting;(3) trust losses are hardly connected to ideological divides in Switzerland. Our findings highlight that public service broadcasting plays an exceptional role in the fight against a pandemic and that contrary to the US, no partisan trust divide occurs.

News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship

This study explores shifts in political trust during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland, examining the role that media consumption and threat perceptions played in individuals? trust in politics. We combine panel surveys taken before and during the first nation-wide lockdown with webtracking data of participants' online behaviour to paint a nuanced picture of media effects during the crisis. Our work has several findings. First, political trust, an attitude known for its stability, increased following lockdown. Second, consumption of mainstream news on COVID-19 directly hindered this increase, with those reading more news having lower over-time trust, while the relatively minor alternative news consumption had no direct effect on political trust. Third, threat perceptions a) to health and b) from the policy response to the pandemic, have strong and opposite effects on political trust, with threats to health increasing trust, and threats from the government policy response decreasing it. Lastly, these threat perceptions condition the effect of COVID-19 news consumption on political trust: perceptions of threat had the power to both exacerbate and mute the effect of media consumption on government trust during the pandemic. Notably, we show that the expected negative effect of alternative news on political trust only exists for those who did not think COVID-19 posed a threat to their health, while public service news consumption reduced the negative effect produced by government threat perceptions. The paper therefore advances our understanding of the nuanced nature of media effects, particularly as relates to alternative media, especially during moments of crisis.

Clinical features and respiratory pathophysiology of COVID-19 patients ventilated in the prone position: a cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: There are few studies that have investigated the response to the prone position in mechanically ventilated COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). We describe the characteristics and outcomes of those patients in a tertiary hospital in Spain. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This is an observational study in consecutive, mechanically ventilated COVID-19 patients. The primary endpoint was to describe the respiratory pathophysio-logy and clinical outcomes of COVID-19 patients treated by mechanical ventilation in the prone position. RESULTS: Of 84 patients mechanically ventilated in the prone position, 19 (22%) were successfully extubated and 43 (51%) were discharged from the ICU. The duration of mechanical ventilation and ICU length of stay were 11 days (IQR 8-16) and 15 days (IQR 9-25), respectively. On admission to ICU, 61% patients had a moderate ARDS according to the Berlin criteria. 76% had 4 lung quadrants affected. After intubation, the median PaO2/FiO2 was 105 (IQR 76-138), ventilatory ratio was 1.48 (IQR 1.16-1.88), and compliance was 33 mL cm H 2 O-1 (IQR 25-41). The median number of cycles in the prone position was 2 (1-3), with a median of total hours in the prone position of 76 (IQR 64-111).72 h after the first prone position cycle the median PaO2/FiO2 increase was up to 193 (IQR 152-251), but the compliance was similar to the basal level (34 mL cm H 2 O-1 [IQR 26-43]). However, the percentage of patients with normal compliance (> 50 mL cm H 2 O-1) increased with the prone position from 15% (n = 13) to 32% (n = 27) after 72 h. CONCLUSIONS: In our study, the COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure presented respiratory mechanics, gas exchange parameters, and a response to prone ventilation similar to those observed in other causes of ARDS.