Collective remembering and forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic: How the impact of COVID-19 affected the themes and phenomenology of global and national memories across 15 countries. (preprint)

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June, 2020, we asked over 4000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) have happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expect to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus, providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it is occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed.

A DNA INTERCALATING DYE-BASED RT-QPCR ALTERNATIVE TO DIAGNOSE SARS-COV-2 (preprint)

Early detection of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been proven crucial during the efforts to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several diagnostic methods have emerged in the past few months, each with different shortcomings and limitations. The current gold standard, RT-qPCR using fluorescent probes, relies on demanding equipment requirements plus the high costs of the probes and specific reaction mixes. To broaden the possibilities of reagents and thermocyclers that could be allocated towards this task, we have optimized an alternative strategy for RT-qPCR diagnosis. This is based on a widely used DNA-intercalating dye and can be implemented with several different qPCR reagents and instruments. Remarkably, the proposed qPCR method performs similarly to the broadly used TaqMan-based detection, in terms of specificity and sensitivity, thus representing a reliable tool. We think that, through enabling the use of vast range of thermocycler models and laboratory facilities for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, the alternative proposed here can increase dramatically the testing capability, especially in countries with limited access to costly technology and reagents.