ABSTRACT
Society is facing a global pandemic, causing millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of infections. The importance of vaccination to face COVID-19 is decisive in the fight against the virus. However, many people have decided not to get vaccinated, ruining public health policy. The objective of this article is to apply knowledge about behavioral economics in the explanation of the behavior of those who decide not to be vaccinated, as well as the use of decision architecture and nudges for the design of behavioral interventions. The methodology used was qualitative, supported by bibliographic search and content analysis, with theoretical methods such as historical-logical analysis and deductive and hypothetical analysis. Behavioral economics has been used to modify behaviors associated with chronic non communicable diseases, so it can provide a solution to increase the number of people who are inoculated against the virus. The perception of risk and uncertainty, the amount of information and social pressure are identified as factors that influence the decision, as well as various heuristics and cognitive biases. The design of behavioral interventions should employ nudges in the decision architecture, starting from the "simple, attractive, social and timely" methodology as an opportunity to increase the number of people who are vaccinated. Copyright © 2022, Editorial Ciencias Medicas. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Society is facing a global pandemic, causing millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of infections. The importance of vaccination to face COVID-19 is decisive in the fight against the virus. However, many people have decided not to get vaccinated, ruining public health policy. The objective of this article is to apply knowledge about behavioral economics in the explanation of the behavior of those who decide not to be vaccinated, as well as the use of decision architecture and nudges for the design of behavioral interventions. The methodology used was qualitative, supported by bibliographic search and content analysis, with theoretical methods such as historical-logical analysis and deductive and hypothetical analysis. Behavioral economics has been used to modify behaviors associated with chronic non communicable diseases, so it can provide a solution to increase the number of people who are inoculated against the virus. The perception of risk and uncertainty, the amount of information and social pressure are identified as factors that influence the decision, as well as various heuristics and cognitive biases. The design of behavioral interventions should employ nudges in the decision architecture, starting from the "simple, attractive, social and timely" methodology as an opportunity to increase the number of people who are vaccinated. Copyright © 2022, Editorial Ciencias Medicas. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Italy was the first country to be affected by the COVID-19 epidemic in Europe. In the past months, predictive mathematical models have been used to understand the proportion of this epidemic and identify effective policies to control it, but few have considered the impact of asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic infections in a structured setting. A critical problem that hinders the accuracy of these models is indeed given by the presence of a large number of asymptomatic individuals in the population. This number is estimated to be large, sometimes between 3 and 10 times the diagnosed patients. We focus on this aspect through the formulation of a model that captures two types of interactions onewith asymptomatic individuals and another with symptomatic infected. We also extend the original model to capture the interactions in the population via complex networks, and, in particular, the Watts-Strogatz model, which is the most suitable for social networks. The contributions of this paper include (i) the formulation of an epidemic model, which we call SAIR, that discriminates between asymptomatic and symptomatic infected through different measures of interactions and the corresponding stability analysis of the system in feedback form through the calculation of the R-0 as H-infinity gain;(ii) the analysis of the corresponding structured model involving the Watts and Strogatz interaction topology, to study the case of heterogeneous connectivity in the population;(iii) a case study on the Italian case, where we take into account the Istat seroprevalence study in the homogeneous case first, and then we analyze the impact of summer tourism and of the start of school in September in the heterogeneous case.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 conspiracy theories have proliferated during the global pandemic, and their rapid spread among certain groups may jeopardize the public health response (e.g., undermining motivation to engage in social distancing and willingness to vaccinate against the virus). Using survey data from two waves of a nationally representative, longitudinal study of life in lockdown in the United Kingdom (N = 1,406), we analyze the factors associated with belief in three origin theories related to COVID-19, namely that it 1) originated in a meat market in Wuhan, China;2) was developed in a lab in Wuhan, China;and 3) is caused by 5G mobile networks. Our findings suggest that political-psychological predispositions are strongly associated with belief in conspiracy theories about the virus, though the direction and effect sizes of these predictors vary depending on the specific content of each origin theory. For instance, belief in the Chinese lab conspiracy theory is strongly associated with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and general conspiracy ideation, as well as less reliable news sources, distrust in scientists, and anxiety about the pandemic. Belief in the 5G network conspiracy theory is strongly associated with SDO, distrust in scientists, while less strongly with conspiracy ideation and information from social networks/media;RWA is strongly negatively associated with belief in the 5G conspiracy theory, with older and more wealthy individuals somewhat less likely to endorse it. The meat market origin theory is predicted by intolerance of uncertainty, ethnocentrism, COVID-19 anxiety, and less so by higher income, while distrust in scientists is negatively associated with this origin story. Finally, belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories is associated with negative public health behaviors such as unwillingness to social distance and vaccinate against the virus. Crucially, our findings suggest that the specific content of COVID-19 conspiracy theories likely determines which individuals may be most likely to endorse them. Copyright © 2021 Hartman, Marshall, Stocks, McKay, Bennett, Butter, Gibson Miller, Hyland, Levita, Martinez, Mason, McBride, Murphy, Shevlin, Vallières and Bentall.
ABSTRACT
The current situation that humanity is experiencing is unsustainable;between economic and social phenomena and the current health crisis, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The present article aims to argue the emergence of new economic knowledge in the current critical situation of the conventional economy and the social reality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We proceeded with the compilation of information and the relevance of the dominant economic paradigm for the functioning of society in current conditions was analyzed, arriving at general considerations about the need to base a new economic knowledge based on the principles and emerging categories of various areas of economic knowledge that have gained space and academic recognition from the middle of the 20th century.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic is generating an array of psychological difficulties in survivors, families and first-line health professionals. The need for psychological interventions within the hospital has led to the increase in the capacity of the Clinical Psychology Liaison Service in the Gregorio Maraiion General University Hospital. The crisis intervention model has underpinned the organization of the care, with a focus on preventing complicated grief and post-traumatic stress disorder. In this paper, the most frequently reported psychological difficulties are outlined and the interventions carried out in the service are described (reduced groups for professionals, face-to-face and telephone-based interventions with patients, families and professionals, crisis intervention, consulting role of the physicians and nurses, etc.).
ABSTRACT
The objective of the study was to analyze the factors that hinder submitting to the state of emergency due to COVID-19 and their relationship in the risk of infection by Coronavirus in informal providers. The survey was used as the technique and two questionnaires as instruments of data collection, one alluding the factors that hinder submitting to the state of emergency for COVID-19 and the other that measured the risk of infection by coronavirus. The results demonstrate that 45.3% (24) of informal providers present a high risk of infection by Coronavirus. It is concluded that unfavorable management of the factors that hinder the state of emergency in informal providers exponentially increases the risk of infection by COVID-19. © 2020, Universidad del Zulia. All rights reserved.