Students' Engagement in Virtual Learning of Heritage Building During the Pandemic

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a significant impact on the higher education system unprecedented in modern history. Learning institutions were closed, tight regulations enforced to encourage social and physical distancing and switched classes from face-to-face to online delivery (ODL). As a result, e-learning tools and platforms were explored to keep students engaged in learning during this pandemic. Although this virtual teaching–learning adaptation is not by choice and challenging for both educators and students, modern technology has encouraged us to explore a new interactive way of delivering knowledge and continue students' learning engagement. This paper focuses on the alternative teaching methods that have been conducted in Architecture Measured Drawing, which traditionally relies on physical interactions and interaction in the form of collaborative work in-studio learning and field trips. A case study of one (1) private university conducted the Architecture Measured course online in response to the pandemic has been investigated. This paper aims to identify the teaching and learning methods of this course during the pandemic and to analyze the level of students' engagement throughout the course. A survey was distributed to students enrolled in the module to gain feedback on their experience. Findings proved that the alternative method adopted has shown that students have experienced different types of engagement with each stage in the course. Students' engagement was maintained at a high level despite the shift and completed the course successfully. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Lockdown Without Loss? A Natural Experiment of Net Payoffs from COVID-19 Lockdowns

Lacking a federal policy to control the spread of COVID-19, state governors ordered lockdowns and mask mandates, at different times, generating a massive natural experiment. The authors exploit this natural experiment to address four issues: (1) Were lockdowns effective in reducing infections? (2) What were the costs to consumers? (3) Did lockdowns increase (signaling effect) or reduce (substitution effect) consumers' mask adoption? (4) Did governors' decisions depend on medical science or nonmedical drivers? Analyses via difference-in-differences and generalized synthetic control methods indicate that lockdowns causally reduced infections. Although lockdowns reduced infections by 480 per million consumers per day (equivalent to a reduction of 56%), they reduced customer satisfaction by 2.2%, consumer spending by 7.5%, and gross domestic product by 5.4% and significantly increased unemployment by 2% per average state by the end of the observation period. A counterfactual analysis shows that a nationwide lockdown on March 15, 2020, would have reduced total cases by 60%, whereas the absence of any state lockdowns would have resulted in five times more cases by April 30. The average cost of reducing the number of cases by one new infection was about $28,000 in lower gross domestic product.

The impact of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution on mental health outcomes

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a "second pandemic" of anxiety and depression. While vaccines are primarily aimed at reducing COVID-19 transmission and mortality risks, they may have important secondary benefits. We use data from U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey merged to state-level COVID-19 vaccination eligibility data to estimate the secondary benefits of COVID-19 vaccination on mental health outcomes. To address endogenous COVID-19 vaccination, we leverage state-level variation in the timing of when age groups are eligible for vaccination. We estimate that COVID-19 vaccination reduces anxiety and depression symptoms by nearly 30%. Nearly all the benefits are private benefits, and we find little evidence of spillover effects, that is, increases in community vaccination rates are not associated with improved anxiety or depression symptoms among the unvaccinated. We find that COVID-19 vaccination is associated with larger reductions in anxiety or depression symptoms among individuals with lower education levels, who rent their housing, who are not able to telework, and who have children in their household. The economic benefit of reductions in anxiety and depression are approximately $350 billion. Our results highlight an important, but understudied, secondary benefit of COVID-19 vaccinations.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses on excess mortality

As a way of slowing COVID-19 transmission, many countries and U.S. states implemented shelter-in-place (SIP) policies. However, the effects of SIP policies on public health are a priori ambiguous as they might have unintended adverse effects on health. The effect of SIP policies on COVID-19 transmission and physical mobility is mixed. To understand the net effects of SIP policies, we measure the change in excess deaths following the implementation of SIP policies in 43 countries and all U.S. states. We use an event study framework to quantify changes in the number of excess deaths after the implementation of a SIP policy. We find that following the implementation of SIP policies, excess mortality increases. The increase in excess mortality is statistically significant in the immediate weeks following SIP implementation for the international comparison only and occurs despite the fact that there was a decline in the number of excess deaths prior to the implementation of the policy. At the U.S. state-level, excess mortality increases in the immediate weeks following SIP introduction and then trends below zero following 20 weeks of SIP implementation. We failed to find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier, and in which SIP policies had longer to operate, had lower excess deaths than countries/U.S. states that were slower to implement SIP policies. We also failed to observe differences in excess death trends before and after the implementation of SIP policies based on pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.

Back to school: the effect of school visits during COVID-19 on COVID-19 transmission

Schools across the United States and the world have been closed in an effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. However, the effect of school closure on COVID-19 transmission remains unclear. We estimate the causal effect of changes in the number of weekly visits to schools on COVID-19 transmission using a triple difference approach. In particular, we measure the effect of changes in county-level visits to schools on changes in COVID-19 diagnoses for households with school-age children relative to changes in COVID-19 diagnoses for households without schoolage children. We use a data set from the first 46 weeks of 2020 with 130 million household-week level observations that includes COVID-19 diagnoses merged to school visit tracking data from millions of mobile phones. We find that increases in county-level in-person visits to schools lead to an increase in COVID-19 diagnoses among households with children relative to households without school-age children. However, the effects are small in magnitude. A move from the 25th to the 75th percentile of county-level school visits translates to a 0.3 per 10,000 household increase in COVID-19 diagnoses. This change translates to a 3.2 percent relative increase. We find larger differences in low-income counties, in counties with higher COVID-19 prevalence, and at later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Deep Learning Approach for Diagnosis of Pneumonia

In the pandemic of Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), lung diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. Among these diseases, pneumonia is the largest infectious disease caused by bacteria, viruses (including coronavirus) that collapses alveoli present in the lungs. Most effective and economic modality for diagnosing it is Chest X-Ray (CXR) imaging. In this paper we have proposed a scratch Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) 13 layers model for detecting pneumonia from CXR images. We have evaluated proposed CNN-13 model on pneumonia and normal CXR image dataset which is freely available on website of Kaggle. After simulation, the proposed CNN-13 model attained results with training and testing accuracy of 98.51% and 96.7% respectively. Metrics log loss and Area Under the Curve (AUC) scored 0.0371 and 0.9984 on training set and 0.1285 and 0.9819 on testing set respectively. © 2021 IEEE.

Cybersecurity During COVID-19

The world today has become fully digitalized. The increase of digitalization has provided a huge platform for the cybercriminals to launch their attacks. With the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) followed by lockdowns, digitalization has been the only way to stay connected virtually. With the growing technology every day, the attacks become more and more sophisticated as the attackers quickly learn and invent new ways to find their prey. Every sector whether public or private has been affected due to breaches in cybersecurity especially during the COVID-19. In this paper, we have tried to analyze various types of cyberattacks carried out during the pandemic with its impact and preventive measures to be taken for protection. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Prevention- Versus Promotion-Focus Regulatory Efforts on the Disease Incidence and Mortality of COVID-19: A Multinational Diffusion Study Using Functional Data Analysis

International marketing has rarely explored the diffusion patterns of the spread of a disease or analyzed the factors explaining the differences in the disease incidence patterns. The rapid diffusion of the novel coronavirus has engulfed the entire world in a very short time. Many countries experienced different levels of disease incidence and mortality despite implementing similar nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Drawing on the regulatory focus theory, the authors propose a framework to conceptualize and investigate the comparative efficacy of diverse NPIs that countries could adopt to prevent or curtail the diffusion of the disease incidence and mortality. They categorize these NPIs as prevention focused (containment and closures) or promotion focused (relief measures and public health infrastructure) and discuss the moderating factors that enhance or impede their effectiveness. Employing functional data analysis, the authors examine a comprehensive data set across 70 countries. They find that prevention-focused interventions inhibit disease incidence, while promotion-focused interventions enhance the nation's ability to respond to medical emergencies and augment people's ability to isolate themselves and slow the spread. The authors also generate insights on how a reallocation of resources between prevention- and promotion-focused efforts influence the evolution of disease incidence and mortality, with various countries falling in different clusters.

315 Emergency Medicine and Trauma Physician Awareness of Mental Health Resources during and after Natural and Human-Made Disasters

Study Objectives: The mental health of physicians is a key issue during the recovery phase of natural and human-made disasters (NHD). During NHDs, physicians must work within devastated health care infrastructures. Profoundly limited and strained resources and surges in acute and chronic care patients lead to prolonged, intense exposure to death, injury, and destruction. Physicians face a triple threat during NHDs - they are exposed to the NHD, are responsible for providing emergent and ongoing care to their community and must cope with complex decisions of delivering care or moving to safe spaces to protect themselves and their families. In non-NHD settings, 54.4% of physicians suffer from burnout. This adversely impacts physician wellbeing, job performance and may result in decreased quality of patient care. NHDs have the potential to exacerbate this effect. While federal law mandates that health care facilities have emergency operation plans in place for disaster preparedness, the accessibility of mental health resources to physicians in these settings has not been characterized. The objective of this study was to examine emergency medicine (EM) and trauma physician knowledge of and access to mental health resources at their institutions during and after NHDs. Methods: Between February 4, 2020 and March 9, 2020, researchers conducted a national survey among EM and trauma physicians. The survey was developed based on an emergency preparedness questionnaire created by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015. Our survey was distributed electronically to the members of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the American Association of the Surgery of Trauma (AAST). The 17-question survey collected information on EM and Trauma surgeon awareness and access to emergency preparedness resources at their institutions. Results: Of those who participated in the survey (n = 230), 80% were white, 75% were male, 80% were greater than 10 years out of graduate training and 76% worked in a trauma center. 85% of responders were aware of a written emergency response plan for their facility and 51% were aware of ACEP and AAST disaster preparedness guidelines. 20% of responders knew if their institutional emergency response plan included policies that addressed physician mental health needs during and after an NHD. In addition, 31% were aware of the hospital’s mental health policies and resources outside the emergency response plan;only 25% knew how to access these resources during and after an NHD. Finally, 10% reported incorporation of these mental health resources during emergency preparedness practice drills at their institution. Conclusion: In a survey administered to physicians in the period immediately prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in the US, the majority of physicians reported knowledge of emergency preparedness policies;however, significant gaps remain in physician knowledge and access to mental health resources during and after an NHD. As the frequency and severity of NHDs rapidly increase on a global scale, it is critical for health systems to ensure accessible infrastructure and resources to support the mental wellbeing of health professionals. In addition, physicians should be extensively and repeatedly educated regarding the existence of these resources and how to access them during or after an NHD.