The effect of increasing health disaster risk and public spending on economy conditions: a DSGE perspective

PurposeThe main motivation of the present study is to understand the severity of the effect of health shock on Iran's oil economy and analyze the role of government under these conditions.Design/methodology/approachDynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models can show the precise interactions between market decision-makers in the context of general equilibrium. Since the duration of the virus outbreak and its effect on the economy is not known, it is more appropriate to use these models.FindingsThe results of the survey of hands-on policies scenarios compared to the state of hands-off policy indicate that the effect of government expending shocks on the economy under pandemic disease conditions has much less feedback on macroeconomic variables.Originality/valueAs a proposed policy, it is recommended that the government play a stabilizing role under pandemic disease conditions.Key messages There is no study regarding health shock and its economic effects in Iran using DSGE models. Also, in foreign studies, the health shock in an oil economy has not been modeled.The general idea in the present study is how the prevalence of a pandemic infectious disease affects the dynamics of macroeconomic variables.In three different scenarios, according to the persistence of health disaster risk and the deterioration rate of health capital due to this shock, the model is simulated.In modeling pandemic diseases, quarantine hours are considered as part of the total time of individuals.According to the research findings, it is recommended that the government, as a policy-maker, play a stabilizing role under pandemic crises conditions.

Colliding Pandemics and CoViD-19

Cases of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), monkeypox virus (MPXV), and avian influenza A Virus (IAV) have increased during our current prolonged Corona Virus Disease 2019 (CoViD-19) pandemic. The rise of these viral infectious diseases may be associated or even inter-dependent with acute, latent or recurrent infection with Systemic Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona virus-2 (SARS-CoV2). The nonsensical neologism 'tripledemic' was tentatively introduced to describe the confluent nature of these trends (epidemic comes from two Greek words: epi=on, about, demos=people;pandemic is also derived from Ancient Greek: pan=all, demos=people;but 'tripledemic' would derive from Latin triplus=three, Greek demos=people, and would at best signify 'three countries, three peoples', but certainly not the current threat of confluence of three, or perhaps more pandemics). Emerging evidence suggests that monkey pox and CoViD-19, among several other viral diseases, produce significant observable manifestations in the oral cavity. From a clinical standpoint, dentists and dental personnel may be among the first health professionals to encounter and diagnose clinical signs of converging infections. From the immune surveillance viewpoint, viral recombination and viral interference among these infectious diseases must be examined to determine the potential threat of these colliding pandemics.

National Epidemic Situation of Notifiable Infectious Diseases in January 2023

<Positive> In January 2023 (from 0:00 on January 1, 2023 to 24:00 on January 31), a total of 249 324 notifiable infectious diseases were reported nationwide (excluding Hong Kong, Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan, the same below). For example, 2 158 people died. Among them, no cases of morbidity or death were reported for Class A infectious diseases. Among Class B infectious diseases, there are no reports of morbidity and death in infectious atypical pneumonia, polio, human infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza, diphtheria, schistosomiasis, and human infection with H7N9 avian influenza. Except for the new coronavirus infection, the remaining 20 A total of 184,750 cases of Class B infectious diseases were reported, and 2,158 deaths were reported. The top 5 diseases with the highest number of reported cases were viral hepatitis (89 719 cases reported, 32 deaths reported), tuberculosis (53 730 cases reported, 327 deaths reported), syphilis (28 708 cases reported, 3 deaths were reported), gonorrhea (4 762 reported cases, 0 reported deaths) and brucellosis (reported cases, reported deaths), accounted for 97% of the total number of reported cases of Class B infectious diseases.

Empirical Study on Social Media Exposure and Fear as Drivers of Anxiety and Depression during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an abundance of news and information dominating media outlets, leading to a widespread atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, potentially having adverse effects on mental health. This study aims to explore whether social media exposure contributes to anxiety and depression. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted using a standardized questionnaire to collect data on social media exposure, fear of COVID-19, depression, and anxiety from 327 employed individuals in the United States. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the relationships between social media exposure, fear of COVID-19, anxiety, and depression. The results suggest that fear of COVID-19 leads to anxiety and depression, and that social media exposure leads to fear, anxiety, and depression. These findings highlight the potential adverse effects of social media exposure and fear on mental health and suggest that reducing social media exposure could help minimize anxiety levels. It also emphasizes the significance of understanding the impact of fear of COVID-19 on anxiety and depression and provides guidance for managing and coping with fear in this pandemic. This study's relevance lies in gaining critical insights into the pros and cons of using social media for health-related information during a pandemic. The novelty of this study lies in its unique perspective on the impact of adverse information that has distinct psychological and social implications.

Planning for Emerging Infectious Disease Pandemics

Problem, research strategy, and findingsPlanners have not paid enough attention to managing the risk of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), of which COVID-19 is the most recent manifestation. Overlooking aggressive policies to manage this risk of zoonotic viruses reassorting between sick animals and humans misses the greatest opportunity for stopping future disease pandemics. In this study we review several disciplines, outline the scant planning literature on EIDs, and identify the increasing calls from virologists and medical professionals to address urbanization as a key EID driver. Using the case of avian influenza outbreaks in Vietnam in 2004 and 2005, we conceptualize a preventive planning approach to managing the risk of zoonotic transmission that results in EID pandemics.Takeaway for practiceWe make several recommendations for planners. Practicing planners should consider how their plans manage the risk of zoonotic disease transmission between animals and humans through land use planning and community planning. Planning education and certification organizations should develop positions regarding the role of planning for EIDs. Food systems planners should consider the importance of livestock practices in food production as a risk factor for EIDs. Diverse research teams should combine geographic scales, data sources, and disciplinary knowledge to examine how an extended series of upstream and downstream events can result in a global pandemic. Such empirical examination can lead to effective planning policies to greatly reduce this risk.

Global Crisis Leadership for Disease‐Induced Threats: One Health and Urbanisation

The concept of ‘One Health' (OH) has gathered momentum among the public health and animal health communities as an important global policy agenda for drawing together these disciplines to inform urban planning and health security policies. OH research, from a risk governance perspective, is generally concerned with identifying preventative programmes that can minimise the threats posed by diseases at the animal‐human interface (e.g. Corona virus, Ebola, avian influenza, the Q virus, for example). This article, by drawing on examples of disease threats, discusses the multi‐level challenges of establishing OH with a particular focus on urban change. It considers the risks posed by the increasing urbanisation of animal habitats and what this means for achieving OH. The article concludes by discussing why social scientists need to pay greater attention to the concept of OH.

Environmental routes of virus transmission and the application of nanomaterial-based sensors for virus detection

Many outbreaks of emerging disease (e.g., avian influenza, SARS, MERS, Ebola, COVID-19) are caused by viruses. In addition to direct person-to-person transfer, the movement of these viruses through environmental matrices (water, air, and food) can further disease transmission. There is a pressing need for rapid and sensitive virus detection in environmental matrices. Nanomaterial-based sensors (nanosensors), which take advantage of the unique optical, electrical, or magnetic properties of nanomaterials, exhibit significant potential for environmental virus detection. Interactions between viruses and nanomaterials (or recognition agents on the nanomaterials) can induce detectable signals and provide rapid response times, high sensitivity, and high specificity. Facile and field-deployable operations can be envisioned due to the small size of the sensing elements. In this frontier review, we summarize virus transmission via environmental pathways and then comprehensively discuss recent applications of nanosensors to detect various viruses. This review provides guidelines for virus detection in the environment through the use of nanosensors as a tool to decrease environmental transmission of current and emerging diseases.

Annual report of the Scientific Network on Animal Health 2022

According to its Founding Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 178/2002), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was tasked to establish a system of networks of organisations operating in the fields within EFSA's remit, with the objective to facilitate a scientific cooperation framework by coordinating activities, exchanging information, developing and implementing joint projects, and exchanging expertise and best practices. The Scientific Network on Risk Assessment in Animal Health and Welfare (AHAW) aims to build a mutual understanding of risk assessment principles in the areas of animal health and welfare, to promote harmonisation of animal health and welfare risk assessment practices and methodologies, and to reduce the duplication of activities by identifying and sharing current and upcoming priorities. The network organises an annual meeting dedicated to animal health‐related issues to discuss and exchange on all topics relevant and interesting to its member organisations. In 2022, this annual meeting took place on 27 and 28 June. Among all topics covered, special attention was paid to avian influenza, African swine fever and SARS‐CoV‐2. One Health surveillance and biosecurity were further highlights in 2022. This report summarises the activities presented by members and observers of the network as well as EFSA's contributions during the meeting.

Expected Credit Loss Under IFRS-9 and Impact of COVID-19

Implementation of new impairment model of IFRS-9 needs to estimate Expected Credit Loss (ECL) for valuation of financial instruments. The whole process of estimating credit risk and calculating of impairment requires in developing of the internal IFRS-9 model and methodology. According to IFRS-9, reporting value of the financial instruments must be presented on the balance sheet only after considering the ECL. Under the general approach, ECL considers the forward looking scenario, along with the past and present records, which entails macro economic factors. The recent Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly affected the economy at the macro level in general and the individual business entities at the micro level in particular. Thus post impact of COVID-19 on ECL is unavoidable. The paper attempts to explore how in accounting the ECL deals with the impact of COVID-19 in respect of valuation of the financial instruments at the date of reporting and disclosure of a business entity. The study incorporates qualitative as well as quantitative analysis. The novelty of the study infers some major findings. The study suggests that the COVID-19 outbreak has a significant impact on the calculation of 'Expected Credit Loss' (ECL).

Efficient compression of SARS-CoV-2 genome data using Nucleotide Archival Format.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genome data are essential for epidemiology, vaccine development, and tracking emerging variants. Millions of SARS-CoV-2 genomes have been sequenced during the pandemic. However, downloading SARS-CoV-2 genomes from databases is slow and unreliable, largely due to suboptimal choice of compression method. We evaluated the available compressors and found that Nucleotide Archival Format (NAF) would provide a drastic improvement compared with current methods. For Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Flu Data's (GISAID) pre-compressed datasets, NAF would increase efficiency 52.2 times for gzip-compressed data and 3.7 times for xz-compressed data. For DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ), NAF would improve throughput 40 times for gzip-compressed data. For GenBank and European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), NAF would accelerate data distribution by a factor of 29.3 times compared with uncompressed FASTA. This article provides a tutorial for installing and using NAF. Offering a NAF download option in sequence databases would provide a significant saving of time, bandwidth, and disk space and accelerate biological and medical research worldwide.

Sustainable Tourism in the Pandemic Era: A Case Study of Japan

The sustainable tourism concept has been evolving continually and respectively with modern society's views on sustainability. The tourism industry constantly faces new challenges showing weak points and providing opportunities for further concept development. With the focus on Japan as a case study, this empirical research discusses the insights of key stakeholders about managing sustainable tourism development during the crisis. This research takes the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of a crisis, which provides an opportunity for the sustainable tourism concept for further evolution. The results indicated that public and private sector stakeholders have different visions of sustainable tourism development. Japan's current public sector approach to it implies resolving the issue of overtourism in main tourism destinations and providing comfortable living for local communities. However, it does not have any implications for making tourism more resilient to external crises. The proposals of stakeholders for response measures for future sustainable tourism development and related policies included the establishment of a crisis management system in the tourism sphere, focus on the development of domestic tourism, creation of proper guidelines for the tourism industry for actions in case of crisis, revision of traditional tourism techniques, the establishment of "new lifestyle"/adaptation to "with Corona" era, focusing on online business/ tourism experience, focus on the development of small groups tours and individual tours, development of flexibility and adaptivity to changes in social conditions, incorporation of public health-related issues, non-contact content expansion, individual approach to different areas, and regional cooperation incorporation.

Analyzing an Epidemic of Human Infections with Two Strains of Zoonotic Virus

Due to the existence and variation of various viruses, an epidemic in which different strains spread at the same time will occur. here, an avian–human epidemic model with two strain viruses are established and analyzed. Both theoretical and simulation results reveal that the mixed infections intensify the epidemic and the dynamics become more complex and sensitive. There are six equilibria. The trivial equilibrium point is a high-order singular point and will undergo the transcritical bifurcations to bifurcate three equilibria. The existence and stability of equilibria mainly depend on five thresholds. A bifurcation portrait for the existence and stability of equilibria is presented. Simulations suggest that the key control measure is to develop the identification technology to eliminate the poultry infected with a high pathogenic virus preferentially, then the infected poultry with a low pathogenic virus in the recruitment and on farms. Controlling contact between human and poultry can effectively restrain the epidemic and controlling contagions in poultry can avoid great infection in humans.

Influenza Virus Like Particles (VLPs): Opportunities for H7N9 Vaccine Development.

In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, influenza virus remains a major threat to public health due to its potential to cause epidemics and pandemics with significant human mortality. Cases of H7N9 human infections emerged in eastern China in 2013 and immediately raised pandemic concerns as historically, pandemics were caused by the introduction of new subtypes into immunologically naïve human populations. Highly pathogenic H7N9 cases with severe disease were reported recently, indicating the continuing public health threat and the need for a prophylactic vaccine. Here we review the development of recombinant influenza virus-like particles (VLPs) as vaccines against H7N9 virus. Several approaches to vaccine development are reviewed including the expression of VLPs in mammalian, plant and insect cell expression systems. Although considerable progress has been achieved, including demonstration of safety and immunogenicity of H7N9 VLPs in the human clinical trials, the remaining challenges need to be addressed. These challenges include improvements to the manufacturing processes, as well as enhancements to immunogenicity in order to elicit protective immunity to multiple variants and subtypes of influenza virus.