Trauma and Distress on a Cruise during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study with Italian and French Tourists

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed our daily lives. One of the sectors most affected was tourism and travel – and, more specifically, cruises, given the prolonged time passengers spend with others within the small spaces of the cruise ship. While finding well-organised entertainment opportunities on cruises is possible, emergency conditions may cause panic. On such occasions, reactions can be highly stressful or even traumatic. This research explores the events and emotions experienced by passengers during a cruise ship quarantined for COVID-19. The empirical materials consist of interviews with 15 passengers. The analyses show four thematic areas: fear of contagion, feelings of discrimination, cooperation between passengers and relationship with the crew. The problems during a cruise ship quarantine presented by the passengers in this study reveal the need for psychological preparation for the crew and security personnel. Finally, we suggest that telemedicine and telepsychology are key elements to improve the efficiency of behavioral control on cruise ships and to mitigate the COVID-19 effects on tourists' well-being during a quarantine. © 2023 by the author.

Narratives of the Virocene: a visual ethnography with basis on the film Contagion

Over the recent years, some authors have questioned the hegemony of mankind (Anthropocene) over nature. The recent virus outbreak known as COVID19 starts a new period known as "violence" where humans are forced to recede to the private sphere. The COVID19 pandemic not only alerted the health authorities but also disposed of extreme measures which included the close of borders, airspaces, as well as the imposition of lockdown and social distancing. Not only global commerce but also the tourism industry was placed on the brink of collapse. In this grim landscape, the problem of climate change is far from being solved. While steps to reverse the greenhouse gas emission should be taken globally coordinating efforts among nations, the current climate of tension without mentioning the geopolitical discrepancies (among countries) impedes the formation of global sustainable institutions to monitor and regulate the effects of climate change. The present article centers on a visual ethnography on the film Contagion, to lay the foundations towards a new understanding of ideology and its effects on ecological justice.

Further evidence of contagion effect between the Chinese and the G20 stock markets during the COVID-19 pandemic: A time-varying copula approach

This paper examines the presence of a contagion effect between Chinese and G20 stock markets as well as its intensity over a recent period from 1(st) January 2013 to 7 April 2022. The empirical study is conducted using the time-varying copula approach. The obtained results show strong evidence of a contagion effect between China and all countries except United States America, Argentina and Turkey during the COVID-19 period. In particular, the Chinese stock market exhibits the highest level of dependence with the Asian and European stock markets in addition to the greatest variability in dependence. These findings are interesting and have important implications for several financial applications.

Epidemic of affect: Contagious anxiety and cinematic metaphor in She Dies Tomorrow (2020)

Although written before the COVID-19 pandemic, Amy Seimetz's She Dies Tomorrow is widely regarded as speaking to collective social anxiety. In the film, Amy is convinced that she will die the next day. She tells her friend, Jane, who becomes convinced that she too will die. Everyone that Jane tells catches the convic-tion and it spreads like a virus. This article offers an alternative reading, analysing the film as a meditation on (horror) cinema as a vehicle for affective bodily conta-gion. Filmic images and sounds are intangible and do not physically touch viewers yet can nevertheless carry affect that makes bodies respond to and sometimes repli-cate what is shown on screen. Similarly, in She Dies Tomorrow, an intangible idea causes affective response and mimesis, as well as audio-visual hallucinations. The article explores how contagious anxiety might be spread through cinematic objects, drawing from affect, phenomenology and object-oriented ontology (OOO). Finally, it explores the film's engagement with both Derrida's spectrality of cinema and the nature of the horror genre. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS AND THE EU IN THE NEW ERA

The Covid-19 pandemic had already changed the course of world history, opening up a number of scientific and political debates, when the war in Ukraine erupted. With the help of a broad literature, we go into depth about how much these events will influence the reshoring process that was already under way before the pandemic, and more generally the development of global supply chains (GSCs), especially in the EU. We discuss the definition, the data and the main sources of the reshoring process and how they will mix with the new situation to favour politically influenced and more regional supply chains. Finally, we debate the alternatives that policymakers face, concluding that trade wars will be fiercer and more frequent in a period of decoupling among economic blocks. © 2022 Vita e Pensiero. All rights reserved.

A review of some Covid-19 pandemic numbers in European Union, Canada, and Mexico

The rapidity and extent of Covid-19 infections have shown how a phenomenon that initially seemed geographically circumscribed quickly spread worldwide. In 2020, the spread of infection and the containment and management measures taken by local governments have been quite heterogeneous. Therefore, here we investigate the different ways of the spread of the infection in different areas, and specifically in Canada, Mexico, and the European Union states. For this purpose, for each area, official data on infection in 2020 are used to depict, analyze, and compare the monthly contagion's curves and the Rt index, both in absolute and relative terms. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.

Factors Associated with the Level of Knowledge about Biosafety against COVID-19 in Peruvian Dental Students: A Cross-Sectional Study under a Multivariable Regression Model.

AIM: Biosafety is a set of preventive measures aimed at controlling risk factors arising from biological, physical, and/or chemical agents. This topic is particularly important in the dental field since saliva is the main biological agent of the transmission of coronavirus. The present study aimed to determine the factors associated with the level of knowledge about biosafety against COVID-19 in Peruvian dentistry students. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present observational, cross-sectional, and analytical study evaluated 312 Peruvian dentistry students. A validated 20-question questionnaire was used to measure the level of knowledge. The nonparametric Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare levels of knowledge between categories of each variable. A logit model was used to evaluate associated factors such as sex, age, marital status, place of origin, academic year of study, being in the academic upper third, history of COVID-19, and living with vulnerable family members. A significance level of p < 0.05 was considered. RESULTS: 36.2%, 31.4%, and 32.4% presented poor, fair, and good knowledge levels, respectively. Students under 25 years of age were 64% less likely to pass the biosafety against COVID-19 questionnaire than students 25 years of age and older (OR = 0.36; CI: 0.20-0.66). Students in the academic upper third were nine times more likely to pass the test than other students (OR = 9.38; CI: 4.61-19.07). Finally, third-year students were 52% less likely to pass the exam than fifth-year students (OR = 0.48; CI: 0.28-0.83). CONCLUSION: Only a minority of dentistry students had a good level of knowledge about biosafety against COVID-19. Younger and less educated students were more likely to fail the questionnaire. On the other hand, those students with outstanding academic performance were more likely to pass the questionnaire.

The role of credit lines and multiple lending in financial contagion and systemic events

Banks play a crucial role in providing liquidity to borrowers, particularly during crises (Kashyap et al., 2002 [33]). The existence of multiple lending relationships between banks and borrowers has been seen as an element that reduces the risk of liquidity shortage for debtors (Detragiache et al., 2000). In this paper, we aim to show how the interaction of these two aspects with solvency and liquidity requirements might have implications for the stability of the banking system, which might still need to be fully analyzed. We show that if other sources of liquidity are unavailable or too costly for banks, multiple lending might be a key element in a systemic liquidity shortage and a large drop in lending to the economy. These findings are particularly relevant for understanding how macroeconomic shocks, such as the relatively recent outbreak of COVID-19, could impact the real economy, as well as for assessing the implications of alternative banking resolution mechanisms.

Does foreign equity investment impact the spillover effect of industries in China?

This study aims to systematically investigate the impact of foreign equity investment on the spillover across industries in China, both in terms of the contagion path and persistence of shocks and the performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use daily data on returns covering 2014 to 2022 and apply linear and non-linear causality tests and spillover framework. Our findings show that the two proxies of foreign investment, net buying and Δ Net Buying, significantly shock the spillover across 11 industry indexes of China's stock market, particularly the spillover output and long-term spillover received of sectors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, international investors are bullish on China's economy reflected in the continuous inflow of northbound trading, and the short-run influence on China's stock market is weakened, while the long-run impact remains. Moreover, financial networks suggest that the path of movement international capital movement to accomplish overall contagion through shock in certain specific industries. Overall, this study evidence that the northbound trading generally overlooked by researchers is indeed an important channel of financial contagion to China's stock market.

Contagion between selected European indexes during the Covid-19 pandemic

The main aim of this study is to examine dynamic dependence and proof of contagion during the Covid-2019 pandemic. The empirical data are daily prices from six European indexes. The FTSE, DAX and CAC indexes represent the largest and most developed stock markets in Europe, while the Austrian ATX index represents small developed markets. The WIG and BUX indexes represent emerging European markets. This empirical study, based on the Dynamic Conditional Correlation model, which is applied to different pairs of indexes, aims to convince the reader of the increase in the correlation between the time of the pandemic (after 30 December 2019) and the period before the beginning of the pandemic. For all pairs, the mean value of the conditional correlations in the pre-Covid period was statistically below the values in the Covid period. The results indicate contagion in Europe after the outbreak of the Covid-2019 pandemic.

On the employment and health impact of the COVID-19 shock on Italian regions: a value chain approach

We evaluate the exposure of Italian regions to employment and the health risk associated with the spread of COVID-19. First, we estimate the degree of participation of Italian regions in a plurality of value chains linked to consumption, investment and exports. Second, we investigate the different levels of contagion risk associated with each value chain and the possibility of reducing such risk through remote work. We find that regions are affected differently by lockdown policies because of their highly heterogeneous embeddedness in different value chains, and their diverse sectoral contributions to each of them. © 2023 Regional Studies Association.

THE CONTAGION NUMBER: HOW FAST CAN A DISEASE SPREAD?

The overall purpose of this paper is to define a new metric on the spreadability of a disease. Herein, we define a variant of the well-known graph-theoretic burning number (BN) metric that we coin the contagion number (CN). We aver that the CN is a better metric to model disease spread than the BN as the CN concentrates on first time infections. This is important because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that COVID-19 reinfections are rare. This paper delineates a novel methodology to solve for the CN of any tree, in polynomial time, which addresses how fast a disease could spread (i.e., a worst-cast analysis). We then employ Monte Carlo simulation to determine the average contagion number (ACN) (i.e., a most-likely analysis) of how fast a disease would spread. The latter is analyzed on scale-free graphs, which are specifically designed to model human social networks (sociograms). We test our method on some randomly generated scale-free graphs and our findings indicate the CN to be a robust, tractable (the BN is NP-hard even for a tree), and effective disease spread metric for decision makers. The contributions herein advance disease spread understanding and reveal the importance of the underlying network structure. Understanding disease spreadability informs public policy and the associated managerial allocation decisions. © 2023 by the authors.

Magical contagion beliefs operate in reactions of Americans to COVID-19

We assessed the reaction of American adults to scenarios involving explicit types of exposure to live COVID viruses in June 2020, in the first months of the COVID pandemic. Four features of magical contagion are physical contact focus, insensitivity to elapsed time (‘permanence'), insensitivity to sterilization (‘spiritual essence'), and insensitivity to dose. We demonstrated the operation of all four features in a majority of participants. We also report another dramatic demonstration of the principle of dose insensitivity. When asked for the minimal number of COVID viruses that would have to enter their lung to give them a 50% chance of contracting COVID, more than half of subjects responded with ‘one'. Magical contagion should generally function to increase fear and perceived risk of COVID. © 2023, Society for Judgment and Decision making. All rights reserved.

Financial Contagion Between Crude Oil, Gold, and Equity Sectors in India During COVID

Purpose: This study examined the financial contagion between crude oil and gold prices with the equity prices of different sectors in the Indian equity market during the recent COVID crisis. Design/Methodology/Approach: Dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) GARCH model was employed to analyze the behavior of time-varying conditional correlation during the time of COVID-19. For examining the financial contagion, regression analysis was performed on the dynamic conditional correlation and the conditional volatilities of the different markets. Findings: The DCC model showed a sharp increase in correlations between markets during the COVID-19 wave. It also suggested the presence of financial contagion between the crude oil and gold markets and the different equity sectors. It also indicated that the COVID-19 effect on the conditional correlation between gold and equity sectors was temporary. In contrast, it increased the correlation between crude oil and the equity sectors. Practical Implications: The findings of this study have implications for portfolio diversification methods because higher correlations lower the benefits of diversification. Originality: This study examined the financial contagion during COVID-19 from crude oil and gold to equity sectors. Not all sectors react in the same way to changes in the prices of these commodities, and some may witness less impact compared to others during the crisis period, which makes it interesting for the study. © 2023, Associated Management Consultants Pvt. Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Health Geography of COVID-19: An Exploratory Analysis of the Pandemic during its First Phase in the Compact Cities of Barcelona and Madrid, Spain

COVID-19 has affected every aspect of life around the globe. To understand the spread of disease it is essential to record location and place, space and population. This chapter is based in history and the epidemiologist literature reporting the relevant variables. The objective is to determine which variable affects contagion in compact cities such as Barcelona and Madrid. Are both cities affected by the same variables? Are there differences between the cities? Why? The set of variables involves the socioeconomic conditions of the population, aging populations and neighborhood conditions. The Global and Local Moran's I tools for spatial autocorrelation are used as well as spatial autoregressive models (SAR). Population movements within compact territories might produce a distortion in research results if not accounted for. In the planning strategy, inequalities, society and health treated as a system might improve the foundations for living conditions and health. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Effects of Financial Contagion in Vietnam during the Pandemic Crisis

The article discusses the features of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam in the context of the theory and methodology for identifying the effects of financial contagion. The Vietnamese economy in the 2000 demonstrated steady growth, which allowed minimizing many of the negative consequences of the pandemic. At the same time, the Vietnamese economy was exposed to financial contagion - the effects of the transmission of negative shocks from other countries and the subsequent spread between sectors of the national economy. These effects during the pandemic have been empirically confirmed. For this purpose, special tests and an extensive information base on the stock market were used. The results showed that Vietnam was exposed to pandemic shock from China, but was not a transmitter of financial contagion for other Asian countries. In addition, the article fixes the risks of contagion at the sectoral level - the most susceptible to contagion were industries such as trade, real estate and food.

Scale of concern about the contagion of a variant of COVID-19 in university students of physical education, recreation and sports: construct validity and reliability

Introduction: There is no valid and reliable instrument of concern about a variant of COVID-19 contagion to face the post-pandemic challenge in Physical Education, Recreation and Sport university students who are being trained in the university institution. Objective: To evaluate the content validity, internal consistency, and reliability of a scale of concern about a variant of COVID-19 contagion in Physical Education, Recreation and Sport university students. Methods: An exploratory study with a quantitative cross-sectional approach and a nonprobabilistic sample was carried out. The instrument consists of an online survey, sent through announcements and institutional emails to the Physical Education, Recreation and Sport students, obtaining 331 participants (219 men, 72,2%, and 112 women, 23,8%), whose ages range between 17 and 24 years, with an average age of 21,3 years. Results: The exploratory factorial analysis indicated that the instrument allowed the factorial analysis (kmo = 0.874;bartlett <0,001), while the confirmatory factorial analysis showed that it was not necessary to eliminate any element. Finally, the item-total correlations range from 0, 72 to 0, 82, and the internal consistency was good (α = 0,91).Conclusions: The scale of concern about covid-19 contagion is a valid and reliable instrument in Physical Education, Recreation and Sport Colombian university students © Este material es publicado según los términos de la Licencia Creative Commons Atribución–NoComercial 4.0. Se permite el uso, distribución y reproducción no comerciales y sin restricciones en cualquier medio, siempre que sea debidamente citada la fuente primaria de publicación

An investigation of financial contagion between cryptocurrency and equity markets: Evidence from developed and emerging markets

The present study conducts a dynamic conditional cross-correlation and time–frequency correlation analyses between cryptocurrency and equity markets in both advanced and emerging economies. The purpose of the study is twofold. First, the study investigates the presence of the pure (narrow) form of financial contagion between cryptocurrency and stock markets in both advanced and emerging economies, during the black swan event of the COVID-19 crisis. Second, the study examines the hedging and safe-haven properties of cryptocurrencies against equity markets, before and during periods of financial upheaval triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two econometric models are used: (1) the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) GARCH and (2) the wavelet analysis models. Using the DCC GARCH model, the study found the evidence of high conditional correlations between cryptocurrency and equity markets. The high conditional correlation was mostly detected in periods of financial turmoil corresponding to the first quarter and the second quarter of 2020. The increase in conditional correlation during periods of financial upheaval (compared to a tranquil period) indicates the presence of the pure form of financial contagion. The wavelet cross-correlation analysis showed the evidence of positive cross-correlation between the Bitcoin and the equity markets during period of financial turmoil. The cross-correlation was identified in both short and long (coarse) scales. In short scales, the equity markets lead the cryptocurrency market, while the cryptocurrency market leads equity markets in coarse scales. The findings of the present study revealed that the degree of interdependence between cryptocurrency and equity markets has substantially increased during the COVID-19 period, and this has negated the safe-haven and hedging benefits of cryptocurrencies over equity markets. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Corona and value change. The role of social media and emotional contagion.

People share their emotions on social media and evidence suggests that in times of crisis people are especially motivated to post emotional content. The current Coronavirus pandemic is such a crisis. The online sharing of emotional content during the Coronavirus crisis may contribute to societal value change. Emotion sharing via social media could lead to emotional contagion which in turn could facilitate an emotional climate in a society. In turn, the emotional climate of a society can influence society's value structure. The emotions that spread in the current Coronavirus crisis are predominantly negative, which could result in a negative emotional climate. Based on the dynamic relations of values to each other and the way that emotions relate to values, a negative emotional climate can contribute to societal value change towards values related to security preservation and threat avoidance. As a consequence, a negative emotional climate and the shift in values could lead to a change in political attitudes that has implications for rights, freedom, privacy and moral progress. Considering the impact of social media in terms of emotional contagion and a longer-lasting value change is an important perspective in thinking about the ethical long-term impact of social media technology.

Psittacosis contagion in 1930: an old story in a new era of zoonotic disease.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the importance of zoonotic diseases. Psittacosis, a human disease resulting from infection spill-over from Chlamydia psittaci-infected birds, is a lesser-known example of a zoonosis. Psittacosis was responsible for numerous outbreaks in the 1930s, characterised by significant human mortality and disruption to the global trade in parrots. This paper describes the epidemiological and clinical details of one family group impacted by the purchase of an infected, imported parrot. Findings are discussed in the context of a growing awareness of the health risks of global disease outbreaks, as well as social and economic impacts. Health information recorded for cases of psittacosis associated with the 1930s cluster was reviewed using contemporary knowledge of disease symptoms and epidemiology. Case details and autopsy reports were examined. Public health investigation deduced that the cluster of infections was chronologically and physically connected to the purchase and subsequent death of an imported parrot. Disease symptoms were consistent with C. psittaci infection. Epidemiological data supported the diagnoses and causes of death, despite the presenting symptoms sharing significant overlap with other common respiratory diseases. There is growing awareness of the risks of epidemiological bridges in transmitting animal diseases to humans. Historical cases are a strong reminder of the fundamental role of scientific and public health responses in the face of such contagion.