U.S. Public Transportation Ridership Analysis and Prediction based on COVID-19

In this paper, a research was conducted to analyse and predict the impacts of COVID-19 on public transportation ridership in the U.S. and 5 most populous cities of the U.S. (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia). The paper aims to exploit the correlation between COVID-19 and public transportation ridership in the U.S. and make the reasonable prediction by machine learning models, including ARIMA and Prophet, to help the local governments improve the rationality of their policy implementation. After correlation analyses, high level of significant and negative correlations between monthly growth rate of COVID-19 infections and monthly growth rate of public transportation ridership are decidedly validated in the total U.S., and New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, except Houston. To analyse the errors of Houston, we consult the literature and made a discussion of Influencing factors. We find that the level of public transportation in quantity and utilization is terribly low in Houston. In addition, the factors, such as the lack of planning law and estimation of urban expressways, the high level of citizens' dependence on private cars and pride of owning cars play a considerable roll in the errors. And the impacts can be predicted to a certain extent through two forecasting models (ARIMA and Prophet), although the precision of our models is not enough to make a precise forecast due to the limitations of model tuning and model design. According to the comparison of the two models, ARIMA models' forecasting accuracy is between 6% and 10%, and Prophet's forecasting accuracy is between 8%-12%, depending on the city. Since the insufficient stationarity, periodicity, seasonality of time series, the Prophet models are hard be more refined. © 2023 SPIE.

Alcohol Misuse, Binge Drinking, and their Associations with Psychosocial Factors during COVID-19 among Harlem Residents in New York City.

This study examined alcohol misuse and binge drinking prevalence among Harlem residents, in New York City, and their associations with psycho-social factors such as substance use, depression symptom severity, and perception of community policing during COVID-19. An online cross-sectional study was conducted among 398 adult residents between April and September 2021. Participants with a score of at least 3 for females or at least 4 for males out of 12 on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test were considered to have alcohol misuse. Binge drinking was defined as self-reporting having six or more drinks on one occasion. Modified Poisson regression models were used to examine associations. Results showed that 42.7% used alcohol before COVID-19, 69.1% used it during COVID-19, with 39% initiating or increasing alcohol use during COVID-19. Alcohol misuse and binge drinking prevalence during COVID-19 were 52.3% and 57.0%, respectively. Higher severity of depression symptomatology, history of drug use and smoking cigarettes, and experiencing housing insecurity were positively associated with both alcohol misuse and binge drinking. Lower satisfaction with community policing was only associated with alcohol misuse, while no significant associations were found between employment insecurity and food insecurity with alcohol misuse or binge drinking. The findings suggest that Harlem residents may have resorted to alcohol use as a coping mechanism to deal with the impacts of depression and social stressors during COVID-19. To mitigate alcohol misuse, improving access to mental health and substance use disorder services, and addressing public safety through improving relations with police could be beneficial.

The Most Vulnerable Hispanic Immigrants in New York City: Structural Racism and Gendered Differences in COVID-19 Deaths.

This paper explores the structural and group-specific factors explaining the excess death rates experienced by the Hispanic population in New York City during the peak years of the coronavirus pandemic. Neighborhood-level analysis of Census data allows an exploration of the relation between Hispanic COVID-19 deaths and spatial concentration, conceived in this study as a proxy for structural racism. This analysis also provides a more detailed exploration of the role of gender in understanding the effects of spatial segregation among different Hispanic subgroups, as gender has emerged as a significant variable in explaining the structural and social effects of COVID-19. Our results show a positive correlation between COVID-19 death rates and the share of Hispanic neighborhood residents. However, for men, this correlation cannot be explained by the characteristics of the neighborhood, as it is for women. In sum, we find: (a) differences in mortality risks between Hispanic men and women; (b) that weathering effects increase mortality risks the longer Hispanic immigrant groups reside in the U.S.; (c) that Hispanic males experience greater contagion and mortality risks associated with the workplace; and (d) we find evidence corroborating the importance of access to health insurance and citizenship status in reducing mortality risks. The findings propose revisiting the Hispanic health paradox with the use of structural racism and gendered frameworks.

Non-fatal drug overdose among persons who inject drugs during first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City: Prevalence, risk factors.

Background: We examined non-fatal drug overdoses during the COVID-19 pandemic among persons who inject drugs (PWID) in New York City (NYC). Methods: We recruited 275 PWID through respondent driven sampling and staff outreach from Oct. 2021-Sept. 2022 and enrolled in a cross-sectional survey. Information was collected on demographics, drug use behaviors, overdose experiences, substance use treatment history and strategies for coping with overdose threat. We compared PWID who did and did not experience non-fatal overdoses during lifetime and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Participants were 71% male, and the mean age was 49 (SD 10). Heroin was the most frequently reported drug used (79%), 82% were fentanyl positive at enrollment urinalysis, 60% had overdosed in their lifetime and 34% had overdosed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In multivariable logistic regression, having previous overdosed, having a received a psychiatric diagnosis, and having a regular group of injectors were independently associated with experiencing an overdose during the pandemic. Overdose during the pandemic was unexpectedly high (approximately 30%) among persons reporting less than daily use of their main drug. Among PWID, 95% reported practicing at least one and 75% at least two overdose coping strategies. Practicing the different strategies, however, was generally not associated with a lower probability of experiencing an overdose. Conclusions: There has been a high rate of non-fatal overdoses among PWID in NYC during the pandemic. Fentanyl is almost ubiquitous in the drug supply in the city. PWID coping strategies are not yet providing strong protective effects against non-fatal overdose.

Field Testing the "Avoid the Needle" Intervention for Persons at Risk for Transitioning to Injecting Drug Use in Tallinn, Estonia and New York City, USA.

This study aimed to field tested the "Avoid the Needle" (AtN) intervention to reduce transitions from non-injecting to injecting drug use in two different epidemiological settings. Respondent driven sampling was used to recruit current non-injecting drug users (NIDUs) in Tallinn, Estonia in 2018-19 and in New York City (NYC) in 2019-20. Both persons who had never injected and persons who had previously injected but not in the last 6 months were eligible; a structured interview was administered, a blood sample collected, and the intervention administered by trained interventionists. We recruited 19 non-injectors from Tallinn and 140 from NYC. Participants in Tallinn were younger and had begun using drugs at earlier ages than participants in NYC. The primary drugs used in Tallinn were amphetamine, fentanyl, and opioid analgesics, while in NYC they were heroin, cocaine, speedball, and fentanyl. Six-month follow-up data were obtained from 95% of participants in Tallinn. The study was interrupted by COVID-19 lockdown in NYC, but follow-up data were obtained from 59% of participants. There were minimal transitions to injecting: 1/18 in Tallinn and 0/83 in NYC. There were significant declines in the frequencies of using readily injectable drugs (fentanyl, amphetamine, heroin, cocaine) from baseline to follow-up in both sites (Cochran-Armitage tests for trend, χ2 = 21.3, p < 0.001 for New York City; and χ2 = 3.9, p = 0.048 for Tallinn). Reducing transitions into injecting is a potentially very important method for reducing HIV transmission and other harms of drug use. Further investigation and implementation of AtN type interventions is warranted.

Blindness (review)

Before COVID, directors often deployed such elements to disrupt traditional theatre by staging site-specific pieces or having actors lip-sync recordings of absent others. Despite being forced to live in appalling conditions in an abandoned mental hospital with countless infected strangers, this resourceful woman never lost her vision or compassion. A central intercom announced that leaving the hospital would result in death.

Life During COVID for Court-Involved People

Data from a unique survey of court-involved New Yorkers collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 provides evidence for a cycle of disadvantage involving penal control, material hardship, and health risk. We find evidence of chaotic jail conditions from March to May 2020 in the early phase of the pandemic, and high levels of housing and food insecurity, and joblessness for those leaving jail or with current criminal cases. The highest levels of material hardship—measured by housing insecurity, unemployment, shelter stays, and poor self-reported health—were experienced by those with mental illness and substance use problems who had been incarcerated.

What Members Need in Work Situations: Two Samples of Essential Managerial Leadership Behaviors: JMI

Violent incidents, terrorist attacks, senseless shootings, health issues such as the Coronavirus, and natural disasters call attention to managerial leadership in crisis situations. Yukl and Van Fleet (1982) did the seminal work on this topic extended by Peterson and Van Fleet (2008) and Peterson et al. (2012). More recently, Geier (2016) reported findings based on firefighters while Htway and Casteel (2015) and Kapucu and Ustun (2018) studied public sector organizations. Since these studies all involved nonprofit organizations, an extension to for-profit organizations is warranted. There are differences between profit organizations and not-for-profit organizations (Collins, 2001;Collins, 2005). Because of the goals involved, there may be differences in the managerial leadership behaviors required by these types of organizations. Hannah and Parry (2013) specifically recommend expanding leadership research to many different extreme situations in an effort to understand different managerial leadership behaviors that adapt to varying crisis situations. Two samples reported here identify the critical managerial leadership behaviors desired by for-profit organizational participants in both stable and crisis situations. Finally, implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.

A Place for Us: Parks as a Social Justice Issue for Asian Americans

Krishnan and Park's communities of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst in New York City - home to a 75,000-strong, rapidly growing Asian American population - were the epicenter of not one, but two pandemics in 2020. As COVID-19 claimed the lives of their elders, trapped in nursing homes and cramped apartments, anti-Asian hate awaited them at every turn, stalking them on subway platforms and sidewalks. As these twin pandemics surged through their communities, their parks saved their lives. Their open spaces allowed them to escape the physical, mental, and social constraints of quarantine into fresh air. They allowed them to exist in community with their neighbors. And today, from daily t'ai chi ch'uan and yoga to annual Diwali, Eid, and Lunar New Year celebrations, their parks have become places of continued healing and growth. Here and across New York City, their public open spaces are essential to meeting the multiple challenges they face, from public health to public safety. They must recognize the extraordinary value of their park system and deepen their investment for all neighborhoods, and for future generations. Every community needs and deserves space to thrive.

Bodies in Transit: Speculation and the Biopolitical Imaginary

This essay explores the Bodies in Transit archive, an artifact of mid-nineteenth-century public health administration in New York City. The ledgers, which tracked the transit of every corpse that moved through the island of Manhattan between 1859 and 1894 and categorized entrants by their cause of death, nationality, and occupation, present a unique lens through which I explore the intersections of speculation, biopolitics, and urban space. I first establish a conceptual framework of "speculation" by dissecting its etymological genealogy, the roots of which share a preoccupation with vision and sight. I note that in practice, the ing and rationalizing tendencies of speculation operate by envisioning, calculating, and coercing specific outcomes into realization. I apply this framework to Bodies in Transit to historicize the ways in which biopolitics, the means through which the state forms, represents, and manages populations, are indexed to speculative economic practices. I read Bodies in Transit through the framework of speculation to articulate a field of meaning that illuminates the complex material and epistemic conditions surrounding its implementation and utility. As I argue, the ledgers were a response to the acceleration of real estate speculation in Manhattan, a trend that incentivized property owners to disinter burial grounds to relocate corpses to rural areas, and thereby connected the speculative logics of real estate to those of public health, spatial order, and surveillance. By thinking across and through the layered meanings of "speculation," this essay illuminates how the state's economy of knowledge is intimately related to biopolitical practices of surveillance and representations of financial value in the modern city.

COVID-19 vaccination and HIV transmission among persons who inject drugs during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.

BACKGROUND: To examine COVID-19 vaccination and HIV transmission among persons who inject drugs (PWID) during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022) in New York City (NYC). METHODS: Two hundred and seventy five PWID were recruited from October 2021 to September 2022. A structured questionnaire was used to measure demographics, drug use behaviors, overdose experiences, substance use treatment history, COVID-19 infection, vaccination, and attitudes. Serum samples were collected for HIV, HCV, and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) antibody testing. RESULTS: Participants were: 71% male, the mean age was 49 (SD 11), 81% reported at least one COVID-19 immunization, 76% were fully vaccinated and 64% of the unvaccinated had antibodies for COVID-19. Self-reported injection risk behaviors were very low. HIV seroprevalence was 7%. Eighty-nine percent of the HIV seropositive respondents reported knowing they were HIV seropositive and being on antiretroviral therapy prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. There were two likely seroconversions in 518.83 person-years at risk from the March 2020 start of the pandemic to the times of interviews, for an estimated incidence rate of 0.39/100 person-years, 95% Poisson CI 0.05-1.39/100 person-years. CONCLUSIONS: There is concern that the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions to HIV prevention services and the psychological stress of the pandemic may lead to increased risk behavior and increased HIV transmission. These data indicate adaptive/resilient behaviors in both obtaining COVID-19 vaccination and maintaining a low rate of HIV transmission among this sample of PWID during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC.

"It's normal to admit you're not okay": New York City college students shaping mental health through journaling

Emerging data make clear that, while there are common pandemic experiences related to mental health across different populations, access to those shared experiences is often disproportionate. In the context of exploring expansive definitions of health as part of their Introduction to Urban Community Health course, students at a large, public university in New York City were given the opportunity to engage with the Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP) beginning in June 2020. This paper explores the impact of both creating their own journals, and reading and reflecting on the public entries of others, on student mental health, and on students' abilities to discuss and process their health status, holistically defined. It raises questions of how definitions of "normal" in relation to feelings of diminished mental health are shared and reified in the context of the pandemic, asking if the process of journaling might be a way not just to capture mental health histories of the pandemic, but also to create an inclusive, therapeutic space for a conversation around mental health.Copyright © 2022

An interpretable machine learning framework to understand bikeshare demand before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City

In recent years, bikesharing systems have become increasingly popular as affordable and sustainable micromobility solutions. Advanced mathematical models such as machine learning are required to generate good forecasts for bikeshare demand. To this end, this study proposes a machine learning modeling framework to estimate hourly demand in a large-scale bikesharing system. Two Extreme Gradient Boosting models were developed: one using data from before the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2019 to February 2020) and the other using data from during the pandemic (March 2020 to February 2021). Furthermore, a model interpretation framework based on SHapley Additive exPlanations was implemented. Based on the relative importance of the explanatory variables considered in this study, share of female users and hour of day were the two most important explanatory variables in both models. However, the month variable had higher importance in the pandemic model than in the pre-pandemic model. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Analyze the Effects of COVID-19 on Energy Storage Systems: A Techno-Economic Approach

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. power sector witnessed remarkable electricity demand changes in many geographical regions. These changes were evident in population-dense cities. This paper incorporates a techno-economic analysis of energy storage systems (ESSs) to investigate the pandemic's influence on ESS development. In particular, we employ a linear program-based revenue maximization model to capture the revenues of ESS from participating in the electricity market, by performing arbitrage on the energy trading, and regulation market, by providing regulation services to stabilize the grid's frequency. We consider five dominant energy storage technologies in the U.S., namely, Lithium-ion, Advanced Lead Acid, Flywheel, Vanadium Redox Flow, and Lithium-Iron Phosphate storage technologies. Extensive numerical results conducted on the case of New York City (NYC) allow us to highlight the negative impact that COVID-19 had on the NYC power sector. © 2023 IEEE.

Building science knowledge, identity, and interest using place-based learning with non-dominant urban undergraduate and high school students

During remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed and implemented a place-based, 5E mini-unit for New York City high school and community college Earth science students, most of whom identify as belonging to non-dominant groups. As well as supporting standard science skills such as graphing and interpreting data, we leveraged active learning and culturally responsive pedagogies such as reasoning by analogy, storytelling, virtual field trips, and sketching. These strategies were aimed at developing science content and skills, science identities, and science interest. The mini-unit was taught over 6 to 7.5 hours. Pre-and post-surveys for 107 students from three schools showed significant gains in learning (38% increase;p= <0.0001). Science identity measurements increased slightly although they stayed relatively low. Science interest measurements were higher with small increases. Teacher influence and science classroom experiences ranked as the most important influencers of science interest. For 33 community college students, no correlation was found between content learning, science identity, and science interest. In this group, females and White students had higher scores for all three measures. Between pre- and post-survey, science identity increased, particularly for Black students, while science interest decreased for all but White students. For all students, overall increases between pre- and post-survey suggest the pedagogical approaches used during remote synchronous learning were successful at helping students grow as scientists. © 2023 National Association of Geoscience Teachers.

Race, masks, residency and concern regarding COVID-19 transmission.

To explore sociodemographic predictors for concern regarding COVID-19 transmission and how these factors interact with the identities of others, we conducted a web-based survey where we asked 568 respondents in the United States to indicate their level of COVID-19 concern in response to a series of images with short vignettes of masked and unmasked individuals of different racial/ethnic backgrounds. Using a linear mixed effects model, we found that regardless of the race of the image being presented in the vignette, concern regarding COVID-19 transmission was associated with respondents' older age (b = 0.029, p < 0.001), residing in NYC (b = 0.556, p = 0.009), being heterosexual (b = 1.075, p < 0.001), having higher levels of education, that is, completion of a Bachelor's degree (b = 1.10, p = 0.033) or graduate degree (b = 1.78, p < 0.001), and the person in the vignette being unmasked (b = 0.822, p < 0.001). Asian respondents were more likely than White respondents to be concerned regarding COVID-19. Individuals who self-reported themselves to be at high risk for COVID-19 were more likely to be concerned about COVID-19 over those who considered themselves to be low risk. These findings highlight the importance of acknowledging interactions between race, mask status, and residency in predicting COVID-19 concern.

COVID-19 and health inequality: The nexus of race, income and mortality in New York City

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate socioeconomic factors related to COVID-19 mortality rates in New York City (NYC) to understand the connections between socioeconomic variables, including race and income and the disease. Design/methodology/approach: Using multivariable negative binomial regression, the association between health and mortality disparities related to COVID-19 and socioeconomic conditions is evaluated. The authors obtained ZIP code-level data from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the US Census Bureau. Findings: This study concludes that the mortality rate rises in areas with a higher proportion of Hispanic and Black residents, whereas areas with higher income rates had lower mortality associated with COVID-19, among over 18,000 confirmed deaths in NYC. Originality/value: The paper highlights the impacts of social, racial and wealth disparities in mortality rates. It brings to focus the importance of targeted policies regarding these disparities to alleviate health inequality among marginalized communities and to reduce disease mortality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The Impact of COVID-19 on Human Mobility: A Case Study on New York

COVID-19 has dramatically changed people's mobility patterns. This report aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on people's mobility through statistics and comparing the visits of POIs (Point-Of-Interests) in New York State in 2019 and 2020. The report uses data from SafeGraph, which is a data company. The raw data contains POI visits across the United States in 2019 and 2020. Considering the analysis size and difficulty of the data, POI visits from New York State are extracted for analysis, and POI locations are classified according to the tags provided by the source data. The scale of analysis is from macro to micro, and they are the total POI visits data of New York State based on different ways in 2019 and 2020, the POI visits of CBG (Census Block Group) division in New York City, and three representative POI samples to do individual analysis. The analysis methods are: (1) use line plot and bar plot statistics to compare the trends of POI visits data from 2019 to 2020, and (2) make the spatial visualization comparison, which includes grid map, scatter map, heatmap, and OD map, between the first peak of epidemic impact in the first full week of April 2019 and April 2020, and the scope is narrowed to New York City. Wherein the OD maps are drawn based on the CBG division. Compared to related work, the analysis object includes CBG, categories, and individual POI. In addition, the analysis method combines statistical graphs and spatial visualizations and explores the policy impact of the New York City government. This report adopts more multidimensional analysis methods and objects to improve the comprehensiveness and reliability of the analysis content. © 2022 IEEE.

REDUCING FAMILY SEPARATIONS IN NEW YORK CITY: THE COVID-19 EXPERIMENT AND A CALL FOR CHANGE

Child welfare agencies and family courts have long removed children from allegedly abusive or neglectful parents as an ultimate means of ensuring a child's safety. The theory that high numbers of removals are necessary to keep children safe, however, had never been tested-there was no mechanism or political will to do so until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. With the near-complete shutdown of New York City, the child welfare apparatus had no choice but to remove fewer children from their homes. Catastrophe did not ensue. Rather, the numbers tell a different story. Children remained safe across a range of metrics, avoided the trauma of removal from their homes during a global pandemic, and experienced sustained safety as the City began to reopen. This Piece argues that New York's child welfare system must learn from COVID-19 and significantly curtail its drastic measure of removing children from their families, which can cause substantial, often irreparable trauma to children. It uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to demonstrate the safety and soundness of reserving removals (also known as remands) for only the most extreme circumstances. This Piece focuses on the dramatic reduction of removals specifically during the pandemic;examines the traumatic, racially biased, and overused practice of family separation from a child's perspective;and calls for specific reforms within the existing system to reduce remands while protecting children's safety.