Shame in the Clash of Two "Normals": The Case of Covid-19 in Tasmania

This paper deals with the general question of what a segment of sociocultural reality in the capital of Tasmania looked like over the time span from the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in China up to Australia's lockdown in mid-March 2020, or more specifically, what took place in direct, daily contacts between people, in the meeting or clash of coexisting incongruous behavioral norms - the "old" (habitual up until then) and the "new" (modified due to the crisis) patterns of interpersonal behavior. In this period of health and social crises, which is here termed liminal, shame was generated. It arose as an emotional reaction to the discrepancy between the thinking, feeling and behavior of interviewees and the thinking, feeling and behavior of members of their social environment, a discrepancy that became apparent in the course of their mutual interactions and whose object was a different emotion - fear. The fieldwork was conducted in mid-2020 in Hobart, in the form of semi-structured interviews with several immigrants from the states of the former Yugoslavia. As it was aimed at studying their fear, and only in second place their feeling of shame, in this paper I have limited myself to a narrative interpretation of the origins and object of shame, with the intention of, on the one hand, highlighting the principal factors in the construction of shame and, on the other, examining what it was in connection with fear that aroused shame in the given context. It was noted that, among other things, shame was culturally generated in the given interactions which occurred within secondary relationships and specific environmental contexts and, still more broadly, as part of the crisis caused by the general spread of the virus, and that, as the object of shame, fear emerged as an inappropriate emotion, initially in the sense of the disproportion between the intensity of fear and its object (i.e. the threat posed by the virus).

Risk Perception Management Related to COVID-19: A Study of Scenario Planning in Cuba

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most disastrous health event of the twenty-first century with significant impacts on the economy, institutions, organizations and people's well-being and lifestyle. Risk perception is a knowledge process that manifests itself in risk behavior and reflects people's experiences, beliefs and social influences. The management of risk perception is essential in contributing to people's protective behaviors in the presence of health risks. In Cuba, one of its significant effects is reflected in the psychology of individuals, despite policies to mitigate its consequences. Minimizing COVID-19 transmission requires the application of effective policies that contribute with adequate perceptions, depending on the risk factors. The goal of this research is to develop a system of actions that can contribute to the transition of a favorable scenario for the management of risk perception regarding COVID-19 in Cuba according to the new normality and through the use of a scenario planning methodology. The findings allow characterizing the current scenario and proposing actions and indicators in order to achieve the most favorable scenario for risk perception management related to COVID-19 from a geographic perspective. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Asymptotic inference for moderate deviations from a unit root of nearly unstable INAR(1) processes

The INAR(1) processes with coefficients , where c>0 is a fixed constant and is a deterministic sequence growing to infinity at a slower rate than n, which are often referred to as nearly unstable INAR processes with moderate deviations from a unit root. We consider some basic properties of the processes and obtain the conditional least squares estimation of the coefficient , which converges to a normal distribution at speed . The simulation study provides numerical support for the theoretical results. The practical utility is illustrated in the data sets about liquor offences, claims of short-term disability and COVID-19, respectively.

Reopening to the world: how safety, normality and trust in government shape young adults' COVID-19 vaccine intentions

During the COVID-19 pandemic, and particularly 2020-2021, young adults were often significant transmitters of the virus. Prior to the availability of vaccines for young adults, we sought to understand what would contribute to their uptake of a COVID-19 vaccine and how government policy might intervene. We undertook qualitative interviews between February and April 2021 with 19 participants (aged 18-29) in Perth, Western Australia. Despite Western Australians' lives changing little during the pandemic, almost all wanted to receive a vaccine. Motivating factors included protecting themselves and others and having life return to normal. Participants' significant levels of trust in the state government response to the pandemic did not extend to the Federal government. This research uncovers what influences young people to receive new vaccinations, how trust in governments develops, and how ideas of normality and safety influence vaccine demand.Alternate :在新冠疫情其间，尤其是2020-2021年，年轻人往往成为病毒的传播者。在新冠疫苗普及到年轻人之前，我们试图了解哪些因素会有利于他们接种新冠疫苗，以及政府应该如何进行干预。我们在2021年2月至4月间对西澳大利亚帕斯市的19位参与者做了定性访谈。虽然西澳大利亚人的生活在疫情其间变化甚小，但几乎所有人都希望接种疫苗。原因包括保护自己及他人、让生活回到常轨。参与者对州政府应对疫情的做法有显著的信任，但不延及联邦政府。本文揭示了哪些东西影响了年轻人接受新疫苗、对政府的信任如何形成、以及正常观与安全观如何影响对疫苗的需求。

Coronavirus, Vaccination and the Reaction of Consumer Sentiment in The United States: Time Trends and Persistence Analysis

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire world was waiting for a medical solution (for example, vaccines) in order to return to normality. Sanitary restrictions changed our consumption behaviors and feelings. Therefore, this paper analyzes the stochastic properties of consumer sentiment during the COVID-19 episode and the appearance of vaccines against the virus in December 2020 in the United States of America. This study adds a new dimension to the literature because it is the first research paper that uses advanced methodologies based on fractional integration and fractional cointegration analysis to understand the statistical properties of these time series and their behavior in the long term. The results using fractional integration methodologies exhibit a high degree of persistence, finding behavior of mean reversion during the pandemic episode. Therefore, the shock duration in consumer sentiment will be transitory, recovering to its previous trend in the short run. Focusing on the cointegrating part, we arrive at two main conclusions. First, an increase in total vaccination produces a positive reaction or impact on the behavior of consumers. On the other hand, an increase in new COVID-19 cases negatively affects the behavior of the consumer.

A Dynamic Interaction Semiparametric Function-on-Scalar Model

Motivated by recent work studying massive functional data, such as the COVID-19 data, we propose a new dynamic interaction semiparametric function-on-scalar (DISeF) model. The proposed model is useful to explore the dynamic interaction among a set of covariates and their effects on the functional response. The proposed model includes many important models investigated recently as special cases. By tensor product B-spline approximating the unknown bivariate coefficient functions, a three-step efficient estimation procedure is developed to iteratively estimate bivariate varying-coefficient functions, the vector of index parameters, and the covariance functions of random effects. We also establish the asymptotic properties of the estimators including the convergence rate and their asymptotic distributions. In addition, we develop a test statistic to check whether the dynamic interaction varies with time/spatial locations, and we prove the asymptotic normality of the test statistic. The finite sample performance of our proposed method and of the test statistic are investigated with several simulation studies. Our proposed DISeF model is also used to analyze the COVID-19 data and the ADNI data. In both applications, hypothesis testing shows that the bivariate varying-coefficient functions significantly vary with the index and the time/spatial locations. For instance, we find that the interaction effect of the population aging and the socio-economic covariates, such as the number of hospital beds, physicians, nurses per 1000 people and GDP per capita, on the COVID-19 mortality rate varies in different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic. The healthcare infrastructure index related to the COVID-19 mortality rate is also obtained for 141 countries estimated based on the proposed DISeF model.

Feasible Panel GARCH Models: Variance-Targeting Estimation and Empirical Application

For the panel generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model, the conditions for the stationarity and positive definiteness of conditional covariance processes are examined. A new feasible specification is constructed for the class of panel GARCH models, and a three-step estimation technique is developed based on a variance-targeting (VT) approach. The consistency and asymptotic normality of the VT estimator are shown when the time dimension tends to infinity and the cross-sectional dimension is fixed. The stationarity and asymptotic properties are discussed for both time and cross-sectional dimensions tend to infinity. The results of Monte Carlo experiments indicate that the finite sample property of the VT estimator is satisfactory, implying that increasing the cross-sectional dimension does not affect the speed of convergence, but shrinks the asymptotic covariance matrix. The empirical results of the analysis of the inflation rates of G7 countries and growth rates for the value of trade in four economic regions indicate that the feasible specification provides a competitive alternative to the class of panel GARCH models. The empirical results indicate that the global financial crisis affects the growth rates of trades, while the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that its effect on inflation rates is insignificant. © 2022 EcoSta Econometrics and Statistics

Our role is vital in rebuilding the lives of people with learning disabilities

Nurses working with people with learning disabilities face new challenges as we move out of the COVID-19 pandemic and life begins to take on some semblance of normality.

ON THE CULTURAL AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE IN PANDEMIC TIMES AND THE CULTURAL POST-NORMALITY OF MEXICO

Recent national surveys in Mexico show an in-crease in acceptance of pseudo-scientific beliefs and practices, as well as a negative public perception of the social visibility of scientists. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a post-normal context that allows us to analyse the relevance that Mexican citizens confer upon science and scientists in times of crisis. This paper presents the results of two 2020 studies on public perception of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the role of science in fighting it, done on two very different population groups in Mexico: the rural (mostly indigenous) population and the urban population. We compare the results from these studies with other national studies on public understanding of science conducted before the pandemic. In this comparison, we use the indicators Progress, Reserves, Knowledge and Engage-ment, as recently proposed by Bauer et al., as a way of ana-lysing science's so-called cultural authority. Our study indicates that in this post-normal sociosanitary situation most citizens, as a general rule, show trust in science and recognize its social legitimacy. Finally, in light of some specific results, we ar-gue that the cultural disparities prevalent in Mexico should be considered especially significant in trying to take advantage of science's current social prestige in order to improve the social appropriation of scientific culture in Mexico in general, that is, beyond specific post-normal contexts. © 2022, CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. All rights reserved.

Generation of New Ventures in the Face of the New Normality: Approaches from its Ethical-Social Dimension

New ventures are part of the global reality, they are an alternative that drives the economy from various angles, being favorable to face adverse realities, such as that experienced by the COVID-19 pandemic. By virtue of the above, this paper, focused on the documentary research method, aims to analyze the figure of entrepreneurship, offering an interpretive and critical position. To achieve this end, the following aspects are considered: 1) The conceptual definition of entrepreneurship, which contemplates its economic meaning, its relevance for the social sciences and as mechanisms to establish relationships between entrepreneurs and the social conglomerate. 2) The ethical dimension of entrepreneurship, its link with social responsibility and with the obligations to the community, which makes us lean towards a definition of entrepreneurship linked to the strengthening of the productive economy and human relations. 3). The role of enterprises in the COVID-19 scenario, a moment characterized by the exacerbation of social asymmetries, the closure of companies, the sanitary confinement, but which also meant the promotion of various enterprises that kept society operational, offering goods, services and inputs in a novel way, supported by digital commerce and other alternative tools. It is concluded that new ventures are part of the current reality, they are a source of innovation, economic growth and effective mechanisms to face the logic of globalization. © 2022, Universidad del Zulia. All rights reserved.

Innovative Solutions in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry to Ensure Sustainable Development in a New Normality

The article examines topical issues of the functioning of the tourism and hospitality industry in the context of the new normalcy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has led to a sharp decline in tourist flows and the need for innovative solutions to restore and further develop the tourism and hospitality industry. In the context of the new normality, the classical interpretation of the concept of the quality of tourist and hotel services and sustainable development of tourism is changing. When assessing the quality of services in tourism, the assessment of their epidemiological safety began to occupy a key place. The sustainable development of tourism is significantly influenced by global digitalization and the formation of a new category of digital tourists. The article analyzes innovative solutions to ensure travel safety and sustainable development of the tourism industry in the context of the new normalcy. It is shown that in the context of a pandemic, there was an acceleration of the processes of introducing innovations, including digitalization in the field of tourism. It is proposed to expand the understanding of sustainable tourism development by including digital information support as a prerequisite for meeting the requirements of digital tourists.

The New Normal In Virtual Education: A View From Teaching Practice

The health emergency determined that classes were suspended in person, implementing virtual education, this measure required actions to adapt to the new normality. The objective was to explore the repercussions of virtual education from the perspective of teaching practice through the qualitative approach of systematic bibliographic review;Consulting academic literature, it was concluded that there were coincidences that teachers faced in the context of the health emergency, such as self-training initiatives, lack of digital skills, and emotional conditions.

At-Risk Youth in the Context of Current Normality - Psychological Aspects

Aim. At-risk individuals have many forms, often it is the two opposing sides of a personality which can ultimately implement risky behaviour only to accept an individual into a peer group. Concept. The risky behaviour of young people and children currently associated with a consumer society aggravated by the pandemic situation Covid-19 is the subject of interest in professional as well as scientific research of various professionals who work in different areas of life. Methods. This study deals with the risks, social, but also individual consequences of at-risk youth, which occur at all levels of society. In the study, we proceeded in an analytical-synthetic way, interpreting and ascertaining the results of various other scientific and professional studies by foreign authors who deal with the given issue. Results. The study confirms that risky behaviour requires a constant approach to educating a young person through not only the family but also the school environment, which allows a new perspective on risky youth behaviour. However, it is very important to integrate young people into society to see the risks of their behaviour not only for themselves. but for a narrower or wider comm unity. Conclusion. The scientific articles and contributions offered in this study point out the risky behaviour of young people, the risks of behaviour not only for individuals but also for groups, it points out the possible causes, reasons, but also consequences of risky behaviour.

Asymptotic inference for moderate deviations from a unit root of nearly unstable INAR(1) processes

The INAR(1) processes with coefficients α n = 1 − c / k n , where c>0 is a fixed constant and { k n } n ∈ N is a deterministic sequence growing to infinity at a slower rate than n, which are often referred to as nearly unstable INAR processes with moderate deviations from a unit root. We consider some basic properties of the processes and obtain the conditional least squares estimation of the coefficient α n , which converges to a normal distribution at speed n 1 / 2 k n . The simulation study provides numerical support for the theoretical results. The practical utility is illustrated in the data sets about liquor offences, claims of short-term disability and COVID-19, respectively. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Fair Trade and the New Post-Covid Reality of the Third Decade of the 21st Century

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing crisis have shown in a clearer light than before the growing global economic, social, and environmental challenges of recent decades. And today no one doubts that the Russian invasion on Ukraine will exacerbate the existing problems. It is increasingly often stated that the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) defined by the UN and the fight against the effects of the crisis caused by the pandemic and war in Ukraine is not possible without greater involvement and active attitude of society, that leaving it only to market forces and top-down regulations will not bring the expected results. There arises the question if and eventually how such socio-economic initiatives as Fair Trade can contribute to the systemic transformation towards a sustainable market economy and building a new post-covid reality in the third decade of the 21st century. Using the method of critical analysis of the literature, the author comes to the conclusion that this initiative fits both into the streams of economics which emphasize the social aspects of markets, as well as into the neoclassical perception of economic processes. Looking at Fair Trade from both perspectives allows to explain the reasons for its emergence and dynamic growth as well as to understand its role in contemporary socio-economic life. It also leads to the conclusion that Fair Trade is not an accidental episode, but can constitute an important development trend in the global economy, playing an important role in counteracting global challenges, including the effects of the pandemic crisis and war in Ukraine. Fair Trade contributes to the society taking responsibility for social problems, incorporating such values as solidarity and altruism into market decisions, and increasing the role of the society as the third institution, next to the market and the state, shaping the economic reality.

Is there a normality bias in the spread of COVID-19? Influence of cognition on perception of COVID-19 and related behavior

The present study examined whether a normality bias occurs in the context of the spread of COVID-19, and whether perceptions of COVID-19 are associated with behavior that is not self-restrained, anger at people who are infected with COVID-19, stress, and depression. Adults (N = 710) in their twenties to sixties living in Tokyo were sampled using a questionnaire posted on the Internet. The results suggested that normality bias could be observed even in a long-term event such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis of the results also suggested that aspects of the perception of COVID-19, including perceived infectiousness, perceived risk from the outside world, and perceived safety, affected different aspects of individuals' responses, based on aspects of a normality bias. In addition, the results suggested that awareness of methods of preventing infection with COVID-19 and self-restraint predicted behavior that was not self-restrained 2 months later. Future research should examine longer-term effects of normality bias and determinants of normality bias during the spread of COVID-19. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Optimising precision and power by machine learning in randomised trials with ordinal and time-to-event outcomes with an application to COVID-19.

The rapid finding of effective therapeutics requires efficient use of available resources in clinical trials. Covariate adjustment can yield statistical estimates with improved precision, resulting in a reduction in the number of participants required to draw futility or efficacy conclusions. We focus on time-to-event and ordinal outcomes. When more than a few baseline covariates are available, a key question for covariate adjustment in randomised studies is how to fit a model relating the outcome and the baseline covariates to maximise precision. We present a novel theoretical result establishing conditions for asymptotic normality of a variety of covariate-adjusted estimators that rely on machine learning (e.g., ℓ 1 -regularisation, Random Forests, XGBoost, and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines [MARS]), under the assumption that outcome data are missing completely at random. We further present a consistent estimator of the asymptotic variance. Importantly, the conditions do not require the machine learning methods to converge to the true outcome distribution conditional on baseline variables, as long as they converge to some (possibly incorrect) limit. We conducted a simulation study to evaluate the performance of the aforementioned prediction methods in COVID-19 trials. Our simulation is based on resampling longitudinal data from over 1500 patients hospitalised with COVID-19 at Weill Cornell Medicine New York Presbyterian Hospital. We found that using ℓ 1 -regularisation led to estimators and corresponding hypothesis tests that control type 1 error and are more precise than an unadjusted estimator across all sample sizes tested. We also show that when covariates are not prognostic of the outcome, ℓ 1 -regularisation remains as precise as the unadjusted estimator, even at small sample sizes ( n = 100 ). We give an R package adjrct that performs model-robust covariate adjustment for ordinal and time-to-event outcomes.

Educational Innovation and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges in the New Normal

The COVID-19 pandemic presented diverse circumstances and social effects. Among all of them, the sanitary confinement, the isolation, the suspension of academic and work activities stand out, as well as the loss of human lives, pedagogical, technological, academic infrastructure modifications, among others, which make up a new normality, a reality different from the one that styled Because of this, education has had to innovate and adapt to little explored scenarios, the use of Information and Communication Technologies, digital platforms, social networks, virtual modalities and, more recently, multimodal. While it is true, this is not entirely new within the educational scene, social distancing has propelled it in an unprecedented way. For this reason, the article explores the philosophical dimension of educational innovation, its theoretical foundations, the interaction with COVID-19, and the resulting proposals to face the new normality. It concludes with the urgency of innovating without losing sight of academic quality, training in critical thinking and humanistic reflection, giving space for new actors in the educational process, promoting an inclusive vision, supported by the growth of the digital society. © 2022, Universidad del Zulia. All rights reserved.

Estrategias y motivaciones en las experiencias educativas de estudiantes de la Universidad Pedagógica Veracruzana: un análisis durante el confinamiento social

The purpose of this paper is to show the strategies and motivations that students of the Universidad Pedagógica Veracruzana have used to continue their studies in the context of the social confinement derived from the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced students to continue their studies by electronic means. Hence the need to investigate the students within this pandemic context;what and how they are doing their studies is fundamental in terms of prospective since it will allow improving their processes in the future since a mixed modality scenario has even been proposed for higher education once the confinement ends. Thus, an exploratory study was carried out, using a multi-method perspective, under an ethnographic approach;for this purpose, quantitative and qualitative techniques were used, such as surveys, observation records, and semi-structured interviews directed to a sample of a total of 82 students of the above-mentioned institution at the undergraduate, masters and doctorate levels. In this sense, elements of importance were found for the management of school activities in this rupture of normality, since the main strategy identified was the diversification of activities and fundamental motivations, the support of the family to continue studies in confinement, which has given us a prospective vision in which the institutional support should be oriented to know and take into account the socio-cultural contexts of their students in order to establish an efficiently mixed modality.Alternate :El presente trabajo tiene como finalidad evidenciar las estrategias y motivaciones que los estudiantes de la Universidad Pedagógica Veracruzana han empleado para continuar sus estudios en el contexto del confinamiento social derivado de la pandemia por el COVID-19, lo cual obligó a los estudiantes a continuar sus estudios por medios electrónicos. De ahí la necesidad de investigar sobre los estudiantes dentro de este contexto pandémico;el qué y cómo están realizando sus estudios es fundamental en términos de prospectiva, puesto que permitirá mejorar sus procesos en un futuro, en tanto que se hasta se ha planteado un escenario de modalidad mixta para la educación superior toda vez que el confinamiento termine. Siendo así, es que se realizó un estudio de tipo exploratorio, empleando una perspectiva multi-metódica, bajo un enfoque etnográfico;para ello se han empleado técnicas cuantitativas y cualitativas, como: encuestas, registros de observación y entrevistas semiestructuradas dirigidas a una muestra de un total de 82 alumnos de la institución señalada de los niveles de licenciatura, maestría y doctorado. En este sentido, se encontraron elementos de importancia para el manejo de actividades escolares en esta ruptura de la normalidad, pues se identificaron como principal estrategia la diversificación de actividades y motivaciones fundamental el apoyo de la familia para continuar los estudios en confinamiento, lo cual nos ha planteado una visión prospectiva en la cual el apoyo institucional se debe orientar en conocer y tomar en cuenta los contextos socio-culturales de sus estudiantes a fin de lograr establecer una modalidad mixta eficiente.

COVID-19 AND DIVIDENDS: EVIDENCE FROM POLAND

This paper aims to examine the impact of an unexpected change in the level of dividend caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on share prices on the Polish stock exchange. Our article analyses the period from 1 February 2020 to 5 June 2020, which was when companies listed on the primary market of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) published information about Boards of Directors' dividend recommendations for 2019. The original group of companies included 140 firms. 56 companies (40%) fulfilled all the study criteria, and these were subsequently divided into 2 groups. The groups were defined by the recommendations on profit distribution. The first group consisting of 38 companies (68% of the surveyed) consisted of firms which unexpectedly announced plans to retain all profits in the company or a dividend payment but with a lower value than in the previous year (cancellation or reduction of the dividend amount). The second group of 18 companies (32% of the surveyed) comprised those which unexpectedly announced willingness to pay a dividend per share at a higher level (increase in dividend amount). The research confirmed that the announcement of a change in the level of the dividend or the cancellation of the payment of profit is essential price-creating information on the Polish securities market and has a significant impact on the share prices. In a situation of uncertainty caused by external factors, such as the coronavirus pandemic, the sensitivity of individual companies to lockdown and uncertainty as to the return to normality have a significant negative impact on the market. They cause a fall in the share prices higher than expected, especially when they are accompanied by a shortage of information from the companies and a recommendation to suspend or reduce dividend payment.