The Impact of Remote Hearing Policies on Racial Equity in Criminal Case Outcomes During the Pandemic

The criminal justice system confronted unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, court systems nationwide quickly instituted policies to enable criminal cases to proceed while protecting public health. The shift toward criminal hearings by videoconference or teleconference has persisted. All fifty states now conduct criminal hearings remotely. Yet evidence about how remote proceedings affect case outcomes remains sparse. Using data for all arrests and criminal case dispositions that occurred in California between 2018 and mid-2021, I characterize the impact the pandemic had on arrest and case resolution rates, estimate the impact of adopting policies to permit remote hearings on conviction and sentencing outcomes, and determine which factors contributed to racial differences in outcomes. Remote hearing policies contributed to racial inequalities in outcomes, which predated the pandemic and persisted amid it.

Reassessing social trust: gossip, self-policing, and Covid-19 risk communication in Norway

This article analyses patterns of compliance with COVID-19 regulations in Southwest Norway. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and a series of interviews, we contrast grassroots discourses with the Norwegian government's own emphasis on 'trust' in its risk communication strategies. As opposed to the official claim that Norwegians complied with COVID-19 emergency regulations because they trusted the authorities, the evidence suggests that citizens complied more due to the informal pressure of their peers. Affective reciprocity and moral judgement, including the dynamics of kinship sociability in which they are expressed, here acquire a critical analytical dimension. In dialogue with dominant theories of trust in risk studies, we argue that such relational aspects of everyday life should be taken into consideration as essential factors for any health risk mitigation strategy.Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Explaining the response of the ECB to the COVID-19 related economic crisis: inter-crisis and intra-crisis learning

The economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have placed a renewed strain on the economic governance of the European Union (EU). The European Central Bank (ECB) was a key player in the EU's response to the crisis induced by the pandemic. This paper adopts a theoretical approach focused on policy learning to explain how and why the ECB responded to the crisis in 2020–2021. By drawing on speeches, newspaper articles and interviews with policy-makers, the paper finds that the ECB was able to rely on earlier crisis experiences in the euro area in forming its response to the pandemic crisis. Although the sovereign debt crisis and the pandemic crisis had both similarities and differences from one another, the ECB was able to engage in inter-crisis and intra-crisis learning. Its learning concerned objectives, instruments as well as an awareness that timely and forceful response was crucial, so that the member states and other EU institutions had time to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of European Public Policy is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Elon Musk in India - a Success Story in the Making

One of Elon Musk's Twitter posts created much buzz in India and most certainly in the southern State of Karnataka in India. His EV company Tesla is planning on expanding to another East Asian Market after the Shanghai branch dealt with R&D and sold almost 50, 000 units. Moreover, India is one of the most likely targets which Tesla would be aiming for, not only because of the humongous workforce capability that the country could offer but also for the development of rules and regulations for the improvement and the enhancement of EV's inthe country. Since the development of the EV policy, 2017 in the state of Karnataka, which pioneered the same and proved itself to be worthy of the badge of "EV Hub" of India, with many tech start-ups pushing the boundaries in the field of EV. Some of the latest news articles in the papers discussed the probability of Tesla being interested i n forming another enterprise in the country, which is exciting news. This would not only mean the change in the economic spectrum of the country because of the remarkable improvement of the Tesla Stocks in the USA but also a significant chance for employment, leading to the push in the Indian economy, which is most required at this time of distress and dilemma because of the COVID-19 pandemic which struck.Copyright © 2020 European Journal of Molecular and Clinical Medicine. All rights reserved.

Building a system dynamics model to analyze scenarios of COVID-19 policymaking in tourism-dependent developing countries: A case study of Cambodia

To control the COVID-19 pandemic, various policies have been implemented to restrict the mobility of people. Such policies, however, have resulted in huge damages to many economic sectors, especially the tourism sector and its auxiliary services. Focusing on Cambodia, this study presents a system dynamics (SD) model for assessing and selecting effective policy responses to contain the spread of COVID-19, while maintaining tourism development. Policies targeted in this study include international and domestic transportation bans, quarantine policy, tourist-centered protection measures, and enterprise-led protection measures. Two types of scenario analyses are conducted: one targets each policy separately and the other combines different policies. Among all scenarios, quarantine policy is evaluated to be the most effective policy as it balances the containment of the spread of COVID-19 and support for tourism development. This study provides a new way of guiding COVID-19 policymaking and exploring effective policies in the context of tourism.

Uncoordinated federalism: Subnational response to the pandemic crisis in Mexico

The COVID-19 pandemic has demanded prompt actions from governments all over the world. In both developed and developing countries, national governments have had to make unprecedented decisions to face the extraordinary challenges posed by the pandemic. In this paper, we explore how, due to the limited intervention from the Mexican federal government (in terms of policy actions, funding mechanisms and acting as a coordinating agent), state governments stepped up to respond to the pandemic. We argue that Mexico's response was relatively decentralized and substantially shaped by individual subnational governments. Based on a new dataset of over 600 subnational governments' responses to the social and economic effects of the pandemic, we show that state governments decided to react to the pandemic with their own policy measures, responding locally to pressing concerns. Furthermore, we demonstrate that state government responses varied widely in their scope and ambition, which exacerbated the pandemic's uneven national effects. We further contend that the structural constraints of Mexico's federalism have had an impact on these reactions, as social policy responsibilities at the state and local levels have historically been opaque and fragmented and state governments lack the funding necessary to implement sufficient and innovative initiatives. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Re-examining the education for all agenda in "apocalyptic” times

This chapter aims to re-examine the Education for All agenda in "apocalyptic” times. In so doing, it explores how the global pandemic has provided opportunity for alternative perspectives to approach and engage with education in more equitable and inclusive ways. While a shift to online learning was intended to support educational inclusion, it simultaneously served to marginalize some of the most vulnerable learners globally. This chapter proposes a collective responsibility to scrutinize how inclusion and exclusion can be reimagined in order to rebuild education systems that are fairer and more accessible for the learners to which they account. What the global pandemic has evidenced is that there remains great provision to reconsider how education can be enacted in increasingly unpredictable and unstable times. This is no more opportune than as the world begins to emerge from a global pandemic. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

COVID-19 Effect: Time to Change the Way of Research

This perspective provides an insight or viewpoint about the current and future way of do-ing research. The opinion includes the limitations of the research in the current scenario and the possible ways to improve it.Copyright © 2021 Bentham Science Publishers.

Sustainable Entrepreneurship And Covid 19

In practically all economies, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an economic crisis greater than the 2008 recession. This research is done to improve understanding of the concepts and underlying principles of sustainable entrepreneurship, as the entrepreneurial activity is a crucial aspect to be considered in reducing this negative. For the purpose of achieving this objective, a comprehensive literature review is undertaken and outlined the fundamental themes that emerged. It is clear from this study that in order to fully realize the potential of entrepreneurs and MSMEs in the wake of the pandemic, structural policies that increase their resilience and competitiveness are essential.Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.

Domesticating models: On the contingency of Covid-19 modelling in UK media and policy.

Our article traces the representation of pandemic modelling in UK print media from the emergence of Covid-19 to the early stages of implementing the first UK-wide lockdown in late March 2020. Covid modelling, it is widely assumed, has shaped policy decisions and public responses to the pandemic in unprecedented ways. We analyse how the UK print media has configured modelling as a significant evidence tool in the representation of the pandemic. Interrogating assumptions about infectious disease modelling, we ask why models became the trusted tool of choice for knowing and responding to the Covid pandemic in the UK. Our analysis has yielded four different periods in the evolution of intersecting policy and media frames. Initially, modellers, policymakers and media alike emphasized uncertainty about available data, and hence the speculative character of modelled projections, thus justifying a 'wait and see' approach to government intervention. With growing public pressure for government action, policy and media frames were adjusted to emphasize the importance of timing interventions for best effect, with modelling evidence mobilized to justify inaction. This gave way to a period of crisis, as the press increasingly questioned the reliability of the existing models and policies, leading modellers and policy makers to dramatically revise their projections. Finally, with the imposition of the first UK lockdown, policy and media frames were brought back into alignment with one another, in a process of domestication through which the language of modelling became a basic resource for the discussion of the epidemic. Our epistemological microhistory thus challenges general accounts of the impacts of pandemic modelling and instead emphasizes contingency and interpretative flexibility.

Global Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Physical Activity Habits of Competitive Runners: An Analysis of Wearable Device Data.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in government restrictions that altered the lifestyle of people worldwide. Studying the impact of these restrictions on exercise behaviors will improve our understanding of the environmental factors that influence individuals' physical activity (PA). We conducted a retrospective analysis using an stringency index of government pandemic policies developed by Oxford University and digitally-logged PA data from more than 7000 runners collected using a wearable exercise-tracking device to compare the relationship between strictness of lockdowns and exercise habits on a global scale. Additionally, the time-of-day of PA globally, and activity-levels of PA in 14 countries, are compared between the pre-pandemic year of 2019 and the first pandemic year of 2020. We found that during the pandemic year there was a major shift in the time-of-day that runners exercised, with significantly more activity counts logged during standard working hours on workdays (p < 0.001) and fewer activities during the same time frame on weekends (p < 0.001). Of the countries examined, Italy and Spain had among the most strict lockdowns and suffered the largest decreases in activity counts, whereas France experienced a minimal decrease in activity counts despite enacting a strict lockdown with certain allowances. This study suggests that there are several factors affecting PA of dedicated runners, including government policy, workplace policy, and cultural norms.

Understanding and strengthening wildlife and zoonotic disease policy processes: A research imperative.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the urgency and importance of monitoring, managing and addressing zoonotic diseases, and the acute challenges of doing so with sufficient inter-jurisdictional coordination in a dynamic global context. Although wildlife pathogens are well-studied clinically and ecologically, there is very little systematic scholarship on their management or on policy implications. The current global pandemic therefore presents a unique social science research imperative: to understand how decisions are made about preventing and responding to wildlife diseases, especially zoonoses, and how those policy processes can be improved as part of early warning systems, preparedness and rapid response. To meet these challenges, we recommend intensified research efforts towards: (i) generating functional insights about wildlife and zoonotic disease policy processes, (ii) enabling social and organizational learning to mobilize those insights, (iii) understanding epistemic instability to address populist anti-science and (iv) anticipating evolving and new zoonotic emergences, especially their human dimensions. Since policy processes for zoonoses can be acutely challenged during the early stages of an epidemic or pandemic, such insights can provide a pragmatic, empirically-based roadmap for enhancing their robustness and efficacy, and benefiting long-term decision-making efforts.

Centering the Right to Health of Childbearing People in the US During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Childbearing people in the US have experienced the double burden of increased risks from infection and significant disruptions to access and quality of essential health care services during the COVID pandemic. A single person could face multiple impacts across the course of their reproductive trajectory. We highlight how failure to prioritize this population in the COVID-19 policy response have led to profound disruptions from contraception services to vaccination access, which violate foundational principles of public health, human rights and perpetuate inequities. These disruptions continued through the omicron surge, during which many health systems became overwhelmed and re-imposed earlier restrictions. We argue that an integrated pandemic response that prioritizes the healthcare needs and rights of childbearing people must be implemented to avoid deepening inequities in this and future pandemics.

Youth sports in a pandemic age

Problem: Youth sporting events is a public health concern as infected youth with coronavirus disease 2019 may unknowingly spread the virus, as many show little to no symptoms (Zimmerman & Nigel, 2020). This project aimed to identify level of adherence to posted Youth Sports Guidelines, which were designed to mitigate the spread of virus at youth sporting events.Methods: An observational descriptive design was utilized. Two observers tallied guideline violations by participants and spectators at six high-contact (basketball) and six low-contact (swimming) public high school youth sporting events.Results: A total of 726 youth sport participants and 139 spectators were observed. Mean total number of violations were higher at high-contact events (145.33 +/- 68.86) compared to low-contact events (87.50 +/- 35.42). The majority of violations involved social distancing and mask violations. Low-contact sporting events had more social distancing violations compared to high-contact events, 391 and 253, respectively. High-contact sporting events had a significant higher number of mask violations compared to low-contact events, 414 and 120, respectively (alpha value of 0.05, p = .032). No significant correlations were identified between violations to the guidelines at the observed youth sporting events and concurrent virus case rates.Implications for practice: Results can guide future decision making related to youth sports, and by implication, other school-sponsored activities. Opportunities for educating the public by advanced practice nurses can improve adherence to health policies and thereby improve health outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Washington View: Must we stay divided over education?

Education became a major issue in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, when Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin clashed over how much say parents should have in their children’s education. Youngkin’s victory, fueled in part by parent outrage over school curricula, could lead other candidates to stoke fear and outrage over schools to score political points. Maria Ferguson discusses the power of schools to divide society and considers what lessons schools should take from the COVID-19 crisis. © 2022 by Phi Delta Kappa International.

Appetite for risk in the C-19 policy environment.

AIM: Leadership deficits and poor communication about COVID-19 (C-19) science connect risk-shifting and vaccination hesitancy to safety issues for nurses and the general public. BACKGROUND: Nurses can be trusted, especially in these chaotic times, to provide trustworthy information on C-19. Publicly expressed gratitude to nurses does little to improve work environments made more precarious by C-19. Practical support may help retain nurses in the health system. DISCUSSION: Public trust in governments has dissipated during the pandemic. People are confused by inconsistent and contentious information and services. Publishing practices that produce low-quality publications undermine scientific information and impede the flow of high-quality research information. CONCLUSION: Science can advise on a pathway through the risks of C-19 but it is politicians and government officials who decide policy on whether to accept the science and set the level of acceptable risk to the general public. Problematic publishing and communication pathways for essential information contribute to public uncertainty and undermine trust in vaccines, public health strategies, and immigration and quarantine policies. IMPLICATIONS: Nurse safety needs to be central to policy deliberations that affect transmission or spending on infection risk reduction. Policies that put nurses at increased risk encourage those with a choice, to abandon unsafe health system employment. Research quality systems that improve research communication pathways to support practice are urgently needed. Nurses rely on research information sources for credible evidence to support their clinical practice. Risk-shifting is the unintended consequence of government policy on vaccination, immigration, international travel, quarantine and screening for C-19. Governments must accept their role in generating public mistrust of vaccines and not judge people's decisions made on the basis of information available. Political manipulation of C-19 data needs to be exposed to enable recovery planning.

Occupational risk of COVID-19 in the first versus second epidemic wave in Norway, 2020.

BackgroundThe occupational risk of COVID-19 may be different in the first versus second epidemic wave.AimTo study whether employees in occupations that typically entail close contact with others were at higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19-related hospitalisation during the first and second epidemic wave before and after 18 July 2020, in Norway.MethodsWe included individuals in occupations working with patients, children, students, or customers using Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) codes. We compared residents (3,559,694 on 1 January 2020) in such occupations aged 20-70 years (mean: 44.1; standard deviation: 14.3 years; 51% men) to age-matched individuals in other professions using logistic regression adjusted for age, sex, birth country and marital status.ResultsNurses, physicians, dentists and physiotherapists had 2-3.5 times the odds of COVID-19 during the first wave when compared with others of working age. In the second wave, bartenders, waiters, food counter attendants, transport conductors, travel stewards, childcare workers, preschool and primary school teachers had ca 1.25-2 times the odds of infection. Bus, tram and taxi drivers had an increased odds of infection in both waves (odds ratio: 1.2-2.1). Occupation was of limited relevance for the odds of severe infection, here studied as hospitalisation with the disease.ConclusionOur findings from the entire Norwegian population may be of relevance to national and regional authorities in handling the epidemic. Also, we provide a knowledge foundation for more targeted future studies of lockdowns and disease control measures.

Efficiency of pooled surveillance testing in academic labs to detect and inhibit COVID-19 outbreaks.

Robust surveillance testing is a key strategic plan to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks and slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic; however, limited resources, facilities and time often impair the implementation of a widespread surveillance effort. To mitigate these resource limitations, we employed a strategy of pooling samples, reducing reagent cost and processing time. Through utilizing academic faculty and labs, successful pooled surveillance testing was conducted throughout Fall 2020 semester to detect positive SARS-CoV-2 infections in a population of 4400 students. During the semester, over 25,000 individual COVID status evaluations were made by pooling eight individual samples into one quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. This pooled surveillance strategy was highly effective at detecting infection and significantly reduced financial burden and cost by $3.6 million.

COVID-19 Diagnostics, Tools, and Prevention.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), outbreak from Wuhan City, Hubei province, China in 2019 has become an ongoing global health emergency. The emerging virus, SARS-CoV-2, causes coughing, fever, muscle ache, and shortness of breath or dyspnea in symptomatic patients. The pathogenic particles that are generated by coughing and sneezing remain suspended in the air or attach to a surface to facilitate transmission in an aerosol form. This review focuses on the recent trends in pandemic biology, diagnostics methods, prevention tools, and policies for COVID-19 management. To meet the growing demand for medical supplies during the COVID-19 era, a variety of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators have been developed using do-it-yourself (DIY) manufacturing. COVID-19 diagnosis and the prediction of virus transmission are analyzed by machine learning algorithms, simulations, and digital monitoring. Until the discovery of a clinically approved vaccine for COVID-19, pandemics remain a public concern. Therefore, technological developments, biomedical research, and policy development are needed to decipher the coronavirus mechanism and epidemiological characteristics, prevent transmission, and develop therapeutic drugs.