The impact of the South African Covid-19 lockdown on incidence and severity of traumatic brain injury at Tshepong hospital: A multivariate retrospective cohort study.

Background: Globally traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are the leading cause of death in people under the age of 45. 2020 saw a series of social lockdowns as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to unveil the impact of the different levels of lockdown on TBI incidence at Tshepong Hospital. Method: A retrospective review of patients with TBIs during the first 30 days of each of the 5 lockdown levels, between 1st of April -20th October 2020 was conducted. Each lockdown level was compared to a control of a similar period in 2019. Results: Level 5 lockdown resulted in a 66% reduction in total incidence of TBI, with a decrease in the daily incidence median value to 0 when compared to its control group median of 1 (P-value 0.004). However, Level 3 and 2 resulted in a significant 133% and 200% increase respectively in TBI incidence for similar period the year before.There was a 0,75% decrease in total trauma during the non-lockdown periods in relation to the lock down periods with a lockdown mean incidence of 53,4 (std Dev. 26.6) and non-lockdown mean of 53 (std Dev 20.8). Conclusion: The cumulative effect of the lockdowns made miniscule changes in the overall TBI incidence but led to significant variation in TBI incidence in the comparative months. A "rebound trauma" phenomena is observed in transitioning from severe social restrictions to milder ones with unemployment and unbanning of alcohol as possible contributary factors. Further studies are needed to investigate these complex interactions.

Improving complementary feeding practices through a comprehensive health systems strengthening approach: experiences from Egypt. (Special section on complementary feeding in emergencies.)

This article describes experiences of improving complementary feeding practices using a systems approach with particular focus on health systems strengthening. Achievements included: the development of national guidelines for optimum complementary feeding for children 6-23 months of age, inclusion of a specific indicator for complementary feeding in the new National Food and Nutrition Strategy, updated training packages to improve health worker counselling skills and strengthened social behaviour change communication activities. A systems approach requires strong coordination between all partners across sectors to ensure communities benefit from the synergistic effects of complementary interventions, while system strengthening was noted to improve the resilience of the Ministry of Health and Population to withstand the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent Ukraine crisis.

Analysis and Countermeasures of the Influence of COVID-19 on the Commodity Category of Port Export in China: Taking Shanghai Port as an Example

Su, B.;Guan, C.;An, Q., and Wang, Q., 2020. Analysis and countermeasures of the influence of COVID-19 on the commodity category of port export in China: Taking Shanghai Port as an example. In: Liu, X. and Zhao, L. (eds.), Today's Modern Coastal Society: Technical and Sociological Aspects of Coastal Research. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 111, pp. 298–301. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Since the end of 2019, the novel coronavirus has spread rapidly, which has affected the economy, social interaction, and foreign trade, both in China and around the world. Import and export trade has become an organic part of China's national economy. Import and export trade accounts for nearly 35% of the national economy, which is a major part of China's economic growth. This article takes Shanghai Port as an example, collecting and analyzing the exporters of Shanghai Port in China from January to May 2020. Compared with the relevant data of the same period in 2019, this article discusses the major commodity categories that are affected by the epidemic situation in the export trade volume of Shanghai Port, giving countermeasures according to the influence situation in order to stabilize the quantity of this category in the future and reduce the risk of lower port trade volume of the export commodity categories affected by public health emergencies in China's port trade. At the same time, some suggestions and countermeasures are given to the ecological environment problems affecting the sustainable development of ports.

Recognising the potential of neglected tropical disease programmes as a platform for pandemic preparedness: the Ascend experience.

Living in an increasingly interconnected world, epidemics and pandemics are increasingly likely to be a vista for the future. This, coupled with the likely devastating effects of climate change, means that humanitarian crises are likely to increase. Now, more than ever before, is the time to scale up investment in prevention and preparedness strategies, and to review our current approaches to delivering health services, including those that address neglected tropical diseases. The Ascend West and Central Africa programme has illustrated the importance of innovation, multisector partnerships, resilience and the opportunity for change.

Tourist mobility in a climate of expectations, uncertainties and encounters. portrait of a pandemic summer in a town in the Sierras de Cordoba region, Argentina

This research analyses "tourist mobility" in the context of the health crisis of COVID-19 to unravel the meanings that situated actors produce about this practice at an exceptional moment in history. Based on an ethnographic case, the archetype of the Argentine tourist corridor, this article portrays the 2020-2021 holiday season, investigating the experiences of tourists and permanent residents who received seasonal displacements in their territories. From here, it was possible to recover a series of transformations that allow us to understand how the pandemic disrupted the meanings associated with "summer culture" and its counterpoint, "the local tourist season";all this with the purpose of outlining triggering hypotheses about the traces that this atypical season may have left on tourism practice.

Impacts of fungal disease on dyadic social interactions in a wild agamid lizard

Emerging infectious fungal diseases are responsible for the extinction of myriad species across a range of phyla. As recently shown by the COVID-19 pandemic, social transmission can be key to disease spread, and in this context, humans are not alone in trying to be alone. In group-living species, individuals have been shown to use social behaviour to avoid infection;diseased individuals can isolate from the group, or healthy animals can avoid diseased conspecifics. However, little is known about social behaviour as a mechanism to avoid fungal infection. In this study, we investigated the extent to which wild urban eastern water dragons, Intellagama lesueurii, a gregarious reptile, modify their social behaviour as a response to infection with a recently emerged infectious fungal disease, caused by the pathogen Nannizziopsis barbatae. Using individual data from a long-term study population inhabiting Roma Street Parkland in Brisbane's Central Business District (QLD, Australia) and focal sampling, we tested whether dragons exhibit self-isolation and social-distancing behaviours in the context of dyadic social approach events. Our results suggested that while the presence of the fungal disease had no effect on individuals' social behaviour, its severity did. Specifically, we found that (1) diseased individuals were no less social than their nondiseased conspecifics, (2) nondiseased individuals did not avoid or spend less time with diseased conspecifics, and (3) models considering the severity of skin lesions caused by N. barbatae, instead of their presence or absence, suggested that individuals avoided more severely diseased conspecifics regardless of their own disease status. © 2023 The Author(s)

Automated system to detect social distancing among humans during covid pandemic situation

Maintaining the purported Social Separating is one of the essential and greatest ways to stop the new popular episode. Legislators are enacting restrictions on the standard of private distance between people in order to concur with this restriction. In light of this real-life occurrence, it is crucial to evaluate how consistent with realistic imperatives in our lives this is, in order to ascertain the causes of any prospective cracks in such distance obstacles and determine whether this portends an anticipated risk. In order to do this, we offer the Visual Social Removing (VSD) problem, which is defined as the automatic evaluation of the difference between the depiction of connected person aggregations and the private separation from an image.When this requirement is violated, it is vital for VSD to conduct painless research to determine whether people agree to the social distance restriction and to provide assessments of the degree of wellbeing of particular places. We first draw attention to the fact that measuring VSD involves more than simply math;it also suggests a deeper comprehension of the social behavior in the setting. The goal is to genuinely identify potentially dangerous circumstances while avoiding false alerts (such as a family with children or other family members, an elderly person with their guardians), all while adhering to current security protocols. Then, at that point, we discuss how VSD links to earlier research in social sign handling and demonstrate how to investigate fresh PC vision techniques that might be able to address this issue. Future issues about the viability of VSD systems, ethical repercussions, and potential application scenarios are the result. © 2023 IEEE.

Immune moral models? Pro-social rule breaking as a moral enhancement approach for ethical AI.

We are moving towards a future where Artificial Intelligence (AI) based agents make many decisions on behalf of humans. From healthcare decision-making to social media censoring, these agents face problems, and make decisions with ethical and societal implications. Ethical behaviour is a critical characteristic that we would like in a human-centric AI. A common observation in human-centric industries, like the service industry and healthcare, is that their professionals tend to break rules, if necessary, for pro-social reasons. This behaviour among humans is defined as pro-social rule breaking. To make AI agents more human-centric, we argue that there is a need for a mechanism that helps AI agents identify when to break rules set by their designers. To understand when AI agents need to break rules, we examine the conditions under which humans break rules for pro-social reasons. In this paper, we present a study that introduces a 'vaccination strategy dilemma' to human participants and analyzes their response. In this dilemma, one needs to decide whether they would distribute COVID-19 vaccines only to members of a high-risk group (follow the enforced rule) or, in selected cases, administer the vaccine to a few social influencers (break the rule), which might yield an overall greater benefit to society. The results of the empirical study suggest a relationship between stakeholder utilities and pro-social rule breaking (PSRB), which neither deontological nor utilitarian ethics completely explain. Finally, the paper discusses the design characteristics of an ethical agent capable of PSRB and the future research directions on PSRB in the AI realm. We hope that this will inform the design of future AI agents, and their decision-making behaviour.

Continuity, change and new ways of being: an exploratory assessment of farmer's experiences and responses to public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic in a rural Irish community. (Special Issue: Landscapes of support: farmer wellbeing and rural resilience through and beyond crises.)

Farming occupations are, in the Global North, generally solitary, and a growing body of research identifies this as one of the factors that underpins low levels of wellbeing and poor mental health amongst farmers. The primary public health response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic focused on reducing transmission of the virus by limiting interactions of people. This article seeks to assess the impact of these restrictions on farmer's experience of isolation and how it shaped their wellbeing. Applying a broad socio-ecological framework, we analyse change, continuity and shifts in social and economic relations and their spatial reconfiguration during the COVID-19 pandemic as recounted in semi-structured, qualitative interviews. We found that while COVID-19 has disrupted socio-spatial relations, including key sites of socialisation for farmers and rural communities, occupational isolation was viewed as a positive feature of farming as was working in nature. Familial and informal networks of support were important throughout the pandemic, while novel engagements with communication technologies facilitated both change and continuity of social and economic interaction. Whilst these findings are broadly positive, the reconfiguration of, particularly, economic relations is viewed as accelerating the turn towards service delivery using technology and, consequently, further reducing opportunities for social interaction.

Evaluation of the behavior changes in mothers caused by COVID-19 positivity

Objective: In this study, it was aimed to examine the changes in the role and parental behaviors of Covid-19 positive mothers. Material and Method: The questionnaire form and Semantic Differential Scale-Myself As Mother (SDS) and Mothers Parental BehaviorScale -Parental Form (MPBS) were used to collect the data. The research was carried out in Gaziantep, in September, 2020. A web-based survey has been designed. SPSS 24.0 statistical package program was used in the analysis of the data obtained in the study. Results: of the participants are 66.7% between the ages of 18-32, 66.7% of them have high school or higher education level, 97.4% have 1 or 2 children and 53.8% are housewives. It was determined that 84.8% of the participants did not have a chronic disease, and 86.4% did not have an elderly individual at home. It was found that 82.9% of the participants spent the Covid-19 process at home, 36.4% were positive for Covid-19 in August, and 62.1% had more than one symptom. Also, of participants' 15.2% symptoms decreased in a week, 47.7% of the participants used hygiene rules foractions to protect from Covid-19.93.2% of the participants' social relations were affected negatively by the Covid-19 process. 80.3% of the participants' family relations were affected negatively by the Covid-19 process. Semantic Differential Scale-Myself as Mother meanscore total score of theparticipantswas 38.63..8.10. Semantic Differential Scale-Myself as Mother meanscore of mothers aged between 18-32 was less thanothe rmothers, and there is statistical significance between the two mother groups (18-32 age and 33 andaboveage). MPBS total score of the participants was 49.03..6.30. Value was found a mong the partici-pants' demographic data in terms of MPBS score. However, the mean Mothers Parental Behaviours Scale - Pa-rental Form total score was found to be low in both groups. Conclusion: As a result of this research, it is determined Covid-19 Positive Mothers of Maternity and Parental Behaviors have owers cores. AD -..elik, M. Y.: Kilis 7Aralik ..niversitesi, Yusuf Serefoglu Saglik Bilimleri Fak..ltesi, Hemsirelik B..l..m.., Kilis, Turkey, Elmaoglu, E.: Kilis 7Aralik ..niversitesi, Yusuf Serefoglu Saglik Bilimleri Fak..ltesi, Hemsirelik B..l..m.., Kilis, Turkey. erhanelmaoglu@hotmail.com

The implementation of COVID-19 health protocol: a higher students' perspective

Over two million Indonesians have been exposed to COVID-19. Every day, thousands of new confirmed cases continue to infect people and form local transmission, even though the guidelines for implementing health protocols in efforts against this pandemic have been rolled out. This study aims to reveal how COVID-19 health protocols are being implemented in Indonesia. We collected information from 289 students to observe the surrounding environment by distributing online questionnaires that include parameters for wearing masks and physical distancing. This study used a mix-method approach, in which the statistical and descriptive analysis were carried out sequentially. This study showed that the presence of positive cases does not affect the implementation of health protocols. Mann-Whitney's test also confirmed that there were no significant differences between the COVID-19 transmitted area and the green zone. This condition was caused by a lack of socialization, social exemplarity, mutual reprimand, and enforcement of the rules. The experience of people telling others to wear a mask has a low, significant, and positive correlation with the intensity of reprimanding others. This phenomenon shows that social awareness of implementing health protocols can continue to increase if they are accustomed to self-awareness. The implementation of the health protocol requires assessment to avoid inconsistencies that reduce the compliance of people.

Social health of Iranian nurses and its related factors during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background and Objectives: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, nurses were in the frontline of patient care. This study aims to determine the social well-being of Iranian nurses working in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic and its related factors. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 612 nurses working in hospitals across the country participated. They completed the social well-being scale online from January to February 2021. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (Frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation) and multiple linear regression analysis in SPSS software, version 22 software. The significance level was set at 0.05. Results: The mean total score of social health well-being was 74.1 .. 9.5 out of 140. Multiple linear regression analysis results showed that age (P = 0.04, beta = -0.95);gender (P = 0.01, beta = 0.1) and type of employment (P = 0.03, beta = -0.1) were the predictors of nurses' social well-being. Other demographic and job-related factors were not significant. Conclusion: The social well-being status of Iranian nurses working in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic is relatively favorable. The increase educational level and age and the specialization of available services through the promotion of organizational tasks can be helpful in improving the social well-being of nurses. Changing the employment of nurses from temporary to permanent can also increase their social well-being.

Pro-environmental attitudes, altruism, and COVID-19 risk management behavior. (Special Issue: COVID-19: feeling and confronting pandemic risk challenges.)

Limiting the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic is a collective action problem that calls on individuals to act, not just for their benefit but also for the benefit of others in their community. Many environmental problems, especially climate change, share this characteristic, which invites inquiry on whether those predisposed to act to solve environmental problems may also be predisposed to act to solve health-focused collective action problems. In this study, we use a survey instrument to examine how pro-environmental attitudes and two types of altruism relate to the tendency to follow social distancing guidelines and limit voluntary social exposure during the pandemic. We find that pro-environmental behaviors predict a feeling of moral obligation to reduce COVID-19 risk and a lower level of voluntary social exposure. Voluntary, individual-level altruism has no relationship with social exposure. These findings point to important insights about the connections between different types of collective action and the nuances in altruistic behavior. These insights may lead to essential guidance for public health and environmental messaging that respects and leverages the differences in voluntary, individual-level altruism and collective altruism.

Predictors of COVID-19 risk perception, worry and anxiety in Italy at the end of the 2020 national lockdown. (Special Issue: COVID-19: feeling and confronting pandemic risk challenges.)

The present study examined the psychological predictors of four measures assessing the cognitive and emotional reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of Italian respondents (N = 497). Using a snowball sampling strategy, an online questionnaire was disseminated through various social media between 29th April and 29th May 2020, that is at the end of the period of national lockdown. Correlational and regression analyses indicated that (a) cognitive risk was higher for participants who were younger and had direct experience with the virus;(b) affective risk was higher for participants who were female, followed COVID-19-related information closely, and thought that the restrictive measures adopted by the Italian government were not sufficient;(c) experienced worry was higher for participants who were female, had higher levels of prosociality and thought that the risks of COVID-19 were exaggerated;and (d) state anxiety was higher for participants who were female, younger and had lower levels of prosociality. Taken together, these results support the notion that the cognitive and affective dimensions of risk perception should be analyzed as separate variables and that worry can be regarded as a construct partially independent of anxiety.

The beach is closed, but not to us: pandemic experience and social boundaries in rural Okinawa. (Special Issue: Hybrid beliefs and identities.)

This article offers an anthropological and ethnographic perspective on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected and shaped rural community social behaviour in Kayo village during Japan's first official state of emergency, April 7th to May 6th, 2020. It draws from observations and informal conversations with villagers during this period. First, it discusses the researcher's experience of living in a rural village in northern Okinawa during the state of emergency and addresses the position of the ethnographer during the pandemic. It explores the Japanese concept of uchi/soto (inside/outside), to discuss the insider/outsider dynamics that characteriseeveryday social life in Okinawa. Secondly, it engages with Marshall Sahlins's (2013) idea of kinship as 'social mutuality' to consider how the pandemic invites us to rethink interpersonal relationships, space negotiation, and social boundaries, and how the latter are reconstructed and negotiated according to the new situation (emergency state). The example of Okinawa rural communities shows how rural populations can reconceptualise their environment and practices during the pandemic. It allows us to understand how notions of space, accessibility and kinship are reshaped into subtle boundaries between locals and outsiders in order toregulate access.

"The Beach is Closed, But Not to Us": Pandemic Experience and Social Boundaries in Rural Okinawa

This article offers an anthropological and ethnographic perspective on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected and shaped rural community social behaviour in Kayo village during Japan's first official state of emergency, April 7th to May 6th, 2020. It draws from observations and informal conversations with villagers during this period. First, it discusses the researcher's experience of living in a rural village in northern Okinawa during the state of emergency and addresses the position of the ethnographer during the pandemic. It explores the Japanese concept of uchi/soto (inside/outside), to discuss the insider/outsider dynamics that character-ise everyday social life in Okinawa. Secondly, it engages with Marshall Sahlins' (2013) idea of kinship as 'social mutuality' to consider how the pandemic invites us to rethink interpersonal relationships, space negotiation, and social boundaries, and how the latter are reconstructed and negotiated according to the new situation (emergency state). The example of Okinawa rural communities shows how rural populations can reconceptualise their environment and practices during the pandemic. It allows us to understand how notions of space, accessibility and kinship are reshaped into subtle boundaries between locals and outsiders in order to regulate access. © 2022 Jamila Rodrigues.

Progress undone by pandemic

The socioeconomically diverse group of individuals known as the middle class is situated between the top class and the lower class. Small and medium sized company owners, professionals, government employees, and skilled workers make up the majority of the middle class. These individuals share certain social traits and beliefs, such as a commitment to hard work, thriftiness, and personal responsibility. Nevertheless, the middle class has a wide range of cultural, social, and educational traits. Given the variety of the middle class, a single measure of their ability to buy things best describes them. Progressive economic growth has elevated a number of households into the middle class throughout time. A Pew Research Center analysis states that, on average, 54 million more individuals joined the middle class each year between 2011 and 2019. According to the research, the global middle class would consist of around 132 billion people in 2020, or 17.1% of the world's population. The middle class has significantly grown, particularly in emerging nations. However, the Covid-19 epidemic has halted the expansion of the middle class globally. The COVID-19 pandemic has also split the middle class, separating those who work in the public sector, receive government pensions, own small businesses, work for large corporations, or have retired from the private sector and have good future security plans. Those who work in industries like pharmaceutical, information technology, and healthcare, which are least affected by restrictions and lockdowns, are also affected. These two segments of the middle class, government employees with advanced degrees who can work from home and make a living and blue collar workers who are unable to do so are currently going through separate stages of life.

Anti-social behaviour and economic decision-making: Panel experimental evidence in the wake of COVID-19.

We systematically examine the acute impact of exposure to a public health crisis on anti-social behaviour and economic decision-making using unique experimental panel data from China, collected just before the outbreak of COVID-19 and immediately after the first wave was overcome. Exploiting plausibly exogenous geographical variation in virus exposure coupled with a dataset of longitudinal experiments, we show that participants who were more intensely exposed to the virus outbreak became more anti-social than those with lower exposure, while other aspects of economic and social preferences remain largely stable. The finding is robust to multiple hypothesis testing and a similar, yet less pronounced pattern emerges when using alternative measures of virus exposure, reflecting societal concern and sentiment, constructed using social media data. The anti-social response is particularly pronounced for individuals who experienced an increase in depression or negative affect, which highlights the important role of psychological health as a potential mechanism through which the virus outbreak affected behaviour.

Understanding the Interplay Between Herd Behaviors and Epidemic Spreading Using Federated Evolutionary Games

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increasing interest in the modeling and analysis of infectious diseases. Our social behaviors in the daily lives have been significantly affected by the pandemic. In this paper, we propose a federated evolutionary game-theoretic framework to study the coupling of herd behaviors changes and epidemics spreading. Our framework extends the classical degree-based mean-field epidemic model over complex networks by integrating it with the evolutionary game dynamics. The statistically equivalent individuals in a population choose their social activity intensities based on the fitness or the payoffs that depend on the state of the epidemics. Meanwhile, the spread of infectious diseases over the complex network is reciprocally influenced by the players' social activities. We address the challenge of federated dynamics by breaking the analysis into the studies of the stationary properties of the epidemic for given herd behavior and the structural properties of the game for a given epidemic process. We use numerical experiments to show that our framework enables the prediction of the historical COVID-19 statistics. © 2022 American Automatic Control Council.

Tracking Mental Health Risks and Coping Strategies in Healthcare Workers’ Online Conversations Across the COVID-19 Pandemic

The mental health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic are magnified for medical professionals, such as doctors and nurses. To track conversational markers of psychological distress and coping strategies, we analyzed 67.25 million words written by self-identified healthcare workers (N = 5,409;60.5% nurses, 39.5% physicians) on Reddit beginning in June 2019. Dictionary-based measures revealed increasing emotionality (including more positive and negative emotion and more swearing), social withdrawal (less affiliation and empathy, more "they" pronouns), and self-distancing (fewer "I" pronouns) over time. Several effects were strongest for conversations that were least health-focused and self-relevant, suggesting that long-term changes in social and emotional behavior are general and not limited to personal or work-related experiences. Understanding protective and risky coping strategies used by healthcare workers during the pandemic is fundamental for maintaining mental health among front-line workers during periods of chronic stress, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 Association for Computational Linguistics.