Crushing coronavirus means ‘breaking the habits of a lifetime.’ Behavior scientists have some tips

With no vaccine or medication to cope with the novel coronavirus, people around the world have sought—or been ordered to seek—protection by changing the way they act in ways large and small, from their washing hands more frequently to avoiding almost all physical contact. Now, government and industry leaders are turning to behavioral scientists for advice on how to persuade their citizens and workers to abide by such dramatic changes. To beat the pandemic, we need “a more rapid change of behavior than I can think of in recent human history,” says Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford University. He recently helped recruit more than 40 top behavioral scientists to summarize their field’s research on how to steer people into certain actions and how it might aid the response to the pandemic.

Social scientists scramble to study pandemic, in real time

If pandemic lockdowns have people feeling a bit like lab rats stuck in cages, in some ways that’s exactly what they are. As the coronavirus touches on virtually every part of life around the globe, social scientists are rushing to suck up real-time data on how people are responding to the unfolding pandemic. Economists are gathering data about supply chains. Political scientists are scrutinizing how government responses track with ideology. Psychologists are monitoring children in after-school programs. Behavioral scientists are surveying thousands of people to see how they respond to information in a crisis.

Can you put a price on COVID-19 options? Experts weigh lives versus economics

Economist Sergio Rebelo has spent the past 2 weeks holed up in his Chicago home, working feverishly to crack the economics of the coronavirus. Armed with a hybrid model that combines how viruses spread with how people work and consume, the Northwestern University researcher is one of a number of macroeconomists now trying to shed light on the balance between the economic impact of locking down major parts of the economy and the economic damage wrought by the disease itself. “When you think about the optimal policy, you really want to see the effect between the economy and epidemiology,” Rebelo says.