The four weeks before lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: a weekly serial cross-sectional survey on risk perceptions, knowledge, public trust and behaviour, 3 to 25 March 2020.

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, public perceptions and behaviours have had to adapt rapidly to new risk scenarios and radical behavioural restrictions.AimTo identify major drivers of acceptance of protective behaviours during the 4-week transition from virtually no COVID-19 cases to the nationwide lockdown in Germany (3-25 March 2020).MethodsA serial cross-sectional online survey was administered weekly to ca 1,000 unique individuals for four data collection rounds in March 2020 using non-probability quota samples, representative of the German adult population between 18 and 74 years in terms of age × sex and federal state (n = 3,910). Acceptance of restrictions was regressed on sociodemographic variables, time and psychological variables, e.g. trust, risk perceptions, self-efficacy. Extraction of homogenous clusters was based on knowledge and behaviour.ResultsAcceptance of restrictive policies increased with participants' age and employment in the healthcare sector; cognitive and particularly affective risk perceptions were further significant predictors. Acceptance increased over time, as trust in institutions became more relevant and trust in media became less relevant. The cluster analysis further indicated that having a higher education increased the gap between knowledge and behaviour. Trust in institutions was related to conversion of knowledge into action.ConclusionIdentifying relevant principles that increase acceptance will remain crucial to the development of strategies that help adjust behaviour to control the pandemic, possibly for years to come. Based on our findings, we provide operational recommendations for health authorities regarding data collection, health communication and outreach.

[Challenges for science journalism in the Corona pandemic-some observations about a mediated world event]. / Herausforderungen für den Journalismus über Wissenschaft in der Coronapandemie ­ erste Beobachtungen zu einem Weltereignis.

The mass media has made the SARS-CoV­2 virus a so-called global event. The volume and congruence of the journalistic selection of topics in Germany exceeds that of the already high level of the H1N1 pandemic 2009 many times over. In this discussion article, challenges for journalism that have arisen in reporting on the scientific aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic are described.At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a real epistemic uncertainty due to the lack of established facts. Many editorial offices lacked professional routines for the competent handling of preliminary research results and for the evaluation of scientific reputation of experts. Dealing with scientific articles that had not yet undergone peer review (preprints) became a major challenge. If peer review isn't available, science journalists have to develop new indicators to assess the quality and relevance of a preprint research publication and they need to be better equipped to distinguish valuable scientific contributions from mere "hype."The phenomena observed during pandemic reporting show how essential independent professional science journalism is for the democratic discourse, because only in this way can nonscientific audiences correctly classify truthful and relevant scientific content conveyed and develop informed trust in science.