A Look Behind the Scenes at COVID-19: National Strategies of Infection Control and Their Impact on Mortality.

(1) Background: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) began spreading across the globe in December and, as of 9 July 2020, had inflicted more than 550,000 deaths. Public health measures implemented to control the outbreak caused socio-economic havoc in many countries. The pandemic highlighted the quality of health care systems, responses of policymakers in harmony with the population, and socio-economic resilience factors. We suggest that different national strategies had an impact on mortality and case count. (2) Methods: We collected fatality data for 17 countries until 2 June 2020 from public data and associated these with implemented containment measures. (3) Results: The outcomes present the effectiveness of control mechanisms in mitigating the virus for selected countries and the UAE as a special case. Pre-existing conditions defined the needed public health strategies and fatality numbers. Other pre-existing conditions, such as temperature, humidity, median age, and low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations played minor roles and may have had no direct impact on fatality rates. (4) Conclusions: Prevention, fast containment, adequate public health strategies, and importance of indoor environments were determining factors in mitigating the pandemic. Development of public health strategies adapted to pre-existing conditions for each country and community compliance with implemented policies ensure the successful control of pandemics.

GFPLAIN250m, a global high-resolution dataset of Earth's floodplains.

Identifying floodplain boundaries is of paramount importance for earth, environmental and socioeconomic studies addressing riverine risk and resource management. However, to date, a global floodplain delineation using a homogeneous procedure has not been constructed. In this paper, we present the first, comprehensive, high-resolution, gridded dataset of Earth's floodplains at 250-m resolution (GFPLAIN250m). We use the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital terrain model and set of terrain analysis procedures for geomorphic floodplain delineations. The elevation data are processed by a fast geospatial tool for floodplain mapping available for download at https://github.com/fnardi/GFPLAIN. The GFPLAIN250m dataset can support many applications, including flood hazard mapping, habitat restoration, development studies, and the analysis of human-flood interactions. To test the GFPLAIN250m dataset, we perform a consistency analysis with floodplain delineations derived by flood hazard modelling studies in Europe.

Pharmacologic treatment of chronic alcoholism.

Of the many drug therapies mentioned in this review, only the alcohol-sensitizing drugs have current therapeutic applications in primary alcoholics. When alcohol abuse occurs in association with anxiety, depression, or schizophrenia, treatment with the anxiolytic, antidepressant, and neuroleptic drugs, respectively, may facilitate the alcoholic's ability to participate in other programs. Patients should receive drugs that are appropriate to treatment goals as well as to their psychosocial status. Even if a drug therapy is shown to be efficacious under controlled experimental conditions, its effectiveness may be compromised by a large number of factors that include poor compliance by the patient, a lack of a treatment strategy, or failure to optimize the treatment conditions. New pharmacotherapies with actions directed at central neurochemical pathways mediating alcohol consumption are urgently needed. However, even if such agents become available, they too will only be adjuncts to behavioral and social therapies directed at stabilizing all aspects of the alcoholic's life.