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1. A multinational Delphi consensus to end the COVID-19 public health threat

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05398-2  

   Lazarus, Jeffrey V.; Romero, Diana; Kopka, Christopher J.; Karim, Salim Abdool; Abu-Raddad, Laith J.; Almeida, Gisele; Baptista-Leite, Ricardo; Barocas, Joshua A.; Barreto, Mauricio L.; Bar-Yam, Yaneer; et al (November 2022, Nature)

   Abstract Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic 1,2 . Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global threat to public health. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of fragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches 1 , while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach 2 that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust and engage communities 3 in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by 184 organizations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end. 

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2. Telerobots for Informal Learning in Schools.

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5214124  

   Ahumada-Newhart, V; Riek, L. (April 2021, ACM/IEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Workshop on Robots4Learning)

   null (Ed.)

   In the pre-pandemic world, it was estimated that 2.5 million children in the US were restricted to their homes due to medical risk. Sadly, in the COVID-19 (C-19) world and post C-19 world this number is expected to be much larger. As communities and schools return to in-person gatherings, many children will not be able to return to in-person school either due to their own health risks or the health risks of a family member. Awareness of this global reality highlights the urgent need to explore the use of inclusive technologies beyond the static screens of Zoom and online schools. As in-person schools resume, there is much we can learn from children and adolescents who pioneered the use of telerobots to not only attend school—but also to play. 

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3. Global adoption of personal and social mitigation behaviors during COVID-19: The role of trust & confidence

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256159  

   Jones, Pauline; Menon, Anil; Hicken, Allen; Rozek, Laura S. (September 2021, PLOS ONE)

   Mukherjee, Amitava (Ed.)

   What influences the adoption of SARS-CoV-2 mitigation behaviors–both personal, such as mask wearing and frequent handwashing, and social, such as avoiding large gatherings and physical contact–across countries? Understanding why some individuals are more willing to change their behavior to mitigate the spread of a pandemic will not only help us to address the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic but also to respond to future ones. Researchers have pointed to a variety of factors that may influence individual adoption of personal and social mitigation behaviors, including social inequality, risk perception, personality traits, and government policies. While not denying the importance of these factors, we argue that the role of trust and confidence has received insufficient attention to date. Our study explores whether there is a difference in the way trust and confidence in particular leaders and organizations affect individual compliance and whether this effect is consistent across different types of mitigation behaviors. Specifically, we utilize an original cross-national survey conducted during the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (May-June 2020) to investigate how trust in scientists, medical professionals, politicians, and religious leaders and confidence in global, national, and local health organizations affects individual compliance in 16 countries/territories across five world regions. Our analyses, which control for the aforementioned factors as well as several others, suggest that trust in politicians and confidence in national health ministries have the most consistent influence on whether individuals adopt both personal and social mitigation behaviors. Across our sample, we find that greater trust in politicians is associated with lower levels of individual compliance with public health directives, whereas greater confidence in the national health ministry is associated with higher levels of individual compliance. Our findings suggest the need to understand trust and confidence as among the most important individual level characteristics driving compliance when developing and delivering messaging about the adoption of mitigation behaviors. The content of the message, it seems, will be most effective when citizens across countries trust its source. Trusted sources, such as politicians and the national health ministry, should thus consider working closely together when determining and communicating recommended health behaviors to avoid contradicting one another. 

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4. The International System After Trump and the Pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2021.120.822.3  

   Hicken, Allen; Jones, Pauline; Menon, Anil (January 2021, Current History)

   null (Ed.)

   The Trump administration sought to erode confidence in the international system, which it regarded as an affront to national sovereignty. The COVID-19 pandemic, by raising collective awareness of the need for global cooperation, may help to restore that confidence and encourage renewed commitment to multilateralism. Public opinion polls show that people around the world have greater confidence in global institutions like the World Health Organization than in national leaders like Donald Trump or Xi Jinping. The United States will continue to be an indispensable partner after Trump, but the international order will rest on a stronger footing if Washington is no longer expected to be the prime mover and contributes instead as one among equals. 

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5. Identifying with all humanity predicts cooperative health behaviors and helpful responding during COVID-19

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248234  

   Barragan, Rodolfo C.; Oliveira, Nigini; Khalvati, Koosha; Brooks, Rechele; Reinecke, Katharina; Rao, Rajesh P.; Meltzoff, Andrew N. (March 2021, PLOS ONE)

   Lim, Jennifer NW (Ed.)

   In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts have produced guidelines to limit the spread of the coronavirus, but individuals do not always comply with experts’ recommendations. Here, we tested whether a specific psychological belief—identification with all humanity—predicts cooperation with public health guidelines as well as helpful behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that peoples’ endorsement of this belief—their relative perception of a connection and moral commitment to other humans—would predict their tendencies to adopt World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and to help others. To assess this, we conducted a global online study ( N = 2537 participants) of four WHO-recommended health behaviors and four pandemic-related moral dilemmas that we constructed to be relevant to helping others at a potential cost to oneself. We used generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) that included 10 predictor variables (demographic, contextual, and psychological) for each of five outcome measures (a WHO cooperative health behavior score, plus responses to each of our four moral, helping dilemmas). Identification with all humanity was the most consistent and consequential predictor of individuals’ cooperative health behavior and helpful responding. Analyses showed that the identification with all humanity significantly predicted each of the five outcomes while controlling for the other variables ( P range < 10 −22 to < 0.009). The mean effect size of the identification with all humanity predictor on these outcomes was more than twice as large as the effect sizes of other predictors. Identification with all humanity is a psychological construct that, through targeted interventions, may help scientists and policymakers to better understand and promote cooperative health behavior and help-oriented concern for others during the current pandemic as well as in future humanitarian crises. 

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