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This paper estimated the impact of intervention effects (state of emergency (SOE) or quasi-SOE requirements) and information effects (publicized increases in the number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths and fear of infection) on preventive behaviors and telecommuting during the COVID-19 pandemic using the Japan Household Panel Survey. Our results indicated that SOEs and quasi-SOEs had positive effects on the adoption of preventive behaviors among individuals, including handwashing, which indicates that an SOE has a direct effect and an indirect effect. Although SOEs in Japan were less enforceable and more lenient than those in other countries, they still had a certain effect on people's adoption of preventive behaviors. However, the contribution of information effects was much larger than that of intervention effects, suggesting the importance of how and when information should be communicated to the public to prevent the spread of infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The emergence of the novel coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) has led to huge disruptions in the medical field and society. The significance of training and education for experts has been increasingly acknowledged in Japan, where the number of infectious disease (ID) specialists is reportedly insufficient. In this paper, we report the results of a web-based survey that was conducted to reveal the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced medical students' awareness of ID specialists and future career choices. Method: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in March 2021 and targeted 717 medical students belonging to Medical School of Okayama University, Japan. The questionnaire consisted of four questions meant to assess students' knowledge and future intentions of becoming ID specialists. Results: We obtained 328 eligible questionnaires (response rate: 45.7%). Of 227 (69.2%) students who were aware of ID specialists, 99 (43.6%) answered that they came to know about them only after the pandemic, 12 (3.7%) answered that their interest in being an ID specialist arose during the pandemic, while 36 (11.0%) responded that they would rather not become ID specialists. At the time of the survey, 5 students (1.5%) were aiming to become ID specialists. Conclusion: We observed a very low rate of interest to be an ID specialist among medical students. The experience of the pandemic does not seem to have influenced Japanese medical students to choose ID as a specialty for their careers. Continuous efforts to increase the number of ID specialists are necessary in Japan as a countermeasure against the coming pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People are obtaining more and more information from social media and other online sources, but the spread of misinformation can lead to social disruption. In particular, social networking services (SNSs) can easily spread information of uncertain authenticity and factuality. Although many studies have proposed methods that addressed how to suppress the spread of misinformation on SNSs, few works have examined the impact on society of diffusing both misinformation and its corrective information. This study models the effects of effort to reduce misinformation and the diffusion of corrective information on social disruption, and it clarifies these effects. With the aim of reducing the impact on social disruption, we show that not only misinformation but also corrective information can cause social disruption, and we clarify how to control the spread of the latter to limit its impact. We analyzed the misinformation about a toilet-paper shortage and its correction as well as the social disruption this event caused in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. First, (1) we analyzed the extent to which misinformation and its corrections spread on SNS, and then (2) we created a model to estimate the impact of misinformation and its corrections on the world. Finally, (3) We used our model to analyze the change in this impact when the diffusion of the misinformation and its corrections changed. Based on our analysis results in (1), the corrective information spread much more widely than the misinformation. From the model developed in (2), the corrective information caused excessive purchasing behavior. The analysis results in (3) show that the amount of corrective information required to minimize the societal impact depends on the amount of misinformation diffusion. Most previous studies concentrated on the impact of corrective information on attitudes toward misinformation. On the other hand, the most significant contribution of this study is that it focuses on the impact of corrective information on society and clarifies the appropriate amount of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the COVID-19-induced employment shocks are associated with increases in suicides and safety net use in the second and third quarters of 2020. We exploit plausibly exogenous regional variation in the magnitude of the employment shocks in Japan and adopt a difference-in-differences research design to examine and control for possible confounders. Our preferred point estimates suggest that a one-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2020 is associated with, approximately, an additional 0.52 suicides, 28 unemployment benefit recipients, 88 recipients of a temporary loan program, and 10 recipients of public assistance per 100,000 population per month. A simple calculation based on these estimates suggests that if a region experienced a one-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate caused by the COVID-19 crisis in the second quarter of 2020, which is roughly equivalent to the third-highest regional employment shock, this would be associated with 37.4%, 60.5%, and 26.5% increases in the total, female, and male suicide rates respectively in July 2020 compared with July 2019. These results are primarily correlational rather than causal due to the limitation of our data and research design, but our baseline findings are robust to several different model specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worsening of neuropsychiatric symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) has been a concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, because most people worked in self-isolation for fear of infection. We aimed to clarify the impact of social restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic on neuropsychiatric symptoms in PD patients and to identify risk factors associated with these symptoms. A cross-sectional, hospital-based survey was conducted from April 22, 2020 to May 15, 2020. PD patients and their family members were asked to complete paper-based questionnaires about neuropsychiatric symptoms by mail. PD patients were evaluated for motor symptoms using MDS-UPDRS part 2 by telephone interview. A total of 71 responders (39 PD patients and 32 controls) completed the study. Although there was no difference in the age distribution, the rate of females was significantly lower in PD patients (35%) than controls (84%) (P < 0.001). Participants with clinical depression (PHQ-9 score ≥ 10) were more common in PD patients (39%) than controls (6%) (P = 0.002). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that an MDS-UPDRS part 2 score was correlated with the presence of clinical depression (PHQ-9 score ≥ 10) and clinical anxiety (GAD-7 score ≥ 7) (clinical depression: OR, 1.31; 95% CI, 1.04–1.66; P = 0.025; clinical anxiety: OR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.07–1.72; P = 0.013). In the presence of social restrictions, more attention needs to be paid to the neuropsychiatric complications of PD patients, especially those with more severe motor symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]