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Monitoring and controlling of transmission lines become easier in real time with synchrophasor measurements technology. Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) provide the time-stamped synchrophasor data of the system buses and transmission lines with a high reporting rate. In this paper, a mathematical model is implemented that allows the simulation of the characteristics of the spread of transmission line switching with load variations. In the model, the transmission lines are divided into three parts defined as susceptible, infected and recovered transmission lines inspired from epidemic model. In this paper, Reliability Test System (RTS − 1979) is divided into three zones to simulate the line switching spread behaviour with load variation for reliability and vulnerability analysis of the synchrophasor smart grid network. The anomaly exists with synchrophasor measuring devices due to cyber intrusion in communication network or failure of devices makes the system observable with the characterization of vulnerable behaviour of transmission lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An epidemic outbreak largely disrupts supply chains (SCs) worldwide through plummeting business confidence, especially when it becomes a pandemic; its unpredictable re-emergence and spreadability may lead to inappropriate decision-making, in turn causing severe economic shocks. In March 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak attained a pandemic level, and many millions of cases were confirmed globally. Many countries reported an increasing number of active cases and formulated long-term lockdown guidelines, which resulted in an unexpected disruption of SCs. A key challenge in this scenario is that the rising number of confirmed COVID-19 cases does not necessarily reflect the already infected or asymptomatic cases. It is thus critical to understand the impact of asymptomatic carriers on the SC, as they may be the key driver of the novel virus spread, disrupting long-term SCs. This paper generalised the susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (S-E-I-R) approach to create a mathematical model for which the impact of a proposed asymptomatic situation on the SC is evaluated through the basic reproduction number (R0), considered the main driver of SC disruption and the equilibrium status of infection over time. This paper presents an action plan for reducing disruption in the SC based on the R0 of the model. Overall, the current study as validated through a case study suggests that the asymptomatic-situation-based model is more convenient for critically understanding as well as forecasting the outbreak’s impact on SCs. This study also highlights different perspectives of SCs for managing such types of pandemics using modelling approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic has triggered a flurry of associated research publications, numbering to ~137 papers a day since February 2020. This rate of publication appears to be exceptionally high, when compared to research papers published on other similar topics. Searches of COVID-19-associated publications on PubMed and Retraction Watch Database indicate that the retraction record appearance rate for COVID-19-related research is also exceptionally high compared to other related research topics in viral epidemics/pandemics and surpasses the basal level of about 4 in 10,000 papers. This finding serves as a reminder and caution against any lapses in the standard of work, peer review, and publication of COVID-19-related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1878 yellow fever epidemic, newspapers in the Mississippi Valley region aimed to prevent the spread of the disease to their populations by (1) reporting on strategies of prevention and (2) criticizing misinformation from both within their own communities and in newspapers from other towns that obfuscated public understanding of the disease. This in turn (3) highlighted the tensions between cities and their respective newspapers. Journalists writing for these papers—in particular, in Vicksburg and New Orleans—penned accusations that reporters in the other city either sensationalized or understated the impact of the epidemic, thereby undermining their own ability to protect their hometowns from threats to public health, economic stability, and regional or national reputations. At times, multiple papers from the same city argued about the accuracy of each other's epidemic coverage. Although public health, science, medicine, and journalism have developed tremendously since 1878, this story reminds us of the significance of local news and cooperation between citizens and journalists when facing contemporary health crises, such as COVID-19. Without a robust foundation for covering epidemics on the local level, broader journalistic networks are far less equipped to fulfill their essential roles in mitigating outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global outbreak of the novel coronavirus has had a great impact on commercial areas, particularly in Wuhan, the first city in China affected by the epidemic. Exploring the changing pattern of these areas during the epidemic period is crucial for effectively restoring the urban economic level and promoting economic development on the basis of epidemic prevention and control in the post-epidemic era. The paper proposes a resilience analysis of urban commercial areas during the COVID-19 epidemic using time-series night-time light remote sensing data. Based on the constructed time-series night-time light remote sensing dataset and considering the urban impervious surface, the urban commercial area was extracted under multi-scale segmentation. Based on night-time light data before and after the epidemic, the resilience of representative commercial areas in Wuhan City, Hubei Province during the COVID-19 epidemic was analysed using a modified improved resilience assessment framework. The results showed that the lighting values of commercial areas and impervious areas decreased by up to 30% following the implementation of city lockdown measures. The change of light brightness in the commercial areas was more prominent, and the range of change is larger than that in the non-commercial areas. The lighting brightness of the commercial areas exhibited a significant downward trend throughout the entire lockdown period, and the downward trend will still remain for a period of time after unlocking. Among all the commercial areas, Wuguang commercial area demonstrated the highest recovery rate during the lockdown period and instantaneous recovery rate after the lockdown, with relatively low closure loss and the highest level of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has exerted significant downward pressure on economic activity. In this paper, we examine the extent of the epidemic shock and recovery effects on economic growth by province in China since 2020. We find that the extent of the epidemic shock on economic growth in China has been gradually weakening. Still, the economy has not yet fully recovered from the shock. Also, there is some heterogeneity across provinces in the extent to the economic growth shocked by epidemic and the recovery effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigated a new heroin–cocaine epidemic model which incorporates spatial heterogeneity and nonlinear incidence rate. The main project of this paper is to explore the threshold dynamics in terms of the basic reproduction number $ \mathcal {R}_0 $ R 0 , which was defined by applying the next-generation operator. The threshold type results shown that if $ \mathcal {R}_0 \lt 1 $ R 0 < 1 , then the drug-free steady state is globally asymptotically stable. If $ \mathcal {R}_0 \gt 1 $ R 0 > 1 , then heroin–cocaine spread is uniformly persistent. Furthermore, the globally asymptotic stability of the drug-free steady state has been established for the critical case of $ \mathcal {R}_0=1 $ R 0 = 1 by analysing the local asymptotic stability and global attractivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ranking of nodes in a network according to their centrality or ''importance'' is a classic problem that has attracted the interest of different scientific communities in the last decades. The COVID-19 pandemic has recently rejuvenated the interest in this problem, as the ranking may be used to decide who should be tested, or vaccinated, first, in a population of asymptomatic individuals. In this paper, we review classic methods for node ranking and compare their performance in a benchmark network that considers the community-based structure of society. The outcome of the ranking procedure is then used to decide which individuals should be tested, and possibly quarantined, first. Finally, we also review the extension of these ranking methods to weighted graphs and explore the importance of weights in a contact network by providing a toy model and comparing node rankings for this case in the context of disease spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of a pandemic is as much a political act as biological reality. It is over not simply when case counts or deaths are reduced to some objectively determined acceptable level but also when, and if, the public accepts the stories that politicians and health officials tell about it. This paper has three aims. First, to develop the concept of a pandemic illness narrative – a public narrative that makes the experience of an outbreak meaningful to a community of people and explains when it will be finished. Using the case of the United States, the paper then examines how American state organisations and public health officials tried to disseminate a version of the 'restitution illness narrative' to make sense out of the COVID-19 pandemic and explain how it would ultimately end. Lastly, the paper describes the factors that made this narrative ultimately implausible to the American public. As most Americans are now seemingly indifferent about the pandemic, it has ended in the United States without ever actually being narratively concluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the use of software agents and simulating real-world medical phenomena. We start with a brief overview of different approaches and tools for developing software agents and running simulations. One of the more recent tools was utilized in this paper to develop a model of disease spread in a population of agents and for performing experiments. We proposed an extension of the SIRD model, which includes a new state for agents, spatial component, and also different risk groups based on age. Multiple factors affect the longevity of a pathogen in a given population, for instance, its infectivity and deadliness. This paper shows interesting results of extensive experiments performed with novel, modified SIRD model and impact of key factors on disease spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a SEIR(D) model to analyse the time-varying transmission dynamics of the COVID-19 epidemic in Korea throughout its multiple stages of development. This multi-stage estimation of the model parameters offers a better model fit compared to the whole period analysis and shows how the COVID-19's infection patterns change over time, primarily depending on the effectiveness of the public health authority's non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). This paper uses the SEIR(D) compartment model to simulate and estimate the parameters for three distinctive stages of the COVID-19 epidemic in Korea, using a manually compiled COVID-19 epidemic dataset for the period between 18 February 2020 and 08 February 2021. The paper identifies three major stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, conducts multi-stage estimations of the SEIR(D) model parameters, and carefully infers context-dependent meaning of the estimation results to help better understand the unique patterns of the transmission of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in each stage. The original SIR compartment model may produce a poor and even misleading estimation result if it is used to cover the entire period of the epidemic. However, if we use the model carefully in distinctive stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, we can find useful insights into the nature of the transmission of the novel coronavirus and the relative effectiveness of the government's non-pharmaceutical interventions over time. Identifies three distinctive waves of the COVID-19 epidemic in Korea. Conducts multi-stage estimations of the COVID-19 transmission dynamics using SEIR(D) epidemic models. The transmission dynamics of the COVID-19 vary over time, primarily depending on the relative effectiveness of the government's non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). The SEIR(D) epidemic model is useful and informative, but only when it is used carefully to account for the presence of multiple waves and context-dependent infection patterns in each wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we define and study a stochastic SIR model on the class of regular rooted trees, in order to describe the spread of an epidemic on a closed population. A generalized geometric random variable is defined, which is essential for our study in this stochastic process. The main objective of this paper is to obtain the distribution of random variable X , the number of infected individuals at the stopping time that a diagnosis occurs. The analyses, simulations, and figures created with the software MATLAB certify the validity of the obtained results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we classify the phase portraits of an SIR epidemic dynamics model. Depending on the values of the parameters, this model can exhibit seven different phase portraits. In particular, from a biological point of view we prove that the unique attractors of this model are one or two equilibrium points depending on the values of the parameters and from the phase portraits follow the basins of attraction of these equilibria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a generalized SIR epidemic model that incorporates infectives with or without symptoms, allows arbitrary distributions for infectious periods and assumes infection rates depending on the current size of susceptibles. Our interest lies in the joint distribution of the state of the population and the severity of the disease at the end of infection. The approach is based on a formulation of the epidemic as a so-called collective model. First, a set of martingales is constructed which provides the distribution of this final epidemic outcome. Then, its corresponding distributional transform is expressed in terms of a family of pseudo-polynomials of Abel-Gontcharoff type. Some of the results obtained are illustrated numerically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the results of a game (Zombie Federalism) created for a lower-level political science elective, State and Local Politics. This game was created to improve both retention of course material and enthusiasm in a historically underperforming course. In the game, students play the roles of officials in different levels of government, who are attempting to solve both the mundane problems of government as well a fictional zombie epidemic. The simulation forces students to navigate between short-term versus long-term goals as well as individual versus communal outcomes. The results show that student scores from multiple choice questions relevant to the game improved from the midterm to the final exam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of the epidemic and a series of strict prevention and control measures taken to prevent the spread of the epidemic will have a significant impact on the entire chain and various fields of agricultural production and operation. Based on the realistic basis of China's current international cooperation in agricultural ecological environmental protection, this paper proposes an international coordination mechanism for agricultural product trade legal systems. There is a certain degree of conflict between ecological environment protection and trade facilitation and liberalisation, but they are not completely uncoordinated. Therefore, the establishment of a set of coordination mechanisms that can restrain and encourage countries to carry out international cooperation plays a key role in resolving the conflict between the two. In addition, this paper analyzes the legal regulation of agricultural trade in the post-epidemic era through intelligent model analysis and proposes corresponding countermeasures. Through analysis and research, it also provides a corresponding reference for legal regulations of agricultural trade in the post-epidemic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact on the macroeconomy for certain OECD economies exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic shock. The analysis employs a panel of OECD countries, spanning the period March 2020 to January 2021. It also uses two proxies for the COVID-19 shocks: i) total confirmed incidences/cases and ii) total deaths while using the Bayesian Panel Vector Autoregressive (BPVAR) method. The findings document that the COVID-19 shock exerts a strong negative effect on industrial production. Considering how such epidemic shocks affect the expectations of economic participants, the paper questions their absence in accounting for forthcoming growth-related incidences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to apply an optimal control theory for the autonomous model of the leptospirosis epidemic to examine the effect of four time-dependent control measures on the model dynamics with cost-effectiveness. Pontryagin's Maximum Principle was used to derive the optimality system associated with the optimal control problem. Numerical simulations of the optimality system were performed for different control strategies and the results were presented graphically with and without controls. The optimality system was simulated using the Forward–Backward Sweep method in the Matlab programme. The numerical results revealed that the combination of all optimal control measures is the most effective strategy for minimizing the spread and impact of disease in the community. Furthermore, a cost-effectiveness analysis was performed to determine the most cost-effective strategy using the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio approach and we observed that the rodenticide control-only strategy is most effective to combat the spread of disease when available resources are limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientometrics is the study of measuring and analyzing science, technology, and innovation. There is significant overlap between scientometrics and other scientific fields such as bibliometrics and information systems. Health science librarians can use scientometrics to aid clinical and research personnel in evidence-based searching to determine which databases are best suited for searching a particular subject, to identify where particular research is being conducted, and for making administrataive decisions such as which resources will best serve library users. The following article describes a scientifiic analysis of the H1N1 influenza pandemic and how librarians used the literature to provide evidence-based support to meedical faculty members. It is probably the first study that evaluates global H1N1 research using scientometric methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemics such as COVID-19 present a substantial menace to public health and global economies. While the problem of epidemic forecasting has been thoroughly investigated in the literature, there is limited work studying the problem of optimal epidemic control. In the present paper, we introduce a novel epidemiological model (EM) that is inherently suitable for analyzing different control policies. We validated the potential of the developed EM in modeling the evolution of COVID-19 infections with a mean Pearson correlation of 0.609 CI 0.525-0.690 and P-value < 0.001. To automate the process of analyzing control policies and finding the optimal one, we adapted the developed EM to the reinforcement learning (RL) setting and ran several experiments. The results of this work show that the problem of optimal epidemic control can be significantly difficult for governments and policymakers, especially if faced with several constraints at once, hence, the need for such machine learning-based decision support tools. Moreover, it demonstrated the potential of deep RL in addressing such real-world problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of government epidemic prevention policies on controlling COVID-19 is of great importance to health, politics, and development economics. This paper thus investigates the impacts of government responses on confirmed cases related to COVID-19 in Taiwan for the period January 1, 2020 to May 13, 2021 by employing ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation. Overall, our empirical results indicate that there is a significantly impact of government responses on COVID-19 pandemic spread in Taiwan. In addition, the speed of government responses would significantly affect confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Taiwan. The earlier government epidemic prevention responses led to fewer confirmed cases. After conducting a series of robustness checks, the above conclusions are still robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDuring an epidemic, the daily number of reported infected cases, deaths or hospitalizations is often lower than the actual number due to reporting delays. Nowcasting aims to estimate the cases that have not yet been reported and combine it with the already reported cases to obtain an estimate of the daily cases. In this paper, we present a fast and flexible Bayesian approach for nowcasting by combining P-splines and Laplace approximations. Laplacian-P-splines provide a flexible framework for nowcasting that is computationally less demanding as compared to traditional Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. The proposed approach also permits to naturally quantify the prediction uncertainty. Model performance is assessed through simulations and the nowcasting method is applied to COVID-19 mortality and incidence cases in Belgium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the numerical properties of a reaction-diffusion susceptible infected susceptible (SIS) epidemic model under a linear external source. A numerical scheme is constructed with a finite difference scheme for the space discretization and an Implicit-Explicit (IMEX) method in time integration. A threshold value, numerical basic reproduction number, is proposed in the long-time stability analysis of numerical solutions. Differently from previous works on the same model, the numerical basic reproduction number can preserve the behaviours of the basic reproduction number of the model, towards which it converges when the spatial stepsize vanishes. Moreover, it plays a role for the discrete dynamics similar to the one played by its continuous counterpart. Some numerical experiments are given in the end to confirm the conclusions and detect the conjecture on the stability of endemic equilibrium (EE) in general case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on fieldwork with the veterinary staff at an Indian wildlife sanctuary, this paper examines the controversy surrounding an epizootic outbreak of tuberculosis among a population of sloth bears. As these bears fell ill and began to die, the veterinary staff asked whether they might be culled, inciting allegations of incompetence and cruelty from both the media and government bureaucrats. This paper works through a series of ethico-legal questions regarding the cullability of these tuberculous bears, which depended in part on how the bears were classified – as wild or domestic, captive or free, curable or incurable. As boundary-crossing figures, the bears confounded straightforward efforts at classification, rendering their fates open to debate. In treating them, the veterinary staff feared that they were only extending their suffering, producing a form of life that might be thought of as iatrogenic. In this light, this paper suggests that cruelty – both the cruelty of culling and that of treatment – might be figured as an unavoidable aspect of the relation of dependency between animals and their human caretakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now drive cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge (journal) systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy (VDP) based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a 'bioinformationalist' response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to (educational) philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic as a quasi-experiment to study the economic impact of epidemic shocks. It aims to answer the following two questions. 1) How does an epidemic affect various macroeconomic variable? 2) What are the transmission channels through which the epidemic shock affected firms? We build an epidemic shock macroeconomic model and use synthetic control method (SCM) and difference-in-differences (DID) estimator to estimate the impact of the 2003 SARS epidemic on the economic performance of China. We find that the SARS epidemic negatively affected China's GDP growth rates and its levels of consumption, investment, and productivity. The lag time effect of SARS was very short because of the short duration of the outbreak and adequate market liquidity. We isolate and compare the effects of the SARS epidemic from the perspectives of changes in business cycles, labour supply shocks and external financing conditions on firms' economic performance using firm-specific sensitivity estimates prior to the SARS epidemic. We find that the SARS epidemic had a larger negative impact on firms with higher sensitivity to business cycles and labour supply shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the vocabulary of 'medical populism' to identify and analyse the political constructions of (and responses to) the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, the Philippines, and the United States from January to mid-July 2020, particularly by the countries' heads of state: Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, and Donald Trump. In all three countries, the leaders' responses to the outbreak can be characterised by the following features: simplifying the pandemic by downplaying its impacts or touting easy solutions or treatments, spectacularizing their responses to crisis, forging divisions between the 'people' and dangerous 'others', and making medical knowledge claims to support the above. Taken together, the case studies illuminate the role of individual political actors in defining public health crises, suggesting that medical populism is not an exceptional, but a familiar response to them. This paper concludes by offering recommendations for global health in anticipating and responding to pandemics and infectious disease outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011, the region has witnessed a major population displacement. Lebanon, a country with a population of 4.2 million, has welcomed around one million refugees. A rise in the incidence of Measles, Hepatitis A and Leishmaniosis was noted. This paper aims to document the incidence of outbreaks along with the factors that contributed to their emergence in Lebanon. A comprehensive literature review was conducted using electronic databases and (non) governmental reports, including studies reporting the state of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and those reporting on infectious outbreaks in Lebanon and Syria. Primary outcomes were defined as incidence or prevalence of Measles, Hepatitis A, and Leishmaniosis in both populations. Secondary outcomes were set to be the risk factors for the outbreaks. As of February 2016, Lebanon registered a total of 1.067.785 refugees. Infectious outbreaks were reported in Lebanon just after initiation of Syrian migration, with 1760 new measles cases, 1551 hepatitis A cases, and 1033 Leishmania cases in 2013. Local factors probably contributing to the emergence and dissemination of the outbreaks include living conditions, water and sanitation, nutritional state, and immunization. The outbreaks were not only reported in regions with higher refugee concentration, but also within other Lebanese regions. This was attributed to deficiencies in immunization of measles, low socioeconomic status and poor living conditions. The Syrian crisis has led to considerable impact on the demographic, economic, and political systems in Lebanon, next to an important burden on the healthcare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Qingdai weisheng fangyi jizhi jiqi jindai yanbian" by Yu Xinzhong explores the public health and epidemic prevention mechanisms in the Qing Dynasty and their evolution in modern China. The revised edition of the book aims to correct errors and omissions from the first edition and includes new papers. The book covers various topics such as the concept of health, the regulation of health, urban water environment, fecal treatment, cleanliness, quarantine systems, and the formation of health and epidemic prevention. The author also discusses the relationship between Chinese people and health, reflecting on the modernization narrative and the need for more reflection on modernity. However, the book has some limitations, including a focus on the late Qing Dynasty, a lack of in-depth discussion on preventive mechanisms, and repetition of historical materials. Overall, the book is a significant contribution to the study of health history and provides interesting insights into historical issues. [Extracted from the article]

Tuberculosis (TB) is a communicable, airborne infection caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) is the most common presentation, although infection can spread anywhere to cause extra-pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB). In this paper, a novel fractional order mathematical model is designed for the transmission dynamics of tuberculosis. Uninfected vulnerable individuals are categorized into the following: susceptible with underline ailment and susceptible without underline ailment. The research seeks to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the proposed model and suggests comprehensive intervention measures for the control of tuberculosis among individuals with underline ailment. Some of the major highlights from the numerical investigation points out that TB vaccination is key to reducing the spread of TB among individuals with underline ailment. Furthermore, efforts to step down the spread of TB through awareness campaigns could significantly reduce the burden of the disease among individuals with co-morbidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the structural change in a class of discrete valued time series, where the true conditional distribution of the observations is assumed to be unknown. The conditional mean of the process depends on a parameter $ \theta ^* $ θ ∗ which may change over time. We provide sufficient conditions for the consistency and the asymptotic normality of the Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) of the model. We consider an epidemic change-point detection and propose a test statistic based on the QMLE of the parameter. Under the null hypothesis of a constant parameter (no change), the test statistic converges to a distribution obtained from increments of a Browninan bridge. The test statistic diverges to infinity under the epidemic alternative, which establishes that the proposed procedure is consistent in power. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure is illustrated by simulated and real data examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of the Slovak job retention scheme introduced in 2020 on dismissals and survival of small firms during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit exogenous variation in epidemic intensity, measured as new COVID-19 cases within a district per month. We show that the sensitivity of dismissals to the intensifying epidemic among unsupported firms was low, i.e. these firms were relatively unaffected by the shock. In contrast, participation in the job retention scheme reduced the sensitivity of firm dismissals to the intensification of the epidemic, preserving endangered jobs. Supported firms benefited by roughly the same amount, regardless of their management quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we prove a functional central limit theorem (FCLT) for a stochastic epidemic model with varying infectivity and general infectious periods recently introduced in R. Forien et al. [Epidemic models with varying infectivity, SIAM J. Appl. Math. 81 (2021), pp. 1893–1930]. The infectivity process (total force of infection at each time) is composed of the independent infectivity random functions of each infectious individual, which starts at the time of infection. These infectivity random functions induce the infectious periods (as well as exposed, recovered or immune periods in full generality), whose probability distributions can be very general. The epidemic model includes the generalized non–Markovian SIR, SEIR, SIS, SIRS models with infection-age dependent infectivity. In the FCLTs for the generalized SIR and SEIR models, the limits of the diffusion-scaled fluctuations of the infectivity and susceptible processes are a unique solution to a two-dimensional Gaussian-driven stochastic Volterra integral equations, and then given these solutions, the limits for the infected (exposed/infectious) and recovered processes are Gaussian processes expressed in terms of the solutions to those stochastic Volterra integral equations. We also present the FCLTs for the generalized SIS and SIRS models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the atmosphere of mistrust that permeated the response to the tenth Ebola epidemic in Eastern DRC (2018–2020). The concept of an 'atmosphere of mistrust' that we develop in this article directs attention to the elusive-yet-pervasive presence of mistrust in interactions between responders and communities during the Ebola epidemic. This analysis focuses on the popular notion that 'Ebola is a business'. Our interviewees frequently used this saying during our research on the Ebola response to explain why mistrust had emerged, how it materialized, and against whom it was directed. Based on these interviews, we examine 'Ebola is a business' as a slogan that enabled people to voice mistrust. This slogan, as we aim to show, resonated with a wider atmosphere of mistrust that governed the emergency situation in Eastern DRC. In using it, people responded to their perceptions of mistrust whilst simultaneously perpetuating and extending this atmosphere of mistrust. Our analysis of the atmosphere of mistrust highlights the power of atmospheres in governing situations, mobilizing people, and disrupting structures of discrimination. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of the barriers inhibiting the collaborations between affected communities and responders, which are required to deliver effective epidemic responses. Moreover, we argue that voice and the atmosphere are important analytics for exploring the histories of mistrust that Ebola epidemics ask for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural disasters, pandemics, and epidemics have devastating impacts on communities. Poverty, famine, ill health, social isolation, and death are some of the consequences of such events. Transformations in culture, religion, political and economic stability, and other social aspects can also be attributed to catastrophic incidents. Whilst such events have been well documented and studied, little attention has been given to their effect on children. Using osteoarchaeological and historical evidence, this review article explores how children appear to have been affected during, and in the aftermath of, natural disasters and epidemics. A range of cases from Antiquity to the modern day is provided, alongside three focal case studies. This research demonstrates analogies with the present-day where countries face disease outbreaks, droughts, floods, and earthquakes. Ultimately, the findings presented in this paper illustrate the extent to which these events shaped the lives and deaths of children in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the Korean War from an environmental perspective. The paper examines the political background that aggravated environmental damage and the ways in which hydro-warfare, ecological warfare, and epidemics are interconnected. By focusing on environmental destruction during the Korean War, this research questions the view of post-1950s industrialization and urbanization as the main sources of environmental crisis on the Korean Peninsula. The paper examines some of the major wartime disasters, such as the destruction of hydroelectric and irrigation dams and epidemic outbreaks. Special attention is given to the impact of aerial bombing, which not only resulted in the deaths of millions, but also created a chain effect of environmental destruction, population displacement, flooding, famine, and epidemic outbreaks. In revisiting them, it conclusively looks at the impact that military activities have on the environment and how the Korean War foreshadowed the rise of environmental warfare during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in South Korea was identified on 20 January 2020. South Korea's blended response of quick action and technological innovations has proven effective in containing the COVID-19 outbreak and can offer lessons for other countries. This paper presents a review of the administrative and legal measures taken by the Korean government, a discussion on the lessons learned from previous epidemics and disasters, and an overview of the government's agile testing and containment strategies. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of Korea's responses to public policy and public management theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rate of infectious disease outbreaks has been accelerating over the past two decades, from the SARS epidemic in 2003 to COVID-19 in 2020. Termed by some as the twenty-first century's first pandemic, SARS originated in China and alerted the country to the importance of public health and epidemic response. After SARS, China improved its health infrastructure and reformed its political and legal health governance system. The emergence of COVID-19 from Wuhan in late 2019 put those reforms to the test. This paper analyses China's public health and epidemic response policies from a historical perspective, tracing the evolution of Chinese public health policies after the SARS outbreak in 2003. This paper assesses China's response to COVID-19 and how post-SARS policy reforms, particularly in epidemic response, played out on the ground in Wuhan. What policies worked well? What were the challenges faced? Based on the policy analysis, this paper presents recommendations for how China can improve its epidemic response through strengthened infectious disease surveillance, more transparent political coordination, and expanded public health infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A catastrophic epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus, commonly recognised as COVID-19, introduced a worldwide vulnerability to human community. All nations around the world are making enormous effort to tackle the outbreak towards this deadly virus through various aspects such as technology, economy, relevant data, protective gear, lives-risk medications and all other instruments. The artificial intelligence-based researchers apply knowledge, experience and skill set on national level data to create computational and statistical models for investigating such a pandemic condition. In order to make a contribution to this worldwide human community, this paper recommends using machine-learning and deep-learning models to understand its daily accelerating actions together with predicting the future reachability of COVID-19 across nations by using the real-time information from the Johns Hopkins dashboard. In this work, a novel Exponential Smoothing Long-Short-Term Memory Networks Model (ESLSTM) learning model is proposed to predict the virus spread in the near future. The results are evaluated using RMSE and R-Squared values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the worsening of the environment and the increasing international trade, indirect transmission from exposure to contaminants in the surrounding environment has become an overlooked mode of transmission. This paper proposes a new game-theoretic model considering voluntary vaccination against imperfection and the unique integration of human-to-human and virus-to-human transmission routes. Based on the individual-based risk assessment update rule (IB-RA), the strategy-based risk assessment update rule (SB-RA), and the direct commitment update rule (DC), the different effects of individuals' behaviors on disease prevalence are analyzed. To find the effect of indirect transmission on epidemic transmission, we compare our model with the traditional SVIR model. Finally, it can be seen that indirect transmission mechanisms will aggravate the spread of epidemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the West African Sub-Region and its spread occurred through a vast array of epidemic management misinterpretations, challenges, and channels. This discussion paper however engages these issues within the context of balancing cultural imperatives and health standards. Data sources (archival sources -- newspaper reviews: July 2014--January 2015; and academic literature) were theoretically and methodological engaged. The aim of the paper was to establish that social systems thrive through a subsystem of exchange. Hence, it was ascertained that through biological and social exchange, Ebola is capable of causing social systems breakdown and death. The paper concludes that the lower degree of permeability present in the Nigerian social system, which is a function of multiple factors, related to space, time, and technology accounted for the outcome of management, control, and containment of the EVD in Nigeria West Africa. The implication of these vis-à-vis the nursing practice and profession was documented to reflect the health system and its extent of functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opioids, a set of potent pain medications, have numerous known deleterious side effects, ranging from constipation to respiratory depression and death, and yet they are routinely prescribed and administered in biomedical settings. Situated against the backdrop of the US opioid epidemic, this paper examines how the iatrogenic and inadvertent harms and complications caused by opioid administration in clinical settings are experienced by clinicians as forms of moral injury. 'Moral injury' describes a moral agent's experience of perpetrating or being unable to prevent events that are at odds with their moral beliefs and social expectations. This concept powerfully extends Illich's notion of clinical iatrogenesis, which refers to harms experienced by patients; instead, 'moral injury' indexes forms of harm that extend beyond patients to those providing them care. Using an analytic auto-ethnographic approach based on more than a decade of clinical practice in urban hospitals in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States, the authors describe interactions with patients on opioids whose treatment trajectories are fraught with iatrogenic complications, and explore how biomedical institutions and systems further harm vulnerable patients who receive and are addicted to opioids. Though anxious to avoid harming their patients, clinicians are disempowered by hierarchical systems of medical decision-making, which hinder their ability to always act in what they feel are the patient's best interests. This paper highlights the emotional/affective distress and ambivalence experienced by physicians when making decisions about whether to administer or prescribe opioids. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates how iatrogenesis and moral injury are concomitantly produced through cascades of decision-making and local health systems, rather than individual clinical decisions alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of books and articles related to AIDS. Some of the books and articles are "Perspectives on AIDS in Africa: Strategies for Prevention and Control," by Collins O. Airhihenbuwa, "Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome: The Victim and the Press," by Edward Albert, "AIDS in the Public Sphere: How a Broadcasting System in Crisis Dealt With an Epidemic," Keith Alcorn, "AIDS: The Politicization of an Epidemic," by Dennis Altman, "The Social Impact of AIDS in the U.S.," edited by Richard A. Berk, "Surveillance for AIDS in Uganda," by Seth Berkeley, Samuel Okware and Warren Naamara, "The Plague Years: A Chronicle of AIDS," by David Black, "Determinants of the Public's Priorities for Allocating Funds Spent on AIDS," by Sandra H. Berry, D. F. Kanouse, F. M. Gorman and E. Yano, "AIDS and Ads: Behavior Change Among Gay Men in Response to the AIDS Epidemic," by Ralph Bolton and so on.

Experiencing bereavement as a child or young person (CYP) can have long-lasting effects. The societal and environmental burdens of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic exacerbated the experience of loss and grief for many CYP, who were unable to access their usual the support networks. However, it is still unclear what is currently known and not known about the experiences of CYP bereaved during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This review used the framework of Arksey and O'Malley and included five stages: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) charting the data; (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. The methodological quality of the included studies was also assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool. The PRISMA framework was used for reporting the results. The electronic databases Medline, PsychINFO, CINAHL, and PubMed were searched for relevant articles. A total of three papers meeting the inclusion criteria were included in this review and two main themes identified: (1) support (which included sub-themes; social isolation and the impact on support; support from family and friends; wider support networks); (2) Emotional impact of bereavement during a pandemic. Access to support networks is crucial for CYP to understand and process their emotions relating to their bereavement experience. The pandemic meant that many usual support networks such as family and friends were inaccessible to CYP, who struggled to deal with their experience of grief during this time. Schools are a valuable support mechanism and can help CYP understand their emotions through open discussions about their bereavement. The limited empirical evidence currently available in this area of research demonstrates an important need to further understanding of the long-term impacts of dealing with pandemic-related loss in childhood [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I draw on a handful of personal fan collections created in the first decade of the star system to examine how schoolgirls of faith engaged Hollywood cinema as a visual vernacular that helped them externalize 'extreme states of personal being', including grief, disgust, and arousal. Working through what I term 'a cinephilia steeped in the distrust of pleasure', I argue that some moviegoing girls turned to private scrapbooking and film reviewing to sort out embattled feelings arising while coming of age in the United States at a time of social upheaval, war, and epidemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we are concerned with an epidemic model with quarantine and distributed time delay. We define the basic reproduction number R 0 and show that if R 0 ≤ 1 , then the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable, whereas if R 0 > 1 , then it is unstable and there exists a unique endemic equilibrium. We obtain sufficient conditions for a Hopf bifurcation that induces a nontrivial periodic solution which represents recurrent epidemic waves. By numerical simulations, we illustrate stability and instability parameter regions. Our results suggest that the quarantine and time delay play important roles in the occurrence of recurrent epidemic waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the dynamical behaviour of a stochastic coronavirus (COVID-19) susceptible-infected-removed epidemic model with the inclusion of the influence of information intervention and Lévy noise. The existence and uniqueness of the model positive solution are proved. Then, we establish a stochastic threshold as a sufficient condition for the extinction and persistence in mean of the disease. Based on the available COVID-19 data, the parameters of the model were estimated and we fit the model with real statistics. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to support our theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a reaction-diffusion SIR epidemic model via environmental driven infection in heterogeneous space is proposed. To reflect the prevention and control measures of disease in allusion to the susceptible in the model, the nonlinear incidence function E f (S) is applied to describe the protective measures of susceptible. In the general spatially heterogeneous case of the model, the well-posedness of solutions is obtained. The basic reproduction number R 0 is calculated. When R 0 ≤ 1 the global asymptotical stability of the disease-free equilibrium is obtained, while when R 0 > 1 the model is uniformly persistent. Furthermore, in the spatially homogeneous case of the model, when R 0 > 1 the global asymptotic stability of the endemic equilibrium is obtained. Lastly, the numerical examples are enrolled to verify the open problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines health worker experiences in two areas of post-epidemic preparedness in Sierra Leone – vaccine trials and laboratory strengthening – to reflect on the place of people in current models of epidemic response. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with health workers in the aftermath of Ebola, it explores the hopes and expectations that interventions foster for frontline workers in under-resourced health systems, and describes the unseen work involved in sustaining robust response infrastructures. Our analysis focuses on what it means for the people who sustain health systems in an emergency to be 'prepared' for an epidemic. Human preparedness entails more than the presence of a labour force; it involves building and maintaining 'relational infrastructures', often fragile social and moral relationships between health workers, publics, governments, and international organisations. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the value of rethinking human resources from an anthropological perspective, and investing in the safety and support of people at the forefront of response. In describing the labour, personal losses, and social risks undertaken by frontline workers for protocols and practicality to meet in an emergency context, we describe the social process of preparedness; that is, the contextual engineering and investment that make response systems work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine a prominent interpretation of HIV risk in a rural South African setting experiencing a severe HIV epidemic well into older ages: the discourse of caregiving HIV transmission. By caregiving transmission, we refer to HIV infection resulting from caring for family members who are living with HIV and may be sick with AIDS-related illnesses. We draw on individual life history and community focus group interviews with men and women aged 40–80+, as well as interviews with health workers providing HIV counselling and testing services at local health facilities in their communities. We illustrate the social and strategic role caregiving HIV transmission discourses play in re-signifying HIV as a sexless infection for older women, thereby promoting HIV testing as well as blameless acceptance of an HIV diagnosis. We further highlight the role of rural health workers who serve as medical epistemic bricoleurs, vernacularising global HIV counselling and prevention messages by blending ideas of gender, generation, and local lived experiences and practices so that they resonate with community norms, values and understandings. Our study highlights the gendered and generational complexities and challenges experienced by rural South Africans aging in a community over-burdened by an HIV epidemic and AIDS-related mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]