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In response to the heightened risk that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses to the health and lives of people with obesity, in 2020 the U.K. government launched a new package of policies intended to stimulate weight loss among the country's population. In this article, I present a critical discourse analysis of the policy paper which announced these new measures. I identify the discourses that are used to represent things, people, and processes in this policy text. These discourses are interpreted in terms of broadly neoliberal ideologies of public health management. Taken together, the discourses identified contribute to a broadly neoliberal ideology of public health management. It is argued that the policy paper represents an instance of "lifestyle drift," as it initially appears to engage with social and economic determinants of health but ultimately neglects these in favor of focusing on individual lifestyle factors, particularly in the shape of individuals' "choices." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK community finance institutions play an important role in deprived neighbourhoods by serving households and businesses unable to access mainstream finance. This paper analyses the short-term effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the activities and sustainability of the community finance sector by analysing longitudinal survey data for 40 providers and follow-up interviews with 25 organisations. COVID-19 resulted in an acceleration of the shift to online service delivery and temporary and permanent branch closures among community finance institutions. Further, the demand for, and volume and value of lending fell significantly during the first lockdown only recovering by the end of the summer 2020. This resulted in lower income, greater costs and lower regulatory ratios. Smaller providers in a weak financial position with more financially vulnerable customers were worst affected by the pandemic. We argue the pandemic may reduce access to finance for the financially excluded through the intensification of the shift to online services and by increasing the risk of providers serving the poorest folding or being merged with larger providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent COVID-19 pandemic, a wide range of epidemiological modelling approaches were used to predict the effective reproduction number, R(t), and other COVID-19-related measures such as the daily rate of exponential growth, r(t). These candidate models use different modelling approaches or differing assumptions about spatial or age-mixing, and some capture genuine uncertainty in scientific understanding of disease dynamics. Combining estimates using appropriate statistical methodology from multiple candidate models is important to better understand the variation of these outcome measures to help inform decision-making. In this paper, we combine estimates for specific UK nations/regions using random-effects meta-analyses techniques, utilising the restricted maximum-likelihood (REML) method to estimate the heterogeneity variance parameter, and two approaches to calculate the confidence interval for the combined estimate: the standard Wald-type and the Knapp and Hartung (KNHA) method. As estimates in this setting are derived using model predictions, each with varying degrees of uncertainty, equal-weighting is favoured over the standard inverse-variance weighting to avoid potential up-weighting of models providing estimates with lower levels of uncertainty that are not fully accounting for inherent uncertainties. Both equally-weighted models using REML alone and REML+KNHA approaches were found to provide similar variation for R(t) and r(t), with both approaches providing wider, and therefore more conservative, confidence intervals around the combined estimate compared to the standard inverse-variance weighting approach. Utilising these meta-analysis techniques has allowed for statistically robust combined estimates to be calculated for key COVID-19 outcome measures. This in turn allows timely and informed decision-making based on all available information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some patients with COVID-19 develop symptoms after the acute infection, known as 'Long COVID'. We examined whether or not confirmation of COVID-19 infection status could act as a nocebo, using data from questionnaires distributed to the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children cohort. We examined associations between confirmation of COVID-19 infection status (confirmed by a positive test vs unconfirmed) and reporting of Long COVID symptoms. We explored the roles of sex and anxiety as potential moderators. There was no clear evidence of a strong association between confirmation of COVID-19 infection status and the Long COVID composite score, physical or psychological symptoms or duration of symptoms. There was no clear evidence of moderation by sex or anxiety. We therefore found no evidence of a nocebo effect. Our data suggest that this psychological mechanism does not play a role in the medical symptomatology experienced by patients with Long COVID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, many nations have mandated sets of requirements, such as social-distancing measures. However, compliance with such measures is likely to be shaped by a range of factors. Here, we proposed and tested a mediation model in which rejection of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and/or theorists mediates the relationship between rational thinking style and compliance with mandated requirements. An online, nationally representative sample of the adult population in the United Kingdom (N = 520) completed a previously validated measure of rational thinking style, as well as novel measures of rejection of COVID-19 conspiracy theories/theorists and compliance with mandated requirements. Intercorrelations between scores on all three measures were significant and positive. Mediation analysis indicated that rational thinking style and rejection of COVID-19 conspiracy theories/theorists, respectively, were directly associated with compliance, and that the mediated association was also significant. These results may have implications for practical policy aimed at promoting greater compliance with mandated requirements, including social distancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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