The COVID-19 Pandemic: We Are All in This Together

Market segmentation strategies can be used to overcome COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and other health crises

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact everyone to some degree, it has become clear that experts from many disparate fields must work together to overcome such public health crises. Even now, a significant portion of U.S. residents remain hesitant to receive a vaccine. In the quest to safely return to a fully open economy, time is of the essence, as many lives and livelihoods can be saved by even marginal improvements in vaccination rates. To reach widespread immunization sooner, science stands to benefit by using market segmentation strategies with vaccine holdouts, much like brands do with customers. As evidence, we present results from a national survey segmented into four groups of COVID-19 vaccine holdouts. When viewed and considered as separate segments, important distinctions regarding the nature and strength of reasons behind COVID-19 vaccine aversion, and the solutions to which people are most open, become clearer.

'We are not the virus': stigmatization and discrimination against frontline health workers

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, several forms of stigma and discrimination have been reported worldwide mainly from toward Asian descent, those with international travel history, and frontline health workers. In response to the situation of stigmatization and discrimination against frontline healthcare workers, the author proposes several ways on how the public and the Philippine government might create safety guidelines by revisiting the international and local laws. Thus, there is an urgent need to end the stigma, discrimination and other forms of inhumane treatment against our frontline health workers. They are not the virus.

Research on International Cooperative Governance of the COVID-19

Since the first case of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has quickly spread to all the corners of the world. Amid the global public health threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, active cooperative governance has gradually emerged as the most powerful weapon against its spread. To facilitate international cooperation for pandemic governance, this paper applied the evolutionary game theory to analyze the factors influencing active cooperative governance and, based on the results, proposed a series of recommendations for promoting international cooperation. (1) leveraging the role of international organizations to reduce the cost of realizing the strategy of active cooperative governance, (2) promoting the international exchange of related experiences to lower the cost of active pandemic governance, (3) sustaining productive and daily activities during the pandemic in a classified and hierarchical manner to reduce the economic loss incurred by active pandemic governance, and (4) optimizing the incentive measures of international organizations to facilitate the selection of active cooperative governance. Finally, from the four aspects of resource management of pandemic treatment, supply management of living materials, population flow cooperation management, and governance fund cooperation management, this paper gives the path of international pandemic cooperative governance.