Temporal clustering of disorder events during the COVID-19 pandemic

The impact of social cohesion and risk communication on excess mortality due to COVID-19 in 213 countries: a retrospective analysis

BACKGROUND

Tools for assessing a country's capacity in the face of public health emergencies must be reviewed, as they were not predictive of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social cohesion and risk communication, which are related to trust in government and trust in others, may have influenced adherence to government measures and mortality rates due to COVID-19.

OBJECTIVE

To analyse the association between indicators of social cohesion and risk communication and COVID-19 outcomes in 213 countries.

RESULTS

Social cohesion and risk communication, in their dimensions (public trust in politicians, trust in others, social safety nets, and equal distribution of resources index), were associated with lower excess mortality due to COVID-19. The number of COVID-19-related disorder events and government transparency were associated with higher excess mortality due to COVID-19. The lower the percentage of unemployed people, the higher the excess mortality due to COVID-19. Most of the social cohesion and risk communication variables were associated with better vaccination indicators, except for social capital and engaged society, which had no statistically significant association. The greater the gender equality, the better the vaccination indicators, such as the number of people who received all doses.

CONCLUSION

Public trust in politicians, trust in others, equal distribution of resources and government that cares about the most vulnerable, starting with the implementation of programs, such as cash transfers and combating food insecurity, were factors that reduced the excess mortality due to COVID-19. Countries, especially those with limited resources and marked by social, economic, and health inequalities, must invest in strengthening social cohesion and risk communication, which are robust strategies to better cope with future pandemics.

The statistical and dynamic modeling of the first part of the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine: The Revolution of Dignity and preceding times

Ukraine's tug-of-war between Russia and the West has had significant and lasting consequences for the country. In 2013, Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president aligned with Russia, opted against signing an association agreement with the European Union. This agreement aimed to facilitate trade and travel between the EU and Ukraine. This decision sparked widespread protests that coalesced in Kyiv's Maidan Square, eventually becoming known as the Euromaidan protests. In this study, we analyze the protest data from 2013, sourced from Ukraine's Center for Social and Labor Research. Despite the dataset's limitations and occasional inconsistencies, we demonstrate the extraction of valuable insights and the construction of a descriptive model from such data. Our investigation reveals a pre-existing state of self-excitation within the system even before the onset of the Euromaidan protests. This self-excitation intensified during the Euromaidan protests. A statistical analysis indicates that the government's utilization of force correlates with increased future protests, exacerbating rather than quelling the protest movement. Furthermore, we introduce the implementation of Hawkes process models to comprehend the spatiotemporal dynamics of the protest activity. Our findings highlight that, while protest activities spread across the entire country, the driving force behind the dynamics of these protests was the level of activity in Kyiv. Furthermore, in contrast to prior research that emphasized geographical proximity as a key predictor of event propagation, our study illustrates that the political alignment among oblasts, which are the distinct municipalities comprising Ukraine, had a more profound impact than mere geographic distance. This underscores the significance of social and cultural factors in molding the trajectory of political movements.

Virus containment measures and homicide in Mexico: An assessment of community strain theory

OBJECTIVES

This study examined whether Covid-19 virus containment measures moderated the relationship between community strain and homicide rates in Mexico City neighborhoods and police quadrants.

METHODS

We tested the moderation effects hypothesis with the use of a mixed-effects regression to estimate fixed effects with random effects at different levels of aggregation. A sensitivity analysis was used to assess whether results of the moderation effects were affected by changes in the unit of analysis.

RESULTS

We found no evidence that virus containment measures moderated the relationship between community strain and observed changes in homicide rates. Moreover, although community strain measures were found to be statistically associated with homicide rates, the results were seemingly affected by the Modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP).

CONCLUSIONS

First, the link being made in the literature between the homicide drop and the Covid-19 pandemic based on strain theory premises has no universal empirical basis. Second, although homicide rates dropped on average after containment measures were implemented, these had different effects across places, making arguments based on overall average change inexact. Third, we find evidence that community strain can predict homicide rates, but results are sensitive to the MAUP. Thus, community strain explanations of homicide rates may only apply in some areas of cities and conditional on the unit of analysis.

Policy responsiveness and institutions in a federal system: Analyzing variations in state-level data transparency and equity issues during the COVID-19 pandemic

In the absence of a coherent federal response to COVID-19 in the United States, state governments played a significant role with varying policy responses, including in data collection and reporting. However, while accurate data collection and disaggregation is critically important since it is the basis for mitigation policy measures and to combat health disparities, it has received little scholarly attention. To address this gap, this study employs agency theory to focus on state-level determinants of data transparency practices by examining factors affecting variations in state data collection, reporting, and disaggregation of both overall metrics and race/ethnicity data. Using ordered logistic regression analyses, we find that legislatures, rather than governors, are important institutional actors and that a conservative ideology signal and socio-economic factors help predict data reporting and transparency practices. These results suggest that there is a critical need for standardized data collection protocols, the collection of comprehensive race and ethnicity data, and analyses examining data transparency and reductions in information asymmetries as a pandemic response tool-both in the United States and globally.

Estimated Mask Use and Temporal Relationship to COVID-19 Epidemiology of Black Lives Matter Protests in 12 Cities

There is an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission during mass gatherings and a risk of asymptomatic infection. We aimed to estimate the use of masks during Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and whether these protests increased the risk of COVID-19. Two reviewers screened 496 protest images for mask use, with high inter-rater reliability. Protest intensity, use of tear gas, government control measures, and testing rates were estimated in 12 cities. A correlation analysis was conducted to assess the potential effect of mask use and other measures, adjusting for testing rates, on COVID-19 epidemiology 4 weeks (two incubation periods) post-protests. Mask use ranged from 69 to 96% across protests. There was no increase in the incidence of COVID-19 post-protest in 11 cities. After adjusting for testing rates, only Miami, which involved use of tear gas and had high protest intensity, showed a clear increase in COVID-19 after one incubation period post-protest. No significant correlation was found between incidence and protest factors. Our study showed that protests in most cities studied did not increase COVID-19 incidence in 2020, and a high level of mask use was seen. The absence of an epidemic surge within two incubation periods of a protest is indicative that the protests did not have a major influence on epidemic activity, except in Miami. With the globally circulating highly transmissible Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants, layered interventions such as mandated mask use, physical distancing, testing, and vaccination should be applied for mass gatherings in the future.

Clustering of countries according to the COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates

Background

Two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic on December 29, 2021, there have been 281,808,270 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5,411,759 deaths. This information belongs to almost 216 Countries, areas, or territories facing COVID-19. The disease trend was not homogeneous across these locations, and studying this variation is a crucial source of information for policymakers and researchers. Therefore, we address different patterns in mortality and incidence of COVID-19 across countries using a clustering approach.

Methods

The daily records of new cases and deaths of 216 countries were available on the WHO online COVID-19 dashboard. We used a three-step approach for identifying longitudinal patterns of change in quantitative COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates. At the first, we calculated 27 summary measurements for each trajectory. Then we used factor analysis as a dimension reduction method to capture the correlation between measurements. Finally, we applied a K-means algorithm on the factor scores and clustered the trajectories.

Results

We determined three different patterns for the trajectories of COVID-19 incidence and the three different ones for mortality rates. According to incidence rates, among 206 countries the 133 (64.56) countries belong to the second cluster, and 15 (7.28%) and 58 (28.16%) belong to the first and 3rd clusters, respectively. All clusters seem to show an increased rate in the study period, but there are several different patterns. The first one exhibited a mild increasing trend; however, the 3rd and the second clusters followed the severe and moderate increasing trend. According to mortality clusters, the frequency of sets is 37 (18.22%) for the first cluster with moderate increases, 157 (77.34%) for the second one with a mild rise, and 9 (4.34%) for the 3rd one with severe increase.

Conclusions

We determined that besides all variations within the countries, the pattern of a contagious disease follows three different trajectories. This variation looks to be a function of the government’s health policies more than geographical distribution. Comparing this trajectory to others declares that death is highly related to the nature of epidemy.

Epidemiological Dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Variants During Social Protests in Cali, Colombia

Background

The third wave of the global health crisis attributed to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus reached Colombia in March 2021. Over the following 6 months, it was interpolated by manifestations of popular disapproval to the actual political regime—with multiple protests sprouting throughout the country. Large social gatherings seeded novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) variants in big cities and propagated their facile spread, leading to increased rates of hospitalizations and deaths.

Methods

In this article, we evaluate the effective reproduction number (Rt) dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in Cali, Colombia, between 4 April 2021 and 31 July 2021 based on the analysis of 228 genomes.

Results

Our results showed clear contrast in Rt values between the period of frequent protests (Rt > 1), and the preceding and following months (Rt < 1). Genomic analyses revealed 16 circulating SARS-CoV-2 lineages during the initial period—including variants of concern (VOCs) (Alpha, Gamma, and Delta) and variants of interest (VOIs) (Lambda and Mu). Furthermore, we noticed the Mu variant dominating the COVID-19 distribution schema as the months progressed. We identified four principal clusters through phylogenomic analyses—each one of potentially independent introduction to the city. Two of these were associated with the Mu variant, one associated with the Gamma variant, and one with the Lambda variant.

Conclusion

Our results chronicle the impact of large group assemblies on the epidemiology of COVID-19 during this intersection of political turmoil and sanitary crisis in Cali, Colombia. We emphasize upon the effects of limited biosecurity strategies (which had characterized this time period), on the spread of highly virulent strains throughout Cali and greater Colombia.

COVID-19 and Organized Crime: Strategies employed by criminal groups to increase their profits and power in the first months of the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has created new opportunities for organized criminal groups and confronted them with new challenges. Analysis of how these groups have reacted to the pandemic yields better understanding of how they work and enables the devising of more effective counter-strategies. To this end, we identified illustrative cases regarding the provision of illegal governance and infiltration of the legal economy by conducting a systematic content analysis of international media articles and institutional reports published during the first eight months after the outbreak of the pandemic (January to August 2020). These cases were further analyzed in order to cluster the behavior of criminal groups in response to the COVID-19 emergency, and the means by which they tried to exploit the pandemic to strengthen their political and economic power. We found that different governance-type criminal groups proposed themselves as institutions able to mitigate the burdens imposed by the pandemic by providing support to people in need and enforcing social-distancing measures. Further, identified cases did not provide evidence of groups devoted to the provision of illicit services and goods assuming any governance role. In this respect, the available evidence supports previous knowledge about organized crime. Cases of misappropriation of public funds and organized crime infiltration of the legal economy seem less common, at least in the first phase of the pandemic. The wholesale distribution of pharmaceuticals and medicines has been the sector targeted the most.