Balanço de 2020

Especial COVID-19: los aprendizajes de 2020 

WHO/Europe’s year in review 2020

Qual será a palavra do ano? É procurar num dicionário de novas palavras sobre o coronavírus

Banda sonora para um fim de ano - uma(s) música(s) por dia... (em actualização)

Political polarisation impedes the public policy response to COVID-19

Political polarisation impedes the public policy response to COVID-19: As the use of face masks has been shown to effectively diminish the spread of COVID-19 without hampering economic activity, it should be among the least controversial public policy responses to the pandemic. This column shows, however, that mask usage is strongly associated with political partisanship in the US. Using various research designs, it finds that localities which voted for Trump in 2016 are significantly less likely to wear masks, even if mask wearing is mandated. Leadership is shown to matter as well – tweets with positive sentiment towards masks surged after Trump wore a mask in public the first time.

Elimination could be the optimal response strategy for covid-19 and other emerging pandemic diseases

Elimination could be the optimal response strategy for covid-19 and other emerging pandemic diseases: The goal of elimination is a major departure from pandemic influenza mitigation. With a mitigation goal, the response is typically to increase stringency as the pandemic progresses and for more disruptive interventions, such as school closures, to be held in reserve to flatten the peak. By contrast, the goal of elimination rapidly escalates the stringency of control measures to extinguish chains of transmission. Choosing a strategy is not necessarily a fixed path, and countries might change their approach. Sweden, for example, initially seemed to pursue a version of mitigation with the intent of achieving herd immunity and then seemed to switch to a suppression strategy.