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During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people shared their symptoms across Online Social Networks (OSNs) like Twitter, hoping for others’ advice or moral support. Prior studies have shown that those who disclose health-related information across OSNs often tend to regret it and delete their publications afterwards. Hence, deleted posts containing sensitive data can be seen as manifestations of online regrets. In this work, we present an analysis of deleted content on Twitter during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this, we collected more than 3.67 million tweets describing COVID-19 symptoms (e.g., fever, cough, and fatigue) posted between January and April 2020. We observed that around 24% of the tweets containing personal pronouns were deleted either by their authors or by the platform after one year.
As a practical application of the resulting dataset, we explored its suitability for the automatic classification of regrettable content on Twitter.
The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of day care centres and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There has been much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany from spring 2020 and winter 2021 we present an empirical analysis that shows that although gender inequality in the division of care work increased to some extent in the beginning of the pandemic, it returned to the pre-pandemic level in the second lockdown almost nine months later. These results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic neither aggravated nor lessened inequality in the division of unpaid care work among mothers and fathers in any persistent way in Germany.
In response to strong revenue and income losses facing a large share of self-employed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency-aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the confidence to survive the crisis. We investigate how the digitalization level of self-employed individuals influences the program’s effectiveness. Employing propensity score matching, we find that the emergency-aid program had only moderately positive effects on the confidence of self-employed to survive the crisis. However, self-employed whose businesses were highly digitalized, benefitted much more from the state aid than those whose businesses were less digitalized. This only holds true for those self-employed, who started the digitalization processes already before the crisis. Taking a regional perspective, we find suggestive evidence that the quality of the regional broadband infrastructure matters in the sense that it increases the effectiveness of the emergency-aid program. Our findings show the interplay between governmental support programs, the digitalization levels of entrepreneurs, and the regional digital infrastructure. The study helps public policy to improve the impact of crisis-related policy instruments, ultimately increasing the resilience of small firms in times of crises.
We present the first systematic literature review on stress and burnout in K−12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a systematic literature search, we identified 17 studies that included 9,874 K−12 teachers from around the world. These studies showed some indication that burnout did increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were, however, almost no differences in the levels of stress and burnout experienced by K−12 teachers compared to individuals employed in other occupational fields. School principals' leadership styles emerged as an organizational characteristic that is highly relevant for K−12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout. Individual teacher characteristics associated with burnout were K−12 teachers' personality, self-efficacy in online teaching, and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19. In order to reduce stress, there was an indication that stress-management training in combination with training in technology use for teaching may be superior to stress-management training alone. Future research needs to adopt more longitudinal designs and examine the interplay between individual and organizational characteristics in the development of teacher stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
We present the first systematic literature review on stress and burnout in K-12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a systematic literature search, we identified 17 studies that included 9,874 K-12 teachers from around the world. These studies showed some indication that burnout did increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were, however, almost no differences in the levels of stress and burnout experienced by K-12 teachers compared to individuals employed in other occupational fields. School principals' leadership styles emerged as an organizational characteristic that is highly relevant for K-12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout. Individual teacher characteristics associated with burnout were K-12 teachers' personality, self-efficacy in online teaching, and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19. In order to reduce stress, there was an indication that stress-management training in combination with training in technology use for teaching may be superior to stress-management training alone. Future research needs to adopt more longitudinal designs and examine the interplay between individual and organizational characteristics in the development of teacher stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
Time for change?
(2022)
Purpose:
This study aims to provide probable future developments in the form of holistic scenarios for business negotiations. In recent years, negotiation research did not put a lot of emphasis on external changes. Consequently, current challenges and trends are scarcely integrated, making it difficult to support negotiation practice perspectively.
Design/methodology/approach:
This paper applies the structured, multi-method approach of scenario analysis. To examine the future space of negotiations, this combines qualitative and quantitative measures to base our analysis on negotiation experts’ assessments, estimations and visions of the negotiation future.
Findings:
The results comprise an overview of five negotiation scenarios in the year 2030 and of their individual drivers. The five revealed scenarios are: digital intelligence, business as usual, powerful network – the route to collaboration, powerful network – the route to predominance and system crash.
Originality/value:
The scenario analysis is a suitable approach that enables to relate various factors of the negotiation environment to negotiations themselves and allows an examination of future changes in buyer–seller negotiations and the creation of possible future scenarios. The identified scenarios provide an orientation for business decisions in the field of negotiation.
Boredom has been identified as one of the greatest psychological challenges when staying at home during quarantine and isolation. However, this does not mean that the situation necessarily causes boredom. On the basis of 13 explorative interviews with bored and non-bored persons who have been under quarantine or in isolation, we explain why boredom is related to a subjective interpretation process rather than being a direct consequence of the objective situation. Specifically, we show that participants vary significantly in their interpretations of staying at home and, thus, also in their experience of boredom. While the non-bored participants interpret the situation as a relief or as irrelevant, the bored participants interpret it as a major restriction that only some are able to cope with.
Forced to stay at home
(2022)
The effects of COVID-19-related lockdowns on deterioration of mental health and use of exercise to remediate such effects has been well documented in numerous populations. However, it remains unknown how lockdown restrictions impacted individuals differently and who was more likely to change their exercise behavior and experience negative well-being. The current study examined exercise dependence as a risk factor and its impact on exercise behavior and mood during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns on a global scale in 11,898 participants from 17 countries. Mixed effects models revealed that reducing exercise behavior was associated with a stronger decrease in mood for individuals at risk of exercise dependence compared to individuals at low risk of exercise dependence. Participants at high risk and exercising more prior to the pandemic reported the most exercise during lockdown. Effects of lowered mood were most pronounced in participants with high risk of exercise dependence who reported greater reduction in exercise frequency during lockdown. These results support recent etiological evidence for exercise dependence and add to a growing body of literature documenting mental health effects related to COVID-19.
We introduce non-Markovian SIR epidemic spreading model inspired by the characteristics of the COVID-19, by considering discrete-and continuous-time versions. The distributions of infection intensity and recovery period may take an arbitrary form. By taking corresponding choice of these functions, it is shown that the model reduces to the classical Markovian case. The epidemic threshold is analytically determined for arbitrary functions of infectivity and recovery and verified numerically. The relevance of the model is shown by modeling the first wave of the epidemic in Italy, Spain and the UK, in the spring, 2020.
The degree of detrimental effects inflicted on mankind by the COVID-19 pandemic increased the need to develop ASSURED (Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and Robust, Equipment-free, and Deliverable) POCT (point of care testing) to overcome the current and any future pandemics. Much effort in research and development is currently advancing the progress to overcome the diagnostic pressure built up by emerging new pathogens. LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification) is a well-researched isothermal technique for specific nucleic acid amplification which can be combined with a highly sensitive immunochromatographic readout via lateral flow assays (LFA). Here we discuss LAMP-LFA robustness, sensitivity, and specificity for SARS-CoV-2 N-gene detection in cDNA and clinical swab-extracted RNA samples. The LFA readout is designed to produce highly specific results by incorporation of biotin and FITC labels to 11-dUTP and LF (loop forming forward) primer, respectively. The LAMP-LFA assay was established using cDNA for N-gene with an accuracy of 95.65%. To validate the study, 82 SARS-CoV-2-positive RNA samples were tested. Reverse transcriptase (RT)-LAMP-LFA was positive for the RNA samples with an accuracy of 81.66%; SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA was detected by RT-LAMP-LFA for as low as CT-33. Our method reduced the detection time to 15 min and indicates therefore that RT-LAMP in combination with LFA represents a promising nucleic acid biosensing POCT platform that combines with smartphone based semi-quantitative data analysis.
Pandemic depression
(2022)
We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these differences. In addition, we find larger mental health responses among self-employed women who were directly affected by government-imposed restrictions and bore an increased childcare burden due to school and daycare closures. We also find that self-employed individuals who are more resilient coped better with the crisis.
Who suffered most?
(2022)
Objective:
This study examines gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parental psychological wellbeing (parenting stress and psychological distress) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.
Background:
The dramatic shift of childcare and schooling responsibility from formal institutions to private households during the pandemic has put families under enormous stress and raised concerns about caregivers' health and wellbeing. Despite the overwhelming media attention to families’ wellbeing, to date limited research has examined parenting stress and parental psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Germany.
Method:
We analyzed four waves of panel data (N= 1,771) from an opt-in online survey, which was conducted between March 2020 and April 2021. Multivariable OLS regressions were used to estimate variations in the pandemic's effects on parenting stress and psychological distress by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
Results:
Overall, levels of parenting stress and psychological distress increased during the pandemic. During the first and third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, mothers, parents with children younger than 11 years, parents with two or more children, parents working from home as well as parents with financial insecurity experienced higher parenting stress than other sociodemographic groups. Moreover, women, respondents with lower incomes, single parents, and parents with younger children experienced higher levels of psychological distress than other groups.
Conclusion:
Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parents' psychological wellbeing increased among the study participants during the pandemic.
Background:
There is evidence that fully recovered COVID-19 patients usually resume physical exercise, but do not perform at the same intensity level performed prior to infection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 infection and recovery as well as muscle fatigue on cardiorespiratory fitness and running biomechanics in female recreational runners.
Methods:
Twenty-eight females were divided into a group of hospitalized and recovered COVID-19 patients (COV, n = 14, at least 14 days following recovery) and a group of healthy age-matched controls (CTR, n = 14). Ground reaction forces from stepping on a force plate while barefoot overground running at 3.3 m/s was measured before and after a fatiguing protocol. The fatigue protocol consisted of incrementally increasing running speed until reaching a score of 13 on the 6-20 Borg scale, followed by steady-state running until exhaustion. The effects of group and fatigue were assessed for steady-state running duration, steady-state running speed, ground contact time, vertical instantaneous loading rate and peak propulsion force.
Results:
COV runners completed only 56% of the running time achieved by the CTR (p < 0.0001), and at a 26% slower steady-state running speed (p < 0.0001). There were fatigue-related reductions in loading rate (p = 0.004) without group differences. Increased ground contact time (p = 0.002) and reduced peak propulsion force (p = 0.005) were found for COV when compared to CTR.
Conclusion:
Our results suggest that female runners who recovered from COVID-19 showed compromised running endurance and altered running kinetics in the form of longer stance periods and weaker propulsion forces. More research is needed in this area using larger sample sizes to confirm our study findings.
Background: There is evidence that fully recovered COVID-19 patients usually resume physical exercise, but do not perform at the same intensity level performed prior to infection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 infection and recovery as well as muscle fatigue on cardiorespiratory fitness and running biomechanics in female recreational runners.
Methods: Twenty-eight females were divided into a group of hospitalized and recovered COVID-19 patients (COV, n = 14, at least 14 days following recovery) and a group of healthy age-matched controls (CTR, n = 14). Ground reaction forces from stepping on a force plate while barefoot overground running at 3.3 m/s was measured before and after a fatiguing protocol. The fatigue protocol consisted of incrementally increasing running speed until reaching a score of 13 on the 6–20 Borg scale, followed by steady-state running until exhaustion. The effects of group and fatigue were assessed for steady-state running duration, steady-state running speed, ground contact time, vertical instantaneous loading rate and peak propulsion force.
Results: COV runners completed only 56% of the running time achieved by the CTR (p < 0.0001), and at a 26% slower steady-state running speed (p < 0.0001). There were fatigue-related reductions in loading rate (p = 0.004) without group differences. Increased ground contact time (p = 0.002) and reduced peak propulsion force (p = 0.005) were found for COV when compared to CTR.
Conclusion: Our results suggest that female runners who recovered from COVID-19 showed compromised running endurance and altered running kinetics in the form of longer stance periods and weaker propulsion forces. More research is needed in this area using larger sample sizes to confirm our study findings.
During COVID-19, various public institutions tried to shape citizens’ behaviour to slow the spread of the pandemic. How did their authority affect citizens’ support of public measures taken to combat the spread of COVID-19? The article makes two contributions. First, it presents a novel conceptualisation of authority as a source heuristic. Second, it analyses the authority of four types of public institutions (health ministries, universities, public health agencies, the WHO) in two countries (Germany and the UK), drawing on novel data from a survey experiment conducted in May 2020. On average, institutional endorsements seem to have mattered little. However, there is an observable polarisation effect where citizens who ascribe much expertise to public institutions support COVID-19 measures more than the control group. Furthermore, those who ascribe little expertise support them less than the control group. Finally, neither perception of biases nor exposure to institutions in public debates seems consistently to affect their authority.
There is an urgent need for screening of patients with a communicable viral disease to cut infection chains. Recently, we demonstrated that ion mobility spectrometry coupled with a multicapillary column (MCC-IMS) is able to identify influenza-A infections in patients' breath. With a decreasing influenza epidemic and upcoming SARS-CoV-2 infections we proceeded further and analyzed patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infections. In this study, the nasal breath of 75 patients (34 male, 41 female, aged 64.4 +/- 15.4 years) was investigated by MCC-IMS for viral infections. Fourteen were positively diagnosed with influenza-A infection and sixteen with SARS-CoV-2 by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of nasopharyngeal swabs. In one patient RT-PCR was highly suspicious of SARS-CoV-2 but initially inconclusive. The remaining 44 patients served as controls. Breath fingerprints for specific infections were assessed by a combination of cluster analysis and multivariate statistics. There were no significant differences in gender or age according to the groups. In the cross validation of the discriminant analysis 72 of the 74 clearly defined patients could be correctly classified to the respective group. Even the inconclusive patient could be mapped to the SARS-CoV-2 group by applying the discrimination functions. Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2 infection and influenza-A infection can be detected with the help of MCC-IMS in breath in this pilot study. As this method provides a fast non-invasive diagnosis it should be further developed in a larger cohort for screening of communicable viral diseases. A validation study is ongoing during the second wave of COVID-19.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrial.gov, NCT04282135 Registered 20 February 2020-Retrospectively registered,
Despite new challenges like climate change and digitalization, global and regional organizations recently went through turbulent times due to a lack of support from several of their member states. Next to this crisis of multilateralism, the COVID-19 pandemic now seems to question the added value of international organizations for addressing global governance issues more specifically. This article analyses this double challenge that several organizations are facing and compares their ways of managing the crisis by looking at their institutional and political context, their governance structure, and their behaviour during the pandemic until June 2020. More specifically, it will explain the different and fragmented responses of the World Health Organization, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund/World Bank. With the aim of understanding the old and new problems that these international organizations are trying to solve, this article argues that the level of autonomy vis-a-vis the member states is crucial for understanding the politics of crisis management. <br /> Points for practitioners <br /> As intergovernmental bodies, international organizations require authorization by their member states. Since they also need funding for their operations, different degrees of autonomy also matter for reacting to emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential for international organizations is limited, though through proactive and bold initiatives, they can seize the opportunity of the crisis and partly overcome institutional and political constraints.
Yes, we can (?)
(2021)
The COVID-19 crisis has caused an extreme situation for higher education institutions around the world, where exclusively virtual teaching and learning has become obligatory rather than an additional supporting feature. This has created opportunities to explore the potential and limitations of virtual learning formats. This paper presents four theses on virtual classroom teaching and learning that are discussed critically. We use existing theoretical insights extended by empirical evidence from a survey of more than 850 students on acceptance, expectations, and attitudes regarding the positive and negative aspects of virtual teaching. The survey responses were gathered from students at different universities during the first completely digital semester (Spring-Summer 2020) in Germany. We discuss similarities and differences between the subjects being studied and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of virtual teaching and learning. Against the background of existing theory and the gathered data, we emphasize the importance of social interaction, the combination of different learning formats, and thus context-sensitive hybrid learning as the learning form of the future.
Sequential data assimilation of the stochastic SEIR epidemic model for regional COVID-19 dynamics
(2021)
Newly emerging pandemics like COVID-19 call for predictive models to implement precisely tuned responses to limit their deep impact on society. Standard epidemic models provide a theoretically well-founded dynamical description of disease incidence. For COVID-19 with infectiousness peaking before and at symptom onset, the SEIR model explains the hidden build-up of exposed individuals which creates challenges for containment strategies. However, spatial heterogeneity raises questions about the adequacy of modeling epidemic outbreaks on the level of a whole country. Here, we show that by applying sequential data assimilation to the stochastic SEIR epidemic model, we can capture the dynamic behavior of outbreaks on a regional level. Regional modeling, with relatively low numbers of infected and demographic noise, accounts for both spatial heterogeneity and stochasticity. Based on adapted models, short-term predictions can be achieved. Thus, with the help of these sequential data assimilation methods, more realistic epidemic models are within reach.
In response to the impending spread of COVID-19, universities worldwide abruptly stopped face-to-face teaching and switched to technology-mediated teaching. As a result, the use of technology in the learning processes of students of different disciplines became essential and the only way to teach, communicate and collaborate for months. In this crisis context, we conducted a longitudinal study in four German universities, in which we collected a total of 875 responses from students of information systems and music and arts at four points in time during the spring–summer 2020 semester. Our study focused on (1) the students’ acceptance of technology-mediated learning, (2) any change in this acceptance during the semester and (3) the differences in acceptance between the two disciplines. We applied the Technology Acceptance Model and were able to validate it for the extreme situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We extended the model with three new variables (time flexibility, learning flexibility and social isolation) that influenced the construct of perceived usefulness. Furthermore, we detected differences between the disciplines and over time. In this paper, we present and discuss our study’s results and derive short- and long-term implications for science and practice.