Health Versus Wealth During the Covid-19 Pandemic : Saving Lives or Saving the Economy?
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PROVIDER: S-EPMC8524622 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Countries worldwide have adopted various strategies to minimize the socio-economic impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Stringency of imposed measures universally reflects the standpoint from which protecting public health and avoiding damage to economy are seen as contradictory objectives. Based on epidemic trajectories of 25 highly developed countries and 10 US states in the (mobility reduction)-(reproduction number) plane we showed that delay in imposition of nation-wide quarantine elevates the number of infections and deaths, surge of which inevitably has to be suppressed by stringent and sustained lockdown. As a consequence, cumulative mobility reduction and population-normalized cumulative number of COVID-19-associated deaths are significantly correlated and this correlation increases with time. Overall, we demonstrated that, as long as epidemic suppression is the aim, the trade-off between the death toll and economic loss is illusory: high death toll correlates with deep and long-lasting lockdown causing a severe economic downturn.
| S-EPMC7844048 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-BSST1055 | biostudies-other
Project description:How do people balance concerns for general health and economic outcomes during a pandemic? And, how does the communication of this trade-off affect individual preferences? We address these questions using a field experiment involving around 2000 students enrolled in a large university in Italy. We design four treatments where the trade-off is communicated using different combinations of a positive framing that focuses on protective strategies and a negative framing which refers to potential costs. We find that positive framing on the health side induces students to give greater relevance to the health dimension. The effect is sizeable and highly effective among many different audiences, especially females. Importantly, this triggers a higher level of intention to adhere to social distancing and precautionary behaviors. Moreover, irrespective of the framing, we find a large heterogeneity in students' preferences over the trade-off. Economics students and students who have directly experienced the economic impact of the pandemic are found to give greater value to economic outcomes.
| S-EPMC8437286 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundPrevious studies have shown that national cultural traits, such as collectivism-individualism and tightness-looseness, are associated with COVID-19 infection and mortality rates. However, although East Asian countries have outperformed other countries in containing COVID-19 infections and lowering mortality in the first pandemic waves, no studies to date have examined flexibility-monumentalism, a cultural trait that uniquely distinguishes East Asia from the rest of the world. Moreover, none of the previous studies have explored mechanisms underpinning the association between national culture and COVID-19 mortality.AimsOur study fills in these gaps by examining the association between flexibility-monumentalism and COVID-19 mortality, adjusting for important covariates and by analyzing mask wearing and fear of COVID-19 during the first weeks of the pandemic as plausible mechanisms underpinning this association.MethodsWe constructed and analyzed a dataset including 37 countries that have valid information on flexibility-monumentalism, COVID-19 deaths as of 31 October 2020 (before the start of vaccination campaigns), and relevant covariates including two other national cultural traits (individualism-collectivism and tightness-looseness) and other national characteristics (economic, political, demographic and health). Multiple linear regression with heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors was used to assess the independent effect of flexibility-monumentalism on COVID-19 mortality. Mediation was assessed by examining the indirect effects of flexibility through mask wearing and fear of COVID-19 and determining the statistical significance through bootstrapping. Graphical and delete-one analysis was used to assess the robustness of the results.ResultsWe found that flexibility was associated with a significant reduction in COVID-19 mortality as of 31 October 2020, independent of level of democracy, per capita GDP, urbanization, population density, supply of hospital beds, and median age of the population. This association with mortality is stronger and more robust than for two other prominent national cultural traits (individualism-collectivism and tightness-looseness). We also found tentative evidence that the effect of flexibility on COVID-19 mortality may be partially mediated through mask wearing in the first weeks of the pandemic.
| S-EPMC9461707 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Despite the global impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, the question of whether mandated interventions have similar economic and public health effects as spontaneous behavioural change remains unresolved. Addressing this question, and understanding differential effects across socioeconomic groups, requires building quantitative and fine-grained mechanistic models. Here we introduce a data-driven, granular, agent-based model that simulates epidemic and economic outcomes across industries, occupations and income levels. We validate the model by reproducing key outcomes of the first wave of coronavirus disease 2019 in the New York metropolitan area. The key mechanism coupling the epidemic and economic modules is the reduction in consumption due to fear of infection. In counterfactual experiments, we show that a similar trade-off between epidemic and economic outcomes exists both when individuals change their behaviour due to fear of infection and when non-pharmaceutical interventions are imposed. Low-income workers, who perform in-person occupations in customer-facing industries, face the strongest trade-off.
| S-EPMC10896714 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has affected millions of people and claimed thousands of lives. Starting in China, it is arguably the most precipitous global health calamity of modern times. The entire world has rocked back to fight against the disease and the COVID-19 vaccine is the prime weapon. Even though the conventional vaccine development pipeline usually takes more than a decade, the escalating daily death rates due to COVID-19 infections have resulted in the development of fast-track strategies to bring in the vaccine under a year's time. Governments, companies, and universities have networked to pool resources and have come up with a number of vaccine candidates. Also, international consortia have emerged to address the distribution of successful candidates. Herein, we summarize these unprecedented developments in vaccine science and discuss the types of COVID-19 vaccines, their developmental strategies, and their roles as well as their limitations.
| S-EPMC8035961 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This paper studies containment policies for combating a pandemic in an open-economy context. It does so via quantitative analyses using a model that incorporates a standard epidemiological compartmental model in a general equilibrium multi-country, multi-sector Ricardian model of international trade with input–output linkages. We quantitatively evaluate the long-run welfare and real-income losses due to the short-run pandemic shocks, and we study the role of trade in these effects. We devise a novel approach to computing national optimal policies. We find that (1) the long-run welfare and real-income losses due to just two years of pandemic shocks are substantial; (2) international trade helps buffer both the welfare and real-income losses, and it also saves lives; (3) the computed optimal policies indicate that most countries should have tightened their containment measures relative to what was done; and (4) compared to the case of autarky, the optimal policy under trade is generally more stringent.
| S-EPMC10289272 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To understand and analyse the global impact of COVID-19 on outpatient services, inpatient care, elective surgery, and perioperative colorectal cancer care, a DElayed COloRectal cancer surgery (DECOR-19) survey was conducted in collaboration with numerous international colorectal societies with the objective of obtaining several learning points from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our colorectal cancer patients which will assist us in the ongoing management of our colorectal cancer patients and to provide us safe oncological pathways for future outbreaks.
| 2346925 | ecrin-mdr-crc
Project description:An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, "What about the risk to human life?" Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern "What about people's livelihoods and individual freedoms?" A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional government intervention in the free-market economy. We examine these lay beliefs among US residents in four studies and find that economic system justification (ESJ), an ideology that defends the prevailing economic system when under threat, is a reliable psychological predictor beyond political ideology. Specifically, compared to those who scored low on ESJ, people who scored high on ESJ judged China as more justified in downplaying the spread of virus to protect its interest in the global free-market economy, supported in-person over online learning, viewed shelter in place as less desirable, and perceived the opening of the Texas economy as more legitimate. We also find that multiple psychological mechanisms might be at work-resistance to market interventions, perceived legitimacy of opening the economy, perceived seriousness of the health crisis, and violation of human rights.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10551-022-05091-4.
| S-EPMC8964385 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDisease prevention has been claimed to reduce health care costs. However, preventing lethal diseases increases life expectancy and, thereby, indirectly increases the demand for health care. Previous studies have argued that on balance preventing diseases that reduce longevity increases health care costs while preventing non-fatal diseases could lead to health care savings. The objective of this research is to investigate if disease prevention could result in both increased longevity and lower lifetime health care costs.MethodsMortality rates for Netherlands in 2009 were used to construct cause-deleted life tables. Data originating from the Dutch Costs of Illness study was incorporated in order to estimate lifetime health care costs in the absence of selected disease categories. We took into account that for most diseases health care expenditures are concentrated in the last year of life.ResultsElimination of diseases that reduce life expectancy considerably increase lifetime health care costs. Exemplary are neoplasms that, when eliminated would increase both life expectancy and lifetime health care spending with roughly 5% for men and women. Costs savings are incurred when prevention has only a small effect on longevity such as in the case of mental and behavioural disorders. Diseases of the circulatory system stand out as their elimination would increase life expectancy while reducing health care spending.ConclusionThe stronger the negative impact of a disease on longevity, the higher health care costs would be after elimination. Successful treatment of fatal diseases leaves less room for longevity gains due to effective prevention but more room for health care savings.
| S-EPMC4130534 | biostudies-literature