Calling for pan-European commitment for rapid and sustained reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infections

Priesemann, Viola; Brinkmann, Melanie M.; Ciesek, Sandra; Cuschieri, Sarah; Czypionka, Thomas; Giordano, Giulia; Gurdasani, Deepti; Hanson, Claudia; Hens, Niel; Iftekhar, Emil N.; Kelly-Irving, Michelle; Klimek, Peter; Kretzschmar, Mirjam; Peichl, Andreas; Perc, Matjaž; Sannino, Francesco; Schernhammer, Eva; Schmidt, Alexander; Staines, Anthony; Szczurek, Ewa

doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)32625-8

Cited by 77 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…An increased consensus has emerged on how to effectively manage the COVID-19 pandemic and the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Habersaat et al, 2020;Kaplan et al, 2020;Priesemann et al, 2021). Countries have implemented a range of measures to curb the spread of the virus (Bedford et al, 2020); while some countries have implemented strict measures that have shut public life and most commercial activity almost completely, others have kept significant parts of society open even though faced with similar health threats imposed by SARS-CoV-2.…”

Section: Public Policy Responses To the Covid-19 Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

Luoto

Varella

2021

Front. Psychol.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global societal, economic, and social upheaval unseen in living memory. There have been substantial cross-national differences in the kinds of policies implemented by political decision-makers to prevent the spread of the virus, to test the population, and to manage infected patients. Among other factors, these policies vary with politicians’ sex: early findings indicate that, on average, female leaders seem more focused on minimizing direct human suffering caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while male leaders implement riskier short-term decisions, possibly aiming to minimize economic disruptions. These sex differences are consistent with broader findings in psychology, reflecting women’s stronger empathy, higher pathogen disgust, health concern, care-taking orientation, and dislike for the suffering of other people—as well as men’s higher risk-taking, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and focus on financial indicators of success and status. This review article contextualizes sex differences in pandemic leadership in an evolutionary framework. Evolution by natural selection is the only known process in nature that organizes organisms into higher degrees of functional order, or counteracts the unavoidable disorder that would otherwise ensue, and is therefore essential for explaining the origins of human sex differences. Differential sexual selection and parental investment between males and females, together with the sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain, drive sex differences in cognition and behavioral dispositions, underlying men’s and women’s leadership styles and decision-making during a global pandemic. According to the sexually dimorphic leadership specialization hypothesis, general psychobehavioral sex differences have been exapted during human evolution to create sexually dimorphic leadership styles. They may be facultatively co-opted by societies and/or followers when facing different kinds of ecological and/or sociopolitical threats, such as disease outbreaks or intergroup aggression. Early evidence indicates that against the invisible viral foe that can bring nations to their knees, the strategic circumspection of empathic feminine health “worriers” may bring more effective and humanitarian outcomes than the devil-may-care incaution of masculine risk-taking “warriors”.

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Section: Public Policy Responses To the Covid-19 Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

Luoto

Varella

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…There are several variants [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] of the SIR model, including stochastic variants [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] and there is a large amount of related work in the context of the SIR model in the presence of vaccination. Many works deal with vaccination strategies [13,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43], transmission among an interconnected group or population [44] and vaccination behavior by coupling the epidemic spreading with human decisions [45], or policies [46,47] using the SIR model with limited resources [48]. One of the classical v...…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analytical Modeling of the Temporal Evolution of Epidemics Outbreaks Accounting for Vaccinations

Schlickeiser

Kröger

2021

Physics

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With the vaccination against Covid-19 now available, how vaccination campaigns influence the mathematical modeling of epidemics is quantitatively explored. In this paper, the standard susceptible-infectious-recovered/removed (SIR) epidemic model is extended to a fourth compartment, V, of vaccinated persons. This extension involves the time t-dependent effective vaccination rate, v(t), that regulates the relationship between susceptible and vaccinated persons. The rate v(t) competes with the usual infection, a(t), and recovery, μ(t), rates in determining the time evolution of epidemics. The occurrence of a pandemic outburst with rising rates of new infections requires k+b<1−2η, where k=μ(0)/a(0) and b=v(0)/a(0) denote the initial values for the ratios of the three rates, respectively, and η≪1 is the initial fraction of infected persons. Exact analytical inverse solutions t(Q) for all relevant quantities Q=[S,I,R,V] of the resulting SIRV model in terms of Lambert functions are derived for the semi-time case with time-independent ratios k and b between the recovery and vaccination rates to the infection rate, respectively. These inverse solutions can be approximated with high accuracy, yielding the explicit time-dependences Q(t) by inverting the Lambert functions. The values of the three parameters k, b and η completely determine the reduced time evolution of the SIRV-quantities Q(τ). The influence of vaccinations on the total cumulative number and the maximum rate of new infections in different countries is calculated by comparing with monitored real time Covid-19 data. The reduction in the final cumulative fraction of infected persons and in the maximum daily rate of new infections is quantitatively determined by using the actual pandemic parameters in different countries. Moreover, a new criterion is developed that decides on the occurrence of future Covid-19 waves in these countries. Apart from in Israel, this can happen in all countries considered.

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“…The moderate autumn/winter death toll in the model variant with constant H = H 0 raises the question as to whether different mitigation strategies in the study regions could have led to practical extinction of the pathogen as realized by few Asian countries such as China [ 29 ]. The post-lockdown H was therefore shifted upwards in consecutive numerical experiments (and then kept constant).…”

Section: Model Skillmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(7) targeting the least costly adjustment to the threat. While this approach is capable of “flattening the curve”, there may be more sustainable strategies aiming at total eradication of the pathogen [ 29 ]. A thorough “zero Covid” mitigation strategy is here induced by a huge value of every single case ( H > 10 6 , Fig.…”

Section: Model Skillmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decline in mitigation readiness facilitated second waves ofSARS-CoV-2

2021

Preprint

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Societal responses crucially shape the course of a pandemics but are difficult to predict. Mitigation dynamics is introduced here as an integral part of an epidemiological model, which is applied to the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Unperturbed simulations accurately reproduce diverse epidemic and social response trajectories from 2020 to 2021 reported from 11 European countries, Iran, and 8 US states. High regional variability in the severity and duration of the spring lockdown and in peak mortality rates of the first SARS-CoV-2 wave can be explained by differences in mitigation readiness H which is here mathematically defined as the value of human lives in relation to business-as-usual contact rates. H entails a suite of political, social, and psychological aspects of decision making. The simulations also suggest that a subsequent decrease in H much intensified the second wave and slowed down its decay. With less effective lockdowns, vaccination became the primary mitigation strategy in 2021. Retardation of vaccination relative to a 3-month scheme is projected to provoke an average toll of 1.5 deaths per million and delayed day. This toll particularly rises in regions with high numbers of old and still susceptible people, which is relevant for revising current policies of vaccine distribution.

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Calling for pan-European commitment for rapid and sustained reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infections

Cited by 77 publications

References 7 publications

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

Analytical Modeling of the Temporal Evolution of Epidemics Outbreaks Accounting for Vaccinations

Decline in mitigation readiness facilitated second waves ofSARS-CoV-2

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