COVID-19 Emergency Public Health and Economic Measures Causal Loops: A Computable Framework

Tonnang, Henri E. Z.; Greenfield, Jay; Mazzaferro, Gary; Austin, Claire C.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3686027

Cited by 7 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In this section, we discuss similarities and differences between the components included in the CLDs by the authors of the reviewed studies. All eight CLDs accounted for the magnitude of the infection spread, and, in addition, studies [4,13,15,16] distinguished between the number of actually infected people and diagnosed cases ("Certified infections rates" 1 vs. "Infectious population" [4], "Number of positive tests" vs. "Infected population" [13], "Diagnosed" vs. "Infected" [15] and "Number of cases detected" vs. "Number of infectious people" [16]); studies [14,15] additionally distinguished between symptomatic and asymptomatic virus carriers. Six out of eight papers also separately accounted for the number of COVID-19 deaths.…”

Section: Common and Rare Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Six out of eight papers also separately accounted for the number of COVID-19 deaths. Three papers [4,14,15] use variables that are commonly included in SIR-type models, i.e., susceptible, recovered, and hospitalized populations [34].…”

Section: Common and Rare Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The next most commonly included aspects across the eight CLDs are panic and/or fears (accounted for by six papers, i.e., "Panic and fear" [4,12], "Anxiety, panic and fear" [13], "Public outrage" [16], or just "Fears" [15]), as well as public awareness ("Alertness " [4], "Awareness campaign" [12], "Advisories and media reports" [15], "Effectiveness of public health risk communication" and "Public awareness" [16], "Situational awareness" [26]), business closures (lockdowns), unemployment (or "People out of work" [4]), impact on the healthcare system ("Hospital strain" and "Medical staff attrition" [4] "Health care worker load" [12], "Occupied health facilities" and "Shortage of health facilities" [14,15], "Impact on healthcare system" [26]), and social distancing (or "Avoidance of public space" [26])-each accounted for by five papers.…”

Section: Common and Rare Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social challenges such as (a lack of) "Trust within communities", "Crime and violence", and "Racism" [12], as well as the "Conflicts of interest" [13] appeared in only one paper, correspondingly. The role of vaccines was also highlighted only in two papers ("Development of vaccines", "Production with promising but not yet certified vaccine", and "Availability of vaccines" [4] and "Vaccination" [15]), while [4] is the only study which accounts for the role of research institutions ("Research institutes mobilisation"). Some issues that are generally considered important factors for the spread of COVID-19 and its impact, for example, social and economic inequality [35,36], are absent in all reviewed CLDs.…”

Section: Common and Rare Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Systems thinking has been suggested to unravel this challenge by accounting for essential links and feedback loops between issues that both scientists and policymakers tend to Systems 2021, 9, 65 2 of 17 consider in isolation, creating a shared understanding of the problem and identifying potential leverage points [7,8]. Some scholars responded to this call advocating the use of systems thinking in a rather general sense [9][10][11], while others came up with some concrete examples of the application of systems thinking, usually through employing causal loop diagrams [2,4,[12][13][14][15][16] or system dynamic models [17][18][19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Causal Loop Diagramming of Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19: State-of-the-Art, Gaps and Good Practices

Strelkovskii

Rovenskaya

2021

Systems

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The complexity, multidimensionality, and persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted both researchers and policymakers to turn to transdisciplinary methods in dealing with the wickedness of the crisis. While there are increasing calls to use systems thinking to address the intricacy of COVID-19, examples of practical applications of systems thinking are still scarce. We revealed and reviewed eight studies which developed causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on a broader socioeconomic system. We find that major drivers across all studies are the magnitude of the infection spread and government interventions to curb the pandemic, while the most impacted variables are public perception of the pandemic and the risk of infection. The reviewed COVID-19 CLDs consistently exhibit certain complexity patterns, for example, they contain a higher number of two- and three-element feedback loops than comparable random networks. However, they fall short in representing linear complexity such as multiple causes and effects, as well as cascading impacts. We also discuss good practices for creating and presenting CLDs using the reviewed diagrams as illustration. We suggest that increasing transparency and rigor of the CLD development processes can help to overcome the lack of systems thinking applications to address the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis.

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