Fear can be more harmful than the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in controlling the corona virus disease 2019 epidemic

Understanding the Collective Responses of Populations to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mainland China

“…To deal with the critical situation of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, a series of quarantines, isolation, and travel restrictions in municipal areas, provincial areas, and nationwide have been placed by Chinese authorities, while the outcomes of these interventions have been examined in [3][4][5] . On the other hand, there are a great number of studies [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] that have demonstrated feasibility to leverage mobile applications and search engines, such as Baidu Migration 1 and Baidu COVID-19 Page 2 , to acquire the real-time information on pandemics, including trends of human mobility, confirmed cases, and death tolls for Chinese cities.…”

The COVID‐19 pandemic and mental health impacts

“…The virus has rapidly spread across the globe leading to many infected people and multiple deaths (Wang et al 2020); especially of the elderly and vulnerable (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2020). While efforts to control and limit the spread of the pandemic in the community are quite straight forward to follow, it seems that prejudice and fear have jeopardized the response efforts (Ren et al 2020). In fact, the COVID‐19 pandemic has already unleashed panic, as evidenced by the empty toilet paper shelves in stores, resulted in accusations against people of Asian races (Malta et al 2020), and impacted people’s decisions to seek help when early symptoms arise (Ren et al 2020).…”

“…While efforts to control and limit the spread of the pandemic in the community are quite straight forward to follow, it seems that prejudice and fear have jeopardized the response efforts (Ren et al 2020). In fact, the COVID‐19 pandemic has already unleashed panic, as evidenced by the empty toilet paper shelves in stores, resulted in accusations against people of Asian races (Malta et al 2020), and impacted people’s decisions to seek help when early symptoms arise (Ren et al 2020). In this editorial, we discuss the issues related to the occurrence of fear, panic, and discrimination, analyse the causes of these phenomena, and identify practical solutions for addressing mental health issues related to this pandemic for both public and healthcare professionals.…”

How to risk-stratify elective surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic?

“…In essence, during the current time of widespread anxiety around the COVID-19 pandemic [16], a pragmatic guide based on underlying risk stratification and resource utilization will help support our ethical duty of assuring access to timely and appropriate surgical care to our patients, while maintaining an unwavering stewardship for scarce resources and emergency preparedness. Figure 1 provides a tentative decision-making algorithm based on elective surgical indications and predicted perioperative utilization of critical resources, including the consideration for intra−/postoperative blood product transfusions, estimated postoperative hospital length of stay, and the expected requirement for prolonged ventilation and need for postoperative ICU admission.…”