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• 08 June 2021

The COVID lab-leak hypothesis: what scientists do and don’t know

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Debate over the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus emerged from a laboratory has escalated over the past few weeks, coinciding with the annual World Health Assembly, at which the World Health Organization (WHO) and officials from nearly 200 countries discussed the COVID-19 pandemic. After last year’s assembly, the WHO agreed to sponsor the first phase of an investigation into the pandemic’s origins, which took place in China in early 2021 .

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Nature 594 , 313-315 (2021)

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

11 Questions to Ask About COVID-19 Research

Debates have raged on social media, around dinner tables, on TV, and in Congress about the science of COVID-19. Is it really worse than the flu? How necessary are lockdowns? Do masks work to prevent infection? What kinds of masks work best? Is the new vaccine safe?

You might see friends, relatives, and coworkers offer competing answers, often brandishing studies or citing individual doctors and scientists to support their positions. With so much disagreement—and with such high stakes—how can we use science to make the best decisions?

Here at Greater Good , we cover research into social and emotional well-being, and we try to help people apply findings to their personal and professional lives. We are well aware that our business is a tricky one.

Summarizing scientific studies and distilling the key insights that people can apply to their lives isn’t just difficult for the obvious reasons, like understanding and then explaining formal science terms or rigorous empirical and analytic methods to non-specialists. It’s also the case that context gets lost when we translate findings into stories, tips, and tools, especially when we push it all through the nuance-squashing machine of the Internet. Many people rarely read past the headlines, which intrinsically aim to be relatable and provoke interest in as many people as possible. Because our articles can never be as comprehensive as the original studies, they almost always omit some crucial caveats, such as limitations acknowledged by the researchers. To get those, you need access to the studies themselves.

And it’s very common for findings and scientists to seem to contradict each other. For example, there were many contradictory findings and recommendations about the use of masks, especially at the beginning of the pandemic—though as we’ll discuss, it’s important to understand that a scientific consensus did emerge.

Given the complexities and ambiguities of the scientific endeavor, is it possible for a non-scientist to strike a balance between wholesale dismissal and uncritical belief? Are there red flags to look for when you read about a study on a site like Greater Good or hear about one on a Fox News program? If you do read an original source study, how should you, as a non-scientist, gauge its credibility?

Here are 11 questions you might ask when you read about the latest scientific findings about the pandemic, based on our own work here at Greater Good.

1. Did the study appear in a peer-reviewed journal?

In peer review, submitted articles are sent to other experts for detailed critical input that often must be addressed in a revision prior to being accepted and published. This remains one of the best ways we have for ascertaining the rigor of the study and rationale for its conclusions. Many scientists describe peer review as a truly humbling crucible. If a study didn’t go through this process, for whatever reason, it should be taken with a much bigger grain of salt. 

“When thinking about the coronavirus studies, it is important to note that things were happening so fast that in the beginning people were releasing non-peer reviewed, observational studies,” says Dr. Leif Hass, a family medicine doctor and hospitalist at Sutter Health’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California. “This is what we typically do as hypothesis-generating but given the crisis, we started acting on them.”

In a confusing, time-pressed, fluid situation like the one COVID-19 presented, people without medical training have often been forced to simply defer to expertise in making individual and collective decisions, turning to culturally vetted institutions like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Is that wise? Read on.

2. Who conducted the study, and where did it appear?

“I try to listen to the opinion of people who are deep in the field being addressed and assess their response to the study at hand,” says Hass. “With the MRNA coronavirus vaccines, I heard Paul Offit from UPenn at a UCSF Grand Rounds talk about it. He literally wrote the book on vaccines. He reviewed what we know and gave the vaccine a big thumbs up. I was sold.”

From a scientific perspective, individual expertise and accomplishment matters—but so does institutional affiliation.

Why? Because institutions provide a framework for individual accountability as well as safety guidelines. At UC Berkeley, for example , research involving human subjects during COVID-19 must submit a Human Subjects Proposal Supplement Form , and follow a standard protocol and rigorous guidelines . Is this process perfect? No. It’s run by humans and humans are imperfect. However, the conclusions are far more reliable than opinions offered by someone’s favorite YouTuber .

Recommendations coming from institutions like the CDC should not be accepted uncritically. At the same time, however, all of us—including individuals sporting a “Ph.D.” or “M.D.” after their names—must be humble in the face of them. The CDC represents a formidable concentration of scientific talent and knowledge that dwarfs the perspective of any one individual. In a crisis like COVID-19, we need to defer to that expertise, at least conditionally.

“If we look at social media, things could look frightening,” says Hass. When hundreds of millions of people are vaccinated, millions of them will be afflicted anyway, in the course of life, by conditions like strokes, anaphylaxis, and Bell’s palsy. “We have to have faith that people collecting the data will let us know if we are seeing those things above the baseline rate.”

3. Who was studied, and where?

Animal experiments tell scientists a lot, but their applicability to our daily human lives will be limited. Similarly, if researchers only studied men, the conclusions might not be relevant to women, and vice versa.

Many psychology studies rely on WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) participants, mainly college students, which creates an in-built bias in the discipline’s conclusions. Historically, biomedical studies also bias toward gathering measures from white male study participants, which again, limits generalizability of findings. Does that mean you should dismiss Western science? Of course not. It’s just the equivalent of a “Caution,” “Yield,” or “Roadwork Ahead” sign on the road to understanding.

This applies to the coronavirus vaccines now being distributed and administered around the world. The vaccines will have side effects; all medicines do. Those side effects will be worse for some people than others, depending on their genetic inheritance, medical status, age, upbringing, current living conditions, and other factors.

For Hass, it amounts to this question: Will those side effects be worse, on balance, than COVID-19, for most people?

“When I hear that four in 100,000 [of people in the vaccine trials] had Bell’s palsy, I know that it would have been a heck of a lot worse if 100,000 people had COVID. Three hundred people would have died and many others been stuck with chronic health problems.”

4. How big was the sample?

In general, the more participants in a study, the more valid its results. That said, a large sample is sometimes impossible or even undesirable for certain kinds of studies. During COVID-19, limited time has constrained the sample sizes.

However, that acknowledged, it’s still the case that some studies have been much larger than others—and the sample sizes of the vaccine trials can still provide us with enough information to make informed decisions. Doctors and nurses on the front lines of COVID-19—who are now the very first people being injected with the vaccine—think in terms of “biological plausibility,” as Hass says.

Did the admittedly rushed FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine make sense, given what we already know? Tens of thousands of doctors who have been grappling with COVID-19 are voting with their arms, in effect volunteering to be a sample for their patients. If they didn’t think the vaccine was safe, you can bet they’d resist it. When the vaccine becomes available to ordinary people, we’ll know a lot more about its effects than we do today, thanks to health care providers paving the way.

5. Did the researchers control for key differences, and do those differences apply to you?

Diversity or gender balance aren’t necessarily virtues in experimental research, though ideally a study sample is as representative of the overall population as possible. However, many studies use intentionally homogenous groups, because this allows the researchers to limit the number of different factors that might affect the result.

While good researchers try to compare apples to apples, and control for as many differences as possible in their analyses, running a study always involves trade-offs between what can be accomplished as a function of study design, and how generalizable the findings can be.

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You also need to ask if the specific population studied even applies to you. For example, when one study found that cloth masks didn’t work in “high-risk situations,” it was sometimes used as evidence against mask mandates.

However, a look beyond the headlines revealed that the study was of health care workers treating COVID-19 patients, which is a vastly more dangerous situation than, say, going to the grocery store. Doctors who must intubate patients can end up being splattered with saliva. In that circumstance, one cloth mask won’t cut it. They also need an N95, a face shield, two layers of gloves, and two layers of gown. For the rest of us in ordinary life, masks do greatly reduce community spread, if as many people as possible are wearing them.

6. Was there a control group?

One of the first things to look for in methodology is whether the population tested was randomly selected, whether there was a control group, and whether people were randomly assigned to either group without knowing which one they were in. This is especially important if a study aims to suggest that a certain experience or treatment might actually cause a specific outcome, rather than just reporting a correlation between two variables (see next point).

For example, were some people randomly assigned a specific meditation practice while others engaged in a comparable activity or exercise? If the sample is large enough, randomized trials can produce solid conclusions. But, sometimes, a study will not have a control group because it’s ethically impossible. We can’t, for example, let sick people go untreated just to see what would happen. Biomedical research often makes use of standard “treatment as usual” or placebos in control groups. They also follow careful ethical guidelines to protect patients from both maltreatment and being deprived necessary treatment. When you’re reading about studies of masks, social distancing, and treatments during the COVID-19, you can partially gauge the reliability and validity of the study by first checking if it had a control group. If it didn’t, the findings should be taken as preliminary.

7. Did the researchers establish causality, correlation, dependence, or some other kind of relationship?

We often hear “Correlation is not causation” shouted as a kind of battle cry, to try to discredit a study. But correlation—the degree to which two or more measurements seem connected—is important, and can be a step toward eventually finding causation—that is, establishing a change in one variable directly triggers a change in another. Until then, however, there is no way to ascertain the direction of a correlational relationship (does A change B, or does B change A), or to eliminate the possibility that a third, unmeasured factor is behind the pattern of both variables without further analysis.

In the end, the important thing is to accurately identify the relationship. This has been crucial in understanding steps to counter the spread of COVID-19 like shelter-in-place orders. Just showing that greater compliance with shelter-in-place mandates was associated with lower hospitalization rates is not as conclusive as showing that one community that enacted shelter-in-place mandates had lower hospitalization rates than a different community of similar size and population density that elected not to do so.

We are not the first people to face an infection without understanding the relationships between factors that would lead to more of it. During the bubonic plague, cities would order rodents killed to control infection. They were onto something: Fleas that lived on rodents were indeed responsible. But then human cases would skyrocket.

Why? Because the fleas would migrate off the rodent corpses onto humans, which would worsen infection. Rodent control only reduces bubonic plague if it’s done proactively; once the outbreak starts, killing rats can actually make it worse. Similarly, we can’t jump to conclusions during the COVID-19 pandemic when we see correlations.

8. Are journalists and politicians, or even scientists, overstating the result?

Language that suggests a fact is “proven” by one study or which promotes one solution for all people is most likely overstating the case. Sweeping generalizations of any kind often indicate a lack of humility that should be a red flag to readers. A study may very well “suggest” a certain conclusion but it rarely, if ever, “proves” it.

This is why we use a lot of cautious, hedging language in Greater Good , like “might” or “implies.” This applies to COVID-19 as well. In fact, this understanding could save your life.

When President Trump touted the advantages of hydroxychloroquine as a way to prevent and treat COVID-19, he was dramatically overstating the results of one observational study. Later studies with control groups showed that it did not work—and, in fact, it didn’t work as a preventative for President Trump and others in the White House who contracted COVID-19. Most survived that outbreak, but hydroxychloroquine was not one of the treatments that saved their lives. This example demonstrates how misleading and even harmful overstated results can be, in a global pandemic.

9. Is there any conflict of interest suggested by the funding or the researchers’ affiliations?

A 2015 study found that you could drink lots of sugary beverages without fear of getting fat, as long as you exercised. The funder? Coca Cola, which eagerly promoted the results. This doesn’t mean the results are wrong. But it does suggest you should seek a second opinion : Has anyone else studied the effects of sugary drinks on obesity? What did they find?

It’s possible to take this insight too far. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that “Big Pharma” invented COVID-19 for the purpose of selling vaccines. Thus, we should not trust their own trials showing that the vaccine is safe and effective.

But, in addition to the fact that there is no compelling investigative evidence that pharmaceutical companies created the virus, we need to bear in mind that their trials didn’t unfold in a vacuum. Clinical trials were rigorously monitored and independently reviewed by third-party entities like the World Health Organization and government organizations around the world, like the FDA in the United States.

Does that completely eliminate any risk? Absolutely not. It does mean, however, that conflicts of interest are being very closely monitored by many, many expert eyes. This greatly reduces the probability and potential corruptive influence of conflicts of interest.

10. Do the authors reference preceding findings and original sources?

The scientific method is based on iterative progress, and grounded in coordinating discoveries over time. Researchers study what others have done and use prior findings to guide their own study approaches; every study builds on generations of precedent, and every scientist expects their own discoveries to be usurped by more sophisticated future work. In the study you are reading, do the researchers adequately describe and acknowledge earlier findings, or other key contributions from other fields or disciplines that inform aspects of the research, or the way that they interpret their results?

Greater Good’s Guide to Well-Being During Coronavirus

Practices, resources, and articles for individuals, parents, and educators facing COVID-19

This was crucial for the debates that have raged around mask mandates and social distancing. We already knew quite a bit about the efficacy of both in preventing infections, informed by centuries of practical experience and research.

When COVID-19 hit American shores, researchers and doctors did not question the necessity of masks in clinical settings. Here’s what we didn’t know: What kinds of masks would work best for the general public, who should wear them, when should we wear them, were there enough masks to go around, and could we get enough people to adopt best mask practices to make a difference in the specific context of COVID-19 ?

Over time, after a period of confusion and contradictory evidence, those questions have been answered . The very few studies that have suggested masks don’t work in stopping COVID-19 have almost all failed to account for other work on preventing the disease, and had results that simply didn’t hold up. Some were even retracted .

So, when someone shares a coronavirus study with you, it’s important to check the date. The implications of studies published early in the pandemic might be more limited and less conclusive than those published later, because the later studies could lean on and learn from previously published work. Which leads us to the next question you should ask in hearing about coronavirus research…

11. Do researchers, journalists, and politicians acknowledge limitations and entertain alternative explanations?

Is the study focused on only one side of the story or one interpretation of the data? Has it failed to consider or refute alternative explanations? Do they demonstrate awareness of which questions are answered and which aren’t by their methods? Do the journalists and politicians communicating the study know and understand these limitations?

When the Annals of Internal Medicine published a Danish study last month on the efficacy of cloth masks, some suggested that it showed masks “make no difference” against COVID-19.

The study was a good one by the standards spelled out in this article. The researchers and the journal were both credible, the study was randomized and controlled, and the sample size (4,862 people) was fairly large. Even better, the scientists went out of their way to acknowledge the limits of their work: “Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.”

Unfortunately, their scientific integrity was not reflected in the ways the study was used by some journalists, politicians, and people on social media. The study did not show that masks were useless. What it did show—and what it was designed to find out—was how much protection masks offered to the wearer under the conditions at the time in Denmark. In fact, the amount of protection for the wearer was not large, but that’s not the whole picture: We don’t wear masks mainly to protect ourselves, but to protect others from infection. Public-health recommendations have stressed that everyone needs to wear a mask to slow the spread of infection.

“We get vaccinated for the greater good, not just to protect ourselves ”

As the authors write in the paper, we need to look to other research to understand the context for their narrow results. In an editorial accompanying the paper in Annals of Internal Medicine , the editors argue that the results, together with existing data in support of masks, “should motivate widespread mask wearing to protect our communities and thereby ourselves.”

Something similar can be said of the new vaccine. “We get vaccinated for the greater good, not just to protect ourselves,” says Hass. “Being vaccinated prevents other people from getting sick. We get vaccinated for the more vulnerable in our community in addition for ourselves.”

Ultimately, the approach we should take to all new studies is a curious but skeptical one. We should take it all seriously and we should take it all with a grain of salt. You can judge a study against your experience, but you need to remember that your experience creates bias. You should try to cultivate humility, doubt, and patience. You might not always succeed; when you fail, try to admit fault and forgive yourself.

Above all, we need to try to remember that science is a process, and that conclusions always raise more questions for us to answer. That doesn’t mean we never have answers; we do. As the pandemic rages and the scientific process unfolds, we as individuals need to make the best decisions we can, with the information we have.

This article was revised and updated from a piece published by Greater Good in 2015, “ 10 Questions to Ask About Scientific Studies .”

About the Authors

Jeremy Adam Smith

Uc berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC’s online magazine, Greater Good . He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift , Are We Born Racist? , and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good . Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D. , is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she directs the GGSC’s research fellowship program and serves as a co-instructor of its Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work online courses.

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A researcher’s view on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: The scientific process needs to be better explained

PhD Student in Microbiology-Immunology, Université Laval

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When I first wrote about the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 in early March 2020, the question was whether or not the new virus would become a pandemic. At the time, most experts believed that we had already reached the point of no return.

Today, 18 months later, the answer is clear. You don’t need to be a scientist to know it. This pandemic is the worst public health emergency of international concern that our modern society has faced. To date, more than 215 million cases have been confirmed and 4.5 million deaths have been reported globally .

These are just the reported cases. In reality, the number of cases is higher, and for a variety of reasons: lack of diagnostic capacity, infection without symptoms, unwillingness or inability to be tested or to visit a health facility, etc. The number of deaths due to COVID-19 is probably underestimated, both in Canada and worldwide .

In addition to changing the way we live our daily lives, the pandemic has brought scientific processes to public attention. Researchers, used to working in the shadows, now had to provide solutions — and explanations — to a very real threat, and they have been doing this under the watchful eye of the public.

One of these solutions, vaccination, is far from new. Yet no matter what the context, it has always generated news . So where are we now?

Still in our laboratories! I recently completed my PhD in microbiology-immunology at Laval University, research that I conducted under the supervision of Professor Gary Kobigner , who is known for co-developing an effective vaccine and treatment for Ebola. This fall, I will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, where I will continue my work on the transmission of, and vaccine development against, severe pathogens.

Relevant questions

The World Health Organization (WHO) currently lists 13 available COVID-19 vaccines, based on four different platforms, including mRNA vaccines and viral vector vaccines . Globally, more than five billion doses of vaccines have been administered. In Canada, five of these vaccines are currently approved for use: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, COVISHIELD and Janssen , with Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca in wide distribution. Combined, these vaccines have been administered to approximately 70 per cent of Canadians.

However, many people have raised questions about these vaccines . And it is fair to do so! The unknown has always been a source of anxiety for human beings, it is normal to ask questions .

So, after working tirelessly to develop vaccines against COVID-19, what are scientists and doctors doing now?

They are doing what they have always done: Practising the best science they can within the limits of current knowledge. This scientific practice means continuing to evaluate the effectiveness of these vaccines against new variants in labs, as the virus continues to mutate.

It means continuing to record who has experienced side-effects (serious or not) from vaccination and continuing to investigate the potential links between these side-effects and the vaccine. The science they are practising involves studying the virus day and night to understand how it makes people sick, how we can prevent infection and what our options are for getting rid of it as quickly as possible.

The term “current knowledge” is very important here. It is possible that more side-effects related to vaccination will be discovered much later. Here’s why.

The scientific method

When vaccines are initially developed in the laboratory and tested on animals, it is normal that not all side-effects are identified. A mouse is not a human, after all, and models cannot account for all the variables that can be found in a human. Humans live in a complex environment and society where individuals each have their own genetics, immunity and lifestyle (exercise, smoking, nutrition).

Furthermore, the more people are vaccinated, the greater the likelihood of detecting a serious side-effect. Clinical trials, where drugs and vaccines are evaluated in a small group of individuals before being made available to the general population, are designed to be safe. Volunteers are usually healthy adults, without serious pre-existing medical conditions .

Read more: Explainer: How clinical trials test COVID-19 vaccines

Vaccination is now widespread in many countries. It is therefore statistically normal that rarer effects (for example, ones that one in a million people develop) are now being observed. These effects are too rare to have been detected in a clinical trial of 10,000 people. This is the case for rare side-effects such as Guillain-Barré syndrome and Bell’s palsy .

The scientific method requires that the following process is followed: Observe a problem, formulate a hypothesis about its possible causes, evaluate it experimentally by controlling the variables, interpret the results and draw a conclusion.

It can turn out that our initial hypothesis is wrong, and that is equally acceptable. This is how science was designed. I think that before the pandemic, people considered science infallible. Opening up research to the general public has greatly changed this perception, especially as science quickly became embroiled in politics, particularly over the question of the origin of the pandemic .

Knowing how to communicate

And that’s where the problem comes from, among other things. The key to effective scientific communication is not the science. It’s the communication . The results of laboratory experiments and clinical trials are what they are. Either the vaccine or drug works to reduce mortality, or it doesn’t work, and we go back to the drawing board.

So where does the reluctance about vaccines come from? One of the main problems is not the lack of information about the safety of the vaccine. Almost everyone has access to this information on internet. The problem is the lack of trust in institutions, which has been growing globally in recent years .

Read more: How better conversations can help reduce vaccine hesitancy for COVID-19 and other shots

But this trust can be earned — or regained. It just takes time, respect and empathy. A study by researchers at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke shows that an educational session about immunization that used motivational interviewing techniques with parents of infants resulted in a nine per cent increase in immunization rates compared with families who did not receive the sessions.

Finding the right answer to a question

Ultimately, the goal of science is to find the right answer to a question.

Of course, human nature being what it is, we are not immune to conflicts of interest. We need to ensure transparency about things like funding and links between scientists and potential investors. This is especially important since we are all responsible for funding research, whether through federal subsidies, which are partly derived from taxes paid by citizens, or through the ordinary purchase of drugs in pharmacies.

Since this concerns everyone, it is high time that the public became more involved. After all, scientific discoveries and health measures are everybody’s business. For example, few citizens are familiar with “ gain-of-function research .” These studies can involve a level of risk ranging from very low to very high. For example, producing a drug from a bacterium carries little risk and much benefit. However, increasing the virulence or transmissibility of a virus such as Ebola or Influenza could carry a lot of risk if such research were carried out by individuals with bad intentions, or in poorly secured laboratories.

Read more: Origins of SARS-CoV-2: Why the lab-leak idea is being considered again

As with any aspect of science, a risk-benefit analysis must be carried out. Note that in the vast majority of institutions where research is done, the committees assessing whether or not a study is worth doing are not only composed of scientists and students, but also members of the public.

Now each side just has to do its part. Scientists need to do a better job of communicating their results and the interpretation of them, as well as specifically answering questions of interest to the public and regaining their trust. They need to listen and stop hiding behind mountains of data, complicated words and scientific articles that are not easily accessible to the general public.

To those who are hesitant about vaccination, scientists should ask: “What data would make you change your mind?”, “Why do you think the current data are insufficient?”, “Why do you trust this individual, but not another or the institutions?” This is how constructive dialogue can be initiated and more in-depth reflection can begin.

For their part, citizens can adopt better practices when it comes to getting information and not only consider information that fits into their personal narrative. It is also important to avoid falling into a spiral of conspiracy theories and trust in false experts. It is important to not be afraid to doubt, to find other sources to confirm or refute what you have just read and to ask trusted experts around you what they think.

Do you have a question about COVID-19 vaccines? Email us at ca‑[email protected] and vaccine experts will answer questions in upcoming articles.

This article was originally published in French

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Hypothesis: The COVID-19 Pandemic is Signaling Humanity’s Global Overshoot

| February 8, 2022 | Leave a Comment

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Date of Publication: April

Year of Publication: 2021

Publication City: San Francisco, CA

Publisher: Academia Inc.

Author(s): Alexander K. Lautensach, Sabina W. Lautensach

Journal: Academia Letters

Volume: Article 538

In the Anthropocene, the year 2020 marks a milestone in humanity’s learning process about how we are affecting the biosphere and how it affects us in return (Ulrich 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic is the first global event that changed every human life, if not yet actually then certainly potentially. For the first time, humanity experiences species-wide a planetary phenomenon that allows neither escape nor denial and that demands a collective response from all cultures and societies. That raises the question how this phenomenon is to be interpreted.

HYPOTHESIS:

The COVID-19 pandemic is a feedback signal from the biosphere that denotes the ecological overshoot of the human species (currently estimated at about 1.7 planets; GFN 2020). That means that efforts to control this pandemic, even if successful, will not solve the wider problem of overshoot and the prospect of further, more threatening signals or ‘transition events’ (including partial collapse) for as long as overshoot persists.

Read the full paper here or download it from the link above.

• CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

What you need to know about the COVID-19 lab-leak hypothesis

Newly reported information has revived scrutiny of this possible origin for the coronavirus, which experts still call unlikely though worth investigating.

Months after a World Health Organization investigation deemed it “extremely unlikely” that the novel coronavirus escaped accidentally from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the idea is back in the news, giving new momentum to a hypothesis that many scientists believe is unlikely, and some have dismissed as a conspiracy theory .

The renewed attention comes on the heels of President Joe Biden’s ordering U.S. intelligence agencies on May 26 to “ redouble their efforts ” to investigate the origins of the coronavirus. On May 11, Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, acknowledged he’s now “ not convinced ” the virus developed naturally—an apparent pivot from what he told National Geographic in an interview last year.  

Also last month, more than a dozen scientists—top epidemiologists, immunologists, and biologists—wrote a letter published in the journal Science calling for a thorough investigation into two viable origin stories: natural spillover from animal to human, or an accident in which a wild laboratory sample containing SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released. They urged that both hypotheses “be taken seriously until we have sufficient data,” writing that a proper investigation would be “transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight,” with conflicts of interest minimized, if possible.

“Anytime there is an infectious disease outbreak it is important to investigate its origin,” says Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security who did not contribute to the letter in Science . “The lab-leak hypothesis is possible—as is an animal spillover,” he says, “and I think that a thorough, independent investigation of its origins should be conducted.”

Unanswered questions

The origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 and has infected more than 171 million people, killing close to 3.7 million worldwide as of June   4, remain unclear. Many scientists, including those that participated in the WHO’s months-long investigation, believe the most likely explanation is that that it jumped from an animal to a person—potentially from a bat directly to a human, or through an intermediate host. Animal-to-human transmission is a common route for many viruses; at least two other coronaviruses, SARS and MERS , were spread through such zoonotic spillover.

Other scientists insist it’s worth investigating whether SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory that has studied coronaviruses in bats for more than a decade.

For Hungry Minds

The WHO investigation —a joint effort between WHO-appointed scientists and Chinese officials—concluded it was “extremely unlikely” the highly transmissible virus escaped from a laboratory. But the WHO team suffered roadblocks that led some to question its conclusions; the scientists were not permitted to conduct an independent investigation and were denied access to any raw data. ( We still don’t know the origins of the coronavirus. Here are 4 scenarios .)

On March 30, when the WHO released its report, its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called for further studies . “All hypotheses remain on the table,” he said at the time.

Then on May 11, Fauci told PolitiFact that while the virus most likely emerged via animal-to-human transmission, “it could have been something else, and we need to find that out.”

Recently disclosed evidence, first reported by the Wall Street Journal , has added fuel to the fire: Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell sick in November 2019 and sought hospital care, according to a U.S. intelligence report. In the final days of the Trump administration, the State Department released a statement that researchers at the institute had become ill with “symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.”

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Most epidemiologists and virologists who have studied the novel coronavirus believe that it began spreading in November 2019. China says the first confirmed case was on December 8, 2019. During a briefing in Beijing this week, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, accused the U.S. of “ hyping up the theory of a lab leak ,” and asked, “does it really care about the study of origin tracing, or is it trying to divert attention?” Zhao also denied the Wall Street Journal   report that three people had gotten sick.

Lab leak still ‘unlikely’

Some conservative politicians and commentators have embraced the lab-leak theory, while liberals more readily rejected it, especially early in the pandemic. The speculation has also heightened ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China.

On May 26, as the U.S. Senate passed a bill to declassify intelligence related to potential links between the Wuhan laboratory and COVID-19, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said, “the world needs to know if this pandemic was the product of negligence at the Wuhan lab,” and lamented that “for over a year, anyone asking questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been branded as a conspiracy theorist.”

Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s former trade adviser, asserted in April 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 could have been engineered as a bioweapon, without citing any evidence.

The theory that SARS-CoV-2 was created as a bioweapon is “completely unlikely,” says William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. For one thing, he explains, for a bioweapon to be successful, it must target an adversarial population without affecting one’s own. In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 “cannot be controlled,” he says. “It will spread, including back on your own population,” making it an extremely “counterproductive biowarfare agent.”

The more plausible lab-leak hypothesis, scientists say, is that the Wuhan laboratory isolated the novel coronavirus from an animal and was studying it when it accidentally escaped. “Not knowing the extent of its virulence and transmissibility, a lack of protective measures [could have] resulted in laboratory workers becoming infected,” initiating the transmission chain that ultimately resulted in the pandemic, says Rossi Hassad, an epidemiologist at Mercy College.

But Hassad adds he believes that this lab-leak theory is on the “extreme low end” of possibilities, and it “will quite likely remain only theoretical following any proper scientific investigation,” he says.

Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to report back with their findings in 90 days, which would be August 26.

Based on the available information, Eyal Oren, an epidemiologist at San Diego State University, says it’s apparent why the most accepted hypothesis is that this virus originated in an animal and jumped to a human: “What is clear is that the genetic sequence of the COVID-19 virus is similar to other coronaviruses found in bats,” he says.

Some scientists remain skeptical that concrete conclusions can be drawn. “At the end, I anticipate that the question” of SARS-CoV-2’s origins “will remain unresolved,” Schaffner says.

In the meantime, science “moves much more slowly than the media and news cycles,” Oren says.

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Available Evidence and Ongoing Hypothesis on Corona Virus (COVID-19) and Psychosis: Is Corona Virus and Psychosis Related? A Narrative Review

Affiliations.

• 1 Department of Psychiatry, College of Health and Medical Sciences, Haramaya University, Harar, Ethiopia.
• 2 Department of Psychiatry, College of Health and Medical Sciences, Mettu University, Mettu, Ethiopia.
• PMID: 32903810
• PMCID: PMC7445510
• DOI: 10.2147/PRBM.S264235

Background: Corona virus (COVID-19) is an outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a novel corona virus and declared to be a global health emergency and a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. Prevention strategies to control the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as closing of schools, refraining from gathering, and social distancing, have direct impacts on mental well-being. SARS-CoV-2 has a devastating psychological impact on the mental health status of the community and, particularly when associated with psychotic symptoms, it could affect the overall quality-of-life. The virus also has the potential to enter and infect the brain. As a result, psychosis symptoms could be an emerging phenomenon associated with the corona virus pandemic. The presence of psychotic symptoms may complicate the management options of patients with COVID-19.

Objective: The aim of this article review is to elaborate the relationships between COVID-19 and psychotic symptoms.

Methodology: We independently searched different electronic databases, such as Google scholar, PubMed, Medline, CINAHL, EMBASE, PsychInfo, and other relevant sources published in English globally, by using the search terms "psychosis and COVID-19", "corona virus", "brief psychotic", "schizophrenia", "organic psychosis", "infectious disease", "mental illness", "pandemics", and "psychiatry" in various permutations and combinations.

Results: The results of the included studies revealed that patients with a novel corona virus had psychotic symptoms, including hallucination in different forms of modality, delusion, disorganized speech, and grossly disorganized or catatonic behaviors. The patients with COVID-19-related psychotic symptoms had responded with a short-term administration of the antipsychotic medication.

Conclusion and recommendation: A corona virus-related psychosis has been identified in different nations, but it is difficult to conclude that a novel corona virus has been biologically related to psychosis or exacerbates psychotic symptoms. Therefore, to identify the causal relationships between COVID-19 and psychosis, the researchers should investigate the prospective study on the direct biological impacts of COVID-19 and psychosis, and the clinicians should pay attention for psychotic symptoms at the treatment center and isolation rooms in order to reduce the complication of a novel corona virus.

Keywords: 2020; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; psychosis.

© 2020 Tariku and Hajure.

Publication types

Grants and funding.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2021)

Chapter: 8 major findings and research questions, 8 major findings and research questions, introduction.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in late 2019, created unprecedented global disruption and infused a significant level of uncertainty into the lives of individuals, both personally and professionally, around the world throughout 2020. The significant effect on vulnerable populations, such as essential workers and the elderly, is well documented, as is the devastating effect the COVID-19 pandemic had on the economy, particularly brick-and-mortar retail and hospitality and food services. Concurrently, the deaths of unarmed Black people at the hands of law enforcement officers created a heightened awareness of the persistence of structural injustices in U.S. society.

Against the backdrop of this public health crisis, economic upheaval, and amplified social consciousness, an ad hoc committee was appointed to review the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in academic science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) during 2020. The committee’s work built on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine: Opening Doors (the Promising Practices report), which presents evidence-based recommendations to address the well-established structural barriers that impede the advancement of women in STEMM. However, the committee recognized that none of the actions identified in the Promising Practices report were conceived within the context of a pandemic, an economic downturn, or the emergence of national protests against structural racism. The representation and vitality of academic women in STEMM had already warranted national attention prior to these events, and the COVID-19

pandemic appeared to represent an additional risk to the fragile progress that women had made in some STEMM disciplines. Furthermore, the future will almost certainly hold additional, unforeseen disruptions, which underscores the importance of the committee’s work.

In times of stress, there is a risk that the divide will deepen between those who already have advantages and those who do not. In academia, senior and tenured academics are more likely to have an established reputation, a stable salary commitment, and power within the academic system. They are more likely, before the COVID-19 pandemic began, to have established professional networks, generated data that can be used to write papers, and achieved financial and job security. While those who have these advantages may benefit from a level of stability relative to others during stressful times, those who were previously systemically disadvantaged are more likely to experience additional strain and instability.

As this report has documented, during 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic had overall negative effects on women in academic STEMM in areas such productivity, boundary setting and boundary control, networking and community building, burnout rates, and mental well-being. The excessive expectations of caregiving that often fall on the shoulders of women cut across career timeline and rank (e.g., graduate student, postdoctoral scholar, non-tenure-track and other contingent faculty, tenure-track faculty), institution type, and scientific discipline. Although there have been opportunities for innovation and some potential shifts in expectations, increased caregiving demands associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, such as remote working, school closures, and childcare and eldercare, had disproportionately negative outcomes for women.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in STEMM during 2020 are understood better through an intentionally intersectional lens. Productivity, career, boundary setting, mental well-being, and health are all influenced by the ways in which social identities are defined and cultivated within social and power structures. Race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, academic career stage, appointment type, institution type, age, and disability status, among many other factors, can amplify or diminish the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for a given person. For example, non-cisgender women may be forced to return to home environments where their gender identity is not accepted, increasing their stress and isolation, and decreasing their well-being. Women of Color had a higher likelihood of facing a COVID-19–related death in their family compared with their white, non-Hispanic colleagues. The full extent of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for women of various social identities was not fully understood at the end of 2020.

Considering the relative paucity of women in many STEMM fields prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, women are more likely to experience academic isolation, including limited access to mentors, sponsors, and role models that share gender, racial, or ethnic identities. Combining this reality with the physical isolation stipulated by public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic,

women in STEMM were subject to increasing isolation within their fields, networks, and communities. Explicit attention to the early indicators of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected women in academic STEMM careers during 2020, as well as attention to crisis responses throughout history, may provide opportunities to mitigate some of the long-term effects and potentially develop a more resilient and equitable academic STEMM system.

MAJOR FINDINGS

Given the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not possible to fully understand the entirety of the short- or long-term implications of this global disruption on the careers of women in academic STEMM. Having gathered preliminary data and evidence available in 2020, the committee found that significant changes to women’s work-life boundaries and divisions of labor, careers, productivity, advancement, mentoring and networking relationships, and mental health and well-being have been observed. The following findings represent those aspects that the committee agreed have been substantiated by the preliminary data, evidence, and information gathered by the end of 2020. They are presented either as Established Research and Experiences from Previous Events or Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic during 2020 that parallel the topics as presented in the report.

Established Research and Experiences from Previous Events

___________________

1 This finding is primarily based on research on cisgender women and men.

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic during 2020

Research questions.

While this report compiled much of the research, data, and evidence available in 2020 on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, future research is still needed to understand all the potential effects, especially any long-term implications. The research questions represent areas the committee identified for future research, rather than specific recommendations. They are presented in six categories that parallel the chapters of the report: Cross-Cutting Themes; Academic Productivity and Institutional Responses; Work-Life Boundaries and Gendered Divisions of Labor; Collaboration, Networking, and Professional Societies; Academic Leadership and Decision-Making; and Mental Health and Well-being. The committee hopes the report will be used as a basis for continued understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in its entirety and as a reference for mitigating impacts of future disruptions that affect women in academic STEMM. The committee also hopes that these research questions may enable academic STEMM to emerge from the pandemic era a stronger, more equitable place for women. Therefore, the committee identifies two types of research questions in each category; listed first are those questions aimed at understanding the impacts of the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by those questions exploring the opportunities to help support the full participation of women in the future.

Cross-Cutting Themes

• What are the short- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the career trajectories, job stability, and leadership roles of women, particularly of Black women and other Women of Color? How do these effects vary across institutional characteristics, 2 discipline, and career stage?

2 Institutional characteristics include different institutional types (e.g., research university, liberal arts college, community college), locales (e.g., urban, rural), missions (e.g., Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Asian American/Native American/Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities), and levels of resources.

• How did the confluence of structural racism, economic hardships, and environmental disruptions affect Women of Color during the COVID-19 pandemic? Specifically, how did the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black citizens impact Black women academics’ safety, ability to be productive, and mental health?
• How has the inclusion of women in leadership and other roles in the academy influenced the ability of institutions to respond to the confluence of major social crises during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How can institutions build on the involvement women had across STEMM disciplines during the COVID-19 pandemic to increase the participation of women in STEMM and/or elevate and support women in their current STEMM-related positions?
• How can institutions adapt, leverage, and learn from approaches developed during 2020 to attend to challenges experienced by Women of Color in STEMM in the future?

Academic Productivity and Institutional Responses

• How did the institutional responses (e.g., policies, practices) that were outlined in the Major Findings impact women faculty across institutional characteristics and disciplines?
• What are the short- and long-term effects of faculty evaluation practices and extension policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic on the productivity and career trajectories of members of the academic STEMM workforce by gender?
• What adaptations did women use during the transition to online and hybrid teaching modes? How did these techniques and adaptations vary as a function of career stage and institutional characteristics?
• What are examples of institutional changes implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that have the potential to reduce systemic barriers to participation and advancement that have historically been faced by academic women in STEMM, specifically Women of Color and other marginalized women in STEMM? How might positive institutional responses be leveraged to create a more resilient and responsive higher education ecosystem?
• How can or should funding arrangements be altered (e.g., changes in funding for research and/or mentorship programs) to support new ways of interaction for women in STEMM during times of disruption, such as the COVID-19 pandemic?

Work-Life Boundaries and Gendered Divisions of Labor

• How do different social identities (e.g., racial; socioeconomic status; culturally, ethnically, sexually, or gender diverse; immigration status; parents of young children and other caregivers; women without partners) influence the management of work-nonwork boundaries? How did this change during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How have COVID-19 pandemic-related disruptions affected progress toward reducing the gender gap in academic STEMM labor-force participation? How does this differ for Women of Color or women with caregiving responsibilities?
• How can institutions account for the unique challenges of women faculty with parenthood and caregiving responsibilities when developing effective and equitable policies, practices, or programs?
• How might insights gained about work-life boundaries during the COVID-19 pandemic inform how institutions develop and implement supportive resources (e.g., reductions in workload, on-site childcare, flexible working options)?

Collaboration, Networking, and Professional Societies

• What were the short- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic-prompted switch from in-person conferences to virtual conferences on conference culture and climate, especially for women in STEMM?
• How will the increase in virtual conferences specifically affect women’s advancement and career trajectories? How will it affect women’s collaborations?
• How has the shift away from attending conferences and in-person networking changed longer-term mentoring and sponsoring relationships, particularly in terms of gender dynamics?
• How can institutions maximize the benefits of digitization and the increased use of technology observed during the COVID-19 pandemic to continue supporting women, especially marginalized women, by increasing accessibility, collaborations, mentorship, and learning?
• How can organizations that support, host, or facilitate online and virtual conferences and networking events (1) ensure open and fair access to participants who face different funding and time constraints; (2) foster virtual connections among peers, mentors, and sponsors; and (3) maintain an inclusive environment to scientists of all backgrounds?
• What policies, practices, or programs can be developed to help women in STEMM maintain a sense of support, structure, and stability during and after periods of disruption?

Academic Leadership and Decision-Making

• What specific interventions did colleges and universities initiate or prioritize to ensure that women were included in decision-making processes during responses to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How effective were colleges and universities that prioritized equity-minded leadership, shared leadership, and crisis leadership styles at mitigating emerging and potential negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in their communities?
• What specific aspects of different leadership models translated to more effective strategies to advance women in STEMM, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How can examples of intentional inclusion of women in decision-making processes during the COVID-19 pandemic be leveraged to develop the engagement of women as leaders at all levels of academic institutions?
• What are potential “top-down” structural changes in academia that can be implemented to mitigate the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic or other disruptions?
• How can academic leadership, at all levels, more effectively support the mental health needs of women in STEMM?

Mental Health and Well-being

• What is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and institutional responses on the mental health and well-being of members of the academic STEMM workforce as a function of gender, race, and career stage?
• How are tools and diagnostic tests to measure aspects of wellbeing, including burnout and insomnia, used in academic settings? How does this change during times of increased stress, such as the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How might insights gained about mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic be used to inform preparedness for future disruptions?
• How can programs that focus on changes in biomarkers of stress and mood dysregulation, such as levels of sleep, activity, and texting patterns, be developed and implemented to better engage women in addressing their mental health?
• What are effective interventions to address the health of women academics in STEMM that specifically account for the effects of stress on women? What are effective interventions to mitigate the excessive levels of stress for Women of Color?

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The spring of 2020 marked a change in how almost everyone conducted their personal and professional lives, both within science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global scientific conferences and individual laboratories and required people to find space in their homes from which to work. It blurred the boundaries between work and non-work, infusing ambiguity into everyday activities. While adaptations that allowed people to connect became more common, the evidence available at the end of 2020 suggests that the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic endangered the engagement, experience, and retention of women in academic STEMM, and may roll back some of the achievement gains made by women in the academy to date.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identifies, names, and documents how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the careers of women in academic STEMM during the initial 9-month period since March 2020 and considers how these disruptions - both positive and negative - might shape future progress for women. This publication builds on the 2020 report Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine to develop a comprehensive understanding of the nuanced ways these disruptions have manifested. The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will inform the academic community as it emerges from the pandemic to mitigate any long-term negative consequences for the continued advancement of women in the academic STEMM workforce and build on the adaptations and opportunities that have emerged.

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Methodologies for COVID-19 research and data analysis

This collection has closed and is no longer accepting new submissions. 

This  BMC Medical Research Methodology collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process overseen by our Guest Editors, Prof. Dr. Livia Puljak (Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb, Croatia) and Prof. Dr. Martin Wolkewitz (University of Freiburg, Germany).  

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Research methodologies to assess the impact of COVID-19

Pj nogueira.

1 Área Disciplinar Autónoma da Bioestatística, Instituto de Medicina Preventiva e Saúde Pública, Lisbon, Portugal

2 Instituto de Saúde Ambiental, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

3 National Center of Epidemiology, Health Institute Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

C Rodriguez-Blazquez

A diaz-franco.

4 Cardiovascular, Endocrine-metabolic Diseases and Aging, National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy

L Carcaillon-Bentata

5 Santé Publique France, Paris, France

R Feteira-Santos

PHIRI WP5 aims at identifying the research approaches, data uses, pathways, indicators, and new methodologies to assess the impact of COVID-19 on Population Health.

Based on a collaborative work of researchers from 20 European institutions, several literature reviews were planned using automatized strategies to map the research methods analysing the impact of COVID-19 and data pathways: i) a scoping literature search to identify indicators of direct and indirect impact; ii) systematic literature reviews on determinants of severity for short and longterm health outcomes; and iii) a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to determine the effectiveness and impact of tracking COVID-19 patients using digitals tools.

In November 2020, more than 73,000 papers about COVID-19 were published. About 16,000 (22%) reported data aspects, and approximately half reported both data aspects and methodologies. The most used indicators of direct impact are incidence and prevalence, mortality, severity and sequelae. To explore the etiological and prognostic effects of frailty, multimorbidity and socioeconomic status, the main identified outcomes were: infection, hospitalization, ICU admission, mortality by COVID-19 (etiological); as well as ICU admission, hospitalization, survival, functional decline, quality of life, disability, mental health difficulties and work absence (prognostic). The search generated 10,139 records. The initial literature search about mobile applications and electronic devices for tracking of COVID-19 patients yielded 2500 records.

Conclusions

The use of machine learning tools to synthesize the research about methods and data pathways on COVID-19 impact is feasible, as the amount of published evidence is very large. The vast amount of available literature on COVID-19 requires specific methods of literature search and synthesis, and an integrated effort of an extensive network of researchers.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The impact of covid-19 and public health emergencies on consumer purchase of scarce products in china.

• 1 School of Business, Jilin University, Changchun, China
• 2 School of Philosophy and Sociology, Jilin University, Changchun, China

Objectives: During public health emergencies, people often scramble to buy scarce goods, which may lead to panic behavior and cause serious negative impacts on public health management. Due to the absence of relevant research, the internal logic of this phenomenon is not clear. This study explored whether and why public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic stimulate consumers' preference for scarce products.

Methods: Applying the questionnaire survey method, two online surveys were conducted on the Credamo data platform in China. The first survey was launched in February and collected psychological and behavioral data from 1,548 participants. Considering the likelihood of population relocation due to the pandemic, a follow-up survey was conducted in August with 463 participants who had participated in the first survey and had not relocated to other cities between February and August. The hypotheses were tested with these data through stepwise regression analysis, bootstrapping, and robustness testing.

Results: Pandemic severity was found to positively affect scarce consumption behavior and the effect was found to be situational; this indicates that the impact of the pandemic on scarce consumption was only significant during the pandemic. Further, it was found that materialism plays a mediating role in the relationship between pandemic severity and scarce consumption. Finally, the need to belong was found to play a moderating role between pandemic severity and materialism.

Conclusion: This study findings imply that the scarce consumption behavior during public health emergencies can be reduced by decreasing materialism and increasing the need to belong. These findings may aid government leaders in managing public health emergencies.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency characterized with high infectivity, a high mortality rate, and a long incubation period. It affects people's psychology and behavior intensively. One of the most typical behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic is panic buying, which refers to the behavior of buying unusually large amounts of products based on the need of coping with public health emergency ( 1 ). Although panic buying has appeared worldwide, there is a dearth of empirical studies explaining it ( 2 ). Many scholars pointed out it is important to discuss panic buying from the perspective of psychology; loss of control, insecurity, social learning, and fear of scarcity may become the core factors that cause panic buying, providing a good inspiration for panic buying research ( 3 , 4 ).

Given that panic buying is a complex behavior, with multiple psychological foundations, an accurate understanding and management of panic buying requires an in-depth analysis from different psychological perspectives ( 4 , 5 ). Prior research from various social learning perspectives showed that in social existence, people sometimes measure the intensity of the crisis through the reaction of those that surround them. Faced with a crisis, they tend to behave in consistence with the behavior of others to cope with external shocks, which is described as conformity consumer behavior in the field ( 6 ). Research, from the perspective of decision-making mode, shows that in times of emergency, people will indulge in behaviors necessary for survival, which may lack rational thinking and lead to impulsive panic buying ( 7 ).

In fact, significant characteristics of scarce consumption (SC)—a preference for panic buying goods that are rare and only available in limited quantities—also have been observed. For example, Japanese residents anticipated that “paper products would be in short supply due to the pandemic.” As a result, they began to irrationally purchase toilet paper rolls, which caused their prices to skyrocket by a factor of 10, and they immediately went out of stock ( 8 ). Similarly, in the United States, “limited supply” or “sold out” signs on food, water, and cleaning products compelled residents to buy these items, resulting in shortages, and even social conflicts ( 9 , 10 ). Due to scarcity of masks, many Chinese residents recklessly chose informal channels to purchase masks, resulting in increased fraud cases and flow of unsafe masks into the market, thus making pandemic prevention efforts even more difficult ( 11 ). For these cases, the purchase was due to scarcity rather than for pandemic prevention, as the purchase quantity surpassed the actual need; these behaviors caused a substantial panic, which negatively impacted public health management. Although SC has already exhibited significant characteristics and studies have shown that the perception of scarcity is closely related to panic buying behavior ( 3 , 12 ), there have been limited research conducted from the perspective of scarcity, causing a lack of sufficient explanation for why a pandemic could cause a frantic pursuit of scarce products and how to ease panic behavior related to scarcity.

Current research tends to believe that perceived scarcity would motivate individuals to engage in panic buying due to psychological reactance and anticipated regret. Research based on the reactance theory found that health crises are likely to threaten or restrict people from buying products. Such signals will stimulate psychological resistance, which in turn will increase people's attention to products and cause panic buying ( 13 , 14 ); those based on the anticipated regret theory indicates that people may regret not making panic purchases due to perceived scarcity, aiming to avoid this kind of uncomfortable feeling they will increase scarce consumption ( 15 ). Although these studies do show that scarcity and panic buying are inextricably linked, reactance and anticipated regret are broader theories, which means that they may also be applicable to the pursuit of scarce resources in other contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research on panic buying from a contextual perspective ( 5 ). In response, from a new theoretical perspective, we propose a research model of scarce consumption based on terror management theory, materialism theory, and need to belong theory, which is more suitable for panic-buying in the context of a public health crisis, aiming to explore whether and why the COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated SC, thereby enriching the research on panic buying and providing reference for crisis-response and public health emergency management.

Scarce Consumption in Public Health Emergencies

The COVID-19 pandemic is a typical public health emergency—unpredictable and threatening. Furthermore, due to its sudden and unexpected occurrence, resources required to deal with this external threat could not be prepared sufficiently in time. Consequently, it triggered negative feelings such as death anxiety, insecurity, and fear concerning resource scarcity ( 16 , 17 ). These are all uncomfortable feelings that people desire to reduce or compensate for through a series of defensive behaviors ( 18 ). Consumption is an important defensive behavior. Although this kind of behavior does not help solve actual dilemmas, it may help people cope with threats from a psychological perspective. For instance, people have opted for conformity consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic to obtain a sense of belonging and security from the group, thereby alleviating inner fear ( 6 ). Therefore, in public health emergencies, behavior is not only affected by the actual needs related to the emergencies, but also by the psychological need to alleviate negative feelings; previous studies have indicated that SC can alleviate negative psychology. The scarcity of an item (decreased quantity and limited access) can symbolize it as precious and even increase the perceived value of almost all available similar items, especially when they convey desirable attributes ( 19 ). Compared with other types of consumption, SC can compensate more for feelings associated with lack of resources, and even alleviate insecurity ( 20 ). Therefore, this study speculates that the COVID-19 pandemic may affect SC, which increases with the pandemic severity (PS).

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Pandemic severity positively affects the scarce consumption behavior .

As SC is generated by a psychological need to alleviate negative feelings caused by a public health emergency, the effect in Hypothesis 1 is situational. Once a pandemic eases and people are less affected by external threats, they no longer desire to alleviate negative feelings through SC. Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 2 (H2): After the pandemic eases, the effect of pandemic severity on scarce consumption behavior will diminish .

Materialism

Materialism (MA) is a value that is placed on the importance of possessing material wealth in life ( 21 ). Individuals with strong MA tend to be more self-centered and their focus in life is on the pursuit of material wealth with the intent of deriving pleasure and happiness ( 22 ). There are many causes of MA, including childhood poverty experiences ( 23 ), social learning ( 24 ), and insecurity ( 25 ). Fear of death is also a major source of MA ( 26 ). Terror management theory asserts that individuals usually activate the self-esteem defense mechanism after facing the threat of death. Possessing material wealth may be an effective way to boost self-esteem ( 27 ). By possessing material wealth, individuals can also enhance the sense of life's meaning and reduce death anxiety ( 24 ). Therefore, fear of death can stimulate MA to act as a buffer and to protect the mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed people to a sudden threat of death, increasing fear, insecurity, and anxiety; to reduce these uncomfortable feelings, people increased their materialistic tendencies. The following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 3 (H3): Pandemic severity positively affects materialism .

Consumption is a significant behavior where individuals obtain material resources, and those with strong MA tend to consume more to meet various inner needs ( 28 ), even excessively ( 29 ). They typically pay more attention to valuable products ( 30 ) and find it difficult to resist the enticement of valuable attributes ( 31 ) Compared with ordinary goods, scarce goods contain more economic and emotional value ( 19 ). Therefore, driven by MA, people are more likely to be enticed by scarce goods. The following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 4 (H4): Materialism positively affects scarce consumption behavior .

The need to cope with threats from the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the threat of death, can stimulate MA ( 24 , 27 ). When MA is stimulated, people are more eager to pursue valuable goods ( 30 , 31 ); they may indicate a preference for scarce goods that contain more economic and emotional value. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 5 (H5): Materialism can play a mediating role between pandemic severity and scarce consumption behavior .

Need to Belong

The terror management theory also asserts that people further cope with the threat of death by enhancing close relationships ( 32 ). Establishing and maintaining close relationships with others, seeking togetherness, intimacy, attachment, and affiliations alleviate the anxiety associated with death. Therefore, individuals demonstrate various coping mechanisms when faced with threats. To enhance security and reduce risks, individuals may increase their own resources by acquiring and possessing material wealth or obtaining resources or emotional attachments from others by seeking close relationships. The former will enhance the pursuit of wealth and status, while the latter will enhance social and altruistic tendencies ( 33 ). During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have adopted various methods to cope with the threat. Some prefer to acquire material possessions, while others seek close relationships to strengthen their unions and social support systems by increasing contact with relatives, donating, participating in social assistance, and other pursuits.

Baumeister and Leary ( 34 ) defined the need to belong (NTB) as a basic social necessity for forming and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Establishing contact with others or integrating into a group not only offers objective support, such as survival resources and group shelter, but also psychological support, such as emotional attachment and security ( 35 ). Compared with those with weak NTB, people with strong NTB generally have a stronger need to establish contact with others or integrate into groups. They are more active in enhancing social connections ( 36 ) and are more inclined to comply with social norms ( 37 ). Faced with a pandemic, people with strong NTB will more likely opt to enhance close relationships as a coping mechanism, while people with a weak NTB will more likely opt to obtain material resources that enhance MA and SC. Therefore, we hypothesize that NTB can reduce the impact of PS on materialism:

Hypothesis 6 (H6): Need to belong can play a moderating role between pandemic severity and materialism .

Based on above hypotheses, a psychological mechanism model for public health emergencies affecting irrational consumer behavior is proposed, as shown in Figure 1 .

Figure 1 . Theoretical model.

Materials and Methods

Participants and procedure.

Credamo is a professional data platform with a sample database of more than 1.5 million participants, which can provide large-scale data collection services and has been recognized by international top journals in the fields of psychology, management, sociology, and environmental science. We used it to conduct two online survey in China, one during the pandemic and one after the pandemic eased.

In the first survey, Credamo randomly distributed questionnaires in 31 provinces of China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) according to a quota of about 50 copies in each province. The survey lasted from February 15 to February 20, 2020 to covering 1,548 participants from 31 provincial-level administrative regions (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) and 297 prefecture-level cities, which could accurately and comprehensively describe the psychology and behavior of Chinese citizens during the pandemic. The data was used to empirically test whether and why PS can affect SC during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To verify that the impact of PS on SC was only pertinent during the pandemic, we conducted a follow-up survey after the pandemic eased. As the COVID-19 pandemic had eased in China by August 2020, with practically no emerging cases, we distributed a follow-up survey lasting from August 3 to August 6, 2020. Considering that participants who moved location may be affected again by the pandemic severity in a new location, we used Credamo to randomly distribute the questionnaire to 500 participants who participated in the first survey, whose location had not changed between February and August. Out of these, 463 questionnaires were filled out and submitted, giving a recovery rate of 92.6%.

The questionnaire has passed the audit of Credamo, which guaranteed that it would not cause negative psychological effects on participants. As for the consent of participation, only those who agreed and volunteered to participate in surveys will access the questionnaire and corresponding remuneration. At the beginning of the questionnaire, we once again emphasized that “the survey results are only used for academic research, and the personal privacy of participants will be protected. If you agree and are participating voluntarily, start answering questions; if you disagree or are unsure, please exit.” Besides, to ensure the validity of the questionnaire, we set up test items to assess whether participants would input the answers carefully. Questionnaires that failed this test were not included in our database. Table 1 shows the demographic information of the database.

Table 1 . Demographic information ( N = 1,548).

The PS varied in different Chinese cities; therefore, we considered measuring it using official pandemic indicators issued by the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China for different regions, namely “the cumulative number of confirmed cases per city” and “the number of new confirmed cases per city.” Among these official indicators, “the cumulative number of confirmed cases per city” focus on the cumulative dimensions and seems to be more suitable for reflect the current situation of the pandemic than “the number of new confirmed cases per city,” which concentrate on the growth dimensions. Therefore, the former was used to reflect pandemic severity for hypothesis testing, while the latter was used for robustness testing. Therefore, we select them to measure pandemic severity, which not only meets the needs of diverse sources of indicators but is also very representative. Specifically, in the first survey, we recorded the dates when participants submitted the questionnaires and the cities where they lived. Then, we searched for the official pandemic indicators in the same timeframe and same places and included these data in the database to match the corresponding psychological and behavior data.

To measure SC, we designed a three-item scale based on the research by Sharma and Alter ( 20 ), as no SC scale in the unique context of a pandemic has been developed yet. The results were as follows: In the first and second survey, the Cronbach's alpha was 0.823 and 0.865, respectively. To measure MA, we used an eight-item scale adapted from Richins ( 21 ) and used by Okazaki et al. ( 38 ); in the first and second survey, the Cronbach's alpha was 0.859 and 0.860, respectively. To measure NTB, we used a ten-item scale adapted from Leary et al. ( 39 ); in the first and second survey, Cronbach's alpha was 0.659 and 0.798, respectively. All measurements used a 5-point Likert scale with endpoints labeled “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree.”

We also measured gender, age, education level, monthly income, monthly expenses, household size, outing frequency, and degree of social isolation. As these variables may affect SC, they were used as control variables. Among them, the gender variable was dummy coded (female = 0); income, expense, and household size were logarithmised to reduce heteroscedasticity.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Considering the sample's large size, which could cause chi-square expansion, we used the Bollen-Stine bootstrapping technique (5,000 bootstrapping samples) for correction ( 40 ). The fitting indexes of the measurement model in Table 2 showed that the three-factor model had the best fitting indexes and that all indexes met the eligibility criteria. The constructs in this study are independent of each other and have good discrimination validity.

Table 2 . Fitting indexes of competition models ( N = 1,548).

Common Method Biases

The common method bias is widely used in psychology and behavioral science research to eliminate systematic errors that arise due to similarity in the data source, measurement environment, project context, and characteristics of the project itself. We used Harman's single factor test to conduct factor analysis on all variables. The variation of the unrotated first factor was 24.52%, which is less than the critical standard of 40% and less than half of the total variation (55.06%). This variation indicated that the common variance is well-controlled.

Correlation Analysis

Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to examine potential associations between the study variables. Results showed that SC correlated significantly with PS ( r = 0.123, p < 0.001), MA ( r = 0.386, p < 0.001), and NTB ( r = 0.183, p < 0.001). Both MA ( r = 0.094, p < 0.001) and NTB ( r = 0.060, p < 0.05) correlated significantly with PS, indicating potential associations between the variables.

Hypothesis Tests

Analysis of main effect.

We used the cumulative number of confirmed cases as an indicator to measure PS and built regression Models 1–2 to verify whether the main effect is established and whether it is situational. Results showed that PS had a significant positive impact on SC during the pandemic (β = 0.109, p < 0.001), but when the pandemic eased, PS had no significant influence on SC (β = 0.008, p = 0.792), indicating that PS only positively affects SC during the pandemic (see Table 3 for details).

Table 3 . The result of stepwise regression analysis ( N = 1,548).

Therefore, H1 and H2 were verified. Pandemic severity can positively affect the scarce consumption behavior. When the pandemic becomes more serious, scarce consumption behavior will become stronger. However, the effect will diminish after the pandemic eases, indicating that it is situational.

Analysis of Mediating Effect

By applying the regression analysis method proposed by Baron and Kenny ( 41 ), we built Models 3–5 to test the mediating role of MA between PS and SC. Results showed that PS had a significantly positive impact on MA (β = 0.111, p < 0.001), which had a significantly positive impact on SC (β = 0.352, p < 0.001). After the addition of MA, PS had a significant impact on SC (β = 0.070, p < 0.01) indicating that MA played a partially mediating role between PS and SC during the pandemic (see Table 3 for details).

Following Preacher et al. ( 42 ), we used a bootstrap procedure to re-verify the mediating effect. We calculated a 95% confidence interval (CI) of the total, direct, and indirect effects through 5,000 sampling. If the CI was not zero, this mediating effect was verified as significant. Results showed that the CI of the total effect (β = 0.063, 95% CI: 0.032–0.094), indirect effect (β = 0.023, 95% CI: 0.012–0.034), and direct effect (β = 0.040, 95% CI: 0.012–0.069) were not zero, indicating that MA actually played a partial mediating role between PS and SC during the pandemic.

Therefore, H3–H5 were verified. Pandemic severity can positively affect materialism and materialism can positively affect scarce consumption behavior. Pandemic severity will affect scarce consumption behavior by affecting materialism, resulting materialism plays a mediating role between pandemic severity and scarce consumption behavior.

Analysis of Moderating Effect

We built regression Models 6–10 to analyze the moderating effect of NTB between PS and MA. We centralized all variables to reduce multicollinearity between them. The results showed that the interaction had a significantly negative effect on SC (β = −0.057, p < 0.05) and MA (β = −0.052, p < 0.05). However, after adding MA as a mediating variable, the effect of MA on SC was significant (β = 0.330, p < 0.001), but the effect of the interaction on SC was no longer significant (β = −0.040, p > 0.05), thus, NTB passed the test indicating that MA plays a moderating role (see Table 3 for details).

The bootstrap procedure was used to calculate the magnitude of the mediating effect and resulted in a 95% CI when the moderating variable was equal to average—one standard deviation above and one below average. The moderating effect was then re-verified through 5,000 sampling. Results showed that the interaction had a significantly negative impact on MA (β = −0.051, p < 0.05, 95% CI: −0.097 −0.004). Only when the value of NTB was one standard deviation higher than average was the indirect effect of PS on SC insignificant (β = 0.006, 95% CI: −0.010–0.022), indicating that NTB passed and MA plays a moderating role.

Therefore, H6 was verified. When people have a strong need to belong, the impact of pandemic severity on materialism will be reduced, resulting need to belong plays a moderating role between pandemic severity and materialism.

Robustness Testing

We used two methods to test for and confirm the robustness of our conclusions. For the first test, we used the number of new confirmed cases per city to replace the cumulative number of confirmed cases and ensure that the effect was still stable under different indicators. For the second test, we eliminated the influence of the extreme regions in the sample, which were the most severely affected geographic area, Hubei, and the least severely affected area, Tibet. Results shown in Table 4 are consistent with the results of hypothesis testing indicating that the effect is robust.

Table 4 . The result of robustness test (bootstrapping times = 5,000, N = 1,548).

Conclusions

These results indicate that pandemic severity is positively associated with materialism, need to belong, and scarce consumption. Pandemic severity positively affected the scarce consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the effect was situational, which means it diminished as the pandemic eased. Materialism mediates the relationship between pandemic severity and scarce consumption. When the pandemic is severe, people demonstrate increased materialism to cope with the threat of death and, therefore, consume scarce goods. The need to belong plays a moderating role between pandemic severity and materialism, and influences people's choices in coping with death threats. People with a weak need to belong are more inclined to materialism and respond to threats by possessing scarce goods, while people with a strong need to belong prefer to cope with threats by seeking close relationships.

Theoretical Contributions

Firstly, previous studies of public health have focused primarily on infection prediction, risk assessment, and health behaviors ( 16 , 17 , 43 ); however, in a public health crisis, panic behavior are inevitable for humans, and the psychological and behavioral impacts related to them also need urgent attention ( 44 ). We revealed the psychological mechanism of panic buying related to scarcity in a more in-depth way—examining whether and why public health emergencies prompt consumers to seek scarce goods—to provides a new perspective to the research of public health. Furthermore, this psychological mechanism is contextual. This makes our research different from previous studies in marketing that focused primarily on uniqueness and wealth insecurity ( 20 , 45 ). We found that scarce consumption is also an important means of alleviating death threats from public health emergencies; because this research is more contextual on the basis of explaining scarcity, it is also different from those that explain scarcity based on the theory of reactance and anticipated regret ( 13 – 15 ).

Moreover, Arafat pointed out that panic-buying behavior may be speculatively affected by socio-cultural status, personality traits, and environmental factors, all of which needs to be empirically tested ( 5 ). We found that public health emergencies as a special social situation can stimulate materialism, while previous studies regarded it as a relatively stable personality factor ( 46 ), indicating that the psychological/behavioral constructs, linked with the personality factors, could contextually affect panic-buying behavior.

Finally, we discussed the different implications of two coping strategies in the context of pandemic. Although improving self-esteem and seeking social connections are both important coping mechanisms ( 32 ), they have different effects on mental health and public health management during a pandemic. The first approach results in materialism and scarce consumption; however, materialism is often considered as a negative social value, which negatively influences psychology and behavior leading to stinginess, jealousy, and excessive consumption ( 29 , 47 ). Scarcity may activate competition orientation, leading consumers to consider their own welfare and predisposing them to act more selfishly ( 48 ) and even violently ( 49 ). Therefore, the first approach can trigger negative social behavior and hinder the management of public health. For example, according to Fox News, there were two episodes of violent conflict caused by scarce consumption of goods in the United States on March 12 alone ( 10 ). On the contrary, the second approach enhances individual social tendencies and altruistic behaviors, which can add positive and constructive significance to global health challenges ( 33 ).

Practical Implications

The conclusions are likely to be valuable and useful to crisis-response and public-health managers. Although panic buying caused serious consequences during the pandemic, it is still easily ignored by managers. This may have been due to the belief that health needs should be given priority, rather than emergency purchases, during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Our research shows that these two goals are not conflicting and are even potentially consistent. The findings verified that the need to belong can moderate the approach witch people cope with public health emergency, thereby alleviating the panic buying related to scarcity. Moreover, the need to belong can actually increase prosocial behavior ( 50 , 51 ), which is essential for the allocation of health resources in global health challenges. In other words, when people desire to obtain a sense of belonging from others or groups, they will be more inclined to think from the perspective of others or collectives. This will not only reduce the competition for scarce resources, but also increase prosocial behavior, including mutual encouragement, voluntarily helping others, even donating supplies.

In terms of specific implementation, since one of the important psychological basic for panic buying is scarcity, reducing perceived scarcity may be an effective crisis management strategy. Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary damage to the market when fighting the pandemic, it is important for the government to inform people which products can help them cope with the pandemic and which products are unnecessary in time. It can also encourage the establishment of production, transportation and warehousing cloud platforms to realize digital management, and to realize material support more efficiently through real-time data sharing. Media should reduce the negative reports related to scarcity and replace them with healthy and positive information. To dispel rumors and reduce anxiety over shortages, business associations or organizations should cooperate with media to release information regarding production and supply; shops can adopt quota measures but try to avoid posting particularly obvious “restricted purchases” and “sold out” slogans.

On the other hand, intervention in psychological mechanisms of scarce consumption can also alleviate panic buying. The findings showed that it is effective to formulate policies or measures based on the strategy of reducing materialism and increasing need to belong. Encouraging people to increase exercising, participate in anti-pandemic topic discussions, or communicate online with relatives or friends may help to shift their attention from the material to the spiritual. In addition, public health managers should give full play to the role of the community in disseminating information, organizing activities, and distributing anti-epidemic materials, to form an atmosphere of solidarity. For example, the community can establish an information platform to provide residents with an opportunity to exchange views, while publishing material information. Further, it can encourage residents to participate in rewarded community check-in activities such as volunteer services, and regularly deliver supplies to residents isolated at home.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

In terms of generalization of the model, this study selects China as a representative for research. Although psychological/behavioral constructs are general, they may also be affected by social-cultural factors and show certain particularities. In the future, research can focus on the comparison of different countries with different social cultures. Besides, the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency with a violent and direct death threat. However, there are many types of public health emergencies, some of which pose peaceful and indirect threats. Whether these threats will lead to this kind of reactionary behavior remains to be studied.

Although exploring psychological mechanisms is important for people to understand and manage panic buying ( 3 , 4 ), the influence of the media on panic buying cannot be ignored. This is because, psychological factors may in turn be influenced by the media ( 52 ) and panic buying can also be caused by unbalanced media coverage. For example, when media display the photos of empty shelves indicating the scarcity, they help to increase tension, anxiety, and fear among the general population, resulting in further increase in panic buying ( 2 ). However, this study lacks adequate consideration of the media. It did not evaluate the duration of reading or watching news. Whether there is any association between the duration of watching news and panic-buying behavior remains to be studied. In addition, people will not only be influenced by the official media but seek information from various media sources during a pandemic. Therefore, future research can also explore the impact of different media sources reporting on panic buying as well as the psychological mechanism behind it. Furthermore, we indicated that reducing the perception of scarcity and increasing the need to belong can alleviate scarce consumption behavior. But how to translate this discovery into actionable measures to a greater extent? Studies have shown that the media can spread rumors as well as health information, thus the formulation and implementation of media guidelines may help control the episodes of panic buying ( 52 ). We suggest that the combination of media and psychological guidance strategies can be studied from the perspective of policy measures in the future.

Finally, we found that after excluding the impact of social isolation, our model is still significant. This shows that although the government's isolation and restrictive policies can cause panic ( 53 ), they are not entirely responsible for causing panic, which is influenced by various factors. Future research may be carried out from the perspective of panic sources, such as the public, experts, and media, to explore the effects of these sources on panic-buying behavior, which will help to clarify the psychological mechanism of panic buying in more detail, and propose targeted strategies or policies.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/ Supplementary Materials , further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Jilin University; Credamo Data Research platform. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

XJ, JL, and TZ were involved in the conceptualization, methodology and investigation referred to in this paper. XJ provide leadership to the team and was responsible for revising the article. JL wrote the first draft of the paper and all authors provided a written contribution and approved the final version. WS revised the manuscript. All authors agreed the final version.

This work was supported by the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71872070), the Youth Program National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71902069), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Project (Grant No. 2019M651231), and the Social Science Foundation of Jilin Province (Grant No. 2019C31).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all individuals who volunteered to participate in this study and funded projects and are grateful to Editage services in manuscript language polishing.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.617166/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: public health emergencies, COVID-19, scarce consumption, materialism, need to belong, China, panic buying

Citation: Jin X, Li J, Song W and Zhao T (2020) The Impact of COVID-19 and Public Health Emergencies on Consumer Purchase of Scarce Products in China. Front. Public Health 8:617166. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.617166

Received: 14 October 2020; Accepted: 11 November 2020; Published: 02 December 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Jin, Li, Song and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Wei Song, jlu624837903@163.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Fauci Makes Huge Admissions On Vaccine Mandates And Lab Leak Theory Legitimacy

D r. Anthony Fauci faced intense questioning from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, where he admitted that the six-foot social distancing rule had little scientific basis.

He also acknowledged that the lab-leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory and that vaccine mandates might increase hesitancy.

Despite supporting travel restrictions from China, Fauci was accused of playing down the lab-leak theory. (Trending: Clintons Scramble To Delete Embarrassing Photo, But Were Too Slow)

“It just sort of appeared,” wrote the committee, mocking Fauci with his own quote.

“Dr. Fauci acknowledged that the lab-leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory,” their statement continued.

“This comes nearly four years after prompting the publication of the now infamous ‘Proximal Origin’ paper that attempted to vilify and disprove the lab-leak hypothesis,” explained the committee.

The committee said Fauci still “advised American universities to impose vaccine mandates on their students.”

The committee wrote that Fauci, “played semantics with the definition of a ‘lab-leak’ in an attempt to cover up the inaccurate conclusions of ‘Proximal Origin.’”

Sen. Wenstrup said, “During his interview today, Dr. Fauci claimed that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come.”

“Further, the social distancing recommendations forced on Americans ‘sort of just appeared’ and were likely not based on scientific data,” he continued.

Wenstrup said the hearing “revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed a light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority.”

“It is clear the dissenting opinions were often not considered or suppressed completely,” lamented the lawmaker.

“Should a future pandemic arise, America’s response must be guided by scientific facts and conclusive data,” declared Wenstrup.

The committee highlighted systemic failures in public health and emphasized the need for future responses to be guided by scientific facts and conclusive data.

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