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Human Behavior

As summer driving season kicks off, it’s unclear just how many people will take to the road – CNBC

A customer gets ready to fill his car with gasoline at a Shell gas station in San Francisco, California.

Getty Images

This weekend's Memorial Day holiday could be a test for the gasoline market, depending on whether drivers in reopening states hit the road and then keep on driving.

Gasoline demand is about 30% below where it was before states shut down in March. As the economy reopens, analysts are looking at traditional measures of supply and demand, but also some newer metrics like Apple mobility data and GPS-generated traffic congestion data.

"After many of these states opened up in early May, we saw a pretty big surge or improvement in the congestion data. By mid that next week, we actually saw a regression in many cities U.S.-wide," said Michael Tran, global energy analyst at RBC. "When we look at the numbers, we saw a big surge then we saw a regression."

Tran said though he believes gas prices are eventually headed higher, and the market should show improvement in fits and starts as economic activity picks up across the U.S.

Retail gasoline data is showing that demand has been varying greatly by region, depending on state shutdown rules, or more normal factors like weather. The GasBuddy tracking firm, for instance, found that demand nationally last Friday was up 11.8% from the previous Friday, and in some states it was way higher.

Gasoline demand is important for a couple of reasons. For one, it is an economic indicator linked closely to employment. Second, U.S. gasoline demand is a factor in the calculation of global oil prices, since U.S. gas consumption equals about 10% of daily oil demand.

The summer driving season traditionally kicks off on Memorial Day weekend, but this year it will be far from normal. AAA said it will not issue a travel forecast for the first time in 20 years because of the impact of the coronavirus. Normally it estimates the number of people who would be traveling over the holiday weekend. Last year, 43 million people traveled, and the lowest point was during the financial crisis in 2009, when just 31 million traveled.

"I think Memorial Day is going to be the future litmus test for human behavior," said Tran. He said if people who have been at home go out and take part in activities, they may feel emboldened to go out more, if they are still healthy two weeks later, the period of incubation.

"There's improvement but over the past 10 days, 15 days, we've really flatlined. it's really societal behavior, not state level policies that are driving gasoline demand. After many of these states opened up, you go out for dinner that first weekend but you don't need to go out for dinner four nights in a week," he said.Commuting to and from work had accounted for as much as 28% of gasoline demand prior to the shutdowns.

Gasoline prices have been rising as more drivers leave their homes. The average price at the pump was $1.90 per gallon of unleaded nationally, up from $1.81 per gallon a month ago, according to AAA. AAA said gasoline hasn't been this cheap on Memorial Day since 2003.

Gasoline futures were nearly 2% higher Thursday, as oil rallied.

In Wednesday trading, gasoline futures surged early with oil prices. Traders have also been talking about how Apple mobility data this week showed a big jump in the U.S., back to just 5% under the baseline from before the shutdowns. It had been down as much as 60%. Apple data is based on the use of its maps.

But then gasoline futures plunged when government data showed the drop in demand for gasoline last week and an unexpected rise in supplies of 2.8 million barrels. RBOB futures erased all early gains and then traded lower on the day, ending down0.1% lower at $1.0438 a gallon.

Tom Kloza, head of global energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service, said the government data matches what he is seeing in terms of demand at the retail stations his service monitors. But the week earlier surge over 7 million barrels a day may have been overstated and included some numbers that should have been categorized differently.

He said demand is improving but the pace has slowed, and that demand is now down about 30% from pre-shutdown levels. "It was pretty quick to go from [down] 50% to 35%. ... I just don't think we're going to get the numbers we've become accustomed to," he said. "There's a lot of excitement about how the economy is kicking open and people are going to be traveling around more because of avoidance of air travel and mass transit. There's too many people out of jobs, and [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin said we haven't seen the peak in terms of job losses."

John Kilduff, partner with Again Capital, said he saw the same when he looked deeper into the Apple data, which showed a weekend spike in activity in some places and then a decline.

"I think there was pent up demand. People were cooped up and took those drives to nowhere, but as we looked at the mobility you see how it drops off during the week," he said. Kilduff said the jump in government demand data two weeks ago may be reflecting the same thing, a spike from pent up demand as drivers finally left their homes.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said he's been seeing a gradual national pickup in retail sales every week since early April. He said drivers often fill up on Fridays, but the jump last week was big at 11.8%.

"So far, this week through the first three days, national demand is up 3.3%," De Haan said. But he said demand was up 6.2% Sunday from the previous week, then up just 1.6% on Monday.

"We're still running about 30% off normal," said De Haan. He said there are big differences between the states. In New Jersey, which has just opened up parks and beaches, gasoline demand last Friday rose 15.5%. In Pennsylvania, demand was up 24%. In Georgia, which began to reopen in late April, saw a jump of 16.7%, but Texas, which was reopened then, saw a drop in demand of 0.7%. Demand in Florida last Friday was only up 1.8% over the week earlier, and California was up 0.6%.

Tran said traffic congestion showed something similar in Texas. Activity there surged initially when the state reopened but has not kept up the pace.

Source: RBC

He said longer term, the U.S. may imitate some of the behavior in China, as it reopened. "Cleary China has rounded the corner," he said. In China, traffic congestion has risen in 12 of the 20 cities he monitors to levels above pre-virus shutdowns, as people appear to be abandoning public transportation.

"We're headed in a trajectory with the reopening of the economy," Tran added. "People are going to drive more as we go deeper into the summer. I think given a lot of work-at-home policies are going to remain in place."

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As summer driving season kicks off, it's unclear just how many people will take to the road - CNBC

Human Behavior

How the humanities can be part of the front-line response to the pandemic (opinion) – Inside Higher Ed

In times of crisis, when we face complex challenges like global pandemics, we need a collaborative response that transcends disciplinary boundaries and offers novel approaches to vexing problems. In the current moment, biologists, engineers and others in fields with established pipelines for translational research have sprung into action, working together to create life-saving diagnostics and therapeutics to help with the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet it isnt always so obvious how scholars in the humanities can contribute to the front-line response.

But Ive seen firsthand the valuable role that the humanities can play in public health. More than a decade after finishing my Ph.D. in American studies, I went back to school to pursue a master of public health degree. I was motivated by something I had observed through my own research: a huge gap between public health as an applied practice and public health as an object of historical and theoretical work in the humanities. Public health fieldworkers, for the most part, werent reading humanities research, and humanities scholars werent focused on the current demands of health communication. As a result, neither side was benefiting from the expertise of the other, and common causes were going unrecognized.

But something unexpected happened during my training. When I took the required epidemiology course, all of the students had to select and give presentations on a book that provided historical context for an important disease outbreak of the past. The professors explained that data without context is meaningless, and therefore, as students of epidemiology, we must learn how to construct meaningful narratives that link human behavior to data about disease. The list of books we could choose was full of humanities scholarship, including my own first book, much to my surprise. The professors did not know in advance that the author would be in the class, and I certainly had not written the book as an epidemiology textbook, or even as a history of a specific disease. Full disclosure: no one picked my book for their presentation. But the incident still convinced me that the connection between the humanities and public health was real. In this case, humanities scholarship was literally part of public health training.

That example points to one of the ways that humanities scholars can contribute to the current pandemic: by engaging in long-term, big-picture research that brings humanities questions to bear on public health. This kind of work provides critical historical and cultural context and can broaden the perspectives of public health and medical trainees.

A current open-source coronavirus syllabus contains a substantial bibliography of resources from the humanities and interpretive social sciences, demonstrating the relevant work that already exists in these fields. The list includes literary analysis of the stories that communities and governments tell in epidemics, explaining why their narrative form matters. It includes research showing how and why panics about contagion infect financial markets, as well as global health histories that illuminate the role of racism and xenophobia in making different parts of the world seem to be more or less vulnerable to outbreaks of infectious disease.

This kind of work is familiar to scholars in the humanities -- it is what many of us already do, and it can help improve our collective preparedness for the inevitable pandemics of the future. For public health officials who are out on the front lines telling governments and citizens what to do, this kind of research is invaluable, but it needs to be more readily accessible. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx cannot read a 200-page book before their next press briefing; they need concise, concrete guidance that is available right now.

Needed: Translational Humanities

This brings us to a second way that the humanities can be part of a pandemic response: through front-line, immediate translational work. The current outbreak has revealed some alarming weaknesses in our public health infrastructure, and we desperately need research to develop fast, cheap field test kits, ventilators and vaccines. But research in the medical humanities has long shown that health cannot be attained and illness cannot be vanquished through biomedical or technical interventions alone. This pandemic has made the human fragility of our response infrastructure abundantly clear, and we need to understand how our decisions about whose life matters will shape the future to come. Vaccines wont help if huge sections of the population believe they are part of a government or corporate conspiracy. Ventilators wont save the lives of patients who are unable to access health care due to systemic racism. We need translational humanities now to complete our technological and biomedical response.

What role can the humanities play in addressing such issues right now? Scholars in Asian American studies can identify and document xenophobia, and they can disseminate those findings in real time to legal advocates. Media scholars can draw on their knowledge of contagion films to alert health organizations to harmful visual iconographies and suggest alternatives. Literary scholars can identify how narratives are being used to spread misinformation, and they can advise health communicators how to create compelling counternarratives to challenge the fictions of conspiracy theorists. Creative writers can draw on their narrative expertise to craft compelling stories that help us imagine a path forward and the steps we could take to get there -- a science fiction prototyping for pandemic response.

Similarly, researchers in African American studies can bring their knowledge of community-based resistance and survival to the attention of city governments so as to intervene in racially discriminatory approaches to testing and referral for care. Artists can respond to the United Nations call for creatives to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Historians of medicine can distill their findings to inform public health practice, as participants in the World Health Organizations Global Health Histories translational seminars have done since 2004. The government of Germany has recognized the value of humanities' contributions to the pandemic, enlisting philosophers, historians, theologians and jurists to provide guidance during and after the crisis.

If humanities scholars want to be part of the response to the pandemic, we must also consider the needs of the front-line workers who could benefit from our research. This may require stylistic adaptation. By translating our scholarly work for broader publics, humanities authors can influence debates, right now, about what to do. When the governor of Louisiana formed a Health Equity Task Force in early April to investigate health disparities resulting from COVID-19 in his state, none of the participants were from humanities disciplines. Yet researchers working on the intersections of gender, race and class could have advised state leadership months earlier that women of color would be disproportionately affected by the crisis. Persistent, targeted op-eds and proactive engagement with government could direct policy makers to consider the needs of vulnerable communities at the outset of the next outbreak, not four months into the disaster.

Becoming part of the front-line response may also require expanding the scope of our research projects, as we reimagine the audience for the work. We should be training our students to do the same. Participating in the pandemic response requires robust, sustained, long-term dialogue with intended publics beyond the academy, and most critically, it demands that we incorporate their needs into the formulation of research topics. Humanities-trained scholars have shown the value of clinical engagement with visual art and literature for fostering empathy and tolerance for ambiguity in medical students. But many physicians working on COVID-19 wards feel unprepared for the human toll of so much suffering and uncertainty. Humanities researchers should reframe their interventions based on the accounts of health-care workers during this pandemic. Moreover, this effort should be extended to address other hard-hit workplaces, such as nursing homes, meatpacking plants and prisons. This shift in orientation may be the hardest but also the most impactful one we can make. Being of service does not require being subservient, but it does demand a realignment of priorities.

This effort must extend into our classrooms, so that undergraduate and graduate students learn to establish transdisciplinary collaborative relationships, frame their research questions and disseminate their findings in forms that will serve the needs of front-line responders when the next crisis breaks. This is true for many fields of humanities research, not just those related to health. The climate crisis poses similar challenges and must be met with adaptations to the ways we train future scholars to imagine the purpose of their research. Now and in the future, the humanities can help save lives, if we bring our work to the front lines, where it belongs.

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How the humanities can be part of the front-line response to the pandemic (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

Human Behavior

Every Volvo model now comes with a 180 km/h speed limit and Care Key – Green Car Congress

Every new Volvo car now comes with a limited top speed of 180 km/h (112 mph), as Volvo Cars delivers on its promise made last year to introduce such a limitation and goes beyond regulation and legislation to help close the remaining gap to zero serious injuries and fatalities in traffic.

Apart from the speed cap, every Volvo car will now also come with a Care Key, which allows Volvo drivers to set additional limitations on the cars top speed, for example before lending their car to other family members or to younger and inexperienced drivers.

Volvo Cars introduces Care Key as standard on all cars for safe car sharing.

Together, the 180 km/h speed limitation and Care Key send a strong signal about the dangers of speeding, underlining Volvo Cars position as a worldwide leader in safety. Both features illustrate how car makers can take active responsibility for striving to achieve zero traffic fatalities by supporting better driver behavior.

We believe that a car maker has a responsibility to help improve traffic safety. Our speed limiting technology, and the dialogue that it initiated, fits that thinking. The speed cap and Care Key help people reflect and realise that speeding is dangerous, while also providing extra peace of mind and supporting better driver behavior.

Malin Ekholm, head of the Volvo Cars Safety Center

The top speed limit has proven to be controversial since it was announced, with some observers questioning the rights of car makers to impose such limitations through available technology.

Volvo Cars says it believes it has an obligation to continue its tradition of being a pioneer in the discussion around the rights and obligations of car makers to take action that can ultimately save lives, even if this means losing potential customers.

Above certain speeds, in-car safety technology and smart infrastructure design are no longer enough to avoid severe injuries and fatalities in the event of an accident. This is why speed limits are in place in most western countries, yet speeding remains ubiquitous and one of the most common reasons for fatalities in traffic. Millions of people still get speeding tickets every year.

Research shows that on average, people have poor understanding of the dangers around speeding. As a result, many people often drive too fast and have poor speed adaption in relation to the traffic situation.

Apart from speeding, intoxication and distraction are two other primary areas of concern for traffic safety and that constitue the remaining gap towards Volvo Cars vision of a future with zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries. It is taking action to address all three elements of human behavior in its safety work, with more features to be introduced in future cars.

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Every Volvo model now comes with a 180 km/h speed limit and Care Key - Green Car Congress

Human Behavior

COVID-19 and mixed population movements: emerging dynamics, risks and opportunities – A UNHCR/IOM discussion paper – World – ReliefWeb

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the different measures States have taken to contain and respond to it, have the potential to shape human behavior at the individual, family or community level, and to impact the ways in which our societies function, in unprecedented and far-reaching ways. This paper explores the implications for human mobility drawing on the trends that IOM and UNHCR are already observing in our field operations, as well as data in the public domain. The focus is on the irregular flows of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers linking Africa and Europe, but the paper also notes some emerging trends in relation to population flows towards Europe from south-west Asia and the Middle East.

The purpose is to take stock of what we are already observing, and what we anticipate developing as the COVID-19 crisis evolves and hopefully subsides in countries of origin, countries hosting large refugee and migrant populations, countries of transit and countries of destination noting that in many cases, these categories overlap and change over time. In doing so, the paper seeks to shed light on how the COVID-19 crisis is interacting with the complex and fluid dynamics shaping mixed population movements, and how these might evolve.

What matters, of course, is what should be our collective response. As the two organizations dealing with population flows, we want to ensure that the potential impact of the crisis on refugee flows and human mobility is understood and factored into wider responses especially those addressing its socio-economic consequences through bilateral and multilateral recovery instruments and development cooperation. We want to draw attention to the risks and opportunities that are emerging, and the potential implications if these are overlooked.

Our aim is to provoke dialogue and early action. What key considerations should help shape responses by States, the African Union, the European Union, other regional entities, civil societies and other stakeholders? Can they find ways of leveraging existing Europe-Africa cooperation frameworks, and their interface with the two Global Compacts, to cope with the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on human mobility? And can governments steer away from stand-alone, introverted responses, and find ways of engaging based on solidarity and partnership, which address the broader drivers of population flows?

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COVID-19 and mixed population movements: emerging dynamics, risks and opportunities - A UNHCR/IOM discussion paper - World - ReliefWeb

Human Behavior

Pac-Man at 40: The eating icon that changed gaming history – kslnewsradio.com

(CNN) When Pac-Man debuted in Tokyo 40 years ago, no one could have predicted it would become the most successful arcade game of all time.

Though video games were a relatively new medium, the recipe for success at the time was already well-established: People wanted to shoot things.

But the creator of Pac-Man, a young game designer named Toru Iwatani, wanted to try something completely different.

When I started drafting up this project in the late 1970s, the arcades were filled with violent games all about killing aliens, said Iwatani, who was working for Japanese games firm Namco at the time. They were gloomy places where only boys went to hang out. What I wanted to do was make arcades into livelier places that women and couples might enjoy visiting, so I thought it best to design a game with women in mind.

Iwatani had little experience. He was just 25, and preferred working on pinball machines, not video games. His first title, 1978s Gee Bee, was essentially a digital version of pinball and wasnt particularly successful. There was little indication that his next project would change video game history forever.

And yet, when the first Pac-Man machine was placed in an arcade in Tokyos bustling Shibuya district on May 22, 1980, it did exactly that.

The game wasnt called Pac-Man back then, but rather PuckMan, which offers a glimpse into its origins. Paku paku taberu is a popular Japanese phrase for gobbling something up, with paku paku mimicking the sound of a snapping mouth and taberu meaning to eat.

I had started off assuming that themes like fashion and romance might be best suited for a female audience, said Iwatani. But then I thought and this may have been presumptuous of me that women also enjoy the act of eating, or taberu in Japanese, and thats how I found myself centered around this keyword and the act of eating as a concept.

While drawing up ideas for a game based around food, Iwatani grabbed a slice of pizza from a box and had an epiphany: The remaining pizza slices formed Pac-Mans shape, and the rest was history (or so the story goes, according to Iwatani).

When the game was imported into the US, however, the name PuckMan was deemed inappropriate. Although the titular character did somewhat resemble a hockey puck, the games American distributor, Midway, feared that kids would scrape off the marquee, changing the P to an F. After its name was changed, the game became an instant hit, with nearly 300,000 units sold worldwide from 1981 to 1987.

Pac-Man pioneered a number of innovations in gameplay and game design. It featured the first power-up the big pill that made ghosts vulnerable and the first cut scenes, the small animated sequences between one level and the next. It was also one of the very first games in the maze genre.

But most importantly, it had a defined main character, which was unheard of at the time according to Chris Melissinos, a video game historian and curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museums 2012 exhibition The Art of Video Games.

Here comes this game thats brightly colored and centered around a character that really doesnt have a gender, he said. And all of a sudden, we found a mascot the first character in video games that existed not just in the artwork, but in the game itself.

We started to see women coming into arcades, multiple generations playing in the same space. For the first time we had a game that was not about aggression, so it fundamentally changed the type of games that designers felt that they could create.

To honor its role as a pillar in the history of video games, Pac-Man was among the titles added to the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 2012.

We were not only enraptured by the masterful use of the flat landscape, but also the authors good intentions when it comes to the human behaviors that video games can engender and play with, said Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at MoMA. Toru Iwatani wanted to develop a nonviolent game for teenage couples, not only for boys. In creating Pac-Mans nemeses (colorful ghosts), Iwatani opted for cuteness over scariness.

The appeal of Pac-Man lies, perhaps, in its simplicity. Unusually, the game doesnt require players to press any buttons at all (except to start a one-player or two-player game), and the control system instead uses a single joystick. However, that doesnt mean that Pac-Man is an easy game: It is, in fact, fiendishly difficult in a way that only classic arcade games designed to gobble up quarters can be.

Thats why it took nearly 20 years for anyone to complete a perfect game of Pac-Man finishing with no lives lost and the maximum number of points from each level.

It took between five to six hours, said Billy Mitchell, who became the first person to achieve a perfect game in 1999, and still one of only a handful in the world to ever do so. The hardest part is to sit there and continually remain focused, not allowing distractions. You have a system down to play. If you go off of your system for even a second, it creates total chaos on the board.

Mitchell agrees that simplicity underpins the games enduring success. No matter how old you are or when you last played, everybody understands what Pac-Man is. Also, if youre watching from behind somebody, you can understand the drama thats unfolding.

Mitchells perfect game saw him reaching level 256 and scoring 3,333,360 points. At that stage, the game runs out of memory and can no longer draw a complete board, so half the screen was garbled, making it impossible to progress further. Doubting anyone would ever go that far, Iwatani and his team never even programmed a celebratory ending.

He did, however, spend months programming the ghosts behavior. Named Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, they each have a personality determining their strategy.

We introduced an AI-like algorithm that sent the ghosts to surround Pac-Man from all sides, Iwatani said. Some other touches we added (included) restarting from a slightly easier difficulty after the player slips up and gets caught, or occasionally sending the pursuing ghosts off course, back to their positions to give the player some room to breathe. We had all sorts of tweaks to make sure we werent simply stressing the player out.

The inspiration for the ghosts appearance came from a Japanese manga called Little Ghost Q-Taro, which Iwatani read as a child, as well as the American cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost.

The relationship between Pac-Man and the ghosts is one thats meant to pit them against each other but only in a very superficial sort of way, that stirs up no real hatred, Iwatani said. Its a relationship influenced by the ideas of the Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Pac-Man spawned countless sequels, the most popular of which was Ms. Pac-Man. It also paved the way for narrative-based titles such as Donkey Kong, offering games a way out from the shoot em up stereotype.

Its still tremendously addictive: When Google replaced its logo with a playable version of Pac Man in 2010, it cost the world almost 5 million man-hours and $120 million in lost productivity, a study concluded.

Iwatani last worked on a Pac-Man title in 2007, and he now teaches game design at Tokyo Polytechnic University. He is not too impressed with modern games, and says that in adapting to smartphones and other small screens, the ideas behind them have gotten small too.

When Pac-Man was first released, video games were still something new and unusual for everyone but game fanatics. For many people, I think it ended up being their very first experience with a video game, he said, speaking of the games legacy.

And now today, 40 years later, its still enjoyed by not only women, but men and women, young and old alike, all around the world. If we were to compare it to music, it might be something like a popular song that everyone knows and has heard before.

The-CNN-Wire & 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

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Human Behavior

How experts say the COVID-19 pandemic will affect Utah births, deaths and demographics – KSL.com

SALT LAKE CITY Demographers believe the COVID-19 pandemic will have some noticeable effects on Utahs population makeup.

But they believe that when looking back at Utahs population growth history in 20 years, the pandemic will likely be just a blip on the timeline.

"Human behavior is incredibly unpredictable," said Mike Hollingshaus, a demographer with the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah.

He discussed how COVID-19 might affect Utahs demographic makeup at a Gardner institute panel May 13. Four others joined Hollingshaus for the discussion: Gardner institute director Natalie Gochnour, Gardner institute director of demographic research Pamela Perlich, U. associate professor Brian Shiozawa and Gardner institute researcher Mallory Bateman.

The panelists predicted the pandemic will lead to more deaths and fewer births in Utah.

However, Perlich noted that 150 years of data have shown Utah is a state that grows. So while the pandemic will hinder that growth in the short term, she predicted that Utah will lead out and be a "beacon of light" post-pandemic.

"Im sort of this eternal optimist about Utah," she said.

Overall, populations only change in three main ways: through births, deaths and migration, Hollingshaus said.

The pandemic is hindering migration significantly, since many areas have been under stay-at-home orders, and nonessential travel is mostly not recommended, he said.

Births have also been decreasing and deaths are increasing over the past few years, he added.

There were about 14,000 deaths in Utah in 2010 and that increased to about 18,000 last year. Demographers expect that to increase as the Baby Boomer generation continues to age, but deaths could decrease after that, Hollingshaus said.

The pandemic is creating more deaths directly from COVID-19.

It also creates deaths indirectly, since people who need health care for other reasons arent able to get it in pandemic times due to resources being allocated elsewhere, Hollingshaus added.

Additionally, people might not seek health care out of fear that by doing so they might get exposed to the disease, he said. Deaths of despair, such as deaths from suicide, may also increase due to the stressful health and economic conditions created by COVID-19.

Hollingshaus said people should be mindful of taking care of their friends and neighbors to counteract the increased likelihood of deaths.

"Each of these deaths is a person," he said.

The mortality rate is currently about 1% in Utah, which puts the state in the top five for lowest mortality rates, according to Shiozawa, who is a medical doctor, former Republican Utah state senator and regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Thats about a sixth of the national average for COVID-19 mortality rates, Shiozawa said. However, he predicted that the state may see that rate go up, especially as social distancing restrictions are gradually loosened.

"Were going to see more deaths just because of the number of patients who have the infection," Shiozawa said.

In 2019, there were about 47,000 births in Utah, but that number has been going down for the past several years.

Hollingshaus doubts that there will be a large spike in births due to the pandemic. Since many couples are holed up, sheltering in place in their homes, some have suggested that the pandemic could lead to more conceptions.

After the northeast blackout of 2003, in which power was out in some parts of New York City and Toronto for two days, some suggested the same phenomenon was taking place. But that turned out to be a myth, and didnt really happen, Hollingshaus added.

Nothing about the pandemic suggests that will take place, he said. Highly effective contraception is readily available. There is also a lowered social stigma around postponing having children to later in life, he said.

"Its much more widely accepted, even in Utah," Hollingshaus added.

People also might still be wary of going to the hospital and being exposed to COVID-19 patients when their baby comes, he said.

Uncertain economic conditions created by the pandemic also may deter people from having children, the panelists said. Even outside of pandemic times, its more expensive to provide things for children, such as housing, child care and food, than it was for previous generations, Hollingshaus pointed out.

However, Utah has a diverse economy, a proactive education system and good health care institutions, Shiozawa said.

He predicts that Utah will recover from the pandemic and come out strong on the other side.

"It will affect us, and it will have interesting downstream effects as we look forward," Shiozawa said. "I think we can be very optimistic."

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Human Behavior

Commentary: CDC is a national treasure; it must be reformed – The Daily Herald

By Saad B. Omer / Special To The Washington Post

As the Covid-19 pandemic ravages communities, the federal agency responsible for outbreak control, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is conspicuously absent from leading the U.S. response. Theres now a cottage industry of plans for opening up America in the midst of the pandemic. But any plan that will keep us safe in the long run will have to include reforming the CDC.

The men and women at the CDC are some of the most well-trained and dedicated civil servants in the country. But even those of us who have been cheerleaders for the CDCs role in keeping America and the world safe recognize the need for fixing this venerable institution.

It is reasonable to ask why the CDC was unable to quickly develop and scale up testing for SARS-CoV-2. Why was there no backup plan? How come SARS-CoV-2 circulation in many parts of the United States remained undetected by the CDCs early warning systems for at least several weeks after January? Why did the CDC not take the lead in developing, or at least systematically collating, projection models for the pandemics spread, which would have decreased confusion among decision-makers and the public?

If we want to avoid asking similar questions again the next time a new virus appears, the CDC needs some changes.

Over the years, there has been a substantial expansion in the types of activities the CDC is involved with. The federal agency whose original name was the Communicable Disease Center now deals with issues ranging from birth defects to injury prevention. Critics have charged that this expanded focus has resulted in dilution of the CDCs outbreak response mission. The CDC should not ignore other health issues such as obesity and noncommunicable diseases. But it cannot afford to lose focus as the nations insurance policy against infectious disease threats.

Reform efforts should focus on increasing CDCs infectious disease laboratory capacity and enhancing its expertise in scaling-up testing during public health emergencies. One of the most effective ways to get ahead of outbreaks is to have a highly sensitive epidemiological surveillance system. CDC currently maintains several surveillance systems, but they were of limited utility as early warning systems for Covid-19. CDC will have to reassess the data it acquires, how fast these data get transmitted and what analytical tools it uses to detect signals. CDC will also have to modernize the types of data it routinely uses. For example, rapidly sequencing and analyzing genomes of circulating viruses can provide important information, such as where the virus was imported from. To better prepare for fast-spreading outbreaks, CDC will have to expand the use of genomic epidemiology and other modern tools for surveillance.

The CDC also badly needs more money, and Congress has to change the way it funds the agency. Public health investments yield very high returns: For every dollar spent on prevention, there is a five times return on investment within five years. Despite this, Congress has tried to fund public health on the cheap. As a result, the CDC has been chronically underresourced. For example, CDCs Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program that supports states and local areas in their preparations for pandemics and other emergencies has had its funding shrunk from $940 million in 2002 to $675 million in 2020. PHEP funds can be used to develop laboratory and contact tracing capacity; which could have come in handy in this pandemic.

CDCs programs are micromanaged by Congress through detailed line-item budgeting, which means lawmakers and their aides have undue influence over CDC priorities. A stroll through the CDC campus can be illustrative: You arrive at the (Rep. Edward R.) Roybal campus to check in at the (Sen.) Tom Harkin communication center to walk to the (Sen.) Arlen Specter Emergency Operations Center. The instinct to appease political leadership was criticized by the National Academy of Sciences during another infectious disease emergency: the smallpox bioterrorism threat in 2005. A nimble, evidence-driven CDC would require flexibility in resource allocation based on scientific acumen and experience of public health professionals, rather than ideological leanings of vested interests.

The Epidemiological Intelligence Service (EIS), CDCs flagship training program for its staff, needs to be modernized. This postdoctoral program trains CDC scientists in epidemiologic field work through a combination of classroom training and experiential learning. Career CDC leaders usually come from this cadre of staff; it is rare for a non-EIS trained CDC staff to rise to the senior echelons.

EIS officers are trained in conventional methods for investigating and responding to outbreaks, such as fast-paced studies that compare exposures among those with illness labeled as cases and those without disease labeled as controls.

But the science of disease control has evolved substantially and now includes tools such as advanced mathematical modeling, genomic epidemiology, and high-end laboratory methods. CDC does employ scientists with expertise in these and other emerging subfields. These skills are increasingly so seminal to modern disease control approaches, though, that they should be a major part of the core EIS training requirements. Moreover, EIS officers should be well-versed in the science of behavioral interventions; designing a smart social-distancing strategy is as much about human behavior as it is about biological characteristics of the virus.

Just over a year ago in a U.S. Senate committee hearing, I was asked about the value of the CDC. Without hesitation, I described the CDC as a national treasure. I continue to believe this. And it is precisely because I have such faith in the abilities of the men and women of the CDC that I know we must reform this American institution of global significance. We need it to be as excellent as it can be.

Saad B. Omer is director of the Yale Institute for Global Health and a professor at the Yale University schools of medicine and public health.

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Commentary: CDC is a national treasure; it must be reformed - The Daily Herald

Human Behavior

AI and Remote Monitoring Technologies Play a Critical Role in Tackling Pandemics like the COVID 19 – Express Computer

Authored by Mr. Vijai Shankar Raja, Founder of HELYXON

In December 2019, Canada-based Artificial Intelligence backed platform BlueDot spotted a cluster of pneumonia-like illnesses spreading in Wuhan, China. Scanning health data from multiple sources, the platform was able to identify the contagion, warning its clients about an impending global outbreak. BluDots prediction came much before WHO officially warned the world about the novel coronavirus threat. AI-based data analytics andpredictive modellingtechniques give an in-depth insight into the spread of diseases and helps forecast future outbreaks in time to be able to prevent them. This is just one example of how the use of Artificial Intelligence is helping the human race identify, tackle and manage such diseases. To be fair, the world is not new to pandemics. In fact, over the past 10 years a series of such outbreaks have jolted the world be it SARS, Ebola, Nipah or COVID 19 the latest and the most devastating of zoonotic diseases to have hit the globe. While the world is still grossly under-prepared to deal with such pandemics, new age digital and Artificial Intelligence backed technology using biosensors and remote monitoring is offering remarkable new ways to tackle such health crisis.

Much like other fields, AI has also boosted healthcare with intelligent machines that can emulate human behavior, offer greater precision and can analyze loads of scattered data and make sense of it. According to a market research, the global artificial intelligence in healthcare market is expected to reach USD 31.3 billion by 2025[1]. Some factors fuelling this surge include increasing adoption of precision medicine, use of big data in healthcare and co-opting of cost cutting technologies in healthcare.

Speeding diagnosis and flattening the disease curve

With faster diagnosis critical to containing the disease spread and flattening the curve, Artificial Intelligence backed interventions are emerging key solutions in the global fight against COVID 19. A number of new AI-based inventions are helping the medical fraternity improve its diagnosis capability. Researchers in China have claimed to have successfully used AI to diagnose COVID 19 from CT Scans of lungs, which is a much faster diagnostic solution that the sputum test currently being used. Another set of researchers in the US and UK have developed an AI model that can predict whether someone is likely to have COVID-19 based on their symptoms. According to the researchers this may provide help for populations where access to testing is limited[2].

Similarly, a team of biotechnology students and a professor from Mumbai has claimed to have developed an AI tool to test COVID-19 through voice-based diagnosis using a smartphone[3].

Clearly, AI based tools offer the new age solution to diagnose, tackle and address such pandemics in the future.

Mass screening of patients

Experience has shown that countries that were successful in widening their testing net were the ones that fared better in the fight against COVID 19. A wider testing net allows access to more accurate information about disease penetration and Spread. This in turn allows for better informed policy decisions. Screening of people in public places, offices, hospitals or public transport systems such as airports, railway stations etc is another area that needs to be taken seriously. Accurate screening can allow authorities to better curtail entry of suspected people ad contain the disease spread. However, thermally screening thousands of people every day at such joints is an uphill difficult task and also raises the threat of a large crowd gathering in waiting queues to be screened. AI-based mass screening tehnology can be an effective answer to this. In fact, Baidu, a Chinese multinational has already built AI-based solutions to effectively screen large populations and detect a change in their body temperature while they are on the move. This system can examine about 200 people per minute without disrupting the flow of people. Such technologies are ideal to be implemented in crowded areas, hospitals, railway stations, airports, etc to quickly identify suspected patients and quarantine them.

In Israel, a health insurance providing organization is using AI technology to run a data screening on its members to identify those who are most at risk of severe covid-19 complications. This tool draws upon data such as age, BMI, existing health conditions and previous history of hospital admissions to spot at-risk individuals and fast track their diagnosis.

Effective monitoring of patients

Another critical usage of AI technology is in improving treatment outcomes and installing better patient monitoring mechanisms. COVID 19 patients, particularly those deemed high risk, need constant monitoring of health parameters. However, with hospitals inundated with patients, manual monitoring of patients is not easy. AI based tools offer a valuable solution to automate monitoring of patients parameters such as heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, among others. Digital solutions such as the ones created by Helyxon in collaboration with IIT Madras are helping hospitals across the world institute better patient monitoring mechanisms. Not just in hospitals, these digital systems offer an effective way to monitor patients quarantined at home as well. Helyxons devices use biosensors and keep a track of the bodys vital parameters. The devices keep a track of the spikes and aberrations and whenever an anomaly is observed a system-generated call alert is made to the user while an automatic escalation to the local provider is done. Interestingly, the devices are also equipped with Geo-fencing tracking alerts to keep a track of patients movements and ensure isolated patients do not violate the provisions of quarantine.

Use of AI platforms, biosensor devices and remote monitoring technologies is helping create better disease management protocols by improving diagnosis, screening and monitoring drives. The use of such technology has also made it easier for researchers to find relevant data and studies to acquire new insights or approaches to address the COVID-19 outbreak.

If you have an interesting article / experience / case study to share, please get in touch with us at [emailprotected]

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AI and Remote Monitoring Technologies Play a Critical Role in Tackling Pandemics like the COVID 19 - Express Computer

Human Behavior

How the Coronavirus Has Changed Animals’ Landscape of Fear – Scientific American

A family of lions takes a midday nap in the middle of a road in South Africas Kruger National Park. On a nearby golf course, a lioness sips water from a pond while spotted hyenas and African wild dogs play wrestle on the grass. Halfway around the world, a herd of wild goats feasts on a Welsh towns manicured lawns and hedges. And in California, black bears wander through empty campgrounds. With so many humans cooped up at home during the coronavirus pandemic, these animals and others have been adjusting to a world relatively free of peopleand the fear they engender.

Animals that are afraid of predators rely on a sort of mental map of their habitats. They use this map to stick near safer areas and avoid riskier ones, a phenomenon scientists call the landscape of fear. All predators influence their prey, but we humans are unique in our extensive ability to shape that landscape because we are such prolific killersand because we slay animals at all levels of the food web. Human hunters can use extremely efficient lethal technologies. We can collaborate with dogs to pursue prey. And we routinely kill animals without even trying to, such as by hitting them with our cars. So it makes sense that our disappearance from roads, golf courses and other spaces we usually dominate is letting animals relax to a very noticeable extent. This is certainly all consistent with the landscape of fear, says Liana Zanette, a biologist at Western University in Ontario who studies the topic. How animals react while humans are holed upand then again as we emergeis something of an unintentional experiment that could offer new details about the pervasive ways a wariness of humans shapes the natural world.

The bodies of fearful animals flood with stress hormones, which fuel quick responses. If such creatures see, smell or hear a predator nearby, they might drop whatever they are doing to run away and hide, gear up for a fight or freeze so their movements do not give them away. Even if there is no sign of an immediate threat, anxious animals may search for food less in order to have more time to monitor their surroundings for potential danger.

Whereas some fears are innatesuch as humans fear of spiders or snakes or a ground squirrels fear of foxesothers are learned, either through direct experience or observing others. Most animals have good reason to be terrified of people: a 2015 analysis reported that recreational and commercial hunters fell their prey at rates up to 14 times higher than those of nonhuman predators. Human prey even include apex predators such as cougars, which hunters kill around nine times more frequently than nonhuman predators do. Some biologists have begun to call our species superpredators.

Research conducted by Zanette and others shows how the special dread of humans changes the behaviors of many types of animals. In a 2016 experiment, Zanette found that European badgers were more fearful of people than they were of dogs and bears. Though badgers initially hid in their burrows when loudspeakers broadcast the sounds of bears or dogs, their need for food eventually spurred them to leave safety. But when they heard the sounds of people, the badgers never emergedthey would not even poke their head out.

Large, intimidating carnivores fear us as well. A 2017 investigation by Zanette found human conversations played over loudspeakers rattled cougars in northern California so much that they abandoned their kills before getting enough to eat. They ate about half as much just because they thought people were around, she says. Numerous studies have shown that even when animals seem tolerant of people, they invariably wind up altering their day-to-day lives to cope with stresses we create: a 2018 paper, for example, revealed that sea lions and fur seals spent less time resting on the beach when gawking tourists got too close or too loud.

Now that the world has become at least a little bit less terrifying for wildlife, it is reasonable to expect that at least some animals would react in noticeable ways. Im not surprised at all, says Kaitlyn Gaynor, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We have seen studies that animals move less [and] become more nocturnal around people and adjust their behavior to avoid us. So it is definitely possible that these patterns are reversing with humans stuck at home during the current pandemic.

Some exceptions may be animals dwelling in urban and suburban areas, Gaynor says. With more people entering local parks and natural areas to get out of the housein the absence of options such as restaurants and sports venuesthese animals may be even more stressed than they were before.

When COVID-19 lets up, and people once again venture from their homes more regularly, Gaynor expects things to return to some version of normal, with animals once again going well out of their way to avoid us. But the transition probably will not be like flipping a light switch. It wont necessarily happen immediatelyand not necessarily uniformly, she says. For example, creatures that once steered clear of roadways might take time to resume their avoidance, and in the meantime, speeding cars may hit more of them than usual. When wild animals lose their fear of people is generally when they get into trouble. Until they regain it, humans may have to to accept some inconveniences to avoid harming them in unexpected places. That response may mean driving more slowly or keeping pets on short leashes. We might need to renegotiate our relationship with wildlife, Gaynor says.

She and Zanette also note that the current situation has had interesting repercussions for field research into such animal behaviors. On one hand, scientists can follow the movements of some creatures using GPS collars and motion-activated cameras to see what they do when humans are out of sightand then as we return. It has turned into an accidental experiment, Gaynor says.

But on the other hand, some work has been put on pause. Ironically, Zanette had earlier planned to travel to Kruger National Park and surrounding areas this summer to see if mammals such as impalas and kudu were more wary of human noise when they were in areas that allowed hunting, compared with the parkwhere they cannot be hunted but may have to contend with the constant presence of tourists. The Skukuza Golf Club, where large carnivores were recently filmed enjoying the sunshine, was to be one of her field sites. Its incredibly frustrating, she says. This is the perfect time to go and study these superpredator questions weve been interested in.

Despite those frustrations and the temporary nature of the current respite for wild animals, Gaynor sees the anecdotes of creatures out and about as reasons to remain sanguine about wildlife conservation. It is a testament to the fact that animals are often incredibly resilient and flexible, she says. It gives me hope that they can bounce back from human disturbance.

Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here. And read coverage from our international network of magazines here.

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How the Coronavirus Has Changed Animals' Landscape of Fear - Scientific American

Human Behavior

This Tokyo pub has a machine that sprays customers with disinfectant as they enter – CNN

(CNN) As businesses around the world adopt new practices due to coronavirus, one Japanese pub is taking a novel approach to customer safety.Visitors to Kichiri Shinjuku, a traditional Japanese-style pub known as an "izakaya," are sprayed with a fine mist of disinfectant before they are allowed to enter.

"We want customers to feel safe when they come inside," spokeswoman Rieko Matsunaga told CNN. "This is geared to promote social distancing and prevent infections."

Upon arrival at the pub in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, customers are greeted by a hostess on a monitor, who tells them to wash their hands and take their temperature with a thermometer.

Next, they walk into what looks like an airport security scanner, where they are sprayed with a mist of chlorine-based disinfectant for 30 seconds.

Customers then pick up a map that shows them where to sit, and scan a QR code to bring up a menu on their phone, from which they can place their order. Diners sit separated by clear acrylic screens.

The pub is owned by Kichiro & Co., which has 103 locations in Japan. The company installed the machine at its Shinjuku branch on May 14, and a Kichiri pub in Osaka got its own machine on May 19.

While Matsunaga cited guidance from the Japanese Ministry of Health in the company's decision to use hypochlorous acid water to spray customers, the World Health Organization (WHO) says spraying people with disinfectant is a really bad idea.

"Spraying disinfectants can result in risks to the eyes, respiratory or skin irritation and the resulting health effects," the WHO said in an updated advisory published Saturday.

"Spraying or fogging of certain chemicals, such as formaldehyde, chlorine-based agents or quaternary ammonium compounds, is not recommended due to adverse health effects on workers in facilities where these methods have been utilized."

Japan continues to battle the pandemic and has implemented what it calls a "soft lockdown."

On May 6, the government extended the country's state of emergency until the end of the month, while introducing controversial "new social behavior guidelines."

An expert panel told the population to permanently adopt measures such as wearing face masks and keeping two meters between people.

Other advice included telling restaurant customers to sit outdoors, side-by-side while keeping conversation to a minimum. This left people wondering why Japan's advice differed from many other countries'.

"I'm dumbfounded ... There are no other experts urging this kind of advice in the world -- just experts in Japan. It's like they studied the virus, but not human behavior. What's scarier than the virus is ignorant people giving society guidance on how to tackle it," said one Twitter user.

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This Tokyo pub has a machine that sprays customers with disinfectant as they enter - CNN