Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Nothing Could Stop People From Moving to Oregon. A Pandemic Might. – Willamette Week

WWpresents "Distant Voices," a daily video interview for the era of social distancing. Our reporters are asking Portlanders what they're doing during quarantine.

Josh Lehner has the unenviable job of giving Oregon's governor bad news.

Last week, Lehner, an economist with the state, delivered the state's quarterly forecast, predicting how much revenue from taxes and other sources Oregon state government will have to spend.

Lehner forecasts state revenue will be down more than $2.5 billion for the next biennium (the state operates on a two-year budget), which is about 11 percent of the state's general fund budget.

And his forecast went out 10 years, predicting there would be 34,000 fewer Oregonians because of the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic.

While Lerner and the Office of Economic Analysis are number crunchers, he also has to predict human behavior, which drives revenue. Fewer people eating outplus less liquor and lottery salesequals less taxes. Fewer people moving to Oregon because of lack of opportunity equals less taxes. More consumption of cannabis equals more taxes.

In this conversation with WW editor Mark Zusman, Lerner offers his look into the crystal ball.

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Nothing Could Stop People From Moving to Oregon. A Pandemic Might. - Willamette Week

Human Behavior

How are zoo animals handling the coronavirus shutdown? – EarthSky

A Californian sea lion swims behind empty seats in its enclosure at a zoo in Berlin, April 4, 2020. Image via EPA-EFE/ Clemens Bilan/ The Conversation.

By Ellen Williams, Nottingham Trent University and Jessica Rendle, Murdoch University

More than 700 million people visit zoos and aquariums each year worldwide, so human visitors are usually a constant presence for the animals that live there. But the Covid-19 pandemic has forced these places to close to the public, plunging resident animals into an empty silence.

Instead, zoos have been opening virtually during the lockdown, allowing people to see behind the closed doors from the comfort of their living rooms. Chester Zoo in the U.K. hosted an online tour so popular that it broke the internet when it went viral according to one zookeeper, with hundreds of thousands of people worldwide flocking to the zoos Facebook page.

Zoo workers have described how animals are greeting the isolation during Covid-19 closures. One zoo in India reported that animals were loving the quiet spell foxes were frolicking around, the hippopotamus was happily splashing in its pool and even the tigers were enjoying a dip. In other zoos, animals seem to be missing people. Twycross Zoos curator reported primates looking for zoo visitors, for instance.

A worker disinfects Giza Zoo in Egypt, April 12 2020. Image via Khaled Elfiqi/ The Conversation.

Some zoo animals are forgetting all about their previous lives, with garden eels at one Japanese aquarium hiding when staff members approached their enclosure. Workers have asked the public to make video calls to their eels, to try and prevent them from seeing visitors as a threat when the aquarium reopens. Meanwhile, some animals are enjoying the freedom of daily zoo walks, like the penguins at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, which were let out to wander the empty halls and look into the other enclosures.

Is this reprieve from regular visitors healthy for zoo animals? And how will they respond to people suddenly flooding back once zoos reopen? Researchers and animal charities are worried that our pets will develop separation anxiety once their owners return to work. The opposite might happen among zoo animals. Will captive creatures be desperate for the public to return or have they adapted to a slower, quieter life?

When zoos reopen

As zoos that have closed for months reopen their doors, we have an opportunity to study how visitors influence the lives of zoo animals. While we cant predict the future, previous research on how zoo animals have responded to changes in visitor schedules might give us some idea of what to expect.

During the night, zoo animals are used to relative peace and quiet. For many, beyond the odd security warden, there are no visitors. But before Covid-19, some zoos did open their doors outside of normal opening hours, for late-night tours and overnight camps.

During lockdown, zookeepers are the only human presence for many zoo animals. Image via Roman Rios/ The Conversation.

Typically, we study animal behaviors to understand how they may be feeling and try to make judgements about their experiences. From that, we can say that zoo animals have tended to show mixed responses to evening events. A study at a zoo in Germany found that elephants sought comfort from others in their herd during an evening firework display, but they didnt retreat into their indoor enclosures. Researchers at London Zoo noticed no changes in the behavior of lions during sunset safaris, on evenings when the zoo was open for visitors until 10 p.m., compared to their behavior during normal opening hours.

Across the board, changes in the usual routines of zoo animals affect different species in different ways. The quiet caused by vanished visitors might mean more animals performing attention-seeking behaviors to try and interact with visitors more than normal, as keepers have reported chimpanzees doing during lockdown, as they reach out towards workers who would usually feed them by hand. It may also cause them to be overly skittish to human visitors when they return, like the garden eels in Japan.

Amsterdams Artis Zoo has reopened for members only, instituting strict social distancing guidelines. Image via EPA-EFE/ Koen Van Weel/ The Conversation.

This is the longest time many zoo animals will have gone without the public, and zoo staff will have to help them transition back to normal life. Most zoos are planning phased reopenings of animal houses to prevent the sudden changes in noise disturbing the animals.

Some animals, especially those born during the Covid-19 lockdown, will never have experienced life in the public eye. Many up-close animal encounters will have to change, particularly as humans can transmit coronaviruses to great apes in captivity.

On your next visit, be cool, calm and collected. Keepers and other zoo staff will be on hand to guide you, helping enforce social distancing and supporting you on how best to behave around the animals. Your local zoo will need visitors more than ever when they reopen. But remember, zoo animals will be experiencing their own post lockdown fuzz, and, just like you, they may need time to adjust.

Ellen Williams, Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University and Jessica Rendle, Honorary Postdoctoral Associate in Conservation Medicine, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: The Covid-19 pandemic has forced zoos and aquariums to close to the public. How are captive animals coping with the sudden emptiness?

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How are zoo animals handling the coronavirus shutdown? - EarthSky

Human Behavior

Africa, Eid-al-Fitr and the virus – TheCable

This years eid-al-fitr, the Muslim festival marking the end of the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast for 29 or 30 days, in observance of one of the Five Pillars of Islam, was celebrated on Saturday and Sunday May 23/24, but it was a different kind of eid. It was sombre, low key, and completely over-shadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In close to 100 years, there has been no eid like that: the worlds nearly 2 billion Muslims observed the Ramadan under imposed conditions. People were advised to avoid congregational prayers and stay in their homes. On Sunday, many could not observe the traditions of the eid either: the sharing of gifts, visits to family and friends to share goodwill, hugs and handshakes. In countries around the world, persons were advised to shun large gatherings for their own safety. Eid prayers could not be held publicly in Mecca and Medina. The Grand Mosque was noticeably scanty. Earlier, the Saudi Grand Mufti had advised against large congregations.

In Egypt, the usually busy Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo was empty. In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Council, ahead of the Eid-al-Fitri, advised Muslims to pray at home. In Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and Malaysia, congregational prayers were allowed but there was very strict adherence to precautions. In Thailand for example, worshippers who showed up for the Hari Raya, as the eid-al-fitri is otherwise known in that country, Malaysia and in Indonesia had to pass through health officials who checked their temperatures, gave them sanitizing gels, recorded their names and addresses so they can be traced and contacted in the event of a report of community spread of the virus. The people prayed but they kept away from one another. The main thing about COVID-19 is how it has imposed a regimen of observances on human behavior and relationships.

The fact that people are expected to comply or gamble with their lives for failing to do so, is what makes it all so surreal. The mode of compliance varied from one country to the other. The only uniting factor, however, is how on Sunday, the Muslim global community and indeed the entire world was reminded of how so much COVID-19 has disrupted our lives. This sub-text was driven home more poignantly when the New York Times on May 24, decided on a dramatic, all-type concept front page, listing the names and brief descriptions of about 1,000 Americans who had died from COVID-19 related complications. It was the first time in more than 40 years that the New York Times will not have an image on its front page. The published names were compiled from obituary notices in newspapers across the United States by a researcher Alan Delaqueriere and put together by a team led by Ms. Simone Landon, Assistant Editor, Graphics. There was also an inside-page essay by columnist, Dan Barry. For me, this was journalism at another level.

The New York Times went beyond the raw data that is quoted daily by Johns Hopkins University which tracks the incidence of COVID-19 in the United States (over 1.6 million confirmed cases, and over 98, 000 deaths the highest COVID-19 figures in the world!). The newspaper gave names to the statistics and conveyed a sense of the uniqueness of those that died. Whoever reads that list is bound to realize how it is so easy to be alive at one moment, only to end up on a list of corpses in a short moment. The unpredictability of human transitions is what therefore makes it alarming that certain persons knowing how the grim reaper is on rampage, riding the vehicle of a virus, would engage in suicidal and risky behavior.

These were my thoughts as I read the New York Times on the day of the eid-al-fitr, and reflected on the sharp variations in how the eid was celebrated especially in sub-Saharan Africa where religion is a virus of sorts. Whereas North African countries (Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria) where there are high figures of COVID-19 enforced rules of physical distancing, many worshippers South of the Sahara threw caution to the winds, with perhaps the notable exceptions of Ghana and Senegal. In Sudan, before and after the eid, neither the leaders nor the people seemed to have heard of physical distancing. Sudan has the highest number of cases in East Africa with over 100 deaths but nobody seems to care. The people and their leaders certainly did not care during this years eid-al-fitri. Inflation is over 100% in Sudan. Health workers have no access to Personal Protective Equipment. The World Health Organization (WHO) should watch that country closely.

In Tanzania, a country that has been Magufulifized to paraphrase the eminent Kenyan Professor, PLO Lumumba, the leaders pretended to be aware of the need for physical distancing but the worshippers who trooped to mosques in Dodoma and elsewhere in the country could not be bothered. As in Sudan, the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic could be traced to the failure of leadership. President John Magufuli of Tanzania held much promise when he assumed office five years ago, but he has since derailed confirming indeed that his reform agenda is a double-edged sword of progressivism and dictatorship/primitivism. He insists that there has been a reduction in the number of COVID-19 cases in Tanzania, but this is not based on data. Tanzania stopped releasing COVID-19 figures and suspended daily briefings on April 21 because Magufuli is convinced that such briefings cause panic among the populace. He also insists that testing cannot be trusted, having discovered that even fruits and goats have tested positive due to faulty test kits. The Africa Centre for Disease Control and the US Embassy in the country have warned about the extremely high risk that Tanzania constitutes, especially to the neighbouring countries of Kenya, Zambia and Uganda. Healthcare workers in Tanzania cannot even express an opinion because under Magufuli, it is a crime to have independent thoughts. On eid-el-fitri day, Muslims in Tanzania simply followed his lead and ignored the reality of COVID-19.

In not too far away Burundi, the management of COVID-19 is not any better. Burundi is officially a secular state. Muslims constitute a minority, previously thought to be only 1% of the population but now considered to be about 5-8% after the last post-civil war census. The big problem with Burundi in the face of COVID-19 is the total refusal of President Pierre Nkurunziza to come to terms with the fact that the pandemic is real. Last week, the country held a Presidential election, a stage-managed election which was rigged to produce the candidate of the ruling party, the CNDD-FDD as winner with 68.72%. The CNDD-FDDs candidate, Evariste Ndayishimiye was once Chief of Staff to Nkurunziza who wants to retire from office and retain the pompous title of Supreme Guide to Patriotism. The new President will be required to consult the Supreme Guide on matters of national security and unity. Nkurunziza has apparently forgotten what happened to former Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos whose delusion of indispensability eventually led to his humiliation.

I digress slightly. The point I am really trying to make is that in Burundi, not even the countrys Muslim population had any need to worry about COVID-19. Before the eid, the government of Burundi expelled World Health Organization officials from the country on the ground that they had become persona non grata. International election observers and monitors were informed that they would be quarantined if they showed up in the country to observe any election. The international community stayed away.

Now let us switch the lens to Nigeria. Days before the eid-al-fitri 2020, the Nigerian Government on May 4 eased restrictions that had been imposed by the Federal Government on Ogun, Lagos states and the Federal Capital Territory, not for religious reasons, but as part of a phased and gradual process of re-opening the Nigerian space while also addressing the multi-faceted challenges of COVID-19. State governments also began to relax the restriction orders in their states, with the entire country bound to enforce the uniform ban on inter-state travel and the emplacement of a nationwide curfew from 8 pm to 6 am. There were specific regulations and guidelines for restaurants, places of religious worship, human relationships, work place protocols etc. There was a big push-back from ordinary Nigerians who had grown weary of the lockdown, as well as pundits and business owners who felt that the lockdown will not work in Africa but the biggest resistance came from religious leaders especially Pentecostal church leaders who argued from all corners of their mouths about either 5G technology or the damage that the lockdown was doing to the church economy. There were exceptions though: on the mainstream Christian side- the Catholic Church, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and on the Pentecostal side: Pastors Enoch Adeboye, Tunde Bakare, Sam Adeyemi and Paul Adefarasin

If Muslim leaders were opposed to the lockdown, they were quiet with their objections. The Christian leaders were loud and aggressive. One of them even said if government could allow markets to re-open, churches should also be re-opened. However, the fact that Muslim leaders were also not entirely quiet soon became evident as many states in the North began to announce that religious worship was in order, and that mosques and churches could re-open even as COVID-19 figures in Nigeria increased geometrically. In due course, these states: Kano, Bauchi, Taraba, Nasarawa, Gombe, Yobe, Niger, Adamawa, Cross River, Delta lifted the ban on worship centres, with the convenient caveat of course that the rules of physical distancing and (2) attendance relative to building capacity and (3) the threshold of 20 persons per gathering must be respected. All the Governors claimed that they were responding to pressures from religious leaders. The Governor of Kano claimed he was advised by Islamic Scholars. The Council of Ulamas in Kano State insisted that they were not consulted. The Sultan of Sokoto, the Head of the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria and head of the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) issued a statement directing all Muslims in Nigeria to observe the eid prayers at home, because the eid-al-fitri is not fard (that is obligatory). President Muhammadu Buhari also issued a statement saying nobody should visit him to pay eid homage as is customary and that people should pray at home.

But in reality, what Nigeria and many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa are faced with is the threat of an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases post eid-al-fitri. In Kano state which is second on the Nigerian COVID-19 League Table, the guidelines were observed more in the breach. The Kano elite at the prayer grounds hypocritically tried to maintain social distancing but nobody provided minimum care for the ordinary people who risked their lives in the name of religion. In Minna, Niger state, there was reportedly a heavy downpour. People abandoned their masks and rushed into the mosque where they huddled together. The Nation newspaper (Nigeria, May 25) reports that Southern Muslims in Nigeria observed the eid in their homes. In the Northern part of the country, where the Northern Governors Forum most recently announced that the region accounts for 54% of reported cases, and 70% of fresh infections, the prayer grounds were unlocked from Kano to Borno, by the same leaders who had only a few days earlier acknowledged a brewing crisis in their region. Does that make sense?

I have tried to paint the picture above simply to revisit the commendation that Africa has received for beating the worlds expectations with regard to COVID-19 sero-prevalence. The eid celebration is merely a peg. At a recent Africa.Com Webinar Series 6 with the theme: Whats the real story behind Africas COVID-19 figures?, the WHO Regional Director Ms Rebecca Moeti expressed enthusiasm about the fact that whereas WHO expected higher COVID-19 cases in Africa, the numbers have been lower than expected. She praised African countries. Both the WHO DG and the UN Secretary General have also had cause to commend Nigeria. The praise for Africa may be premature. It is not justified by the attitude of many of the leaders and the behaviour of the people. Could the real story in Africa be that not enough testing is being done resulting in gross undercount or that corruption has further mutated COVID-19 into a strain that is yet unknown to the world? Or is the virus un-African? These are the key questions.

Link:
Africa, Eid-al-Fitr and the virus - TheCable

Human Behavior

Psychiatrist: Men drink 4 times more often than women, but it is not inherited – The Times Hub

During a recent press conference, the chief freelance psychiatrist of the Moscow Desdra and Ministry of health of Russia Yevgeny Bryun said that, statistically, men drink alcohol are four times more likely than women. The specialists stressed that there were no signs of hereditary transmission of craving for alcohol in this case.

According to Brune, there are certain peculiarities in the treatment of alcohol dependence and rehabilitation of women. For example, according to him, they first partake of alcohol at the average age of 12-13 years, while the misuse of the first problems with the behavior change begins to occur in 14-16 years. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist stressed that alcoholism is generally not inherited, despite the fact that genetics do may to some extent influence human behavior and risks of acquisition of some dependencies. According to the expert, in Russia today recorded the upward trend in mortality of working age citizens, largely caused by alcohol dependence.

It is noteworthy that shortly before the Moscow Department of health noted an increase in mortality in the first quarter of 2020 in the capital of 3.7% compared to the same period of 2019. The report noted that from January through April in the city died 42 000 people, and among the most common causes of death among the population invariably is part of the abuse of alcohol.

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Psychiatrist: Men drink 4 times more often than women, but it is not inherited - The Times Hub

Human Behavior

Have Pollution Levels Decreased Amid the Coronavirus Lockdown? – Earth911.com

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Does it take a pandemic to reduce pollution? The Earth is vibrating lessbecause of lockdowns, according to geoscientists, andIndias falling levelsof harmful microscopic particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide have given those citizens glimpses of blue skies.

Even though were all running from an infectious disease, the reality seems to be that we might be living on a healthier planet. So, what can a global shutdown teach us about how to change our lifestyle?

It feels like the whole world is in limbo. Everything we used to do is not happening the same way anymore, if its happening at all our commutes, shopping, eating out, traveling. Heavy industries and factories have shut down or significantly decreased their output. Traffic jams have all but disappeared.

Even though our normal behavior is stunted, weve found new ways to live, work, and play. And we still impact the environment, but now were impacting it differently. Are we making good decisions? Is COVID-19 our opportunity to reset? Maybe.

We are in the middle of an unintended experiment when it comes to the environmental impact of air pollution emissions, according to NASA. With so much of the world shut down because of coronavirus restrictions, we have been given an opportunity to really see how air quality is affected when communities and countries are not operating normally.

The air quality footprint around airports, for example, has lightened up less nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde. There is, quite simply, better air quality with less air traffic in the time of COVID-19. Though electric airplanes are still a long time in the future, these details are evidence that can help policymakers improve their understanding of the air we breathe and the necessity for greater intervention when it comes to making changes.

With fewer planes flying through the sky, there are certainly fewer exhaust trails behind them. However, the sharp decline in air travel has impacted meteorologists abilities to accurately forecast the weather.

Commercial aircraft take about 900,000 measurements of air temperature, wind speed, humidity, and direction per day. In the age of coronavirus, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the reports are only around 300,000 measurements a day. NOAA has announced it will conduct a systematic study of the impact of the coronavirus on the climate.

Climate and weather systems are very complex significant changes in these systems are undeniably valuable to researchers. Without the extensive daily reporting, its more difficult to see where the weather may be headed, make predictions, and allow people in danger zones to prepare.

There have been major drops in air pollution in areas hit hardest by COVID-19, according to worldwide satellite images. Millions of people are working from home instead of commuting every day. Millions of people are out of work and no longer have a commute. School buses are off the streets. Work trucks are parked. Roadways are hardly crowded anymore.

Whilelower emissions are real, experts say theyre temporary. This decrease in pollution is amazing, but life will eventually return to normal, and the pollution and greenhouse gases will return too. NASA studies and the like have made it clear humans are a major contributor to the incredible blights on Earth. When our behavior changes, so does our affect on the Earth.

Coronavirus has demanded a new normal, and we can learn from the environmental shifts that are happening around us. Changes in human behavior caused by the pandemic have given scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study how coronavirus and humans impact the environment.

We are trusting that we will one day rebound to our usual way of life, so the question is: What changes have you made to accommodate the coronavirus that helped the planet? What are you doing now that you can continue to do, pandemic or not?

Maybe you can:

Human behavior is a powerful thing. Wearing masks and staying home has saved millions of lives over the past few months and given Earth a reprieve in the process. If we can come together to do that, we can come together to save our planet too.

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Have Pollution Levels Decreased Amid the Coronavirus Lockdown? - Earth911.com

Human Behavior

COVID-19 recovery can benefit biodiversity – Science Magazine

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global crisis. Severe interruptions to international trade and travel are crippling economies and forcing reevaluation of economic, health, and environmental trajectories. Given that COVID-19 has triggered widespread changes in human behavior and reductions in pollution (1, 2), it presents opportunities for further positive change. Lockdowns have spurred households to rethink consumer needs, making now an opportune time to promote sustainable consumer choices that will become more engrained with prolonged exposure (1). How we emerge from the state of lockdowns will drive a new world economy with lasting effects on global biodiversity and supply chains (3, 4).

The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to trigger enormous effects on biodiversity and conservation outcomes. This virus emerged due to wildlife exploitation (5), and the risk of new diseases increases with environmental degradation (6). Past events such as pandemics, wars, and financial crises have also triggered quantifiable environmental changes (7, 8). We can learn from such events to guide effective conservation strategy. National governments and intergovernmental organizations should adopt clear strategies to safeguard both biodiversity and human health throughout the COVID-19 recovery.

Active promotion and implementation of certain strategies could tip the balance in favor of positive biodiversity outcomes. We can reboot economies while protecting humans and nature by redesigning trade networks and supply chains to localize and better support sustainable consumer options. We can also strengthen environmental protections, improve environmental monitoring through better use of automation, and ensure that conservation funding schemes remain active.

Environmental policy has already moved in both directions. Although in some places, environmental protections have weakened (9), in others, governments have banned animal trade (3, 10) and aim to localize supply chains to increase resource security (11). Blanket wildlife trade bans are not the answer (3), but appropriately nuanced strategies that incorporate such measures should be encouraged. As we progress into a postCOVID-19 world, recovery strategies can be optimized to benefit biodiversity conservation and protect human health.

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COVID-19 recovery can benefit biodiversity - Science Magazine

Human Behavior

Should you fly yet? An epidemiologist and an exposure scientist walk you through the decision process – Fairfield Citizen

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Kacey Ernst, University of Arizona and Paloma Beamer, University of Arizona

(THE CONVERSATION) We dont know about you, but were ready to travel. And that typically means flying.

We have been thinking through this issue as moms and as an exposure scientist and infectious disease epidemiologist. While weve decided personally that were not going to fly right now, we will walk you through our thought process on what to consider and how to minimize your risks.

Why the fear of flying?

The primary concern with flying or traveling by bus or train is sitting within six feet of an infected person. Remember: Even asymptomatic people can transmit. Your risk of infection directly corresponds to your dose of exposure, which is determined by your duration of time exposed and the amount of virus-contaminated droplets in the air.

A secondary concern is contact with contaminated surfaces. When an infected person contaminates a shared armrest, airport restroom handle, seat tray or other item, the virus can survive for hours though it degrades over time. If you touch that surface and then touch your mouth or nose, you put yourself at risk of infection.

Before you book, think

While there is no way to make air travel 100% safe, there are ways to make it safer. Its important to think through the particulars for each trip.

One approach to your decision-making is to use what occupational health experts call the hierarchy of controls. This approach does two things. It focuses on strategies to control exposures close to the source. Second, it minimizes how much you have to rely on individual human behavior to control exposure. Its important to remember you may be infectious and everyone around you may also be infectious.

The best way to control exposure is to eliminate the hazard. Since we cannot eliminate the new coronavirus, ask yourself if you can eliminate the trip. Think extra hard if you are older or have preexisting conditions, or if you are going to visit someone in that position.

If you are healthy and those you visit are healthy, think about ways to substitute the hazard. Is it possible to drive? This would allow you to have more control over minimizing your exposures, particularly if the distance is less than a day of travel.

Youre going, now what?

If you choose to fly, check out airlines policies on seating and boarding. Some are minimizing capacity and spacing passengers by not using middle seats and having empty rows. Others are boarding from the back of the plane. Some that were criticized for filling their planes to capacity have announced plans to allow customers to cancel their flights if the flight goes over 70% passenger seating capacity.

Federal and state guidance is changing constantly, so make sure you look up the most recent guidance from government agencies and the airlines and airport you are using for additional advice, and current policies or restrictions.

While this may sound counterintuitive, consider booking multiple, shorter flights. This will decrease the likelihood of having to use the lavatory and the duration of exposure to an infectious person on the plane.

After you book, select a window seat if possible. If you consider the six-foot radius circle around you, having a wall on one side would directly reduce the number of people you are exposed to during the flight in half, not to mention all the people going up and down the aisle.

Also, check out your airline to see their engineering controls that are designed or put into practice to isolate hazards. These include ventilation systems, on-board barriers and electrostatic disinfectant sprays on flights.

When the ventilation system on planes is operating, planes have a very high ratio of outside fresh air to recirculated air about 10 times higher than most commercial buildings. Plus, most planes ventilation systems have HEPA filters. These are at least 99.9% effective at removing particles that are 0.3 microns in diameter and more efficient at removing both smaller and larger particles.

How to be safe from shuttle to seat

From checking in, to going through security to boarding, you will be touching many surfaces. To minimize risk:

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Bring hand wipes to disinfect surfaces such as your seat belt and your personal belongings, like your passport. If you cannot find hand wipes, bring a small washcloth soaked in a bleach solution in a zip bag. This would probably freak TSA out less than your personal spray bottle, and viruses are not likely to grow on a cloth with a bleach solution. But remember: More bleach is not better and can be unsafe. You only need one tablespoon in four cups of water to be effective.

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Bring plastic zip bags for personal items that others may handle, such as your ID. Bring extra bags so you can put these things in a new bag after you get the chance to disinfect them.

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Wash your hands or use hand sanitizer as often as you can. While soap and water is most effective, hand sanitizer is helpful after you wash to get any parts you may have missed.

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Once you get to your window seat, stay put.

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Wear a mask. If you already have an N95 respirator, consider using it but others can also provide protection. We do not recommend purchasing N95 until health care workers have an adequate supply. Technically, it should also be tested to make sure you have a good fit. We do not recommend the use of gloves, as that can lead to a false sense of security and has been associated with reduced hand hygiene practices.

If you are thinking about flying with kids, there are special considerations. Getting a young child to adhere to wearing a mask and maintaining good hygiene behaviors at home is hard enough; it may be impossible to do so when flying. Children under 2 should not wear a mask.

Each day, we are all constantly faced with decisions about our own personal comfort with risk. Arming yourself with specific knowledge about your airport and airline, and maximizing your use of protective measures that you have control over, can reduce your risk. A good analogy might be that every time you get in the car to drive somewhere there is risk of an accident, but there is a big difference between driving the speed limit with your seat belt on and driving blindfolded, 60 miles an hour through the middle of town.

You might also be interested in other parts of this series:

- How do you stay safe now that states are reopening? An expert explains how to assess risk when reconnecting with friends and family

- Heres how to stay safe while buying groceries amid the coronavirus pandemic

- How can you be safe at pools, beaches or parks? A doctor offers guidance as coronavirus distancing measures lifted

- How to lower your coronavirus risk while eating out: Restaurant advice from an infectious disease expert

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/should-you-fly-yet-an-epidemiologist-and-an-exposure-scientist-walk-you-through-the-decision-process-138782.

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Should you fly yet? An epidemiologist and an exposure scientist walk you through the decision process - Fairfield Citizen

Human Behavior

Mechanicsburg girl, 10, develops a board game to help her little sister understand the coronavirus – PennLive

Rosslyn Gingrich, 10, started out looking for a solution to a basic problem: How to explain the coronavirus to her 4-year-old sister, Evelyn, in terms she would understand.

What she found was a two-month creative journey to teach the basics of the virus while also taking aim at the human behaviors that came with it.

A fifth-grader in the Mechanicsburg Area School District, Gingrich combined what she learned from her nurse practitioner grandmother, Marge, with everything she saw in the news and her own acts of service to develop a COVID-19 board game.

My mom and I were on a walk and my sister kept asking why her school was closed, Rosslyn said. We wanted to make a fun and easy way to explain the coronavirus, so we just made a game of it.

The game features two paths with their own pitfalls and positive outcomes. It comes with cards that can send players forward or backward or make them lose their turns. There are also spaces where players contract the coronavirus and lose a turn while they are in quarantine.

Didnt practice social distancing? Go back two spaces. Lent a roll of toilet paper to a neighbor in need? Advance one space. Wash your hands for only 10 seconds instead of 20? Go back a space. Sanitize your countertops after putting all your groceries away? Move ahead two spaces.

The game has 20 total cards, all of which highlight good, bad, greedy or selfless behavior. The end goal is to reach the finish line and find a cure first.

When we started making the game, thats when it was crazy with toilet paper, Rosslyns mother, Jaclyn, said. Shes gotten a lot of ideas from the news about how greedy and selfish people are, but then shes also seen the good people are doing.

The game sets out to explain a virus, but also cuts into deeper themes such as the panic and fear that can drive me-first behavior. It underscores the idea that little eyes are watching all of these adult stress responses. Theyre taking mental notes when they see someone clean out a shelf of toilet paper or ignore social distancing.

At the very beginning of putting this game together, I was just really impressed, Marge Gingrich said. Shes a very creative kid.

In Rosslyns case, she managed to find an outlet during a time when kids are missing their friends or feeling lonely or struggling to process it all. She said she felt some of that, too, but she turned her focus to a project that she could share with her mother, grandmother and sister.

Its very difficult because I just want to see my friends and have a sleepover and hug them and I cant, Rosslyn said.

The hope with the board game was to answer questions in a fun way while encouraging a focus on the greater good. Thats a valuable lesson to people of all ages.

To her, its like, OK, theres this virus but its not really going to do much to me, but it could hurt my grandparents, Jaclyn Gingrich said. So, she understands the idea of keeping her distance from older people and the more high-risk people. She has a pretty good concept of it for a 10-year-old.

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Mechanicsburg girl, 10, develops a board game to help her little sister understand the coronavirus - PennLive

Human Behavior

Appinium Announces Major Update to the Most Effective Way for Salesforce Users to Leverage Video, Multimedia, and Learning – WFMZ Allentown

SAN FRANCISCO, May 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- While there are currently multiple sales-enablement and video marketing options on the Salesforce platform, Appinium is the only one that offers comprehensive marketing, sales enablement, customer-success, and learning data build natively on Salesforce.

Their ViewTrac app allows Salesforce users to view a wide range of data for video, podcasts, interactive video, and multimedia assets, including; who is watching those videos, who is interacting with the video, who is listening, how much of those videos they watched, where they watched them and at what point they engaged with them. With ViewTrac, Salesforce users can ensure that their multimedia assets are always being viewed by the right people at the right time to drive behavior.

With Appinium's LearnTrac app, Salesforce users can engage customers, employees and partners like never before. Now, users can deliver contextual, targeted eLearning as part of a larger Salesforce strategy, seamlessly and effortlessly. LearnTrac also allows Salesforce users to obtain relevant and unique data regarding the efficacy of sales-training efforts, customer-support costs, employee performance and much more.

"No one brings together data on human behavior as it relates to business the way we do."- says Appinium CEO and Founder, Steven Jacobson, "Think of Appinium as a river that picks up vital information regarding marketing, sales-enablement, learning and customer-service along the way. That data ensures connectivity, and it's connectivity that drives behavior."

Appinium recognizes that the future is driven by data. Which is why their team of engineers, sales professionals and entrepreneurs have gone to great lengths to build a product that acquires, compiles and delivers an unprecedented level of marketing, sales learning and customer-success data on the platform where it can be used most effectively Salesforce.

User acceptance testing of the updated app (version 4.1) is scheduled to begin May 30, 2020, with an official release planned for June 23, 2020.

http://www.appinium.com

Media Inquiries:Jody Green917 292 7070240327@email4pr.com

Excerpt from:
Appinium Announces Major Update to the Most Effective Way for Salesforce Users to Leverage Video, Multimedia, and Learning - WFMZ Allentown

Human Behavior

Humanizing the coronavirus as an invisible enemy is human nature – The Conversation US

President Donald Trump has called the coronavirus an invisible enemy thats brilliant and tough and smart, adding that we are tougher and smarter.

CNN host Chris Cuomo, recovering from the virus, attributed malicious intent to it, saying it wants us to lay down. He warned his audience not to cooperate.

Other people called the coronavirus sneaky, tricky, merciless, cruel and vicious. One reporter wrote that in a nursing home, the virus found the people who were most frail.

Speaking of the coronavirus as if it were a person, then, is common. But why do we all do it, despite knowing that the virus is just a tiny bundle of inanimate genetic material?

As cognitive scientists who study the human mind we suggest that this tendency to see human features everywhere is an innate human characteristic, one that automatically alerts you to signs of other people and helps you make sense of a confusing world.

Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things and events is called anthropomorphism or personification. Philosophers and psychologists suggest that it is a human universal, found among all of us, regardless of culture or upbringing. For instance, philosopher David Hume wrote in the 18th century that We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and ascribe malice or good-will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us. Most recently, people find enemies in viruses.

They do so, Hume wrote, because the world is complex and unpredictable, and often threatens you with unexpected calamities such as earthquakes, floods and plagues. In order to predict and control these dangers, he said, people want to understand their causes, but often cannot. Baffled, they resort to the most familiar explanations, those based on their own experiences and those of other people.

This habit often results in the mistake of thinking you see persons, or features of persons, where they dont exist, as with the new virus. But having a human-like modelindeed, having any modelto apply to such a mysterious, invisible and dangerous entity as the coronavirus provides some measure of apparent control, and thus comfort.

And although people may not consciously believe that the coronavirus is like a person, their language and behavior suggest that they do so unconsciously.

The assumption that persons and features of persons may be present is spontaneous and irrepressible. For example, 16th-century Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted a series of faces composed of various objects. In one work, Winter, you cant help seeing a face in a tree stump, perhaps reflecting a face that the artist had imagined in a real stump. It is virtually impossible not to see the face emerging from Arcimboldos assemblage of objects.

Interpreting many phenomena as human in origin is the safest bet, while dismissing them as irrelevant may be dangerous if youre wrong.

When you find possible traces of humans faces in stumps, voices in the wind or footsteps in a houses creaks it opens a wide repertoire of important possibilities. Is it an enemy who might harm me? A friend who will comfort me?

Thus, a high sensitivity to human-like features and a low threshold for deciding they are present have evolutionary advantages. Their disadvantage is that youre often mistaken, when no human feature is really there. But most such mistakes are less consequential than missing someone you need to see, whether friend or foe.

Humans, then, are a special stimulus for us, and cognitive neuroscience provides further evidence of it. For example, infants are born ready to recognize a face or anything resembling one and by a few months of age, infants prefer a block that helps another block up a slope to one that hinders it. So babies are born ready to see shapes as human anatomy, and quickly see even inanimate objects as having social relationships. People never outgrow this tendency, and throughout life see aspects of ourselves in cliff faces, river mouths and mountain majesties, and purpose and meaning everywhere.

Scanning for human features in the environment and ending up anthropomorphizing appears built into human beings. It is supported by what neuroscientists call the social brain, an evolved person network.

This brain network is activated by any stimulus that even suggests a person, such as a stick figure or emoji. For instance, part of this network, the fusiform face area, responds both to a human face and to anthropomorphized car headlights, grill and bumper.

No wonder its so easy to talk about the coronavirus as human-like. Anthropomorphic narratives provide models of the virus and its behavior that feel familiar and accessible. Theyre a way to grasp these unseen beings, and this grasp, illusory or not, provides a bit of the confidence and sense of control so crucial to mental well-being.

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Excerpt from:
Humanizing the coronavirus as an invisible enemy is human nature - The Conversation US