Human Behavior

NKU Simulation Lab: the new standard in healthcare education – NKU The Northerner Online

NKU has been named one of the top learning environments for practicing medicine after incorporating the simulation labs in the Health and Innovations Center, according to the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

Recently, the simulation center earned accreditation from the Society and the Council for Accreditation of Healthcare Simulation Programs. NKU is the only university in the state with this accreditation and only one of 183 worldwide.

Professor Rami Leventhal teaches in the simulation labs and says that they allow students from all health professions to practice and learn in a realistic environment.

We have two stories, one labeled an outpatient and inpatient area and we have an emergency room setting and an operating room setting. So nurses and other students can really practice how to take care of a patient, Leventhal said.

Leventhal said the equipment in the labs are the newest state-of-the-art technology.

We have mannequins that range anywhere from $20,000 to $120,000. They are really advanced fancy mannequins that are physiologically based, meaning that one of our mannequins can breathe, he has a pulse, he blinks, he can bleed, he can talk. But the big part is they can physiologically present things that an actor cannot, Leventhal said.

Students from all different types of specializations are learning in the simulation lab environment.

Students say the real-life scenes and scenarios help them learn how to deal with any situation that they may come upon in the medical field.

Hope Wagner, art therapy student, learned in the labs last semester. She said the technology really helps students learn about any real life situation.

In a simulation lab, they have high fidelity mannequins, which simulates human behavior as well as human functions. I think it helps to interact with the high fidelity mannequins because they can do actions, similar to real human diseases or injuries, Wagner said.

Shawn Nordheim is a professor of nursing at NKU; she also is one of the simulation educators. She said this technology is really important for students to learn the concepts they will face in their field.

By making our students process multiple concepts and make split minute decisions in the simulation lab, it helps our students develop their critical thinking skills which ultimately improves patient care. Improved patient care translates into early discharge from hospitals and better patient outcomes, Nordheim said.

Educators also agree that the simulation center is the new normal in health education.

This teaching strategy is here to stay, theres no doubt about it because you could see whats going on in health care, Nordheim said.

Nordheim also said this program is the best in the region because of the faculty that teach students.

I think the simulation educators are very committed to their craft. The simulation technicians, the educators were all very committed to making the simulation as authentic as possible, Nordheim said.

You can take a virtual tour of the simulation center here.

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NKU Simulation Lab: the new standard in healthcare education - NKU The Northerner Online

Human Behavior

Marmosets eavesdrop on their neighborsand judge them accordingly – Science Magazine

Two wild marmosets in the Caatinga forest in northeastern Brazil

By Tess JoosseFeb. 3, 2021 , 2:00 PM

Like a nosy neighbor, marmosets eavesdrop on the conversations of othersand judge them based on what they say, new research finds. The pint-size primates might be using the behavior to screen strangers, preferring to mingle with those they feel will make the best nannies for their offspring.

This study is really cool because it pinpoints whats happening inside the animal when they eavesdrop, says Sonja Koski, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Helsinki who was not involved with the work.

Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) are native to the forests of northeastern Brazil, where they scurry between branches like squirrels, thanks to their clawed fingernails. Theyre tiny, weighing about 250 grams, and have white ear tufts that evoke the untamed hair of Albert Einstein. But its their social structure that really sets them apart.

Extended families of up to 15 marmosets live, eat, and hang out with each other, but only one or two pairs within each group breed. When babies are born, the whole clan pitches in: Siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles all take turns caring for the young. It takes a village to raise a marmoset.

Because marmosets rely on others for help, they must evaluate who is or isnt good at cooperation, says Judith Burkart, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich (UZH). Thats where the eavesdropping comes in. But what exactly is going on in the marmoset mind when they spy on the conversations?

To find out, Burkart teamed up with UZH evolutionary anthropologist Rahel Brgger. The duo and their colleagues placed a single marmoset in a room and played recordings of marmoset vocalizations from a hidden speaker. The chatter was either from a positive interaction, like an infant marmoset calling for food and an adult responding gently, or a negative one, like the adult reacting to the hungry baby with aggressive talkback. As a control, the scientists played calls from a single animal.

The researchers then pointed an infrared camera at the faces of the marmosets to record the temperature of their nosesone of the only places on the face that is not covered by fur, Brgger says. They tested 21 marmosets over 90 total sessions, looking for drops in nasal temperature, which indicate the marmoset is alert and engaged. The animals got fired up during the combined calls but not during the individual vocalizations, indicating they perceived them as conversations and not just noise.

After the playbacks, the scientists let the marmosets into an adjoining room stocked with toys and a mirror. Because the primates dont recognize their own reflections, theyre likely to approach a mirror and socialize with the image like its an unknown monkey. The researchers set up the interaction so the animals would assume the calls they just heard were coming from the mirrored roomand from the individual in the mirrors reflection.

After hearing the playback of a positive interaction, the marmosets readily entered the room and ran up to the mirror ready to socialize with the supposed vocalizer, the researchers say. But after the uncooperative calls, the marmosets were hesitant to approach the monkey in the mirror. They were more interested in interacting with a stranger who was cooperative, the researchers report today in Science Advances.

The findings indicate marmosets arent just passive observers, but make decisions about others based on what they hearjust like humans, the researchers say. The team plans to use this temperature-mapping approach to investigate even bigger questions about the origin of human traits like morality.

Koski is on board. Using monkeys to understand the evolution of human behaviors relies on the idea that animals understand whats happening in others interactions, she says. They have really pinpointed that here.

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Marmosets eavesdrop on their neighborsand judge them accordingly - Science Magazine

Human Behavior

Experts Offer Cybersecurity Guidance In AWO Webinar – The Waterways Journal

The latest in a series of webinars offered by The American Waterways Operators featured Coast Guard and civilian experts in cybersecurity sharing the latest tips and development in the ongoing battle to maintain security in the systems on which inland traffic increasingly relies.

The webinar, titled Cyber Risk Management: 2021 Outlook for the Towing Industry, held January 27, was hosted by Caitlyn Stewart, director of regulatory affairs for AWO. Speakers included Lt. Cmdr. Kelley Edwards, of the critical infrastructure protection branch of the Coast Guards Office of Port and Facility Compliance; Lt. Nate Toll, deputy and operations officer of the Coast Guards newly created Cyber Protection Team; and Lessie Longstreet, global director of outreach and partner engagement at the Cyber Readiness Institute.

Edwards began by reminding participants of the Coast Guards Cyber Strategy, published in 2015, which outlines its goals: defending cyberspace, enabling operations and protecting infrastructure. Email spoofing remains one of the most-used gateways into systems for bad actors. Kelley referred to one particular spoofed email attack in which email senders impersonated Coast Guard officials, which resulted in a cascading set of spoofed emails.

NVIC 01-20 offers guidance on how to comply with existing regulations on cyber security for shore facilities, but it does not create new obligations or regulations, she said. A companion NVIC specifically for vessels is under preparation, but some of the information in this NVIC can also prove valuable to vessels.

Sign up for Waterway Journal's weekly newsletter.Our weekly newsletter delivers the latest inland marine news straight to your inbox including breaking news, our exclusive columns and much more.

A document released by the Coast Guard last October, CVC-WI-027, Vessel Cyber Risk Management, urges vessels to include cyber risk measures into their towing vessel safety management systems, which would bring them into compliance with international standards.

The Coast Guard also issued a Marine Safety Information Bulletin on the SolarWinds software breach. In December, it was discovered that sophisticated malicious actors had been able to insert multiple Trojan horse packages into software offered by SolarWinds, a company based in Austin, Texas, that provides network operating software for at least 300,000 customers including numerous government agencies around the world. According to a recentSEC filing by SolarWinds, approximately 18,000 of their 300,000 customers were running vulnerable versions of the SolarWinds Orion platform. The malware allowed for elevated credential access [to the attackers] and lateral movement throughout the network and the ability to create other persistent devices on the network. The Coast Guard urged all entities using any version of this software to take immediate action.

The Coast Guard policy letter of 2016 gave guidance on how to report cyber incidents and breaches of security, both for vessels and shoreside facilities. Kelley urged all parties concerned about cyber incidents to contact their local captains of the port, who can guide them to resources to help them assess vulnerabilities and improve their security plans. These will have to be submitted to the Coast Guard beginning in October of this year, extending through October 2022.

Lt. Nate Toll described the activities of the Coast Guards Cyber Protection Team, which was set up about six months ago. While the team cannot, at present, act as a first responder to cyber incidents as private contractors do, it can perform threat-hunting on a network to help uncover buried malware and help you clear adversary activity, he said. The team can also do simulated attacks to assess vulnerabilities. Interested parties can request a visit from a CPT team by sending a request to maritimecyber@uscg.mil.

Lessie Longstreet spoke about cyber threats to small business, which make up the majority. She said 80 percent of businesses have fewer than 10 employees, and 95 percent have fewer than 100. Sixty-seven percent of small business fail to survive a cyber breach. The average cost of a cyber breach is $3.92 million.

The Cyber Readiness Institute, founded in July 2017, develops free resources to improve cyber readiness for small and medium-sized businesses. Most of their resources focus on human behavior, she said.

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Human Behavior

What If Herd Immunity Is Out of Reach? – New York Magazine

Photo: Federic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

What if it never really ends, just recedes?

There are, at the moment, a number of encouraging signs about the near-term course of things: Caseloads and hospitalizations are falling dramatically, perhaps as a sign of seasonal effects turning a corner; vaccine deployment, while still suboptimal, is improved from a month ago; there has been good news about additional vaccines, with AstraZeneca (already approved in the U.K. but facing an FDA roadblock here) reporting fantastic results against severe disease; and vaccine shipments are said to on the way, with Novavax promising 100 million American doses by the spring.

A few months ago, these developments might have suggested the true endgame of the pandemic was in sightand indeed the likely vaccination of 100 million or more by late spring does suggest a dramatic change in the countrys experience of the disease, with those vaccinated feeling safe from hospitalization and death and the disease in retreat. But thanks to a combination of higher herd-immunity estimates, stubbornly high vaccine hesitancy, and the arrival of new coronavirus variants that render existing vaccines less effective, the second year of the American pandemic is beginning to look less like a page-turning, book-slammed-shut bang and more like a long and indefinite whimpering into the future in which many are protected but the disease, undefeated, still circulates, perhaps forever. That the coronavirus would become endemic, like the common cold, has always been one possible outcome, though less appealing than true elimination. The arrival of new variants has made that kind of near-term future, with enduring reservoirs of virus throughout the country, seem less appealing still.

This is, at base, a matter of the math of herd immunity whether the vaccines we have, combined with the natural protection already acquired through disease exposure, can produce sufficient population-level immunity that the coronavirus actually dies away. Most of the vaccine trials were focused on reduction of severe disease, and so we do not yet have a clear sense of how effective they will be in stopping transmissionthough most experts believe they will put a pretty big dent in caseloads. How big? In December, Harvards Marc Lipsitch estimated that the current bundle of vaccines would likely prove between 50 and 70 percent effective against transmission. What does that mean in terms of herd immunity? A sort of median estimate of the natural reproduction rate (or R0) for the classic COVID-19 strain is around 3 on average, each person infected in a totally unexposed population would infect three others. Assuming an R0 of 3 yields an estimated herd-immunity threshold of 67 percent exposure, which, Bloombergs Justin Fox points out, would require between 96 percent and 134 percent of the population be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.At the end of last year, Anthony Fauci somewhat controversially revised his own estimate of the threshold of herd immunity, first from between 60 and 70 percent to 70, 75 percent, then to 75, 80, 85 percent, then to 80-plus percent, and then all the way to 90 percent. Mathematically, you simply cannot achieve 90 percent protection from a vaccine that offers even 70 percent protection, let alone 50 percent, and while the vaccines might somewhat outperform Lipsitchs back-of-the-envelope calculations, the new variants are driving their efficacy in the other direction, pushing herd immunity even further out of reach. Perhaps the vaccines will surprise us, offering more protection against transmission than has been expectedand in this goal the country may be aided by the naturally lower rates of transmission among the very young. A bit more than a quarter of the country has already been exposed to the virus, which means we may already have 80 million or more Americans with protection. But that is only a true floor on which to add additional immunity through vaccination if none of those previously infected line up to get shotsand since the majority of them probably dont even know they had the disease in the first place, and no effort is being made to target vaccine doses to the un-exposed, the contribution of those 80 million towards herd immunity is likely to be somewhat smaller than their numbers suggest.

Technically, of course, even vaccinating 96 percent of the country would be doable, though almost certainly it would take the U.S. into 2022 to achieve it. But the challenge grows steeper when you turn from the abstractions of math to the much messier world of human behavior. While it is certainly likely that vaccine resistance will gradually shrink as more and more Americans safely receive shots, with infection rates beginning to fall as a result, the scale of present-tense skepticism is an immense roadblock. According to a large Kaiser Family Foundation poll published in December, only 41 percent of Americans say they will definitely agree to be vaccinated, with another 30 percent saying they probably will, 12 percent saying probably not, and 15 percent saying definitely not. That gives a rough ceiling of 85 percent of the American population signaling at least some openness to vaccination, less than Faucis estimate of threshold of 90 percent needed for herd immunity (though, presumably, some of the already-infected could help close that gap). And of course certain groups are more skeptical than others in rural America, Kaiser found, only 64 percent would definitely or probably take the vaccine and 35 percent probably or definitely wouldnt. More recently, an eye-opening report by the CDC suggested that among those working at nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities, only 37 percent agreed to a first dose.

And then there are the variants, which seem already to be reducing the efficacy of our existing batch of vaccines with presumably more variants to come. Already, what has been called the U.K. strain seems to have picked up a new mutation first observed in the South African and Brazilian strains, for instance, which may further reduce the effectiveness of vaccines and natural immune protection. And in most of the world, limited genetic surveillance of the disease means we are probably missing some new variants of the disease. Of course, it is important to remember that rendering existing vaccines less effective is not the same thing as rendering them ineffectiveand that even with reduced efficacy, the vaccines we have do seem to offer meaningful population-level protection against the new variants. Already many of the manufacturers are working on retooling their products to offer additional protection against the new strains indeed, this ability to tweak the existing vaccine platforms has been one big selling point of the new class of vaccines produced for the first time, with breathtaking speed, in this pandemic. But at least according to initial reports, those tweaked vaccines wont be available until 2022 almost a year from the arrival of this group of variants.

This is not to say that the brief window of vaccine optimism will yield only to a future of eternal, or even periodic, lockdown. Things are going to get a lot better, and probably pretty quickly. The vaccines are very effective in protecting against severe disease, at least when caused by the classic strain, which means that anyone who receives them will likely feel safe and protected from the scariest outcomes again, at least against the classic strain. Herd immunity is not binary, which means that well before its threshold is reached, the spread of the disease will begin to slow, perhaps even precipitously in fact, there is some hope that we are already beginning to see such population exposure bending the curve of cases downward. And some mathematical modelers have long argued that calculations of herd-immunity thresholds based simply on R0, like Faucis, are crude overestimates, overlooking the superspreader dynamics of the disease (whereby the vast majority of new infections are produced from a tiny minority of cases and the median sick person doesnt infect anyone else at all). But many of them have been making those arguments since the beginning of the pandemic, suggesting that herd immunity was just around the corner in communities and countries that then saw large second and third waves and in fact there have been terrible subsequent waves even in places, like Brazils Manaus, estimated to have had much higher levels of exposure (in the case of Manaus, exposure was estimated at 76 percent, in the vicinity of most estimated herd-immunity thresholds). Seasonal effects may help quite a lot, suppressing the disease for roughly three-quarters of the year.

But it does mean that what has long been the dream of most Americans enduring the pandemic a point at which all of this is over, with COVID-19 as much a historical artifact for us as, say, SARS is in East Asia may never come to pass precisely as imagined. Instead, in the medium term and perhaps even the long term, a likelier endgame is one in which large portions of the population are protected, from at least severe disease produced by at least some variants, but, with immunity falling short of the herd threshold, the disease continues to circulate infecting even some of those whove been vaccinated, threatening the lives of those who havent, and continuing to evolve, perhaps in some scary ways. For most of those whove received a vaccine, the disease will fade into the background, joining the ranks of other endemic diseases, but as a social fact the coronavirus will nevertheless remain.

What will that world look like? In Denmark, they are already planning on issuing immunity passports, which would allow those whove been vaccinated to travel and socialize and do business in ways that others still cant a sort of immunity apartheid system of the kind that many warned about at the beginning of the pandemic but appears more and more difficult to avoid and that may ultimately persuade some number of vaccine skeptics to receive doses after all. There could also be harder measures taken, with companies requiring vaccine compliance from employees or even a national vaccine mandate though each of these measures would run up against health-privacy protections in the U.S., where even masking regulations have proved difficult to enforce. The fate of those measures of vigilance is unclear, too if less than half of nursing-home workers are vaccinated, will long-term-care residents and staff be required both to mask up and to social distance in an ongoing way, as they have for the last year, in circumstances described as solitary confinement, which may have already produced a mental-health crisis? Especially in places with low vaccination rates, schools may deploy temperature checks and rapid spit-tests or may disregard those protocols and risk sporadic outbreaks. And any time a new strain arises, in the American reservoir or abroad, there may be renewed panic and vigilance with even already-vaccinated people waiting those many months it will take to roll out a tweaked vaccine to feel truly safe again.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

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What If Herd Immunity Is Out of Reach? - New York Magazine

Human Behavior

Researchers find dogs are paying attention | Bandon News | theworldlink.com – Coos Bay World

Dogs synchronize their behavior with the children in their family, but not as much as they do with adults, a new study from Oregon State University researchers found.

The findings are important because there is a growing body of evidence that dogs can help children in many ways, including with social development, increasing physical activity, managing anxiety or as a source of attachment in the face of changing family structures, the researchers said. Yet, very little research has focused on how dogs perceive and socially engage with children.

The great news is that this study suggests dogs are paying a lot of attention to the kids that they live with, said Oregon State animal behaviorist Monique Udell, the lead author of the study. They are responsive to them and, in many cases, behaving in synchrony with them, indicators of positive affiliation and a foundation for building strong bonds.

One interesting thing we have observed is that dogs are matching their childs behavior less frequently than what we have seen between dogs and adult caretakers, which suggests that while they may view children as social companions, there are also some differences that we need to understand better.

The paper was recently published in the journal Animal Cognition. Co-authors were Shelby Wanser, a faculty research assistant in Udells lab, and Megan MacDonald, an associate professor in Oregon States College of Public Health and Human Sciences, who studies how motor skills and physically active lifestyles improve the lives of children with and without disabilities

The researchers recruited 30 youth between the ages of 8 and 17 years old 83% of which had a developmental disability to take part in the study with their family dog. The experiments took place in a large empty room. Color-coded taped lines were placed on the floor, and the children were given instructions on how to walk the lines in a standardized way with their off-leash dog.

The researchers videotaped the experiments and analyzed behavior based on three things: (1) activity synchrony, which means how much time the dog and child were moving or stationary at the same time; (2) proximity, or how much time the dog and child were within 1 meter of each other; and (3) orientation, how much time the dog was oriented in the same direction as the child.

They found that dogs exhibited behavioral synchronization with the children at a higher rate than would be expected by chance for all three variables. During their assessments, they found:

Active synchrony for an average of 60.2% of the time. Broken down further, the dogs were moving an average of 73.1% of the time that the children were moving and were stationary an average of 41.2% of the time the children were stationary.

Proximity within 1 meter of each other for an average of 27.1% of the time.

Orientation in the same direction for an average of 33.5% of the time.

While child-dog synchrony occurred more often that what would be expected by chance, those percentages are all lower than what other researchers have found when studying interactions between dogs and adults in their household. Those studies found active synchrony 81.8% of the time, but at 49.1% with shelter dogs. They found proximity 72.9% of the time and 39.7% with shelter dogs. No studies on dog-human behavioral synchronization have previously assessed body orientation.

The Oregon State researchers are conducting more research to better understand factors that contribute to differences in levels of synchrony and other aspects of bond quality between dogs and children compared to dogs and adults, including participation in animal assisted interventions and increasing the childs responsibility for the dogs care.

While research has found dogs can have a lot of positive impacts on a childs life, there are also risks associated with the dog-child relationship, the researchers said. For example, other studies have found dogs are more apt to bite children versus adults.

We still have a lot to learn about the dog-child relationship Udell said. Were hoping this research can inform the best ways to shape positive outcomes and mitigate risks by helping children interact with dogs in a manner that improves the relationship and ultimately the welfare of both individuals.

Based on this study, Udell also offered some takeaways for families with children and dogs.

What we are finding is that kids are very capable of training dogs, and that dogs are paying attention to the kids and can learn from them, she said. Sometimes we dont give children and dogs enough credit. Our research suggests that with some guidance we can provide important and positive learning experiences for our kids and our dogs starting at a much earlier age, something that can make a world of difference to the lives of both.

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Human Behavior

The Square Helmer Ruben Ostlund on Filming Triangle of Sadness With Woody Harrelson During Pandemic (EXCLUSIVE) – Variety

Ruben stlund, the Palme dOr-winning director of The Square, did not binge-watch series on a couch during the pandemic. Instead, stlund, who received the 2021 Nordic Honorary Dragon Award on Thursday, told Variety that he had the time of his life shooting Triangle of Sadness, his most ambitious film to date, in exotic locations with a multinational cast, including Woody Harrelson.

The 72-day shoot took place on a deserted Island in Greece and onboard The Christina O, a prestigious yacht whose passengers have included Winston Churchill, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe.

Perks aside, stlund admitted that on a few occasions (he and his producers) werent sure (they) could finish the shooting in the fall.

One key challenge was having the cast travel from multiple locations, but especially the U.S. from where Harrelson flew, in spite of an international travel ban. The staff at the gate wouldnt let Woody board the plane. And then, when he arrived, we were afraid he would be sent back to the U.S. We felt that anything could happen at any moment because of the COVID-19 hysteria, said stlund, who mentioned that the production carried out 1,061 tests throughout filming and all were negative.

It was also a race against the clock to wrap shooting on the yacht before filming restrictions kicked in in Greece.

We had to shoot several days on the yacht just as Greece was going into lockdown, and we knew that if we couldnt finish the shoot on the yacht, we would lose everything, (including) one big scene where we blow everything up! said stlund.

The film boasts a 13 million ($15.6 million) budget and a splashy production value. Its an expensive film. We have a cast with actors of eight different nationalities, we captured the fashion world and were blowing things up in a spectacular way, including the yacht (which has) a fun symbolic value, said the filmmaker.

stlund also noted he had a blast working with Harrelson, whom he described as a fantastic person and 100% socialist from the many political discussions the pair had during filming.

In Triangle of Sadness, Harrelson plays a rabid Marxist who is the captain of a cruise for the super-rich. The yacht sinks, leaving survivors, including a fashion model celebrity couple, marooned on an island.

Hes been famous since he was 20 and now hes 60 hes a superstar but he doesnt act that way. Hes a very social person and we had so much fun shooting this film. I also pushed him like I push any other actor, said stlund, whose banner, Plattform, produced the film with Coproduction Office and Essential Films.

Harrelson stars opposite Harris Dickinson (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil), Charlbi Dean, Vicki Berlin, Dolly De Leon and Zlatko Buric, among others.

stlund, who is known for his sharp sense of observation, isnt done exploring human nature in extreme situations. Hes currently in early development on The Entertainment System is Down, a feature project set on board a long-haul flight and inspired by Aldous Huxleys dystopian novel Brave New World.

In a world controlled by advanced entertainment systems, you have people stuck on a long flight with no screens to look at. Im curious to see if people will start talking to each other or what will happen, he said.

stlund added that the movie would be like an experimental lab looking at human behavior from different perspectives. One aspect hes particularly interested in is the so-called air rages among passengers. Air rages are uncontrollable and considered a danger, so when one happens, the plane has to land. Interestingly enough, air rages are more frequent when economy passengers board through business class, stlund quipped.

The daring helmer said, going forward, he aims to continue making films with his European production partners, whether or not theyre in English.

While we were preparing this tribute for the Gteborg Festival with [its artistic director] Jonas Holmberg, it was fun because I could look back at my body of work, my social approach when looking at human behavior and I want this to remain my main focus, said stlund, whos been offered several projects from Hollywood since winning the Palme dOr for The Square in 2017.

stlund also said he had a special bond with Swedens Goteborg Film Festival, where he made his first steps in the film world back in 1998. Its like a football team youre cheering for, or old relatives. I feel loyalty towards them; they have made cinema something thats alive and interesting, and theyre a big part of why Im doing what Im doing.

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The Square Helmer Ruben Ostlund on Filming Triangle of Sadness With Woody Harrelson During Pandemic (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

Human Behavior

Reddits WallStreetBets has its own language: What stock tendies and diamond hands tell us about America – Vox.com

Its hard to overstate how big the WallStreetBets group has gotten. With 8 million members as of this writing, and the group is still growing its as if 1 in every 40 Americans is standing in a giant room talking. And, at first glance, theyre speaking a foreign language.

Tendies, rocket ships, diamond hands this is the language of WallStreetBets (WSB), the white-hot subreddit powering the GameStop (GME) frenzy on the stock market. Strings of rocket emojis signify how the group wants to send GMEs price to the moon. Users encourage each other to have diamond hands (represented in emojis, of course), a riff on the strength of diamonds and a users strength to last through big market swings.

They insult the paper hands who crumple and sell their shares at the first taste of money or scary drops. Commenters call themselves degenerates or apes. Reddit posts hype up how many tendies a person will get from their investments, a phrase that comes from old 4chan greentext stories about manchildren living in their moms basement. In the joke, a manchild relies on his mom for everything, throws tantrums, and is rewarded for good behavior with Good Boy Points (GBP), which he redeems for his favorite food: chicken tenders, a.k.a. tendies.

The groups potential influence is enormous. So far, followers have created two original songs and bought emoji-covered billboards across the country touting their stock picks. Entrepreneurial heavyweights like Chamath Palihapitiya, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban have stood up for WSB (Cuban even did a pep talk AskMeAnything in the subreddit on Tuesday morning). The news coverage is both constant and global. Oh, and there was that little stock rally. But what does it all mean?

I spoke with a dozen people, from WallStreetBets members to professors to human behavior analysts, to try to understand what makes up the unique culture of WSB and what the group might mean for society at large.

No group is a monolith, especially one of this size. There is a wide spectrum of opinions, beliefs, and experiences. The users I spoke to were quick to point out that the groups dynamics have changed at light speed over the past two weeks.

For anyone wondering whether WSB is part of the alt-right or a harbor for neo-Nazis, it doesnt appear that way. Although the subreddits controversial ex-founder who was banned from the group for violating community rules himself has accused moderators of racism off-site, after a week and dozens of hours spent on the forum, I havent seen any evidence of hate speech or alt-right imagery.

Political posts barely make it past the moderators, let alone political extremism, even with the recent massive influx of users. WallStreetBets language is crass and offensive, the humor is self-deprecating, and the culture is a little strange, but it is not an organizing ground for hate. Instead, what I found is a complex, multifaceted group. There is mutual aid, gambling, inequality, community, creativity, masculinity, humor, humanity. Its a microcosm of America.

Like many GameStop retail investors, my week has been full of late nights, deep dives into Reddit, and obsessive stock chart checking. I dont yet have diamond hands; I only just signed up for Robinhood, throwing $100 into GameStop stock at 2 am last Tuesday to see what happens. I felt the frustration of every canceled buy order, the anxiety of steep drops in the stock charts, and an odd affinity for a bunch of strangers on the internet.

Im not a frequent Reddit user, and I thought the anonymity of the platform might bring out the worst in people. WallStreetBets often uses problematic language, but buried beneath piles of rocket emojis and cuckolding jokes and homophobic and ableist insults, there is some vulnerability and heart.

Jimmy Lee, a 20-year-old college student in Southern California and member of WallStreetBets, told me his GME holdings could help his family buy another car. Lees father is a janitor, and his mother is out of work due to the pandemic. Depending on what happens with GME stock, his earnings may be the largest lump sum his parents, who moved from Vietnam after the war, have seen in their lives.

Tutu, a WSB member who requested that I refer to him by his nickname, reports turning his initial investment of $35,000 into almost $278,000 as of Sunday also to help his family. He tells me they immigrated from India roughly 15 years ago, and Tutu worked full time through high school to help provide for them. Now he wants to use his GME gains to help pay off his parents mortgage. If his family were still in India, Tutus dad would have retired by now. Instead, Tutu says he works six days a week, managing a 7-Eleven.

This is not to glorify struggles or paint over pain with a rosy rags to riches brush. But there is more to WallStreetBets than the story thats been told so far, and its the story that some commenters are telling about themselves: Dishwashers, gas station attendants, and minimum wage workers have all posted publicly about how the gains from GME stock could change their lives. Commenters have shared tender stories of siblings or children with cancer, losing partners to overdose, or fighting addiction. Some subscribers have parents who lost everything in the 2008 stock market crash. Many Redditors say they see this as a chance at revenge against the people on Wall Street who ruined lives but suffered no consequences.

Sure, its Reddit. It could all be a troll. But is it really so hard to believe?

Theres also a core group of WallStreetBets members that is more experienced than the news media gives them credit for (and theres even reason to think that these investors may be comparatively well off). They have sophisticated investing ideas (alongside lots of memes) and want to make money. Theyre also well aware that the stock market and the group is a casino. Bets is in the name, after all. William Callewaert, a portfolio manager at the financial services firm Multipli, has been a member of WSB for about a year and thinks the original WSB members probably fell into two main camps.

The first is the 25- to 50-year-old professionals who are longtime Reddit users and probably have significant investments. The other would be 14- to 24-year-olds who probably spend a lot of time on 4chan, etc., and are interested in finance and investing (and understand the power of 100,000 plus people doing the same thing), Callewaert surmised.

Chris Barnes, chief product officer at Escalent, a behavior and analytics firm, notes that while the GameStop surge didnt start as a way to push back against billionaires, low levels of institutional trust in America and simple, clear messaging made the cause easy to rally around.

Thomas Shohfi, an assistant professor of finance and accounting at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, thinks this subset of WallStreetBets may also be using their investor power to point out the greed of Wall Street. Theres a good portion of the retail side thats saying The stock market is the pinnacle of capitalism and capitalism isnt working for a lot of people. We want to show people that we dont even care about the money. We just care about not driving companies into the ground, he hypothesized.

To be clear, if inequality werent rampant in America, or if we had stronger social safety nets, wage growth, and cheaper health care, werent facing potential climate catastrophe, and didnt have deep generational angst or if a hedge fund hadnt shorted so much of a single stock we wouldnt be here. To paraphrase entrepreneur Jeromy Sonnes think piece, people dont burn down a system thats working for them.

Clear demographics on WSB members dont exist, but roughly 70 percent of Reddit users are men and approximately 65 percent of Redditors are between the ages of 18 and 29. These arent exactly the people Id expect to open up and be vulnerable online, but InverseInception, a frequent Reddit user and longtime member of WSB who asked that I not use his real name, thinks Reddit, in particular, offers a safe space for people to share things they cant or dont want to share on other social media sites.

No one wants to see a post about antidepressants on Facebook, he said, but the anonymity of Reddit and the way the pandemic has opened up conversations about mental health allows people to share their stories. Indeed, dozens of comments on the WSB subreddit share how the groups humor and community are helping users climb out of depression.

At the same time sometimes within the same post users often refer to themselves as autists, degenerates, or smooth-brained. They also use homophobic terms to refer to bearish investors (those who expect stock prices to fall), particularly Gabe Plotkin of Melvin Capital, the hedge fund at the center of GameStops short squeeze. The same vulnerability that gives WSB heart may also help explain the problematic language used in the group.

C.J. Pascoe, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, has researched teenage boys, young men, and masculinity for 20 years. When I talk to teenage boys and young men, what I hear them say about masculinity is that to be a man, you have to be dominant, competent, unemotional, and heterosexual, Pascoe said.

One way she sees this type of masculinity play out, both online and off, is in the way men talk. First, men insult other men using feminizing insults, Pascoe explained, which is often illustrated in homophobic language similar to whats used in WSB. By tying another mans identity to gay culture, you are feminizing him. At the same time, Pascoe said, you head other men off at the pass by making a joke about your own masculinity before other men can insult you. This helps explain the groups cuckolding jokes.

My wifes boyfriend is typical of the self-deprecation heard on WSB. It stems from yet another meme. Is there a bit of pure humor in these jokes? Absolutely. Is every poster using each joke in the same way? Of course not. But Pascoes research helps show us where the culturally acceptable boundaries of masculinity are and why people may be acting the way they are within those boundaries.

If WSB users are largely male, theyre joking about their masculinity to protect themselves. And the joking is key. Jokes serve as a sort of shield in male adolescent culture, Pascoe has found, demonstrating how unemotional you are. (This is also illustrated in Peggy Orensteins writing on young men.) Even if the young men in WallStreetBets are no longer teenagers, they grew up in an internet culture soaked in this humor.

The narrow path of masculinity weve laid out for young men, one focused on dominance and competence, Pascoe explained, also helps make sense of the zeal of WallStreetBets. Wall Street suits might have money and power in America, but now, millions of men on their computers have access to information and crowdsourced leverage. If WSB can beat Wall Street at its own game, these men demonstrate their own dominance and competence.

Pascoe is also quick to point out that constricting ideas about masculinity arent due to mens personal failings. Its a structural problem.

Weve set up these impossible standards for men to achieve, she said. Boys often get teased and harassed by other boys for not being manly enough. And so then what happens? You end up with these young men who have a deep need for connection because theyre human. [WallStreetBets] is a place for these guys to connect in a really great way, but that connection also leaves them vulnerable.

Hence, the self-deprecating humor. If WallStreetBetters advertise themselves as tendie-seeking degenerates who live in their moms basement playing video games their wifes boyfriend gave them, theres not much other men can tease them for.

Perhaps, most encouragingly, Pascoes research has shown that the jokes or shock-value statements men make in a group setting dont necessarily reflect their internal desires or feelings. Her analysis of more than 1,000 tweets with the phrase no homo found that it is mostly used as a shield that allows boys to be fully human, a sort of inoculation against insults from other guys. It is our job, as a society, to create new definitions of masculinity that allow men to connect without these insults.

Since 2010, fintech startups like Robinhood, Betterment, and Acorns have launched easy-to-use mobile apps that welcome a younger generation of investors. Robinhood also gamified trading, transforming the stuffy UI of boomer-favored platforms into an exciting interface with simple green and red lines and confetti rewards for trades. In October 2019, in part spurred on by Robinhood, behemoth broker Charles Schwab dropped its commissions on stock trades. Every major online broker quickly followed. But it wasnt until the coronavirus market downturn that young people piled into the markets in record numbers.

Like so many events in the past year, the pandemic was a catalyst for this moment. If the rise of fintech, the gamification of trading, and zero-commission trades were the kindling, the pandemic was the spark that started the fire. Barnes, the CPO and researcher from Escalent, notes that retail trading increased months before the GameStop rally.

People who havent been financially impacted by the pandemic have more cash on hand than in pre-pandemic times since they arent able to spend on travel or social engagements, Barnes explained. And, with the increase in remote work, people have more freedom to trade throughout the day. Government stimulus checks could also be propelling trading. Numerous WSB comments mention investing their stimmy checks, as the group calls them, into the stock market.

But the pandemic hasnt just impacted WallStreetBets in financial ways. Loneliness, increased isolation, and a need for community all probably helped WSB go viral. InverseInception thinks people are desperate for community right now and just want to laugh. And WSB is nothing if not a form of entertainment, from the loss porn posts to intricate memes about J-Pow (Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, savior of stonks).

The pandemic also inspired InverseInception to give away tendies with his tendies. He donated 100 lunches from a chicken tenders chain to the staff at Gillette Childrens Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Minnesota. He wanted to support health care workers who are stressed and have been through a hell of a year. He hopes to set an example for other WallStreetBets subscribers to follow. No matter how big or small your account is ... you can make an impact.

It seems to have caught on. Subscribers want to give back and make a positive impact on their local communities always with a touch of WSB humor. One person donated $5,000 to a childrens hospital, two have donated Nintendo Switches (bought at GameStop, of course) to local hospitals, another donated $500 to St. Judes Hospital, yet another sent Buffalo Wild Wings to their local GameStop. After a year when Americans donated to charities more than ever and mutual aid was in the mainstream news, its hard not to see WSBs donations as an extension of a positive trend.

Pascoe, the researcher on masculinity, welcomed the spirit of these donations. There is a delight and a playfulness there, she said. Perhaps WallStreetBets and these donations show us a broader version of masculinity that involves generosity and humor that doesnt come at the cost of somebody else.

Its impossible to predict what will happen with GameStop or the WallStreetBets group moving forward. Opinions are divided. Barnes thinks we may see the larger group fade away, only to come back as smaller, more concentrated groups. These smaller groups may focus on environmental, social, or governance investing theyre passionate about. Callewaert, the portfolio manager at Multipli, is more bullish.

He thinks WSB can successfully harness the power of the group and is confident meme stocks arent going anywhere soon. Shohfi, the RPI professor, doesnt want to see retail investors get crushed. He worries the economic concept of prospect theory, which is the idea that losses are more painful than gains are pleasurable, could deter individual traders who may have seen their holdings decline from GameStops record highs last week even if theyve still made money overall from investing in the future.

Tutu, one of the WallStreetBets members I spoke with, left me with a plea. Most of us are regular people who are just trying to make a quick buck out of this GME craze so we [can] pay off some bills or get someone something special. Wall Street has been playing this game for years, messing with the regular folks. This one time we have the chance to get back [at] them. Dont tarnish this movement, please.

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Human Behavior

Healthy Oceans Need Healthy Soundscapes | The UCSB Current – The UCSB Current

The landscape of sound or soundscape is such a powerful indicator of the health of an environment, noted Ben Halpern, a coauthor on the study and director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at UC Santa Barbara. Like we have done in our cities on land, we have replaced the sounds of nature throughout the ocean with those of humans.

The deterioration of habitats, such as coral reefs, seagrass meadows and kelp beds with overfishing, coastal development, climate change and other human pressures, have further silenced the characteristic sound that guides the larvae of fish and other animals drifting at sea into finding and settling on their habitats. The call home is no longer audible for many ecosystems and regions.

The Anthropocene marine environment, according to the researchers, is polluted by human-made sound and should be restored along sonic dimensions, and along those more traditional chemical and climatic. Yet, current frameworks to improve ocean health ignore the need to mitigate noise as a pre-requisite for a healthy ocean.

Sound travels far, and quickly, underwater. And marine animals are sensitive to sound, which they use as a prominent sensorial signal guiding all aspects of their behavior and ecology. This makes the ocean soundscape one of the most important, and perhaps under-appreciated, aspects of the marine environment, the study states. The authors hope is that the evidence presented in the paper will prompt management actions ... to reduce noise levels in the ocean, thereby allowing marine animals to re-establish their use of ocean sound.

We all know that no one really wants to live right next to a freeway because of the constant noise, commented Halpern. For animals in the ocean, its like having a mega-freeway in your backyard.

The team set out to document the impact of noise on marine animals and on marine ecosystems around the world. They assessed the evidence contained across more than 10,000 papers to consolidate compelling evidence that human-made noise impacts marine life from invertebrates to whales across multiple levels, from behavior to physiology.

This unprecedented effort, involving a major tour de force, has shown the overwhelming evidence for the prevalence of impacts from human-induced noise on marine animals, to the point that the urgency of taking action can no longer be ignored, said Michelle Havlik, aKAUST Ph.D. student. The research involved scientists from Saudi Arabia, Denmark, the U.S. and the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Norway and Canada.

The deep, dark ocean is conceived as a distant, remote ecosystem, even by marine scientists, Duarte said. However, as I was listening, years ago, to a hydrophone recording acquired off the U.S. West Coast, I was surprised to hear the clear sound of rain falling on the surface as the dominant sound in the deep-sea ocean environment. I then realized how acoustically connected the ocean surface, where most human noise is generated, is to the deep sea; just 1,000 m, less than 1 second apart!

The takeaway of the review is that mitigating the impacts of noise from human activities on marine life is key to achieving a healthier ocean. The KAUST-led study identifies a number of actions that may come at a cost but are relatively easy to implement to improve the ocean soundscape and, in so doing, enable the recovery of marine life and the goal of sustainable use of the ocean. For example, simple technological innovations are already reducing propeller noise from ships, and policy could accelerate their use in the shipping industry and spawn new innovations.

Deploying these mitigation actions is a low hanging fruit as, unlike other forms of human pollution such as emissions of chemical pollutants and greenhouse gases, the effects of noise pollution cease upon reducing the noise, so the benefits are immediate. The study points to the quick response of marine animals to the human lockdown under COVID-19 as evidence for the potential rapid recovery from noise pollution.

Using sounds gathered from around the globe, multimedia artist and study coauthor Jana Winderen created a six-minute audio track that demonstrates both the peaceful calm, and the devastatingly jarring, acoustic aspects of life for marine animals. The research is truly eye opening, or rather ear opening, both in its groundbreaking scale as well as in its immediacy.

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Human Behavior

Ending the Rat Race: How Evolution Can Change Science for the Better – SciTechDaily

Mathematical modeler and statistics. Credit: Image is provided by the Anthro Illustrated project (https://anthroillustrated.com)

Current reforms to end the rat race between scientists can help; but are they enough?

Science is societys best method for understanding the world. Yet many scientists are unhappy with the way it works, and there are growing concerns that there is something broken in current scientific practice.

Many of the rules and procedures that are meant to promote innovative research are little more than historical precedents with little reason to suppose they encourage efficient or reliable discoveries. Worse, they can have perverse side-effects that harm both science and scientists. A well-known example is the general preference for positive over negative results, which creates a publication bias giving the false impression that certain effects exist, where in reality the dissenting evidence simply fails to be released.

Arizona State University researchers Thomas Morgan and Minhua Yan, working with ASU graduate Leonid Tiokhin, now at University of Technology Eindhoven in the Netherlands, have developed a new model, published this week in Nature Human Behaviour, to better understand the challenges facing the scientific process and how we can make it better. They focused on the priority rule: the tendency for the first scientist to document a finding to be disproportionately rewarded with prestige, prizes and career opportunities while those in second place get little to no recognition.

Many scientists have sleepless nights worrying about being scooped fearing that their work wont be considered novel enough for the highest-impact scientific journals because a different group working on the same topic manages to publish first. The priority rule has been around for centuries. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz haggled over who invented calculus. And in the 19th century, Charles Darwin rushed to publish On the Origin of Species to avoid being scooped by Alfred Russel Wallace.

Rewarding priority is understandable and has some benefits. However, it comes at a cost, Tiokhin said. Rewards for priority may tempt scientists to sacrifice the quality of their research and cut corners.

The idea is that competition encourages scientists to work hard and efficiently, such that discoveries are made quickly, said Morgan, a research affiliate with theInstitute of Human Originsand associate professor with theSchool of Human Evolution and Social Change.But if everyone is working hard, and you need to come in first to be successful, then theres a temptation to cut corners to maximize your chances, even if it means the science suffers.

This is partly why some academic publishers, such as PLOS and eLife, now offer scoop protection, allowing researchers to publish findings identical to those already published within a certain timeframe. The problem is that science and publishers currently dont have a good idea about whether these reforms make sense.

To figure out how exactly the preference for priority affects science, and whether recent reforms offer any solution for its potential drawbacks, the collaborators developed an evolutionary agent-based model. This computer model simulates how a group of scientists investigate or abandon research questions, depending on their own results and the behavior of other scientists they compete against.The benefit of an evolutionary simulation is that we dont need to specify in advance how scientists behave. We just create a world in which success is rewarded, and we let selection figure out what kinds of behavior this favors, Morgan said. We can then vary what it means to successful for instance, whether or not its critical to come first and see how selection changes the behavior of scientists in response. We can also measure the benefit to society are scientists being efficient? Are their findings accurate? And so on.

The researchers found that a culture of excessive rewards for priority can have harmful effects. Among other things, it motivates scientists to conduct quick and dirty studies, so that they can be first to publish. This reduces the quality of their work and harms the reliability of science as a whole.

The model also suggests that scoop protection, as introduced by PLOS and eLife, works.

It reduces the temptation to rush the research and gives researchers more time to collect additional data, Tiokhin said. However, scoop protection is no panacea.

This is because scoop protection motivates some scientists to continue with a research line even after several results on that topic have been published, which reduces the total number of research questions the scientific community can address.

Scoop protection reforms in themselves, while helpful, are not sufficient to guarantee high-quality research or a reliable published literature. The model also shows that even with scoop protection, scientists will be tempted to run many small studies if new studies are cheap and easy to set up and the rewards for negative results are high. This suggests that measures that force scientists to invest more heavily in each study, such as asking scientists to preregister their studies or get their research plans criticized before they begin collecting data, can help.

We also learned that inefficiency in science is not always a bad thing. On the contrary inefficiencies force researchers to think twice before starting a new study, Tiokhin said.

Another option is to make large-scale data collection so straightforward that there is less incentive to skimp on data, alternatively, reviewers and journals could be more vigilant in looking out for underpowered studies with small sample sizes.

This project is an example of metascience, the use of the scientific method to study science itself.

It was a great pleasure to be part of this project. I got to use my modeling skills not only to make specific scientific discoveries, but also to shed light on how the scientific procedure itself should be designed to increase research quality and credibility. This benefits the whole scientific community and ultimately, the whole society, said Yan, a graduate student in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

Reference: Competition for priority harms the reliability of science, but reforms can help by Leonid Tiokhin, Minhua Yan and Thomas J. H. Morgan, 28 January 2021, Nature Human Behaviour.DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-01040-1

Written by Julie Russ (ASU) and H.G.P van Appeven (Eindhoven University of Technology).

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Ending the Rat Race: How Evolution Can Change Science for the Better - SciTechDaily

Human Behavior

Family ties and pandemics: Evidence from Covid-19 | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal – voxeu.org

Luca Di Gialleonardo, Mauro Mar, Antonello Motroni, Francesco Porcelli 04 February 2021

We still have imperfect knowledge of the 2020 pandemic from the Sars-CoV-2 virus, its origin, how it is evolving, and when it will come to an end. The history of humankind is full of pandemics, each with profound impacts on the habits of people, the evolution of health treatments, and the economy (Baldwin and Weder di Mauro eds. 2020a and 2020b). There are still some uncertainties about the implementation of containment measures and the intensity of lockdown needed (Flaxman et al. 2020, Barro 2020, Barro et al. 2020, Asvae et al. 2020, Scala et al. 2020, Hsiang et al. 2020, Aksoy et al. 2020, Van Bavel et al. 2020, Bartscher et al. 2020a, 2020b, Barrios et al. 2020, Bayer and Kuhn 2020, Borgonovi and Andrieu 2020). In the absence of a vaccine, self-isolation and social distancing, along with mask-wearing and cleaning hands, are the only protection tools against the virus (Greenstone and Nigam 2020, Scott and Old 2020, Hsiang et al. 2020, Aksoy et al. 2020, Flaxman et al. 2020). Such actions, however, generate a painful disruption to economic activities. That disruption, in turn, feeds deniers, populism, and social discontent.

We do not have yet the epidemiological proof to affirm specific cause-and-effect links. It is now clear, however, that close relationships between people in transport (trains, buses, and airplanes), schools, workplaces, and mass events significantly increase the probability of contracting the virus. When the medium is the air, to stop a possible exponential growth1one must avoid staying close to potentially infected people; subsequently, the identification of contagion chains and the isolation of spreaders are essential aspects to slowing the spread. However, it was underappreciated at least at the beginning of the pandemic that social capital, family ties, and personal behaviour are also crucial factors in the spread of the virus.2

In our recent study (di Gialleonardo et al. 2020), we provide an empirical analysis of the relationship between the spread of Covid-19 and the strength of family ties. The dataset combines different sources for a cross-section of 63 countries3taking into account seven dimensions: diffusion of the virus, the power of family ties, social capital in terms of trust and religion, the policy instruments implemented to stop the outbreak, the status of the economy, geography, and demography.4 Figure 1 and Figure 2 report the main variables of the study related, respectively, to the spread of Covid-19 and the strength of family ties.

Figure 1 Covid-19 outbreak data registered from 22 January to 12 September for the 63 countries included in the analysis

Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) of the Johns Hopkins University.

Figure 2 Family-ties variables for the 63 countries included in the analysis

Source: authors elaboration using data from World Values Survey.

As suggested in Mar-Motroni-Porcelli (2020), we measure the strength of family ties considering the principal component of three World Values Survey (WVS) variables: the importance of the family, the childrens respect for parents (love-parents), and the generosity of parents towards children (help-child).5

Final results confirm a robust positive relationship between the strength of family ties and the contagion rate across the world. Our estimates show that one standard deviation increase in the principal component of the strength of family ties generates a 0.454 increase in the standard deviation of the number of daily cases per capita.6As visualised in Figure 3, the main force driving the positive correlation is the generosity of parents towards their children (variable help-child).

Figure 3 Correlation between family ties and Covid-19 cases from 22 January to 12 September

Source: authors elaboration using data from World Values Survey and Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) of the Johns Hopkins University.

In line with the existing literature, our paper also shows interesting evidence stemming from social capital variables - trust in other people and religiosity are negatively correlated with the number of cases, while trust in the church shows a positive correlation (Borgonovi and Andrieu 2020, Durante et al. 2020, Bartscher et al. 2020a and 2020b, Barrios et al. 2020, Bayer and Kuhn 2020). Our study also shows that the mortality rate (number of deaths over the number of registered cases) appears to be independent of social behaviours, including family ties. Mortality is positively correlated with other structural variables, such as income, the number of hospital beds, life expectancy, and the average age of the population. More advanced countries have richer and more efficient healthcare systems and healthier lifestyles, which are key factors for virus tracing and treatment strategies. Finally, geographical position and latitude also appear relevant.

A pact between generations is therefore essential. Young people must be "prudent at school, respecting the rules, and keeping the measures at home".7Some clinical evidence in Italy shows that family lunch on Sundays is more dangerous than going to the supermarket. There is no doubt that, until the vaccine is distributed, pharmacological therapies will not be sufficient to contract the spread of Covid-19 if not complemented with the social measures that proved effective during past pandemic events. As far as possible, contacts between the elderly and grandchildren must be limited; we have to protect the former with socially bearable distancing measures such as wearing masks, hand washing, and maintaining appropriate safety distances. It is yet another confirmation that family ties, social capital, and trust are essential not only for economic and social issues, but also for key policies in health care and management of a pandemic. The final question is: Will the pandemic change our social habits in the long run, including the strength of family ties

Aksoy, C G, M Ganslmeier and P Poutvaara (2020), Public Attention and Policy Responses to Covid-19 Pandemic, Cesifo Working Paper, no. 8409.

Asvae, A, G Alfani, F Gandolfi and M Le Moglie (2020), Epidemics and Trust: The Case of the Spanish Flu, IGIER Working Paper Series, March.

Baldwin, R (2000), Covid-19 testing for testing times: Fostering economic recovery and preparing for the second wave, VoxEU.org, 26 March.

Baldwin, R and B Weder di Mauro (2020a), Economics in the Time of COVID-19, VoxEU.org, 6 March.

Baldwin, R and B Weder di Mauro (2020b), Mitigating the COVID economic crisis: Act fast and do whatever it takes, VoxEU.org, 18 March.

Barrios J, E Benmelech, Y Hochberg, P Sapienza and L Zingales (2020), Civic Capital and Social Distancing during the Covid-19 Pandemic, Working paper, University of Chicago, 28 May.

Barro, R J (2020), Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions and Mortality in U.S. Cities during the Great Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919, NBER Working Papers, No. 27049.

Barro, R J, F Ursa and J Weng (2020), The coronavirus and the great influenza pandemic: Lessons from the Spanish flu for the coronaviruss potential effects on mortality and economic activity, NBER Working Papers, No. 26866.

Bartscher, A, S Seitz, S Siegloch, M Slotwinski and N Wehrhfer (2020a), Social Capital and the spread of Covid-19: Insights from European Countries, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 14711.

Bartscher, A, S Seitz, S Siegloch, M Slotwinski and N Wehrhfer (2020b), The role of social capital in the spread of Covid-19, VoxEU.org, 18 June.

Bayer, C and M Kuhn (2020), Intergenerational ties and case fatality rates: A cross-country analysis, VoxEU.org, 20 March.

Borgonovi, F and E Andrieu (2020), The role of social capital in promoting social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, VoxEU.org, 10 June.

Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) (2020), COVID 19 Dashboard, John Hopkins University.

Di Gialleonardo, L, M Mar, A Motroni and F Porcelli (2020), Family Ties and the Pandemic, Some Evidences from Sars-CoV-2, Covid Economics 60, 4 December.

Durante, R, L Guiso and G Gulino (2020), Civic capital and social distancing: Evidence from Italians response to Covid-19, VoxEU.org, 16 April.

Flaxman, S, S Mishra, A Gandy et al. (2020), Estimating the effects of non- pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe, Nature584, 257261.

Greenstone, M and V Nigam (2020), Does Social Distancing Matter?, Working Paper Becker Friedman Institute, n. 26, 25 March.

Hsiang S, D Allen, S Annan-Phan et al. (2020), The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic, Nature584.

Mar, M, A Motroni, F Porcelli (2020), How family ties affect trust, tax morale and underground economy, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization174, 235252.

Scala A, A Flori, A Spelta, E Brugnoli, M Cinelli, W Quattrociocchi and F Pammolli (2020), Time, space and social interactions: exit mechanisms for the Covid-19 epidemics, Sci Rep 10, 13764.

Scott, A and J D Old (2020), The interaction between Covid-19 and an ageing society, VoxEU.org, 27 April.

Van Bavel,B, PBoggio, V Capraro et al. (2020), Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response, Nature Human Behavior4, May.

1A recent analysis by Baldwin (2020) shows that the epidemiological curve not necessarily follow the path of an exponential curve, but rather tends to rise rapidly, peaks, and then flattens.

2Van Bavel et al. (2020) highlights that the perception of threat plays a very important role. Like other animals, human beings can perceive emotions and the feeling of threat that can be very effective in the virus containment, since it motivates people to adopt good practices and changes unhealthy behaviours.

3This is the maximum number of countries for which we have been able to measure the strength of family ties in a consistent way by using World Values Survey data.

4Information on COVID-19 outbreak are taken from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSS 2020) of the Johns Hopkins University. Data include, for 187 countries, the number of confirmed cases, the number of deaths, and the number of recovered, from 22 January to 12 September, the day we closed the estimation.

5 In the empirical analysis, the overall measure of family ties is computed using the principal component of the three variables: "importance of family", "love-parents", and "help-child".

6This result, robust to different specifications of our model, is obtained through the OLS estimator (robust for heteroscedasticity) applied to a linear regression model in which we control for the following variables: Religiosity, trust church, trust people, rule of law index, COVID measures stringency index, GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Parity, human development index, health spending in % of GDP, number of beds per 1,000 inhabitants, latitude, northern hemisphere dummy, median age in years, life expectancy, diabetes prevalence, and cardiovascular death rate. Information on the composition of the population, status of the economy, the policy response to the pandemic, and other general structural characteristics of each country (including data on health care systems), are taken from "GlobalEconomy.com" and "Ourworldindata.org". These two web repositories combine official statistics and research data sources on almost all countries. Finally, information on trust, attitude toward religion, and composition of the family (especially to monitor the ratio of older people living within a family) have been collected from the latest World Values Survey edition available at the time.

7 The French Health Prefecture has recently reiterated that "a significant number of outbreaks originate in the family or friends", and for this reason, private meetings should be limited to fewer than six or ten people. In Spain, the limit was set to six, as in the UK and Italy. Giuseppe Ippolito, the scientific director of Italian "Istituto Lazzaro Spallanzani", a major Covid centre in Italy, stated that the resurgence of infections could be attributed to "a transmission model that involves family contacts between different age groups".

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Family ties and pandemics: Evidence from Covid-19 | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal - voxeu.org