Illness Perceptions of COVID-19 in Europe: Predictors, Impacts and Temporal Evolution
covid-19, Stress, illness perceptions, illness representations, Common-sense model
Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral responses in many diseases. The current study aims to investigate the COVID-19-related IP throughout Europe. The specific goals are to understand the temporal development, identify predictors (within demographics and contact with COVID-19) and examine the impacts of IP on perceived stress and preventive behaviors.Methods: This was a time-series-cross-section study of 7,032 participants from 16 European countries using multilevel modeling from April to June 2020. IP were measured with the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Temporal patterns were observed considering the date of participation and the date recoded to account the epidemiological evolution of each country. The outcomes considered were perceived stress and COVID-19 preventive behaviors.Results: There were significant trends, over time, for several IP, suggesting a small decrease in negativity in the perception of COVID-19 in the community. Age, gender, and education level related to some, but not all, IP. Considering the self-regulation model, perceptions consistently predicted general stress and were less consistently related to preventive behaviors. Country showed no effect in the predictive model, suggesting that national differences may have little relevance for IP, in this context.Conclusion: The present study provides a comprehensive picture of COVID-19 IP in Europe in an early stage of the pandemic. The results shed light on the process of IP formation with implications for health-related outcomes and their evolution.
David Dias Neto, David Dias Neto, Ana Nunes da Silva, Magda Sofia Roberto, Jelena Lubenko, Marios Constantinou, Christiana Nicolaou, Demetris Lamnisos, Savvas Papacostas, Stefan Höfer, Giovambattista Presti, Valeria Squatrito, Vasilis S. Vasiliou, Louise McHugh, Jean-Louis Monestès, Adriana Baban, Javier Alvarez-Galvez, Marisa Paez-Blarrina, Francisco Montesinos, Sonsoles Valdivia-Salas, Dorottya Ori, Raimo Lappalainen, Bartosz Kleszcz, Andrew Gloster, Maria Karekla, Angelos P. Kassianos, Angelos P. Kassianos
Im/Mobility at the US–Mexico Border during the COVID-19 Pandemic
covid-19, asylum, US–Mexico border, Immobility, refugee camp
In March 2020, the United States government began a series of measures designed to dramatically restrict immigration as part of its response to the global health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This included Title 42, which deported asylum seekers immediately and prevented them from applying for asylum. These measures worsened an already precarious situation at the US–Mexico border for an estimated 60,000 asylum seekers who were prevented, by the Trump administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ (aka MPP) policy enacted in January 2019, from remaining in the United States while they awaited their asylum hearings. In-depth interviews, participant observation, and social media analysis with humanitarian and legal advocates for asylum seekers living in a camp at the border in Matamoros, Mexico reveal that COVID-19’s impacts are not limited to public health concerns. Rather, COVID-19’s impacts center on how the Trump administration weaponized the virus to indefinitely suspend the asylum system. We argue that the Matamoros refugee camp provides a strategic vantage point to understand the repercussions of state policies of exclusion on im/mobility and survival strategies for asylum seekers. Specifically, we use the analytical lenses of the politics of im/mobility, geographies of exclusion, and asylum seeker resilience to identify how COVID-19 has shaped the im/mobility and security of the camp and its residents in unexpected ways. At the same time, our research illustrates that camp residents exercise im/mobility as a form of political visibility to contest and ameliorate their precarity as they find themselves in conditions not of their choosing.
Sarah A. Blue, Jennifer A. Devine, Matthew P. Ruiz, Kathryn McDaniel, Alisa R. Hartsell, Christopher J. Pierce, Makayla Johnson, Allison K. Tinglov, Mei Yang, Xiu Wu, Sara Moya, Elle Cross, Carol Anne Starnes
La Cuenca del Río Tijuana se encuentra en ambos lados de la frontera, dos terceras partes en México y una en Estados Unidos. Este paisaje presenta a la gente de ambos lados un destino geográfico-hidrológico común. En este trabajo se presenta un análisis de tres imaginarios de la cuenca producidos por distintas organizaciones: un afiche con fotografía de satélite, una fiesta y un video de la cuenca. El análisis, en un marco teórico de la ecología política, consiste en resaltar lo que está presente y ausente en las imágenes y en los discursos que las han producido. El trabajo concluye con la propuesta de un proyecto binacional de investigaciones etnográficas que incluya entrevistas con diversas personas de ambos lados de la frontera sobre sus vivencias y visiones de la cuenca en sus diferentes sectores (montañosos, agrícolas, urbanos) y desde distintos puntos de vista.
IMAGINARIOS AMBIENTALES Y DE EDUCACIÓN AMBIENTAL DE LOS ESTUDIANTES Y DOCENTES DE LA INSTITUCIÓN EDUCATIVA AGROTÉCNICO MIXTO, MUNICIPIO DE BELÉN DE LOS ANDAQUÍES (CAQUETÁ)
Educación Ambiental, Interdisciplinar, agroecológica, transdisciplinar
El modelo de educación imperante en las instituciones educativas del país presenta graves falencias en cuanto al método de enseñanza de la educación ambiental. Por esto, se busca plantear la transdisciplinariedad entre asignaturas, para que la comunidad educativa se vincule con los diferentes actores que giran en torno a estas, y se pueda evaluar, rediseñar y planificar desde una vista integral en el contexto educativo. En esta dirección, se realizó el presente estudio en la Institución Educativa Agrotécnico Mixto, lo que implicó, desde el punto de vista metodológico, la ejecución de una investigación cualitativa de estudio de caso, a partir de entrevistas realizadas a los docentes y estudiantes para conocer sus imaginarios ambientales y de educación ambiental. La producción de los datos permitió identificar divergencias entre ambas percepciones y, a partir de esta realidad, se elaboró una propuesta para el rediseño de la metodología educativa de la institución, que vincula a las huertas agroecológicas como estrategia para los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje.
Verenice Sánchez - Castillo, Carlos Gómez - Cano, César Coronado - Sarria, Wilmer Valenzuela - Molina
http://revistas.unisimon.edu.co/index.php/educacion/article/view/2537
Social sciences (General), Education (General)
Imaging features of the initial chest thin-section CT scans from 110 patients after admission with suspected or confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19.
Pneumonia, coronavirus, COVID-19, Thin-section CT
In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus pneumonia, now called COVID-19, occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. COVID-19, which is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has spread quickly across China and the rest of the world. This study aims to evaluate initial chest thin-section CT findings of COVID-19 patients after their admission at our hospital. Retrospective study in a tertiary referral hospital in Anhui, China. From January 22, 2020 to February 16, 2020, 110 suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients were examined using chest thin-section CT. Patients in group 1 (n = 51) presented with symptoms of COVID-19 according to the diagnostic criteria. Group 2 (n = 29) patients were identified as a high degree of clinical suspicion. Patients in group 3 (n = 30) presented with mild symptoms and normal chest radiographs. The characteristics, positions, and distribution of intrapulmonary lesions were analyzed. Moreover, interstitial lesions, pleural thickening and effusion, lymph node enlargement, and other CT abnormalities were reviewed. CT abnormalities were found only in groups 1 and 2. The segments involved were mainly distributed in the lower lobes (58.3%) and the peripheral zone (73.8%). The peripheral lesions, adjacent subpleural lesions, accounted for 51.8%. Commonly observed CT patterns were ground-glass opacification (GGO) (with or without consolidation), interlobular septal thickening, and intralobular interstitial thickening. Compared with group 1, patients in group 2 presented with smaller lesions, and all lesions were distributed in fewer lung segments. Localized pleural thickening was observed in 51.0% of group 1 patients and 48.2% of group 2 patients. The prevalence of lymph node enlargement in groups 1 and 2 combined was extremely low (1 of 80 patients), and no significant pleural effusion or pneumothorax was observed (0 of 80 patients). The common features of chest thin-section CT of COVID-19 are multiple areas of GGO, sometimes accompanied by consolidation. The lesions are mainly distributed in the lower lobes and peripheral zone, and a large proportion of peripheral lesions are accompanied by localized pleural thickening adjacent to the subpleural region.
Ping Fang, Jingchao Zhang, Tiejun Song, Cheng-Juan Long, Qing Yang
Imaging in support of the clinical diagnoses of COVID-19 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.
atypical pneumonia, Interstitial lung diseases, CT computed tomography, COVID-19 coronavirus infections
Abstract Background Coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It was highly contagious spreading all over the world, with a rapid increase in the number of deaths. The reported cases have reached more than 14 million with more than 600,000 deaths around the world. So, the pandemic of COVID-19 became a surpassing healthcare crisis with an intensive load on the healthcare resources. In this study, the aim was to differentiate COVID-19 pneumonia from its mimickers as atypical infection, interstitial lung diseases, and eosinophilic lung diseases based on CT, clinical, and laboratory findings. Results This retrospective study included 260 patients, of which 220 were confirmed as COVID-19 positive by two repeated RT-PCR test and 40 were classified as non-COVID by two repeated negative RT-PCR test or identification of other pathogens, other relevant histories, or clinical findings. In this study, 158 patients were male (60.7 %) and 102 patients were female (39.3%). There was 60.9% of the COVID-19 group were male and 39.1% were female. Patients in the non-COVID group were significantly older (the mean age was 46.4) than those in the confirmed COVID-19 group (35.2y). In the COVID-19 group, there was exposure history to positive cases in 84.1% while positive exposure history was 20% in the non-COVID group. Conclusion The spectrum of CT imaging findings in COVID-19 pneumonia is wide that could be contributed by many other diseases making the interpretation of chest CTs nowadays challenging to differentiate between different diseases having the same signs and act as deceiving simulators in the era of COVID-19.
Abdelghany Mohammed Motawea, Suzan Omar, Rabab Yasin
Medical physics. Medical radiology. Nuclear medicine
Imagining living spaces in extreme conditions: suggestions from a case study in Bari
urban spaces, spatial cognition, lockdown, covid emergency
The coronavirus pandemic has affected over 200 countries worldwide, finding an environment well-suited to its spread in cities as the heart of our civilization, as the meeting place for ideas, cultures and commercial exchanges. In these circumstances, prevention and control play a vital role, revealing the need to improve the current knowledge of users’ perception of urban spaces and the way in which spaces are perceived and used. This work aims at investigating how the coronavirus emergency influenced perception of the surrounding spaces. In this regard, two questionnaire-based surveys were carried out on a sample of students from the School of Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Bari (Italy), one during the lockdown phase and one immediately after. Even after only a preliminary analysis, results showed some interesting patterns. They revealed, on the one hand, the expectations regarding possible changes, indicating places that are particularly important or symbolic for participants, and which are perceived to be missing, and on the other, the feelings of fear, worry and uncertainty with regard to the risk of contagion during post-lockdown access to and navigation through them. Nonetheless, some changes were considered positive, thus providing a strong indication of the expectations placed on future cities
TeMA: Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment
Transportation engineering, Urbanization. City and country
Imersão na realidade rural como metodologia de ensino
Aprendizados, Pedagogia de imersão, Prática, Reflexão sobre a ação
O artigo tem como objetivo apresentar a experiência da Vivência em Agricultura Familiar, disciplina curricular obrigatória do curso de graduação em Agronomia da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, e caracterizar a imersão na realidade social rural enquanto metodologia de ensino. Insere-se na perspectiva analítica que considera teoria e prática como construtos inseparáveis no processo de ensino e aprendizagem e tem como base empírica os dados qualitativos coletados durante os processos coletivos de avaliação da etapa de campo da disciplina. Como principal resultado, desvela-se que a imersão na realidade rural produz múltiplos aprendizados, alguns para além dos objetivos da disciplina, sendo a relação teoria e prática o disparador de processos reflexivos sobre a ação e o efetivo papel dos futuros engenheiros/as agrônomos/as.
Daniela Aparecida Pacífico, William Douglas Bolzan, Edimar Luiz Rode, Mayara Breskovit Blasius
https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/rdes/article/view/15914
Immediate and long-term consequences of COVID-19 infections for the development of neurological disease
Cognition, Neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, cytokine, NLRP3 inflammasome, systemic inflammation
Abstract Increasing evidence suggests that infection with Sars-CoV-2 causes neurological deficits in a substantial proportion of affected patients. While these symptoms arise acutely during the course of infection, less is known about the possible long-term consequences for the brain. Severely affected COVID-19 cases experience high levels of proinflammatory cytokines and acute respiratory dysfunction and often require assisted ventilation. All these factors have been suggested to cause cognitive decline. Pathogenetically, this may result from direct negative effects of the immune reaction, acceleration or aggravation of pre-existing cognitive deficits, or de novo induction of a neurodegenerative disease. This article summarizes the current understanding of neurological symptoms of COVID-19 and hypothesizes that affected patients may be at higher risk of developing cognitive decline after overcoming the primary COVID-19 infection. A structured prospective evaluation should analyze the likelihood, time course, and severity of cognitive impairment following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael T. Heneka, Robert Brown, Dave Morgan, Eicke Latz, Douglas Golenbock
Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry, Neurology. Diseases of the nervous system