197.
Bishoy Louis Zaki, Francesco Nicoli, etc.,
Contagious inequality: economic disparities and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022.03.01,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/2/199/6550136?searchresult=1 .
In this article, we focus on exploring a territory that remains relatively unchartered on a large scale, namely the relationship between economic inequalities and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a dataset of 25 European countries spanning 300 regions. Our findings reveal two pathways by which economic asymmetries and inequalities can observably influence excess mortality: labor market structures (capturing concentrations of industrial jobs) and income inequalities (capturing concentrations and asymmetries in income distribution). We leverage our findings to offer recommendations for policymakers toward a more deliberate consideration of the multidimensionality of technically complex, large-scale crises with a high degree of societal embeddedness.
196.
Veronica Q T Li, Liang Ma, Xun Wu,
COVID-19, policy change, and post-pandemic data governance: a case analysis of contact tracing applications in East Asia, 2022.02.01,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/1/01/6513795?searchresult=1 .
The development and use of data tools for pandemic control, for example, may have potentially detrimental and irreversible impacts on data governance and, more broadly, society, in the long run. In this paper, we aim to explore the extent to which COVID-19 and digital contact tracing have led to policy change in data governance, if at all, and what the implications of such change would be for a post-COVID world. We compare the use of contact tracing and monitoring applications across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore to illustrate both the enormous benefits and potential risks arising from the design of contact tracing applications and the involvement of stakeholders in the various stages of the policy cycle to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that, while COVID-19 has not changed the nature of issues, such as public trust in data governance, the increasing involvement of big tech in data policies, and data privacy risks, it has exacerbated those issues through the accelerated adoption of data technologies.
195.
Stuart Gietel-Basten, Kira Matus, Rintaro Mori,
COVID-19 as a trigger for innovation in policy action for older persons? Evidence from Asia, 2022.01.01,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/1/168/6513587?searchresult=1 .
COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on older people, in terms of their susceptibility to the disease and increased fatality rates, while also by creating barriers to health care access, social isolation, psychological and financial burdens. Policy responses provide an opportunity to understand whether the demands of this crisis have led to the development of policy innovations to meet the needs of aging populations. We analyzed an illustrative corpus of policies collected by HelpAge International across Asia in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam. We identified different policy types that impacted older persons during the pandemic. We also observed the degree to which these policies support arguments for paradigmatic policy changes by examining different models of intersectoral and multisectoral collaborations, and the kinds of policies where these multiactor arrangements were the most common.
194.
John Hogan, Michael Howlett, Mary Murphy,
Re-thinking the coronavirus pandemic as a policy punctuation: COVID-19 as a path-clearing policy accelerator, 2022.01.10,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/article/41/1/40/6503294?searchresult=1 .
This article examines the evolution of our understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted policy ideas and routines across a wide variety of sectors of government activity. Did policy ideas and routines transform as a result of the pandemic or were they merely a continuation of the status quo ante? If they did transform, are the transformations temporary in nature or likely to lead to significant, deep and permanent reform to existing policy paths and trajectories? As this article sets out, the literature on policy punctuations has evolved and helps us understand the impact of COVID-19 on policy-making but tends to conflate several distinct aspects of path trajectories and deviations under the general concept of “critical junctures” which muddy reflections and findings.
193.
Althaf Marsoof,
The Disposal of COVID-19 Dead Bodies: Impact of Sri Lanka’s Response on Fundamental Rights, 2022.03.12,
https://academic.oup.com/jhrp/article/13/3/669/6547324?searchresult=1 .
In early 2020, the Government of Sri Lanka decided that all bodies of individuals who had (or were suspected to have) died of COVID-19 should be disposed of by cremation alone. Although this decision appears to be neutral and does not give rise to de jure discrimination, as a matter of fact, it has significantly impacted the religious rights of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Government’s decision to adopt a cremation-only policy interfered with the right of all Sri Lankan Muslims to manifest their religion or belief as guaranteed by the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka. The objective of this article is to consider the extent to which the aforementioned decisions of the Sri Lankan Government are consistent with the fundamental rights framework of the country’s Constitution.
192.
Mark Leon Goldberg,
These Lessons from COVID Can Help The World Prevent the Next Pandemic. 2022.5.30 ,
https://www.undispatch.com/these-lessons-from-covid-can-help-us-prevent-the-next-pandemic-dr-joanne-liu/ .
This article presents world leaders need to be approaching pandemic preparedness and response as if it were a potentially existential threat to humanity, on par with a nuclear catastrophe. This requires far greater levels of political attention than it currently receives.
191.
Veerle Buffel, Sarah Van de Velde, etc.,
Depressive symptoms in higher education students during the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of containment measures, 2022.03.15,
https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurpub/ckac026/6548801?searchresult=1 .
Students are a vulnerable group for the indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly their mental health. This paper examined the cross-national variation in students' depressive symptoms and whether this can be related to the various protective measures implemented in response to the initial stage of the COVID-19 outbreak. Our findings raise concerns about the potential adverse effects of existing containment measures (especially the closure of schools and workplaces and stay-at-home restrictions) on students' mental health.
190.
Gabriel Gregory, Lin Zhu, etc.,
Learning from the pandemic: mortality trends and seasonality of deaths in Australia in 2020, 2022.03.15,
https://academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyac032/6547421?searchresult=1 .
This article aim to assess whether the observed numbers and seasonality of deaths in Australia during 2020 differed from expected trends based on 2015–19 data. The conclusion is that the observed reductions in respiratory and dementia deaths and the reduced seasonality in ischaemic heart disease deaths may reflect reductions in circulating respiratory (non-SARS-CoV-2) pathogens resulting from the public health measures taken in 2020. The observed increase in diabetes deaths is unexplained and merits further study.
189.
Jonathan Pugh, Dominic Wilkinson, etc.,
Vaccine suspension, risk, and precaution in a pandemic, 2022.03.16,,
https://academic.oup.com/jlb/article/9/1/lsab036/6549442?searchresult=1 .
In early 2021, cases of rare adverse events were observed in individuals who had received the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Countries around the world differed radically in their policy responses to these observations. In this paper, we outline the ethical justification for different policy approaches for managing the emerging risks of novel vaccines in a pandemic. We begin by detailing the precautionary approach that some countries adopted, and distinguishing ethical questions regarding the management of known and unknown risks. We go on to outline the harms of adopting a highly precautionary approach in a pandemic context, and explain why an appropriate policy approach should accommodate the benefits as well as the risks of vaccination. In the final section, we outline three policy approaches that can accommodate the different benefits of vaccination, whilst taking into account the harms of precaution. Whilst we do not set out to defend one particular policy approach, we explain how different moral theories lend different degrees of support to each of these different approaches. Our analysis elucidates how fundamental value conflicts in public health ethics played out on the global stage of vaccine policy.
188.
Bishoy Louis Zaki, Francesco Nicoli, etc.,
Contagious inequality: economic disparities and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022.03.17,
https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/advance-article/doi/10.1093/polsoc/puac011/6550136?searchresult=1 .
The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the need to consider multiple and often novel perspectives on contemporary policymaking in the context of technically complex, ambiguous, and large-scale crises. In this article, we focus on exploring a territory that remains relatively unchartered on a large scale, namely the relationship between economic inequalities and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a dataset of 25 European countries spanning 300 regions. Our findings reveal two pathways by which economic asymmetries and inequalities can observably influence excess mortality: labor market structures and income inequalities. We leverage our findings to offer recommendations for policymakers toward a more deliberate consideration of the multidimensionality of technically complex, large-scale crises with a high degree of societal embeddedness. These findings also urge future scholarship to utilize a range of parameters and indicators for better understanding the relationship between cues and outcomes in such complex settings.
Chinese Society of International Law, in association with Chinese Institute of International Law at China Foreign Affairs University, and National Center for Foreign-related Rule of Law Research at China Foreign Affairs University
Contact: secretary@bigghgg.cn