JMIR public health and surveillance
-
JMIR Public Health Surveill · May 2020
Tracking Social Media Discourse About the COVID-19 Pandemic: Development of a Public Coronavirus Twitter Data Set.
At the time of this writing, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak has already put tremendous strain on many countries' citizens, resources, and economies around the world. Social distancing measures, travel bans, self-quarantines, and business closures are changing the very fabric of societies worldwide. With people forced out of public spaces, much of the conversation about these phenomena now occurs online on social media platforms like Twitter. ⋯ It is our hope that our contribution will enable the study of online conversation dynamics in the context of a planetary-scale epidemic outbreak of unprecedented proportions and implications. This data set could also help track COVID-19-related misinformation and unverified rumors or enable the understanding of fear and panic-and undoubtedly more.
-
JMIR Public Health Surveill · May 2020
COVID-19: Putting the General Data Protection Regulation to the Test.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is very much a global health issue and requires collaborative, international health research efforts to address it. A valuable source of information for researchers is the large amount of digital health data that are continuously collected by electronic health record systems at health care organizations. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be the key legal framework with regard to using and sharing European digital health data for research purposes. ⋯ Health care organizations focusing on individual risk minimization threaten to undermine COVID-19 research efforts. In our opinion, there is an ethical obligation to use the research exemption clause of the GDPR during the COVID-19 pandemic to support global collaborative health research efforts. Solidarity is a European value, and here is a chance to exemplify it by using the GDPR regulatory framework in a way that does not hinder but actually fosters solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
-
JMIR Public Health Surveill · May 2020
Collateral Crises of Gun Preparation and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infodemiology Study.
In the past, national emergencies in the United States have resulted in increased gun preparation (ie, purchasing new guns or removing guns from storage); in turn, these gun actions have effected increases in firearm injuries and deaths. ⋯ Our results corroborate media reports that gun purchases are increasing amid the COVID-19 pandemic and provide more precise geographic and temporal trends. Policy makers should invest in disseminating evidence-based educational tools about gun risks and safety procedures to avert a collateral public health crisis.
-
JMIR Public Health Surveill · May 2020
No Place Like Home: Cross-National Data Analysis of the Efficacy of Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
In the absence of a cure in the time of a pandemic, social distancing measures seem to be the most effective intervention to slow the spread of disease. Various simulation-based studies have been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of these measures. While those studies unanimously confirm the mitigating effect of social distancing on disease spread, the reported effectiveness varies from 10% to more than 90% reduction in the number of infections. This level of uncertainty is mostly due to the complex dynamics of epidemics and their time-variant parameters. However, real transactional data can reduce uncertainty and provide a less noisy picture of the effectiveness of social distancing. ⋯ Consistent with simulation-based studies, real cross-national transactional data confirms the effectiveness of social distancing interventions in slowing the spread of COVID-19. In addition to providing less noisy and more generalizable support for the idea of social distancing, we provide specific insights for public health policy makers regarding locations that should be given higher priority for enforcing social distancing measures.
-
JMIR Public Health Surveill · May 2020
Comparative StudyComparison of Transmissibility of Coronavirus Between Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Patients: Reanalysis of the Ningbo COVID-19 Data.
Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in December 2019, the coronavirus has spread all over the world at an unprecedented rate. The transmissibility of the coronavirus from asymptomatic patients to healthy individuals has received enormous attention. An important study using COVID-19 data from the city of Ningbo, China, was carried out to estimate and compare the transmission rates of the coronavirus by the symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. However, in the original analysis, the usual chi-square tests were unduly used for some contingency tables with small cell counts including zero, which may violate the assumptions for the chi-square test. ⋯ Through a more in-depth and comprehensive statistical analysis of the Ningbo data, we concluded that there is no difference in the transmission rates of coronavirus between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.