Search results

The COVID-19 pandemic placed many challenges on policing, from limiting officers' ability to interact with citizens to enforcing regulations to prevent the spread of the virus. One of those regulations, and the focus of the current study, is mask mandates.

Using a sample of over 550 US adults recruited on Amazon MTurk, the current study examines factors that may influence citizen attitudes toward the police's role in mask enforcement, with a specific focus on perceptions of the police, political leanings, and views about COVID-19 and mask-wearing.

The authors find that when respondents believed COVID-19 was serious and a major public health threat, they were more likely to believe the police should enforce masks, regardless of attitudes about the police, political party affiliation or other demographics.

The enforcement of public health mandates, such as mask wearing, often result in arguments related to the infringement of rights and questions about the overall legality of enforcement. This often puts law enforcement in a difficult position regarding how such mandates should be enforced and whether it is the responsibility of the police. Additional policy implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to intelligibly demonstrate the effectiveness of face mask wearing as a means to prevent COVID-19 transmission. Through understanding the benefits of wearing masks, it is hoped to facilitate the change of societal behavior and more people are willing to wear face mask.

The paper investigates the 50 states in the United States of America (U.S.) and Washington, D.C. that implemented the mask mandates before September 30, 2020, which are divided into four groups: (1) those implemented the statewide mask mandates before June 5, 2020 when World Health Organization (WHO) recommended mask wearing; (2) those implemented statewide mask mandates after June 5, 2020; (3) those implemented partial mandates affecting 30 percent or more of the state’s population; and (4) those implemented partial mandates affecting less than 30 percent. Simple descriptive statistics are analyzed.

For the 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., the higher the mask wearing rate, the lower the number of COVID-19 cases (correlation coefficient: −0.69 (p<0.001)). For the 23 states with mobility reduction of less than 15 percent, the higher the proportion of population required to wear masks, the lower the number of cases. This can be seen from the difference in the number of cases among the four groups by ANOVA (p = 0.013).

The positive effect of wearing masks is shown based on simple descriptive statistics for intuitive and intelligible understanding, which may lead people to comprehend the importance of wearing masks, and break through their custom, culture, and norms, and wear masks.

One explanation for why people wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 focuses on political party affiliation. This study explores the role of values in attempts by five South Dakota cities to pass local mask mandates.

A nonrandom convenience sample used search engines to find documents on mask mandates in South Dakota. The working hypotheses are: (1) the debate over mask mandates is a form of value conflict over freedom of choice and the role of government that reflect those held by Emerson, Thoreau, and Spencer and (2) the mandates themselves prescribe Value-Rational rather than Instrumental-Rational action to control the pandemic.

Antimaskers valued freedom of choice, and were willing to defy authority while promasker health professionals valued science and were willing to sacrifice themselves for the health of their patients. South Dakota cities encouraged mask wearing but did not include penalties for noncompliance. The vociferous opposition to the mask mandates resembles the opposition cities encountered when deciding to fluoridate drinking water in the 1950s and 1960s.

A case study cannot be generalized and may reflect sampling and researcher bias. Future research could include a content analysis of documents and videos presenting both sides of the debate.

This case study may provide the first in-depth analysis of values in the masking debate.

Prior to the mandate young adults wore masks 42.7% (n = 565) of the time and elderly adults wore masks 81.4% (n = 129) of the time. Also, 56.7% (n = 979) of females and 48.2% (n = 678) of males wore masks. Whereas almost all the observed participants (95.9%, n = 73) who appeared of Asian descent wore masks, individuals perceived as White were far less likely to wear masks with only 47.2% (n = 1,089) wearing masks, and 62.6% (n = 401) of perceived Black individuals wearing masks. After the mask mandate was issued 91.7% (n = 109) of those observed were wearing masks. Mask wearing declined shortly after the CDC guidelines changed to indicate that fully vaccinated people did not need to wear masks indoors.

Understanding demographic differences in mask wearing and responses to policy changes are important for public policy and public health.

This chapter is one of a few that include observational data of actual mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021.

COVID-19’s influence on the teaching profession will be felt for many years as teachers faced experiences that they have never encountered. The pandemic forced already taxed teachers to assume additional responsibilities, many of which they were not prepared to deal with. The result was an exodus of teachers from the profession, and those who remained reported challenges that impacted their personal and professional lives. The authors describe the effects on teachers and the impact that this had on them, including reasons why many departed from teaching. In closing, the authors offer recommendations to teacher preparation programs, districts, and schools.

With the COVID-19 pandemic introducing social distancing measures around the world, how we conceptualise and experience intimacy has significantly and suddenly shifted. Intimate moments such as funerals, weddings and the nurturing of everyday relationships have unfolded over video calls, and digitally mediated contact has been granted, for many, greater importance. At the same time, who we can be close to, and the conditions of this closeness have come under intense scrutiny as we become aware of how bodily proximity and bodily performances such as breathing are implicated in the spread of the virus. With this awareness comes a renewed intimacy with seemingly mundane bodily gestures and performances such as breath – and with the ways in which we are always entangled with those around us. In this chapter, we examine intimacy in a post-COVID future through the themes of proximity, breath and mediation. While intimacy is often conceptualised as occurring only between human subjects, we contribute to a more expansive understanding of intimacy that can account for the closeness and familiarity we feel with non-human objects. We argue that our social worlds are layered with familiar objects that facilitate our everyday encounters – a facemask or Zoom interface – and we argue that conceptualising intimacy must account for these entanglements.

Science and logic offer the greatest promise of progress in increasing the odds that students, especially those who struggle academically or behaviorally, will experience positive outcomes. That said, science and scientific thinking have been under attack in recent decades, including in special education. There are a number of reasons science may not be valued; I posit that these include the ideas that (1) science is incremental, (2) science is slow, (3) science and the theories developed from it evolve, and (4) science does not answer our most vexing problems. If science is understood for its strengths, which include identifying variables that increase the probability of positive outcomes, scientific and logical thinking would be far more accepted as the most promising foundation for progress in special education.

This study aims to examine how different hospitals utilize social media to communicate risk information about COVID-19 with the communities they serve, and how hospitals' social media messaging (firm-generated content and their local community's responses (user-generated content) evolved with the COVID-19 outbreak progression.

This research proposes a healthcare-specific social media analytics framework and studied 68,136 tweets posted from November 2019 to November 2020 from a geographically diverse set of ten leading hospitals' social media messaging on COVID-19 and the public responses by using social media analytics techniques and the health belief model (HBM).

The study found correlations between some of the HBM variables and COVID-19 outbreak progression. The findings provide actionable insight for hospitals regarding risk communication, decision making, pandemic awareness and education campaigns and social media messaging strategy during a pandemic and help the public to be more prepared for information seeking in the case of future pandemics.

For hospitals, the results provide valuable insights for risk communication practitioners and inform the way hospitals or health agencies manage crisis communication during the pandemic For patients and local community members, they are recommended to check out local hospital's social media sites for updates and advice.

The study demonstrates the role of social media analytics and health behavior models, such as the HBM, in identifying important and useful data and knowledge for public health risk communication, emergency responses and planning during a pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to show that histories of how past crises were managed can help us anticipate how today’s public health challenges will permanently change the workplace and at least some aspects of management practice.

This paper reviews prominent public health histories and leadership responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors interpret these accounts of past crises to anticipate the long-lasting effects of the COVID pandemic. This also can be seen as a case study of how public health crises are managed and the effects of that management.

It is likely that several changes will come to the workplace, similar to transformations that happened after past pandemics. Technologies incorporating virtuality will see adoption accelerated. Health behaviors may change, especially in certain cultures or industries. The psychological contract between employees and management may increasingly emphasize autonomy as a prized attribute, again in some cultures more than others.

In looking at past pandemics and public health crises, and the way leaders reacted, one can learn about the potential for current health- and conflict-related events to unfold and alter workplace practices and norms.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how immediacy explains articulated dissent, considers how an individual’s attitudes toward online communication predicts immediacy and articulated dissent and compares these relationships in England, Australia and the USA.

Three nations were examined: Australia, England and the USA (n = 1,776). Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: organizational dissent scale, perceived immediacy measure, computer-mediated immediate behaviors measure and measure of online communication attitude.

The results reveal supervisors’ computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy both positively predict dissent. Some aspects of online communication attitudes positively predict computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy. In addition, attitudes toward online communication positively predict dissent. National culture influences some of these relationships; in each case the effects were substantively larger for the USA when compared to the other nations.

This study is the first to cross-culturally analyze dissent and immediacy. In addition, this study considers the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic influences the superior–subordinate relationship.