For the third Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2024 series, we are pleased to welcome Professor Mark Bailey (University of East Anglia). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 7 March at the normal time (1600 CET). You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.
Abstract
The Black Death of 1348–9 halved the population of Europe, and the English sources provide unparalleled insights into the economic consequences of this catastrophe. Recent research and re-readings of older research underline the profound importance of the Black Death in causing long-term shifts in wealth distribution, patterns of consumption and production, the decline of serfdom, and the spread of contractual relations in the land and labour markets.
About the Speaker
Mark Bailey is Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of East Anglia, UK. In 2019 he delivered the Ford Lectures at Oxford University, subsequently published as After the Black Death. Economy, society and the law in fourteenth-century England (Oxford University Press, 2021).
If you missed the second Pandemics & Society Seminar of the Spring 2024 series with Thomas Finnie (UK Health Security Agency) you can catch up with the video here.
Recordings of all of our Seminars, beginning with the Fall 2021 series, are available here.
For the second Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2024 series, we are pleased to welcome Thomas Finnie (UK Health Security Agency). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 29 February at the normal time (1600 CET). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.
Abstract
All viral pathogens mutate, sometimes that mutation has profound effects on how the pathogen affects the human population (for example by evading the human immune system), often it does not. In this talk I will explore how we have begun to bring together the multiple scales of understanding required to turn raw genomic, or virological information into modelling the effects on a population so that public health actions may be taken.
About the Speaker
Thomas Finnie is Head of Modelling and Data-Science for Emergency Preparedness, Resilience, and Response at the UK Health Security Agency. He worked for more than a decade as a modeller at the UKHSA’s predecessor organization, Public Health England, and has a PhD in Numerical Ecology from Imperial College London.
If you missed the first Pandemics & Society Seminar of the Spring 2024 series with Nita Bharti (Penn State University), you can catch up with the video here.
Recordings of all of our Seminars, beginning with the Fall 2021 series, are available here.
For the first Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2024 series, we are pleased to welcome Nita Bharti (Penn State). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 22 February at the normal time (1600 CET). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.
Abstract
As global health emphasizes data-driven approaches to improve health equity, it is increasingly important to assess the quality and representativeness of data that are used in decision making. We measured the inclusion of health vulnerable populations in mobile phone data, which are used to measure mobility, access to health care, and potential pathogen transmission. We find that the representation of health vulnerable populations in these data is both low and biased in ways that would magnify, rather than reduce, health inequities. We discuss strategies for detecting and overcoming data biases due to exclusion.
About the Speaker
Nita Bharti is Huck Early Career Professor and Associate Professor of Biology at the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State University. Her research lab investigates the underlying links between humans, pathogens, and the environment.
We are pleased to release the schedule for our Spring 2024 seminar series. As in previous series, the seminar will be held via Zoom at 16.00 Central European Time on Thursdays.
To access the Zoom meetings, please join our mailing list here.
8 February Association of Severe COVID-19 and Persistent COVID-19 Symptoms With Economic Hardship Among US Families Nicole Hair, University of South Carolina
22 February Navigating gaps and biases in surveillance data Nita Bharti, Penn State University
29 February Title To Be Announced Thomas Finnie, UK Health Security Agency
7 March The Economic Impact of the Black Death in England, 1350 to 1400 Mark Bailey, University of East Anglia
4 April Long COVID and Labor Force Participation in the United States Katie Bach, Brookings Institution **Note that Central European Summer Time begins on 31 March**
18 April “We are not afraid but only like to take precautions”: Popular understandings of contagion during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic and their impacts on flu prevention measures in Southern California Islay Shelbourne, University of St Andrews
2 May Socioeconomic mortality differences during the Great Influenza in Spain Sergio Basco, Universitat Autònoma Barcelona
23 May Forgotten Pandemic? Revisiting the “Spanish” Influenza on the First World War’s Macedonian Front Christos Konstantopoulos, McGill University
30 May Racialized Epidemiologies: The Case of Black Americans During the Great Influenza, 1918–1920 Paul Skäbe, Universität Leipzig
If you missed the final Pandemics & Society Seminar of the Fall 2023 series with Kristina Thompson (Wageningen University), you can catch up with the video here.
Recordings of all of our Seminars, beginning with the Fall 2021 series, are available here.
For the final Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Fall 2023 series, we are pleased to welcome Kristina Thompson (Wageningen University). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 30 November at the normal time (1600 CET). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.
Abstract
To better prepare for future pandemics, revisiting lessons from the COVID-19 period may be useful. Doing so may help to identify the trade-offs of different containment and mitigation measures. While non-pharmaceutical interventions, particularly lockdowns, helped to slow the spread of COVID-19, they were not without negative consequences of their own. A large body of evidence has shown that depressive disorder, or depression, rose markedly during these periods. This is problematic, as depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. Despite the large number of studies on the topic, these studies are largely based on statistical models, rather than computational ones. This prevents us from comparing actual and hypothetical scenarios, and limits our ability to tease out the elements of lockdowns that may have impacted depression. To that end, a microsimulation model was developed, named COMMA (COvid Mental-health Model with Agents). Microsimulation models are well-suited to exploring policy impacts on specific population sub-groups.
Individuals’ characteristics and actions during lockdowns were based on the Lifelines cohort, a representative sample of the northern Netherlands. Data from the largest city in this sample, Groningen, were used (n=5,193). Information on individual characteristics (e.g. gender, age) was taken from waves prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Information on actions during the pandemic (e.g. working from home, maintaining physical distance) was taken from periodic COVID-19-specific questionnaires. Daily COVID-19 case information for the city of Groningen was used from the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (in Dutch: Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu). In COMMA, the probability that an individual is at increased risk of depression is estimated in several steps. First, from a matrix of ten agent characteristics, the probability of taking one of ten actions during different types of lockdowns is derived. Second, from a matrix of ten actions an individual could take during absent, partial or full lockdowns, the probability of being depressed is derived. Based on a simulation with 6,000 individuals set between 2 February 2021 and 4 February 2022, hard lockdowns in particular were associated with an increased risk of depression. In a simulation with a hard lockdown for this entire period, 75% of individuals were at increased risk of depression. In a simulation with a hard lockdown followed by a light lockdown, only 2% of individuals were at increased risk of depression. We found evidence that the severity and duration of lockdowns mattered. The negative impacts of hard lockdowns on mental health may be largely buffered by periods of fewer restrictions. These findings may be important to consider when considering future pandemic mitigation policies.
About the Speaker
Kristina Thompson is an assistant professor in the Health & Society group of Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands. She quantitatively examines the social determinants of health. More specifically, she studies how social and economic factors across the life course may impact health and mortality. Her projects often employ complexity science approaches and computational modelling.
If you missed our latest Pandemics & Society Seminar of the Fall 2023 series with Lauren Steele (University of Queensland), you can catch up with the video here.
Recordings of all of our Seminars, beginning with the Fall 2021 series, are available here.
If you missed our sixth Pandemics & Society Seminar of the Fall 2023 series with Natalie Bennett (Newcastle University) you can catch up with the video here.
Recordings of all of our Seminars, beginning with the Fall 2021 series, are available here.
