Call for papers: Science lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
AISDL Team
The SM3D Portal invites colleagues to provide their perspectives, assessments, and analyses on science’s involvement in coping with the epidemic to the “Science lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic” collection. The collection is intended to supplement academic efforts to generate insightful lessons from the COVID-19 catastrophe and to create measures to safeguard our communities from future pandemics.
Figure: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coronavirus._SARS-CoV-2.png
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused catastrophic consequences to not only human health and well-being but also the global economy since its first outbreak in February 2020. As of 25th November 2022, 636.440.663 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 6.606.624 deaths, have been reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) [1]. Researchers also found that 80% of the infected patients suffered from at least one long-term effect of COVID-19, such as fatigue (58%), headache (44%), attention disorder (27%), hair loss (25%), and dyspnea (24%) [2]. The mental health of people across the globe has also been affected directly through neuropsychiatric sequelae after infection and indirectly through disruptive socio-environmental changes [3]. During the pandemic, economic activities were disrupted by lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing measures, causing a severe cumulative loss to the global GDP in 2020 by -3.3%. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the economic loss caused by the pandemic is much worse than that caused by the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, resulting in the worst recession since the Great Depression [4].
Fortunately, the pandemic is near its end. However, lessons derived from the crisis remain and will be highly valuable for us when dealing with future crises with similar characteristics, as future pandemics are inevitable due to the increasing number of zoonoses (infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans).
In fighting against the pandemic, science has played pivotal roles in creating vaccines, developing public health response strategies, and informing policy-making in various aspects. More studies have recently been conducted to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of scientific activities and advice in dealing with the pandemic. One of the most remarkable studies is Brusselaers et al. [5]’s evaluation of scientific advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden, a country suffering ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared to its neighbor – Norway – in 2020.
The study provides a detailed and systematic assessment of Sweden’s pandemic strategies before 2020, the strategies’ relations to science, and strategies’ implementation and adaption into policy-making during the pandemic. Based on the assessment, Brusselaers and colleagues indicate that responsible politicians (or major figures in the acting authorities) did not follow scientific methodology for decision-making, leading to arbitrary policy decisions. For example, Swedish people were not informed about the basic facts of the pandemic, such as the airborne transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the protection ability of face masks towards the carrier and others, and virus contagion through asymptomatic individuals [5].
Recognizing the importance of similar evaluations, the SM3D Portal would like to invite colleagues to contribute opinions, evaluations, and analyses of the roles of science in dealing with the pandemic. The contributed works are expected to complement the academia’s efforts to generate insightful lessons from the COVID-19 crisis and build up preparations to safeguard our societies from the upcoming pandemics. Some potential topics include, but are not limited to [6-8]:
- Response strategies’ effectiveness and efficiency
- The social cost of policy failure
- Post-pandemic recovery directions
- Evidence-based policy responses
- Information, databases and science policy in improving the knowledge base about pandemic prevention strategies
- Scientific integrity and research misconduct
- Minh-Hoang Nguyen
- Tam-Tri Le
- Quan-Hoang Vuong
For submission, please send the contributed paper to the following email of the AISDL team: aisdl_team@mindsponge.info
- Submission deadline: 31st January 2023
- Accepted file formats: doc; docx
- Accepted figure file formats: tiff; jpg; pdf (vector enabled); png
- The following information should be included in the submitted paper:
o Indication of corresponding author and email address;
o Affiliations;
o ORCID
A contributed paper should be approximately 400-1000 words (excluding tables, figure legends and references). The number of figures and tables should be no more than 2 for both types. No specific reference style is required
References
[1] World Health Organization. (2022). WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard. World Health Organization. Available at: https://covid19.who.int/?mapFilter=deaths (Accessed on 27th November 2022)
[2] Lopez-Leon S, et al. (2021). More than 50 long-term effects of COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Scientific Reports, 11, 16144. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95565-8
[3] Penninx BWJH, Benros ME, Klein RS, Vinkers CH. (2022). How COVID-19 shaped mental health: from infection to pandemic effects. Nature Medicine, 28, 2027-2037. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02028-2
[4] Gopiath G. (2020). The Great Lockdown: Worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Available at: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2020/04/14/blog-weo-the-great-lockdown-worst-economic-downturn-since-the-great-depression
[5] Brusselaers N, et al. (2022). Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 91. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01097-5
[6] Vuong QH, et al. (2022). Covid-19 vaccines production and societal immunization under the serendipity-mindsponge3D knowledge management theory and conceptual framework. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 22. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01034-6
[7] Vuong QH. (2020). Reform retractions to make them more transparent. Nature, 582, 149. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01694-x
[8] Vuong QH. (2018). The (ir)rational consideration of the cost of science in transition economies. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 5. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0281-4
tags:
COVID-19