As the COVID-19 pandemic brought fear and anxiety to people around the world, the Christian community is called to give witness to her hope in the risen Lord. Preaching is a major channel of this witness. The analysis of five Easter sermons, preached in April 2020 by pastors of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, brings to the fore how an alarming contextual situation weighs in on the tone and content of Easter preaching in local churches. A lamenting mode of preaching was found, that voices local communities’ distress and strengthens hope, repeating the salvific message of Easter in the face of bewilderment and suffering. The analysis underscores and adds to homiletical theory on lament in preaching.

This paper examines the preaching at Washington National Cathedral as a response to the dual pandemic of COVID-19 and systemic racism in the United States. Drawing on research from over forty sermons from high church traditions and comparing it with analysis of sermons on Palm Sunday and Easter this paper will show how preachers in high church traditions, accustomed to preaching in the presence of eucharist, adapted their proclamation to respond to a virtual congregation and the absence of in-person communion. Then, the paper examines how Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and Presiding Bishop Michael Curry further develop elements of eucharistic preaching in Pentecost and Trinity Sunday sermons to respond to the murder of George Floyd. Among other things, Budde and Curry’s sermons call for confession, evoke anamnesis, employ liturgical music, invite embodiment, and offer Christ as broken body and resurrected hope to target systemic racism. These sermonic examples show how the theology and rhetoric of the eucharistic liturgy can be a resource for preaching that more effectively confronts the challenges of a dual pandemic.

Mellanmänsklig kontakt är viktigt för oss människor. I dagens värld har kontakt via virtuella möten ökat, och bland annat skolor har börjat använda sig av distansundervisning via videomöten i allt större utsträckning. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur lärare och studenter på högskolenivå upplever den mellanmänskliga kontakten vid distansundervisning via video. Totalt intervjuades sex lärare och sex studenter på högskolenivå. Databearbetningen skedde enligt tematisk analys. Resultatet visade på svårigheter att bygga relationer, bristande överblick över andras reaktioner, begränsad kommunikation och bristande deltagande i undervisningen. Detta framgick dock kunna motverkas av påslagna kameror, god teknisk utrustning, tidigare relation till varandra, mindre grupper, distraktionsfri studiemiljö och interaktiva moment. Resultatet speglar tidigare teori och bidrar samtidigt till en större förståelse för hur de mellanmänskliga aspekterna av undervisning påverkats av övergången till distansundervisning. I diskussionen tas möjliga källor till eventuell snedvridning av resultatet upp, såsom extra begränsningar kopplat till covid-19.

A lo largo de la pandemia, a nivel de redes sociales, se han propuesto múltiples métodos que supuestamente buscaban reducir el impacto del COVID-19 en las personas, siendo el consumo de dióxido de cloro uno de ellos a pesar de no tener evidencia científica que lo respalde. En este contexto, se llevará a cabo el presente estudio con el propósito de realizar un análisis de redes sociales de usuarios peruanos acerca del uso de dióxido de cloro como tratamiento de COVID-19. Se busca que en el futuro dicho análisis pueda servir para la vigilancia en salud pública. Se usará información públicamente disponible (Big Data) y se examinará a través de Google trends y social-searcher para analizar las tendencias de búsquedas; asimismo, se realizará sentiment analysis de las redes sociales (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube. Tumblr, Reddit, Flickr, Dailymotion y Vimeo).

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / The COVID-19 pandemic presents threats, such as severe disease and economic hardship, to people of different ages. These threats can also be experienced asymmetrically across age groups, which could lead to generational differences in behavioral responses to reduce the spread of the disease. We report a survey conducted across 56 societies (N = 58,641), and tested pre-registered hypotheses about how age relates to (a) perceived personal costs during the pandemic, (b) prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), and (c) support for behavioral regulations (e.g., mandatory quarantine, vaccination). We further tested whether the relation between age and prosocial COVID-19 responses can be explained by perceived personal costs during the pandemic. Overall, we found that older people perceived more costs of contracting the virus, but less costs in daily life due to the pandemic. However, age displayed no clear, robust associations with prosocial COVID-19 responses and support for behavioral regulations. We discuss the implications of this work for understanding the potential intergenerational conflicts of interest that could occur during the COVID-19 pandemic. / New York University Abu Dhabi

This paper examines whether compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures is motivated by wanting to save lives or save the economy (or both), and which implications this carries to fight the pandemic. National representative samples were collected from 24 countries (N = 25,435). The main predictors were (1) perceived risk to contract coronavirus, (2) perceived risk to suffer economic losses due to coronavirus, and (3) their interaction effect. Individual and country-level variables were added as covariates in multilevel regression models. We examined compliance with various preventive health behaviors and support for strict containment policies. Results show that perceived economic risk consistently predicted mitigation behavior and policy support—and its effects were positive. Perceived health risk had mixed effects. Only two significant interactions between health and economic risk were identified—both positive. / New York University Abu Dhabi

This paper considers the pastoral challenge of a diminished experience of liturgy and worship during the Covid-19 pandemic. It explores the ubiquity of the digital realm and a pervasive culture of consumerism as factors in addition to the pandemic contributing to the challenge. We then reflect on the challenge through the theological perspective of Scripture, sacramental theology, Vatican II teaching and liturgical theology before proposing a pastoral plan.

Thesis advisor: Jonathan Krones / The manifold effects of the COVID-19 pandemic include many changes to humanity's impact on the natural environment, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions from air travel and increased personal protective equipment (PPE) waste generation. The pandemic has served as a global natural experiment, revealing interactions between human health and the environment that were not clearly observable before. This research aims to develop a framework for systematically assessing the impacts of human health on the environment. This framework has been structured and populated from a review of the emerging literature on the documented environmental effects of the pandemic in addition to existing literature on environmental impacts of the health care sector in general. The framework tool catalogs observed and expected environmental effects in five stages of a public health crisis (the health issue, the medical response, the public health response, adaptation and rebound, and long-term effects) and five environmental impact categories (water pollution, solid waste, air pollution, global warming, and environmental degradation). The applicability of this framework is examined using two case studies: the 2003 SARS outbreak and the localized experience of COVID-19 in New York City. The application revealed that the framework is both transferable and scalable for use in assessing other human health crises. Overall, many of the beneficial environmental impacts that occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic only came at the expense of widespread human suffering, and over time, many of these benefits were reversed. The goal is that this tool will be useful to understanding both the ways COVID-19 will continue to affect the environment as well as the effects of potential public health campaigns and crises in the future. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Environmental Studies.

The spread of COVID-19 across the globe has produced global and possibly persistent economic disruption. This study follows the design science research process and conducts qualitative and quantitative analysis to identify and investigate Canadian agri-food company responses to COVID-19. The results show the possibility of capturing companies’ responses from web-based data, the breadth of responses, and the relationships between the communication of corporate responses and their reception among social media users. Divergences of regression results across different languages are also discussed in this paper. The findings will help academic researchers, business leaders and policymakers understand corporate responses and subsequent reactions better.

With over 550,000 American lives claimed by COVID-19, over 30 million confirmed infections, and historic job losses across the nation, evaluations of the pandemic response from the Trump Administration have been polarizing. In the eyes of many Americans, President Trump’s Coronavirus response has been lacking in swiftness and efficacy, while many others see the governmental response as competent or having exceeded expectations. In light of previous research, to expect these evaluations to be politically polarized would be reasonable, but at what point do these partisan biases fall away? This survey study will test how partisan biases influence Americans’ evaluations of President Donald Trump’s – and President Biden’s – handling of the Coronavirus pandemic response – factoring in how respondents have been personally affected by the pandemic or personally know someone who has been. These experiences with COVID-19 will be quantified by proximity to loss of life due to, and infection of, COVID-19, as well as job loss as a result of the effects of the virus. As devastating as these experiences may be, I expect the influence of partisan biases to be overwhelmingly correlated with respondents’ evaluations of both President Trump’s and President Biden’s COVID-19 response when compared to the correlation of personal experience. As the findings will suggest, these expectations prove to be accurate; Republicans indicate substantially higher levels of satisfaction with President Trump’s pandemic response when compared to Democrats, with the reverse relationship observed for evaluations of President Biden, and this holds true at all levels of proximity. Further, partisan identity yields a considerably larger magnitude of correlation with these evaluations when compared to personal experience. Unfortunately, Americans do not seem to hold their presidents accountable for their actions (or inaction) by learning from even the most traumatic experiences; party overpowers all else. The findings of this study will greatly enrich the current literature on the extent to which partisan biases influence evaluations of government, and will provide insight into the reliability of democratic accountability, and, resultantly, the very functioning of American democracy.