The COVID-19 pandemic has pressured governments to plan and implement policies to protect their citizens and economies. In British Columbia (B.C.), all local governments needed to plan and respond to the pandemic emergency to some degree. However, due to the variations in population, region, and resource capacity, there may be a number of discrepancies between local governments. Using key informant interviews with emergency management staff from local governments across B.C., this thesis aims to identify how local governments in B.C. used pandemic planning documents to develop policies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis revealed that the majority of participants viewed pandemic planning documents as not critical to the successful implementation of policies. The analysis also identified what the participants believed worked well and did not work well when planning and responding to the pandemic with respect to collaboration, communication, staff impacts, digital infrastructure, and financial impacts. The thesis concludes by recommending that local governments develop a flexible plan, establish collaborative networks with target groups, create communication strategies with higher levels of government, and regularly review and update digital infrastructure. / Graduate

Objetivos. Determinar las características epidemiológicas y clínicas de la gastroenteritis causada por Vibrio parahaemolyticus del grupo pandémico en el Perú. Materiales y métodos. Se examinó las historias clínicas y registros de laboratorio de cien casos de gastroenteritis en los cuales se aisló V. parahaemolyticus del grupo pandémico y no pandémico. Se recolectó información epidemiológica y clínica y se realizó el análisis estadístico de los datos para evaluar si la gravedad de la enfermedad se asoció con la presencia de las cepas del grupo pandémico. Resultados. Se logró colectar información epidemiológica en 85% de los casos e información clínica sólo en 37% de los casos, principalmente de los hospitalizados. Los casos del grupo pandémico tuvieron una mayor probabilidad de tener deposiciones líquidas (96,3% frente a 62,5%, p<0,05), presentar deshidratación moderada o grave (100% frente a 60%, p<0,05) y requerir atención hospitalaria (98% frente a 42,9%, p<0,0001). Fue más probable aislar una cepa pandémica en personas de 30 o más años de edad (63% frente a 39,5%, p<0,05). Conclusiones. El Vibrio parahaemolyticus del grupo pandémico causa enfermedad gastrointestinal de mayor gravedad que las cepas no pandémicas, con mayor probabilidad de requerir atención hospitalaria. Basados en este reporte, se recomienda incluir la identificación de V. parahaemolyticus en el diagnóstico etiológico de agentes causantes de gastroenteritis grave en el sistema de salud del Perú. / Objective. To determine the epidemiological and clinic characteristics of gastroenteritis caused by Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains of the pandemic group in Peru. Material and methods. Clinical and laboratory records were searched in 100 cases of gastroenteritis caused by V parahaemolyticus, either of the pandemic or non pandemic group. Clinical and epidemiological data were collected and statistical analysis was done to evaluate if the severity of illness was associated with the pandemic group. Results. Epidemiological data were collected in 85% of cases, and clinical data were only available in 37% of cases, mainly on those hospitalized. Cases associated with the pandemic strains had a higher probability of liquid stools (96.3% vs. 62.5%, p<0.05), moderate or severe dehydration (100% vs. 60%, p<0.05), and hospital care (98% vs. 42.9%, p<0.0001). Cases aged thirty or older were associated with the pandemic strains (63% vs. 39.5%, p<0.05). Conclusions. Vibrio parahaemolyticus of the pandemic group causes more severe gastrointestinal disease than none pandemic strains, with higher probability of requiring hospital care. Based on this report, it is advisable to include the identification of V. parahaemolyticus in the etiological diagnosis of agents causing severe gastroenteritis in the Peruvian health system.

The Diplom thesis will deal with the economic-mangerial evaluation of the incidence of swine flu in 2009 - 2010, with emphasis on epidemic data, a vector of its spreading and the consequences of the disease. The work will also deal with the effect of vaccination. The main objective of the presented diplom thesis is the evaluation of the economic consequences related to its outbreak.

Thesis advisor: Kathleen Dunn / Nearly a century ago, a deadly pandemic swept the globe, taking with it over 25 million lives. This pandemic was caused by the elusive Spanish influenza of 1918. Although many decades have passed since this pandemic, research has yet to uncover the exact origin of the Spanish influenza and the cause of its increased virulence. By examining the current research on the Spanish influenza, some of the secrets of this virus can be uncovered. Most of today's research supports the theory that the hemagglutinin receptor of the Spanish influenza was the most likely source of its potency and that it was an amalgamation of swine and human strains created from a common avian strain that created this virus. Based upon the information that has been uncovered, there is a considerable chance that the Spanish influenza or a similar strain could return in the future. The processes of recombination and reassortment create an endless amount of genetic variants of the virus and any one of them has the potential to be lethal. Although a natural emergence of lethal influenza is a potential threat, the artificial reconstruction of the Spanish influenza or another lethal strain for the purposes of bioterrorism may be an even bigger threat. Thus, it is necessary for researchers to press on with their search for the secrets of the Spanish influenza so that a future outbreak can be avoided. As researchers continue to do their job, the government must also take action and develop the most efficient approach to protecting the public from deadly strains of influenza. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2003. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Biology. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

The swine-origin H1N1 influenza A pandemic virus (A(H1N1)pdm09) was detected in the human population in March 2009. Due to its antigenic novelty, the majority of individuals were susceptible to the virus and the pandemic quickly disseminated around the globe. Rapid characterization of the epidemic was required in order to help inform interventions and determine the risk posed to public health. Widespread sampling and sequencing of virus isolates enabled early characterization of the virus using phylogenetic analysis and continued surveillance over the subsequent three years of global circulation. Throughout this thesis, Bayesian phylogenetic methods are employed to investigate how quickly evolutionary parameters can be accurately and precisely estimated from pandemic genome sequence data and explore how selection has acted across the A(H1N1)pdm09 genome over its period of transition to a seasonal influenza lineage. It is shown that accurate estimates of the evolutionary rate, date of emergence and initial exponential growth rate of the virus can be obtained with high precision from analysis of 100 genome sequences, thereby helping to characterize the virus just 2 months after the first cases were reported. In order to account for variation in growth rates of influenza epidemics between localized outbreaks around the globe, a hierarchical phylogenetic model is employed for analysis of pandemic and seasonal influenza data. The results suggest that the A(H1N1)pdm09 lineage spread more easily and with greater variation between populations during its first pandemic wave than either seasonal influenza lineage in previous seasons. The birth-death epidemiology model has been shown to provide more precise estimates of the basic reproductive number than the coalescent in analysis of HIV epidemic data. Analysis of pandemic influenza data carried out here suggests that the model assumptions are less applicable to influenza and in fact thebirth-death epidemiology model loses accuracy more rapidly than coalescent models as data increased during the pandemic. The effects of an increasingly immune global host population over the pandemic and subsequent influenza seasons were investigated using robust counting of substitutions across the genome. Results suggest that antigenic genes were under a greater selective pressure to evolve than internally expressed genes and the rate of non-synonymous substitution was highest across all segments immediately after emergence in the human population. Bayesian phylogenetics is increasingly being employed as an important tool for rapid characterization of novel infectious disease epidemics. As such, the work carried out here aims to determine the accuracy and applicability of existing evolutionary models with pandemic sequence data sampled over a range of temporal and spatial scales to help better inform similar analyses of future epidemics.

Emerging infectious disease has become a paradigmatic way of thinking about disease in recent years. In response to the widely-held view that an emerging pandemic is an imminent, albeit uncertain, event linked to global interconnectedness, pandemic preparedness has been the target of considerable political concern and economic investment. To date, there has been relatively little critical research questioning the broader social and political implications of this seemingly natural undertaking. My research addresses this knowledge gap by exploring pandemic influenza planning as a global approach to the regulation of emerging infectious disease. I investigate how pandemic is framed and the ways in which these framings link to broader political and economic contexts. I undertake a Foucauldian-informed, critical discourse analysis of four key pandemic planning documents produced by the World Health Organization between 1999 and 2009. I ask how infectious disease is constructed in particular ways, and how these constructions can be interpreted in relation to broader global contexts. My findings, which describe a range of discursive strategies in governing pandemic, are four-fold. First, I examine the characterizations of the influenza virus, and their effect of rendering normal and pandemic circumstances as indistinct. I describe how these constructions are implicated in the framing of preparedness as a continuous engagement with the process of emergence. Next, I explore how the delineation and regulation of boundaries simultaneously constitutes bodies and territories as distinct. Third, I describe the discursive construction of a particular kind of global geopolitics which represents vulnerability according to the interconnectedness of states. Finally, the pandemic virus acquires a form of utility that portrays preparedness as having the potential for securing society against a broad range of potential threats. Anticipating the exceptional features of pandemic is to be achieved through the integration of contingency mechanisms into existing systems of preparedness whose objective is continued economic and social functioning. The regulation of circulation central to pandemic preparedness establishes an ongoing engagement in decisions about freedom and constraint in relation to different forms of mobility or circulation. My findings are interpreted in light of their implications for understanding the global regulation of, and intervention into, molecular life.

In disease outbreak situations, the media are considered (and relied upon) by authorities to “translate” information across disciplinary boundaries. A reporter covering the 2003 SARS outbreak observed that journalists “are often conscious of their role as participants in a human crisis” (World Health Organization). Consequently, a pandemic presents a unique rhetorical situation to journalists. As significant intermediaries in public health messaging, journalist-rhetors help frame the narrative of a disease outbreak for lay audiences and influence whether those audiences implement protective behavioral changes. While the literature implicitly acknowledges issues of motivation in the media industry as a whole, little work has yet appeared to examine strategies specific to individual acts of reportage. Through comparative analyses of media portrayals of the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak before the nature of the threat became clear, this project explores rhetorical characteristics of the coverage in order to uncover implicit assumptions guiding public understanding of a high-risk health threat. Kenneth Burke’s method of cluster analysis yields insight into the symbolic processes embedded in a rhetorical artefact, enabling an interpretation of the rhetor’s worldview. Resulting worldviews can then be examined through a dramatistic lens. Burke also described the strategic adoption of “role” as an element of symbolic action. This study found that journalists purveyed widely different, even contradictory, worldviews, each with different impacts on audiences in terms of the interpretation and appropriate response to the threat. I argue that such divergences occur due to alienation arising from individual ethos in conflict with formal constraints in the new pandemic “scene.” Responses to alienation manifested in identifiably distinct roles. Identification with a particular role in pandemic reportage was reflected in the terminology of journalists studied. Through clusters of association and dissociation, journalists classed the threat as “mild” and rejected the term “pandemic,” as a serious threat but one that could be managed, or as an apocalyptic threat against which there was no defence, with all stances occurring simultaneously in time. Ramifications for the lay public ranged from the location of protection with public health officials, invitations to engage in processes of Othering, or the amplification of the cataclysmic nature of the scene. As these stances differed in their portrayals of impacts on the lay public and thus ability to motivate behavioral change, an improved understanding of journalistic experience in the pandemic “scene” is crucial to improving communication aiming to protect the health of lay publics.

Emerging infectious disease has become a paradigmatic way of thinking about disease in recent years. In response to the widely-held view that an emerging pandemic is an imminent, albeit uncertain, event linked to global interconnectedness, pandemic preparedness has been the target of considerable political concern and economic investment. To date, there has been relatively little critical research questioning the broader social and political implications of this seemingly natural undertaking. My research addresses this knowledge gap by exploring pandemic influenza planning as a global approach to the regulation of emerging infectious disease. I investigate how pandemic is framed and the ways in which these framings link to broader political and economic contexts. I undertake a Foucauldian-informed, critical discourse analysis of four key pandemic planning documents produced by the World Health Organization between 1999 and 2009. I ask how infectious disease is constructed in particular ways, and how these constructions can be interpreted in relation to broader global contexts. My findings, which describe a range of discursive strategies in governing pandemic, are four-fold. First, I examine the characterizations of the influenza virus, and their effect of rendering normal and pandemic circumstances as indistinct. I describe how these constructions are implicated in the framing of preparedness as a continuous engagement with the process of emergence. Next, I explore how the delineation and regulation of boundaries simultaneously constitutes bodies and territories as distinct. Third, I describe the discursive construction of a particular kind of global geopolitics which represents vulnerability according to the interconnectedness of states. Finally, the pandemic virus acquires a form of utility that portrays preparedness as having the potential for securing society against a broad range of potential threats. Anticipating the exceptional features of pandemic is to be achieved through the integration of contingency mechanisms into existing systems of preparedness whose objective is continued economic and social functioning. The regulation of circulation central to pandemic preparedness establishes an ongoing engagement in decisions about freedom and constraint in relation to different forms of mobility or circulation. My findings are interpreted in light of their implications for understanding the global regulation of, and intervention into, molecular life.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Department of Philosophy, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jason T. Eberl. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-68).

El COVID-19 no solo es un virus contagioso, también es un virus de noticias falsas que incrementa la angustia, ansiedad y el estrés. Para ello, se hizo una revisión de la literatura, resumiendo los puntos más relevantes con el objetivo de describir aspectos relacionados a la desinformación, la infodemia y las teorías de la conspiración que han estado circulando a través de los medios de comunicación y las redes sociales durante el año 2020. Se encontró que las noticias falsas se propagan con mayor rapidez que el virus en sí, principalmente por intereses personales, colectivos, económicos y políticos. En tal sentido, se recomienda que la mejor forma de combatir las noticias falsas, es no difundir mensajes sin antes haber verificado la información en fuentes oficiales y autorizadas. / COVID-19 is not only a contagious virus, it is also surrounded bay fake news which could lead individuals to experience anxiety, anguish, and even stress. Therefore, literature has been revised including of the most relevant points with the objective of describing aspects relating to the infodemic and false conspiracy theories that have been circulating through the media and social networks. during the year 2020. It was found that the fake news was propagating quicker than the virus itself, primarily due to personal, collective, economic and political interests. Nonetheless, it is recommended that the best way to fight fake news is not to spread messages before having verified the information in official and authorized sources.