This set of resources related to Coronavirus and COVID-19 is focused on science advice and policy evaluation. It is intended to support my professional research and teaching, and if you find it useful, so much the better. It is the next iteration of an earlier syllabus, that became too unwieldy due to the amount of materials.

Updated 8 April 2020

Current COVID-19 Information

COVID-19 Scenarios and Dynamics

Science Advice and Emergency Situations

COVID-19 Policy Options and Evaluation

United States Pandemic Policy and Planning

Unheeded Warnings

Pandemics, Society, Politics and Policy Dynamics

SARS-Cov-2 and Relevant Research

Tools and Training

Tony Blair Institute, 2020. Covid-19 Testing in the UK: Unpicking the Lockdown, 6 April (link)

Center for Economic Policy Research, 2020. Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers (link)

Abele-Brehm, A. et al. 2020. Making the Fight against the Coronavirus Pandemic Sustainable, ifo Institute, April.

Partensky, P. 2020. To Beat the Coronavirus, Raise an Army of the Recovered, Wired, 5 April.

Balz, D. 2020. America was unprepared for a major crisis. Again., The Washington Post, 4 April.

Abutaleb, Y. et al. 2020. The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged, The Washington Post, 4 April.

Roberts, J. 2020. Five things you need to know about: mRNA vaccines, Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine, 1 April.

Wallach, P. and J. Myers, 2020. The federal government’s coronavirus response—Public health timeline, Brookings Institution, 31 March.

Peeples, L. 2020. News Feature: Avoiding pitfalls in the pursuit of a COVID-19 vaccine, PNAS, 30 March.

Kissler, S. et al. 2020. Social distancing strategies for curbing the COVID-19 epidemic
medRxiv 2020.03.22.20041079; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.22.20041079

Greenstone, Michael and Nigam, Vishan, Does Social Distancing Matter? (March 25, 2020). University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2020-26. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=

Prem, K. et al. 2020. The effect of control strategies to reduce social mixing on outcomes of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China: a modelling study, The Lancet, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30073-6

Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (link)

Group of Concerned Economists, 2020. The COVID-19 crisis calls for pre-emptive monitoring of production and distribution chains, VoxEU, 24 March.

Horowitz, J. 2020. In Italy, Going Back to Work May Depend on Having the Right Antibodies, New York Times, 4 April.

Van Bavel et al. 2020. Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response, PsyArXiv, 24 March.

Emanuel, E. et al. 2020. Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources in the Time of Covid-19, New England Journal of Medicine, 23 March.

Milanovic, B. 2020. The Real Pandemic Danger Is Social Collapse As the Global Economy Comes Apart, Societies May, Too. Foreign Affairs, 19 March.

Kraemer, M. et al. 2020. The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China, Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.abb4218

M. Chinazzi et al., The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019
novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, Science 10.1126/science.aba9757 (2020).

Riou, J., & Althaus, C. L. (2020). Pattern of early human-to-human transmission of Wuhan 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), December 2019 to January 2020. Eurosurveillance, 25(4).

Rosenbaum, L. 2020. Facing Covid-19 in Italy — Ethics, Logistics, and Therapeutics on the Epidemic’s Front Line, New England Journal of Medicine, 18 March.

Correia, Sergio and Luck, Stephan and Verner, Emil, Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: Evidence from the 1918 Flu (March 26, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=

Assve, A. et al. 2020. Pandemics and social capital: From the Spanish flu of 1918-19 to COVID-19, VoxEu, 22 March.

Nerlich, B. (2007). Media, metaphors and modelling: How the UK newspapers reported the epidemiological modelling controversy during the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak. Science, technology, & human values, 32(4), 432-457.

McCoy, C. A. (2016). SARS, pandemic influenza and Ebola: The disease control styles of Britain and the United States. Social Theory & Health, 14(1), 1-17.

Elbe, S., Leach, M., and Scoones, I. (2013). Pandemic Flu Controversies: What have we learned? Reflections from a workshop to discuss lessons, policy implications and future challenges. STEPS Centre and Centre for Global Health Policy, University of Sussex, Brighton. (PDF)

Safford, T. et al. 2017.The Zika Virus Threat: How Concerns About Scientists May Undermine Efforts to Combat the Pandemic, Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire.

Versluis, E., van Asselt, M., & Kim, J. (2019). The multilevel regulation of complex policy problems: uncertainty and the swine flu pandemic. European Policy Analysis, 5(1), 80-98.

Bjørkdahl, K., & Carlsen, B. (Eds.). (2018). Pandemics, Publics, and Politics: Staging Responses to Public Health Crises. Springer.

Fan, V. Y., Jamison, D. T., & Summers, L. H. (2018). Pandemic risk: how large are the expected losses?. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 96(2), 129.

MIDAS – Online Portal for COVID-19 Modeling Research (link)

International Survey on Coronavirus (link)

Silver, N. 2020. Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless* *Unless you know something about testing. And even then, it gets complicated, FiveThirtyEight, 4 April.

Eder et al. 2020. 430,000 People Have Traveled From China to U.S. Since Coronavirus Surfaced, The New York Times, 4 April.

Warzel, C. 2020. What We Pretend to Know About the Coronavirus Could Kill Us, The New York Times, 3 April.

Romer, P. and R. Shah, 2020. Testing Is Our Way Out, The Wall Street Journal, 2 April.

Koerth et al. 2020. Why It’s So Freaking Hard To Make A Good COVID-19 Model, FiveThirtyEight, 31 March.

Josepth, A. 2020. The next frontier in coronavirus testing: Identifying the full scope of the pandemic, not just individual infections, STAT News, 27 March.

Yong, E. 2020. How The Pandemic Will End, The Atlantic, 25 March.

Atkeson, A. 2020. What Will Be the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in the US? Rough Estimates of Disease Scenarios, NBER Working Paper No. 26867.

Eichenbaum, M. et al. 2020. The Macroeconomics of Epidemics, NBER Working Paper No. 26882.

Barro, R. et al. 2020. The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Pandemic: Lessons from the “Spanish Flu” for the Coronavirus’s Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity, NBER Working Paper No. 26866.

Azzoni, T. and A. Dampf, 2020. Game Zero: Spread of virus linked to Champions League match, Associated Press, 25 March.

McKibbin, W. J., & Fernando, R. (2020). The global macroeconomic impacts of COVID-19: Seven scenarios. Brookings Institution. (PDF)

Baldwin, R., & di Mauro, B. W. (2020). Economics in the Time of COVID-19. Center for European Policy Research (PDF)

Baldwin, R., & di Mauro, B. W. (2020). Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis: Act Fast and Do Whatever It Takes. Center for European Policy Research (PDF)

Beale, R. 2020. Wash Your Hands, London Review of Books, 19 March.

Fauci, et al. 2020, Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted, New England Journal of Medicine, 28 February.

 

Yazdany, J. et al. 2020. Use of Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine During the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Every Clinician Should Know, Annals of Internal Medicine, 31 March.

Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020). The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine, 17 March.

Lloyd-Smith, J. O., Schreiber, S. J., Kopp, P. E., & Getz, W. M. (2005). Superspreading and the effect of individual variation on disease emergence. Nature, 438(7066), 355-359.

Heesterbeek, J. A. P. (2002). A brief history of R 0 and a recipe for its calculation. Acta biotheoretica, 50(3), 189-204.

Global Health Security Initiative (link)

Global Health Security Agenda (link)

Global Health Security Index (link)

Hong Kong University COVID-19 Resource page (link)

Dong, E., Du, H., & Gardner, L. (2020). An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Dashboard: here

US CDC COVID-19 Situation Summary (here)

WHO COVID-19 Situation reports (here)

Imperial College London COVID-19 Reports (link)

Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, COVID-19 Resources (link)

Coronavirus simulator (link)

Epidemic calculator (link)

Our World in Data COVID-19 (link)

A Users Guide to COVID-19, London Business School (link)

The COVID Tracking Project (US, link)

IHME Covid-19 Projections (link) based on: IHME COVID-19 health service utilization forecasting team. Forecasting COVID-19 impact on hospital bed-days, ICU-days, ventilator days and deaths by US state in the next 4 months. MedRxiv. 26 March 2020. doi:

INGSA COVID-19 Policy-Making Tracker (link)

Science Advice and COVID-19 (INGSA, link)

US National Academy of Sciences, Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats (link) (my initial Twitter thread on the committee)

U.K. Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE): Coronavirus (COVID-19) response (link)

UK New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) (link)

U.K.  Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) Modelling
Summary (2018 report, link) (advisory subcommittee)

Nice, A. 2020. Expert advice to government on pandemics, Institute for Government, 23 March.

WHO IHR Emergency Committee on Novel Coronavirus (members) (First meeting – 23 Jan 2020) (Second meeting – 30 Jan 2020)

CNBC, 2020. Watch a timeline of disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci’s comments on coronavirus (link)

Wan, W. and C. Johnson, 2020. America’s most influential coronavirus model just revised its estimates downward. But not every model agrees. The Washington Post, 8 April.

Cookson, C. and M. Peel, 2020. EU science chief resigns with blast at coronavirus response, Financial Times, 7 April.

Gluckman, P. 2020. Build a science advice system fit for global crises, Research Professional News, 7 April.

Kelly, J. 2020. Imperial’s Neil Ferguson: “We don’t have a clear exit strategy”, FT Alphaville, 7 April.

Swan, J. 2020. Navarro memos warning of mass coronavirus death circulated in January, Axios, 7 April.

Rucker, P. et al. 2020.‘What do you have to lose?’: Inside Trump’s embrace of a risky drug against coronavirus, The Washington Post, 6 April.

Crowley, M. et al. 2020. Ignoring Expert Opinion, Trump Again Promotes Use of Hydroxychloroquine, The New York Times, 5 April.

Helderman, R. et al. 2020. Giuliani, a familiar voice in Trump’s ear, promotes experimental coronavirus treatments, The Washington Post, 5 April.

Hall, B. and G. Chazan, 2020. Europe prepares to ease coronavirus lockdowns, Financial Times, 5 April.

Kranish, M. 2020. Fauci and Birx worked together at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. Thirty-seven years later, they are partners in fighting the coronavirus. Washington Post, 5 April.

Boburg, S. et al. 2020. Inside the coronavirus testing failure: Alarm and dismay among the scientists who sought to help, The Washington Post, 3 April.

Wan, W. 2020. Experts and Trump’s advisers doubt White House’s 240,000 coronavirus deaths estimate, The Washington Post, 2 April.

Bort, R. 2020. Why the World Health Organization’s Response to COVID-19 Is Crucial to the Future of Public Health, Rolling Stone, 31 March.

Lemire, J. et al. 2020. How dire projections, grim images dashed Trump’s Easter plan, Associated Press, 30 March.

Meyers. S. 2020. China Created a Fail-Safe System to Track Contagions. It Failed, New York Times, 30 March.

Shear, M. et al. 2020. The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19, The New York Times, 28 March.

Boyd, I. 2020. Coronavirus: a former member of SAGE explains how the science advisory group really works, The Conversation, 24 March.

Rivers, C. et al. 2020. Modernizing and Expanding Outbreak Science to Support Better Decision Making During Public Health Crises: Lessons for COVID-19 and Beyond, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, 24 March. (PDF).

Enserink, M. and K. Kupferschmidt, 2020. Mathematics of life and death: How disease models shape national shutdowns and other pandemic policies, Science, 25 March.

Mulgan, G. and J. Chataway, 2020. Coronavirus response shows science in motion, Research Fortnight, 25 March.

Majumder, M. and K. Mandl, 2020. Early in the epidemic: impact of preprints on global discourse about COVID-19 transmissibility, The Lancet, 25 March.

Sarewitz, D. 2020. Pandemic Science and Politics, Issues in Science and Technology, 25 March.

Parker, A. et al. 2020. Trump versus the scientists: The president’s tug-of-war with experts over coronavirus policy, The Washington Post, 24 March.

Cohen, J. 2020. ‘I’m going to keep pushing.’ Anthony Fauci tries to make the White House listen to facts of the pandemic, Science, 22 March.

Mesfin, M. 2020. It Takes a World to End a Pandemic Scientific Cooperation Knows No Boundaries—Fortunately, Foreign Affairs, 21 March.

Wickham, A. 2020. 10 Days That Changed Britain: “Heated” Debate Between Scientists Forced Boris Johnson To Act On Coronavirus, BuzzFeed, 21 March.

Nature, 2020. Coronavirus: three things all governments and their science advisers must do now, 17 March.

Devlin, H. 2020. Behavioural scientists form new front in battle against coronavirus, The Guardian, 13 March.

OECD, 2018. Scientific Advice During Crises Facilitating Transnational Co-operation and Exchange of Information, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264304413-en

Wilton Park, 2017. Report: Science advice: international co-operation and exchange of data and information during transnational crises, OECD. (PDF)

Maini, R., Clarke, L., Blanchard, K., & Murray, V. (2017). The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and its indicators—where does health fit in?. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 8(2), 150-155.

Aitsi-Selmi, A., Blanchard, K., & Murray, V. (2016). Ensuring science is useful, usable and used in global disaster risk reduction and sustainable development: a view through the Sendai framework lens. Palgrave Communications, 2(1), 1-9.

OECD 2015, Scientific Advice for Policy Making: The Role and Responsibility of Expert Bodies and Individual Scientists, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 21, OECD Publishing, Paris. (PDF)

Glasser, J. W., Hupert, N., McCauley, M. M., & Hatchett, R. (2011). Modeling and public health emergency responses: Lessons from SARS. Epidemics, 3(1), 32-37.

UK House of Commons, 2011. Scientific advice and evidence in emergencies, Inquiry and Reports (here), Direct link to report (PDF).

WHO, 2011. Implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005), Report of the Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations (2005) in relation to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, Report by the Director-General, World Health Organization. (PDF)

WHO, International Health Regulations (2005) (link)

Syed, A. M., Hjarnø, L., Krumkamp, R., Reintjes, R., & Aro, A. R. (2010). Developing policy options for SARS and SARS-like diseases–a Delphi study. Global public health, 5(6), 663-675.

The Royal Society, 2006. Pandemic Influenza: From Science to Policy, The Royal Society, London. (PDF)

Ferguson, N. M., Cummings, D. A., Fraser, C., Cajka, J. C., Cooley, P. C., & Burke, D. S. (2006). Strategies for mitigating an influenza pandemic. Nature, 442(7101), 448-452.

Ferguson, N. M., Keeling, M. J., Edmunds, W. J., Gani, R., Grenfell, B. T., Anderson, R. M., & Leach, S. (2003). Planning for smallpox outbreaks. Nature, 425(6959), 681-685.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/26/watch-a-timeline-of-disease-expert-dr-anthony-faucis-comments-on-coronavirus.html