The COVID-19 pandemic has had growing environmental consequences related to plastic use and follow-up waste, but more urgent health issues have far overshadowed the potential impacts. This paper ...gives a prospective outlook on how the disruption caused by COVID-19 can act as a catalyst for short-term and long-term changes in plastic waste management practices throughout the world. The impact of the pandemic and epidemic following through the life cycles of various plastic products, particularly those needed for personal protection and healthcare, is assessed. The energy and environmental footprints of these product systems have increased rapidly in response to the surge in the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide, while critical hazardous waste management issues are emerging due to the need to ensure destruction of residual pathogens in household and medical waste. The concept of Plastic Waste Footprint (PWF) is proposed to capture the environmental footprint of a plastic product throughout its entire life cycle. Emerging challenges in waste management during and after the pandemic are discussed from the perspective of novel research and environmental policies. The sudden shift in waste composition and quantity highlights the need for a dynamically reponsive waste management system. Six future research directions are suggested to mitigate the potential impacts of the pandemic on waste management systems.
•Expert insight for dealing with COVID-19 plastic use and waste.•Minimising plastic waste during and after the pandemic.•Introduction and benefits of Plastic Waste Footprint.•Considering and reducing Environmental, including GHG, Footprints.
This study examines the relationship between international tourism and COVID-19 cases and associated deaths in more than 90 nations. We use a cross-country regression analysis and find a positive ...correlation between international tourism and the cumulated level of COVID-19 confirmed cases and death by April 30, 2020. Our regression analyses show that countries exposed to high flows of international tourism are more prone to cases and deaths caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. This association is robust even after controlling for other socioeconomic determinants of COVID-19 outbreak and regional dummies. Based on our estimations, a 1% higher level of inbound and outbound tourism is associated with 1.2% and 1.4% higher levels of confirmed COVID-19 cases and death, respectively, controlling for other factors. When we normalize the number of cases and death by size of population, the statistical significance remains robust, especially for the COVID-19 deaths, while the effect size reduces.
As a threat, a pandemic has indirect implications for social, economic and political conditions both at domestic and international levels. Thus, collective and comprehensive efforts are needed in ...responding to and preventing the expansion of infections caused by the virus, including Covid-19. This international conference provides the discourse on social, economic as well as political issues regarding the condition after the pandemic. Social issues are studied through social welfare, sociology, governance, communication and international relations approaches. Meanwhile, economic problems are discussed through business, economic development and economic management approaches. Under the First International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences (ICHSOS) 2021, speakers from several countries provided solutions and alternative perspectives in preventing and dealing with problems after the Covid-19 pandemic. This book contains 42 papers presented at the conference.
This qualitative research aims to determine changes in students’ learning behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of changes on students’ learning behaviour at SMA Kristen Kapan. The ...research subjects were students, teachers, and the headmaster. The data were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation. The data were analysed through data reduction, data display, and drawing conclusions. The study shows that there are changes in students' learning behaviour, namely: the students were less active to ask questions, the students were less enthusiastic about learning, and the students were not active (silent) in joining the learning process. Besides, the impact is that the students begin to forget the school culture, students were more interested in playing online games and social media, lack discipline in learning, the students feel bored, and lack motivation.
The global epistemological gendarmerie do not only police epistemologies but they also infect the world with infectious epidemics of laughter targeted at those people whose epistemologies are ...offhandedly condemned as sterile and useless in controlling and containing pandemics. Patrolling epistemic borders in ways that demobilise indigenous epistemologies, the global epistemological policemen have ironically managed to prevent transgressive epistemologies from crossing borders but they have fatally failed to prevent the transgressive COVID-19 from recurrently crossing borders, be they bodily, national or continental. Brandishing fetishised degree and diploma certificates, African comprador academics, who are more interested in fetishised ranks and titles than in creativity and innovation, have also fatally failed to help African communities by producing vaccines for Africans by Africans. Arguing that Eurocentric epistemologies have become sterile fetishes, the book contends that such epistemologies have disabled African scholars from actively producing vaccines on a continent where there are paradoxically more epidemics of mimetic laughter than there are efforts at creativity and innovation. The book is useful for scholars in sociology, anthropology, development studies, languages and communication, natural sciences, historical studies and social work.
Background: Infertility remains an important problem with a significant negative social impact on infertile couples. intrauterine insemination (IUI) is an assisted method of infertility treatment in ...couples with unexplained and mild/moderate male factor subfertility. In the present study, we compared infertility-related stress in women undergoing the IUI cycle before and after COVID-19 Pandemic. Materials and Methods: One hundred and sixty women undergoing the IUI cycle participated in the present study. Samples were collected from Jun 2019 to December 2019 and postponed for 6 months because of COVID-19 Pandemic. Afterward, sampling was started again in March 2021. The sampling was divided into two parts, including (I) before and (II) after COVID-19 Pandemic. A socio-demographic form and Fertility Problem Inventory (FPI) questionnaire were completed by participants before starting their treatment. Statistical analyses were performed using Prism software. Results: According to the results of FPI questionnaires, ~95% of all women participating in the study showed medium to very high levels of total infertility stress. The mean total scores of FPI in patients before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic groups were 137.6 ± 24.8 and 134.6 ± 27, respectively. The comparison of FPI scores between the two groups exhibited no significant difference (P˃0.05). Findings also showed that total infertility stress was significantly associated with age, duration of infertility, employment, and educational status. No significant relationship was found between total infertility stress and other data (cause of infertility, type of infertility, and history of previous IUI). Conclusion: According to our study, COVID-19 Pandemic did not affect infertility-related stress in infertile women.
•Quarantine decisions during a pandemic directly affect the hospitality industry.•A DEMATEL method is proposed for quarantine decision due to COVID-19 Pandemic.•A real life case study in Turkey is ...conducted in this paper.•Istanbul has an essential impact on the rest of all regions in Turkey.
Countries' most effective methods to reduce the impact of outbreaks are quarantine the regions during the pandemic periods. Quarantine decisions during a pandemic directly affect the hospitality industry. There is no universal guideline regarding the quarantine decision during a pandemic. There is a gap in the literature on making the right quarantine decisions to decrease the negative effect of a pandemic on the hospitality industry. To fill this gap, this study uses a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method to help countries for quarantine decisions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the critical hospitality industry indicators is the inter-regional travel flow between regions for local tourism. Data from the household domestic tourism survey obtained from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) is used to acquire the number of people entering and exiting among regions. This study's findings indicate that Istanbul has an essential impact on Turkey's rest. The results also demonstrate that the DEMATEL method provides convenient solutions for quarantine decisions during a pandemic. The DEMATEL application results concerning the COVID-19 pandemic effect might shed light on the hospitality industry’s prospects and challenges. This study's findings might be adopted to prepare the hospitality industry for the COVID-19 pandemic and similar pandemic.
We propose a compartmental mathematical model for the spread of the COVID-19 disease with special focus on the transmissibility of super-spreaders individuals. We compute the basic reproduction ...number threshold, we study the local stability of the disease free equilibrium in terms of the basic reproduction number, and we investigate the sensitivity of the model with respect to the variation of each one of its parameters. Numerical simulations show the suitability of the proposed COVID-19 model for the outbreak that occurred in Wuhan, China.
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