Epidemiology

Der SPIEGEL Bestseller Platz 1Fakten gegen Fakes!Die bekannte Wissenschaftsjournalistin Dr. Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim untersucht mit analytischem Scharfsinn und unbestechlicher Logik brennende Streitfragen unserer Gesellschaft. Mit Fakten und wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen kontert sie Halbwahrheiten, Fakes und Verschwörungsmythen - und zeigt, wo wir uns mangels Beweisen noch zurecht munter streiten dürfen.Themen:Die Legalisierung von Drogen, Videospiele, Gewalt, Gender Pay Gap, systemrelevante Berufe, Care-Arbeit, Lohngerechtigkeit, Big Pharma vs. Alternative Medizin, Homöopathie, klinische Studien, Impfpflicht, die Erblichkeit von Intelligenz, Gene vs. Umwelt, männliche und weibliche Gehirne, Tierversuche und von Corona bis Klimawandel: Wie politisch darf Wissenschaft sein?Fakten, wissenschaftlich fundiert und eindeutig belegt, sind Gold wert. Gerade dann, wenn in Gesellschaft und Politik über Reizthemen hitzig gestritten wird, braucht es einen Faktencheck, um die Dinge klarzustellen und Irrtümer und Fakes aus der Welt schaffen. Leider aber werden Fakten oft verkürzt, missverständlich präsentiert oder gerne auch mit subjektiver Meinung wild gemischt. Ein sachlicher Diskurs? Nicht mehr möglich. Dr. Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim räumt bei den derzeit beliebtesten Streitthemen mit diesem Missstand auf.Bestechend klarsichtig, wunderbar unaufgeregt und herrlich kurzweilig ermittelt sie anhand wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse das, was faktisch niemand in Abrede stellen kann, wenn es beispielsweise um Erblichkeit von Intelligenz, Gender Pay Gap, Klimawandel oder Legalisierung von Drogen geht. Mai Thi Nguyen-Kims Suche nach dem Kern der Wahrheit zeigt dabei nicht nur, was unanfechtbar ist und worauf wir uns alle einigen können. Mehr noch: Sie macht deutlich, wo die Fakten aufhören, wo Zahlen und wissenschaftliche Belege fehlen - wo wir also völlig berechtigt uns gegenseitig persönliche Meinungen an den Kopf werfen dürfen.Ein spannender und informativer Fakten- und Reality-Check, der beste Bullshit-Detektor für unsere angeblich postfaktische Zeit.

This book is a comprehensive and practical introduction of clinical epidemiology for students and practitioners. It covers both the basic principles and concepts of clinical epidemiology as well as its applications in various medical disciplines.It covers how to design, conduct, and interpret clinical studies using methods such as bias analysis, confounding control, causality assessment, diagnosis evaluation, prognosis prediction treatment comparison, and meta-analysis in this book. It also introduces how to apply these skills to real-world scenarios through case studies and examples that provide a fresh perspective on familiar topics. This book is a useful textbook for graduate and undergraduate students in medical schools, including MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) student.

Five years after Ronald Ross discovered the link between malaria and mosquitos, American entomologist Leland Howard wrote of the "mosquito evil" that occurs when "everybody's business is nobody's business." Howard's insight was largely ignored, but it captures what social scientists now refer to as the problem of collective action. When this problem persists in the context of malaria, individuals under-provide prevention and suffer from a higher prevalence of malaria. Imagine a group of people trying to drain a pond where mosquitoes breed. Everyone in the group faces an incentive to free ride, which can hinder their drainage efforts. Thus, when people fail to resolve issues related to collective action, they submit to the "mosquito evil" and, potentially, to malaria. This book explores Howard's logic, the economics of collective action, and the history, epidemiology, and public health of malaria to analyze the conditions under which peopleprivately resolve collective action problems associated with mosquito abatement and malaria prevention. Generally, people are more likely to resolve these problems when the benefits of abatement and prevention outweigh the costs. This logic is developed into a framework and applied to historical and modern-day issues related to malaria, including the lack or abundance of private prevention in the United States and in developing areas; malaria's resurgence in countries like China, Venezuela, and Bangladesh; and the difficulties of large-scale insecticide-treated bed net campaigns. Given this framework, we should develop a greater appreciation for entrepreneurial responses, civil society, market processes, and private forms of collective action.

A vibrant cultural history investigating pandemics and vaccines, by bestselling author and historian Simon SchamaCities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.Characteristically, Schama's message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories of medical history set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope - in hospitals and prisons, palaces, and slums - are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs in public health happen, in Paris, Hong Kong, and Mumbai.At the heart of it all is an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine, a gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as "the saviour of mankind" for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world's first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice.Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, "there are no foreigners, only familiars." This sweeping history of medicine reveals:- The Birth of Vaccines: Follow the gripping story of inoculation, from its controversial beginnings with smallpox in the eighteenth century to the breakthroughs that saved millions.- Unsung Heroes of Science: Meet the unforgettable cast of characters at the heart of medical history, including Waldemar Haffkine, the microbiologist who developed the first mass-produced vaccines against cholera and plague.- Global Pandemics: Travel from the slums of London to the palaces of Paris and the stricken streets of India as Schama traces the epic history of humanity's fight against contagion.- Narrative Nonfiction at its Finest: Discover a page-turning story, rich with detail, that connects the worlds of politics, poverty, and pioneering science across centuries.

The societal consequences of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are severe. They include declining health outcomes from longer illnesses, prolonged stays in hospital, loss of protection for patients undergoing medical procedures, increased health care expenditure, and increased mortality. They also include declining global food security as AMR damages farm animal health and crop yields. Despite AMR being a transboundary crisis, concerted global initiatives that effectively combat AMR have been few and far between.Steering Against Superbugs analyses ways to reduce barriers and create opportunities for coordination. The expert contributions in this volume offer specific and original insights about what global governance of AMR means, and ways to help solve AMR issues. They show that effective governance relies crucially on pursuing local level implementation of key policies, and equitable recognition of solutions across multiple sectors within countries, and across the Global North and South. With the COVID-19 pandemic, societies across the world have been reminded of the devastating consequences of not being able to effectively counter global health threats. AMR is arguably one of the most severe long-term threats to human, animal, and environmental health. There is momentum for global political action around novel and emerging disease threats and Steering Against Superbugs contributes with original and insightful research to inform ongoing and future debates.

This is a comprehensive book series that comprises two distinct yet interconnected volumes. Volume I focuses on international relations and global politics, while Volume II delves into social sciences and humanities studies. Both volumes revolve around the central theme of the COVID-19 pandemic era, exploring its profound impact on various aspects of the world. In Volume I, scholars, and experts in the field of international relations delve into the intricate dynamics of global politics in the context of the pandemic. They analyse the shifting power dynamics, the role of international organisations, the challenges to global governance, and the geopolitical implications of the crisis. This book provides valuable insights into how the pandemic has shaped and transformed the international system, influencing state behaviour, diplomatic relations, and global cooperation. Volume II takes a multidisciplinary approach, examining the social, cultural, economic, and psychological dimensions ofthe COVID-19 pandemic. Experts from the fields of social sciences and humanities contribute their research and perspectives, offering critical analyses of the pandemic's effects on societies, communities, individuals, and various aspects of human life. Together, these two volumes provide a comprehensive exploration of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on world politics, society, and human experiences. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines, the book series offers a holistic understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by this unprecedented global crisis. It serves as a valuable resource for academics, policymakers, and anyone seeking to comprehend and navigate the complexities of the COVID-19 era.

Covid-19 has hit the world unprepared, as the deadliest pandemic of the century. Governments and authorities, as leaders and decision makers fighting against the virus, enormously tap on the power of AI and its data analytics models for urgent decision supports at the greatest efforts, ever seen from human history. This book showcases a collection of important data analytics models that were used during the epidemic, and discusses and compares their efficacy and limitations.Readers who from both healthcare industries and academia can gain unique insights on how data analytics models were designed and applied on epidemic data. Taking Covid-19 as a case study, readers especially those who are working in similar fields, would be better prepared in case a new wave of virus epidemic may arise again in the near future.

This book addresses the many ethical issues and extraordinary risks that nurses and others are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which creates physical, emotional, and economic burdens, affecting nurses' overall health and well-being. Nurses are essential front-line clinicians across all health care settings and in every nation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARs-CoV-2 virus has affected children, adults, and communities within and across all societies. Nurses, too, have contracted the virus and died from the disease. They have also seen their colleagues, family members, and friends hospitalized or in intensive care units struggling to survive. Nursing's professionalism and disciplinary resolve to care for patients and families amidst confusion, misinformation, and shifting guidelines has been called "heroic" by the public. How much risk should nurses be expected to accept during a pandemic? How do nurses help patients and families find comfort and dignity at the end-of-life? How do we help nurses who are suffering from moral distress and mental health concerns from what they have seen, been asked to do, or are unable to provide? And, how does society move forward from a pandemic that has challenged our basic ethical principles of justice and what is "fair, good and right" in caring for those who need care, including the most vulnerable and nurses themselves? This book addresses these and other ethical concerns that nurses are facing in their day-to-day clinical practice; experiences shared with patients, families, and colleagues. Although this book was written while the pandemic was still raging across the United States and globally, the events needed to be told as they were unfolding. This book helps us to learn from both the successes and failures that are affecting so many across the globe, including those on whom the public relies on to provide quality, compassionate, and expert care when they are sick: nurses.

This open access book describes Smittestopp, the first Norwegian system for digital contact tracing of Covid-19 infections, which was developed in March and early April 2020. The system was deployed after five weeks of development and was active for a little more than two months, when a drop in infection levels in Norway and privacy concerns led to shutting it down. The intention of this book is twofold. First, it reports on the design choices made in the development phase. Second, as one of the only systems in the world that collected population data into a central database and which was used for an entire population, we can share experience on how the design choices impacted the system's operation. By sharing lessons learned and the challenges faced during the development and deployment of the technology, we hope that this book can be a valuable guide for experts from different domains, such as big data collection and analysis, application development, and deployment in a national population, as well as digital tracing.

Das Tagebuch der berühmten chinesischen Schriftstellerin Fang Fang aus einer abgeriegelten Stadt ist ein einzigartiges, ergreifendes Zeitdokument über den Kampf gegen einen unsichtbaren Feind, den die Menschen in Wuhan weltweit als erste führten.Wuhan: Am 25. Januar, zwei Tage nachdem erstmals in der Geschichte eine 9-Millionen-Einwohner-Stadt komplett von der Außenwelt abgeriegelt wurde, beginnt Fang Fang, online Tagebuch zu schreiben. Eingeschlossen in ihrer Wohnung berichtet sie vom Hereinbrechen und dem Verlauf einer Katastrophe, von der Panik während der ersten Tage der Covid-19-Epidemie bis zu ihrer erfolgreichen Eindämmung. Sie erzählt von der Einsamkeit, dem heroischen Kampf des Personals in den Krankenhäusern, vom Leid der Erkrankten, dem Schmerz der Angehörigen von Verstorbenen und der Solidarität unter Nachbarn.Millionen Chinesen folgen ihren Gedanken und ihren Geschichten aus dem unmöglichen Alltag - vom Zorn über die Untätigkeit und Vertuschungsmanöver der Behörden während der Anfangsphase der Epidemie und der Unterdrückung warnender Stimmen, bis zur Anerkennung der wirkungsvollen Maßnahmen der Regierung in den Wochen danach.Fang Fang liefert einen unverstellten Blick auf die Katastrophe "von unten", ganz nah an den Menschen, ihren Ängsten und Nöten, aber auch ihren kleinen Freuden und dem speziellen Wuhaner Humor selbst in dunkelsten Stunden. Zugleich wurde ihr Wuhan Diary in China zum Gegenstand erbitterter Auseinandersetzung über den Umgang mit kritischen Stimmen und Verantwortung - und somit über Chinas künftigen Weg. "Als Zeugen, die wir die tragischen Tage von Wuhan miterlebt haben, sind wir verpflichtet, für diejenigen Gerechtigkeit einzufordern, die gestorben sind."- Fang Fang

Machine learning and big data is hot. It is, however, virtually unused in clinical trials. This is so, because randomization is applied to even out multiple variablesModern medical computer files often involve hundreds of variables like genes and other laboratory values, and computationally intensive methods are requiredThis is the first publication of clinical trials that have been systematically analyzed with machine learning. In addition, all of the machine learning analyses were tested against traditional analyses. Step by step statistics for self-assessments are includedThe authors conclude, that machine learning is often more informative, and provides better sensitivities of testing than traditional analytic methods do

This book focuses on the Chinese health impact induced by ambient temperature variation, especially the epidemiology-based exposure-response relationship with the mortality and morbidity from respiratory, cardiovascular diseases, and mental health among Chinese population.A great number of epidemiological studies have reported that ambient temperature is closely associated with a wide range of health outcomes, such as mortality, cardiovascular and respiratory events, adverse birth outcome, and some infectious diseases, such as dengue fever, malaria. Although a number of epidemiological studies in western countries have evaluated the adverse health effects of ambient temperature, the exposure-response relationship from these countries cannot simply be applied to the Chinese population due to the large differences in temperature profile, exposure pattern, as well as the population vulnerability. This book will provide up-to-date estimates of the magnitude of adverse health effects of ambient temperature in the Chinese population. We hope to provide readers with a comprehensive and organized body of information in the area of Ambient Temperature and health.

L'analisi e l'interpretazione di enormi quantità di dati sono diventati un prerequisito fondamentale della ricerca medica e dell'analisi biostatistica. La terza edizione di "Biostatistica. Concetti di base per l'analisi statistica delle scienze dell'area medico-sanitaria" offre una guida approfondita verso concetti, tecniche e applicazioni biostatistiche nell'attuale ambito sanitario. Il testo facilita l'apprendimento e l'utilizzo corretto di: distribuzioni di probabilità e campionarie, stima, test d'ipotesi, analisi della varianza, regressione, analisi di correlazione e altri strumenti statistici fondamentali per la scienza e la pratica della medicina. Gli esempi trattati nel testo americano mediante Minitab, SAS o SPSS, sono stati analizzati nella versione italiana con R e, in particolare, con l'interfaccia grafica R Commander. Il testo ha adottato questo programma in quanto è gratuito e facilmente scaricabile. Ciò facilita l'approccio alla statistica, incoraggiando la pratica mediante lo svolgimento di numerosi esercizi. Das Urheberrecht an bibliographischen und produktbeschreibenden Daten und an den bereitgestellten Bildern liegt bei Informazioni Editoriali, I.E. S.r.l., oder beim Herausgeber oder demjenigen, der die Genehmigung erteilt hat. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

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Mathematical and Statistical Estimation Approaches in Epidemiology compiles t- oretical and practical contributions of experts in the analysis of infectious disease epidemics in a single volume. Recent collections have focused in the analyses and simulation of deterministic and stochastic models whose aim is to identify and rank epidemiological and social mechanisms responsible for disease transmission. The contributions in this volume focus on the connections between models and disease data with emphasis on the application of mathematical and statistical approaches that quantify model and data uncertainty. The book is aimed at public health experts, applied mathematicians and sci- tists in the life and social sciences, particularly graduate or advanced undergraduate students, who are interested not only in building and connecting models to data but also in applying and developing methods that quantify uncertainty in the context of infectious diseases. Chowell and Brauer open this volume with an overview of the classical disease transmission models of Kermack-McKendrick including extensions that account for increased levels of epidemiological heterogeneity. Their theoretical tour is followed by the introduction of a simple methodology for the estimation of, the basic reproduction number,R . The use of this methodology 0 is illustrated, using regional data for 1918-1919 and 1968 in uenza pandemics.