Research

This article features research by LCDS Associate Member Alice Reid. The article says the geography of coronavirus deaths in the UK closely follows the pattern of poor health in the 19th Century. Alice's research was supported by The Cambridge Group for the History of Population at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, the ESRC and www.PopulationsPast.com

Dr Per Block is interviewed about his research Sharing the load: Contagion and tolerance of mood in social networks

The study examined mood contagion between teenage musicians on tour, and showed that they caught moods from each other and that bad moods are more contagious than good ones. Listen at 17m 50s.

Research conducted by Per Engell, Arun Frey and Mark Verhagen found that primary school children learned very little or nothing during lockdown, without face to face teaching. The team studied evidence from the Netherlands, and suggest their findings are applicable internationally.

Guardian Health Policy, Head to Head

Would Covid passports be damaging to public health?
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Our Director Professor Melinda Mills, author of the Royal Society report on vaccine passports goes Head to Head with Stephen Reicher
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Covid passports could be workable, but they’ll need to meet certain criteria, says Professor Mills.
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Professor Melinda Mills discusses the ethics of vaccine passports with presenter Iain Dale and Dawn, a pub landlady from Norwich. Listen at 0.22

Our Director Professor Melinda Mills wrote this opinion piece...


...Building carrot policies and incentives to help workers understand why vaccination protects might be more effective than the mandatory stick, while we cannot forget that the central crux of the vaccination conundrum is this: protecting the fundamental right of one might endanger the wellbeing of another.

Published Tues 22 June.

Professor Melinda Mills is the expert guest on this podcast. She warns that COVID-19 vaccine passports could create two-tier societies, in which those that have the passports can participate and those that do not cannot.

With worries circulating about the risk of blood clots possibly linked with a COVID-19 vaccine, our Director Professor Melinda Mills wrote this opinion piece on public perception of risk. It alters in times of uncertainty, such as a pandemic.

'If you take the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, you have a 99.9996% chance of not developing a clot,' she wrote.

Research conducted by Dr Per Block showing that moods are contagious, is reported in this article. It's hoped the findings will lead to improved understanding of mental health in teenagers.

Professor Melinda Mills talking about the Govt's possible plan to make presenting a vaccine passport a requirement to enter pubs. Listen at 1.09.

Article on José Manuel Aburto's research published in Nature Communications : The Long Lives of Primates and the ‘Invariant Rate of Ageing’ Hypothesis

Professor Jennifer Dowd says there are ways to make it safer if you do decide to go to sports stadiums. "Yelling, chanting, hugging and generally pouring out our sports enthusiasm is still not the safest activity...Spaces that are indoors with lots of people eating and drinking without masks are still among the riskiest," she said.

'People get in a car and think it’s low risk as they’re in control. And they think GM, food preservatives and vaccines, which they are unrelated to, as high risk. Actually it's the reverse,' she says. Watch the interview at 6m 45s



Professor Jennifer Beam Dowd is interviewed in this article. It's impossible to predict when herd immunity will be reached, she says. But if kids are vaccinated in the fall, the difference will be felt by New Year 2022.

Professor Mills is interviewed:
“What happens if I’m sitting in another country and my vaccine is paused?” says Melinda Mills, who recently co-led a report on vaccine passports for the Royal Society. “What is a valid vaccine? It’s a moving target.”