David Lazer met with Alessandro Vespignani, a professor at Northeastern University, in February 2020, a month before the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“I said, ‘Tell me, how bad is this going to be?'” says Lazer, professor emeritus of political science and computer science at Northeastern University. “And he explained to me how bad it would be. “
They were facing a life-changing event, said Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute and Sternberg family professor emeritus at Northeastern. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was spreading in the United States and beyond. , just 3 months after it emerged in Wuhan, China.
“He talked about how things were going to be prevented over the next month and how we had to adapt our lives for an indefinite amount of time to protect ourselves individually and collectively,” Lazer recalls of that conversation. “I understood the general parameters.
“Obviously I’m very upset. I like, ‘What can I do to make a contribution right now?'”
It would be known as the COVID States Project, an effort led by four universities in the Northeast that would analyze newly collected knowledge to make sense of the changing and volatile COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the next 4 years, the mission would produce more than a hundred reports, all of them applicable to urgent issues, which would be reflected in the media throughout the country.
By sharing their expertise in various fields (computational social sciences, network science, public opinion polling, epidemiology, public health, psychiatry, communication, and political science), the researchers evolved and conducted surveys that allowed them to identify national and regional trends that influenced (and were influenced by) the spread of the virus.
“It was an act of improvisation—we didn’t know exactly what we were going to do,” Lazer says. “But we decided to make a positive impact and use our tools, our skills, to do anything during this terrible time. “
Their real-time studies included that social behaviors would play a significant role in a pandemic that has claimed about 1. 2 million lives nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (though there is an explanation for why so many more people died).
The project’s surveys and reports reflected national moods and trends while providing reliable data to policymakers at a time when the long term is difficult to predict.
“David, as a political scientist, told me that he had the idea that a poll would be useful,” says Mauricio Santillana, a member of the COVID States Project who has since joined Northeastern as director of the Machine Intelligence Group to Improve the Situation. Minister of Health and Environment (MIGHTE) at the Network Science Institute.
“I told him it was very appropriate because, rather than seeing a public reaction to a public health crisis, the pandemic was evolving into a sociological problem, in which other people were reacting more based on their political perspectives than clinical evidence.
“He came up with the idea of having a task where we could simply monitor people’s feelings, emotions, and behavioral changes in reaction to a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections and we could just record their political affiliations,” Santillana adds. , which focused on mathematical modelling of the pandemic situation.
“The assignment became a great tool for me, because it allowed me to perceive why things were going from bad to worse. “
His paintings are based on objectivity: the desire to respect all opinions, prioritizing understanding and rejecting judgment.
“By being kind to things in a way that has visibility,” Lazer says, “we hope you’ll tell other people who read our stories in the media, as well as political elites, the decisions we want to make. “
All this when Lazer reached out to colleagues at other universities. The COVID States Project has become a coordinated effort through Harvard’s Lazer, Santillana, Matthew Baum and Roy Perlis, Rutgers’ Katherine Ognyanova, and Northwestern’s James Druckman. Weekly meetings were held on Fridays at 10 a. m. M. , as the task grew to include undergraduate and postdoctoral students, all of whom contributed voluntarily.
“In April we went out to the box and started collecting data,” Lazer says. “We learned that it’s possible for us to have useful effects for all 50 states. We might see the numbers pile up and it was an exciting time, like, maybe this will work.
“We continue to publish insights into vaccination and infection rates,” says Lazer, whose team has relied on a third-party vendor to conduct online surveys that are a new frontier for public surveys. “It turns out that our knowledge is greater than the official knowledge, because the latter are gravely at vital points. “
These official figures are possibly because individual states find it difficult to link citizens to the number of vaccines they’ve received, Lazer says.
The COVID status mapping team learned only how to phrase the questions with the precision needed to address the pertinent issues, but also how to rethink the answers to provide a representative analysis.
“If you need to know the vaccination rates of a given state, I think our knowledge is the most productive available,” Lazer says. “It’s pretty mind-boggling that 1,400 to 1,500 surveys have been conducted statewide. “
Early efforts focused on discoveries from the pandemic. As all 50 states developed plans to reopen businesses in June 2020, the draft found that most people liked a more cautious approach, with only 15% of respondents favoring an early reopening.
“Homework is a vital step in survey research,” says Alexi Quintana Mathé, a fourth-year PhD student. Student of Lazer at Northeastern. ” We surveyed more than 20,000 people approximately per month, with viable samples in U. S. states. An intelligent representation of the general population.
“This allowed us to closely monitor the behaviors, opinions, and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country, with particular attention to statewide differences that applied during the pandemic. “
Their work showed that black people waited longer for test results than other people in the United States.
“It’s to shine a light and create accountability,” Lazer says.
The project’s tracking of social distancing behaviors in October 2020 predicted which states would revel in surges the following month.
A survey conducted in the summer of 2020 predicted the rates of people who would get vaccinated when vaccines became available in December. Another survey was able to show which demographics would be reluctant to get vaccinated.
“The team found that considerations about vaccine safety, as well as mistrust, were the main reasons [for the reluctance],” says Kristin Lunz Trujillo, now an assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina who worked on COVID states. “This report generated far more ongoing work on the task and provided a more complete picture of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy than our same old research measures provide. “
“We still had to convince people, and I think that’s a very natural response,” says Santillana, a professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering in the Northeast. “The fact that other people worry about their fitness when they’re exposed to a vaccine is an herbal thing.
“But it’s been interpreted as, ‘Oh, so you’re a denier. ‘There was no room for a general user willing to be informed while experimenting with things. For me, being a mathematician and a physicist and listening to my fellow politicians “Scientists talk about acceptance issues in medical studies and in fitness professionals, this has become a multidisciplinary experience. “
In the midst of their work on COVID-19, the researchers looked at other major events in the United States. They needed to identify the demographics of the widespread Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. And they were to show that those outdoor protests had not led to a resurgence of pandemic-related illnesses.
“The scientists’ varied experience in the task allowed us to publicize fitness issues broadly and comprehensively,” says Alauna Safarpour, a Northeast postdoctoral associate on the task and now an assistant professor of political science at Gettysburg College.
“We looked not only at pandemic-related misinformation, vaccine skepticism, and depression and mental fitness issues, but also attitudes toward abortion, political violence, and even racism as a matter of public fitness. “
Anticipating the role mail-in ballots would play in the 2020 election, the allocation expected state effects to replace as late-arriving votes were counted.
“We had an article predicting replacement after Election Day,” Lazer says. “We said there would be a shift in Biden’s favor in some states and that it would be a very significant shift, and they gave us smart effects for the states. “They gave us clever estimates.
“We were looking to prepare other people so that there wouldn’t be anything suspicious here. That’s what you’d expect. “
After the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the mission, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump would maintain his influence as leader of the Republican Party.
“There were a lot of other people right after Jan. 6 who were saying Trump was done,” Lazer says. “We went out on stage a few days later, did some research, and said, ‘The [typical] Republican thinks the election was stolen and says Trump’s would still matter a lot. ‘”
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 was followed through a report by the COVID States Project, as it should predict a Democratic response.
“There’s a story about the constructive role academia can play in times of crisis – the equipment we have is very hands-on,” Lazer says. “While our country’s data ecosystem has shrunk (we see the media firing other people on the left and right), universities have a role to play in taking part in that ability to create wisdom and translate it into help in dealing with the crises of the moment. “.
“It revealed the effect of the social and political adjustments that Americans have gone through over the past four years at the national level, and more importantly, it broke down the effects into demographic and regional groups,” says Ata Aydin Uslu. Third-year PhD student. PhD student at the Lazer Lab at Northeastern.
“I see CSP as a successful attempt to capture the American public. We allowed Americans to make their case to local and federal decision-makers, and for decision-makers to make informed decisions and allocate resources, which is of utmost importance. crisis of a century. “
As it enters its fifth year, the assignment takes on an identity that reflects the changing times. The new Civic Health and Institutions Project, a 50-State Survey (CHIP50) is based on classes learned through the COVID States allocation team during the pandemic.
“The concept is to institutionalize the perception of conducting surveys in 50 states of a federal country,” Lazer says. “We have this in states that no other study has had. “
Their ongoing work will come with competitions to publish questions posed by outside researchers, Lazer says. “We will continue to publish reports, albeit less frequently, and we will be more research-oriented and look to get that detail. “of what that means, what other people think, what policymakers are doing, and so on. “
In a recent interview, as Lazer recounts the work of the so-called Zoom for more than four years, his head moves back and forth. When the pandemic forced him to isolate, he says, he became accustomed to working by walking on a treadmill. in your attic. At times, he responded to the pressures of the pandemic by running 16 hours while logging 40,000 steps per day, and contracted plantar fasciitis along the way.
“All of this has led me to think a lot more about the sociological and mental realities that underlie how other people process information, and the role they accept as true in plays in particular plays,” Lazer says. “In fact, it shaped the way I think about what is necessary to understand politics. “
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