Funded by the Weston Family Foundation. Additional support from CIHR and Canada Research Chairs. Code and data on GitHub: github.com/kennek6/soci...
Posts by Kate Kennedy
The takeaway: For future pandemics, focus on the structural pressures people face, not just asking them to make "good choices."
Unexpectedly, vaccination status didn't significantly affect people's exposure risk behaviours.
We also found demographic differences. Older adults and people with pre-existing health conditions had lower exposure risk overall, largely because they were less likely to work outside the home. Women also had lower exposure risk, driven mainly by more frequent handwashing.
But here's what's interesting - when we saw exposure risk increase over time, it wasn't driven by changing personal choices about things like social gatherings. Instead, the increases were largely due to systemic factors, like a return to in-person work.
Key finding: People were generally very responsive to government restrictions throughout the pandemic. When restrictions increased, exposure risk decreased.
We wanted to understand how people's behaviour changed in response to non-pharmaceutical interventions (like lockdowns, gathering limits) and whether different groups responded differently.
First, a huge thanks to our 348 participants who stuck with us through 70+ weekly surveys during a pandemic.
New paper out! We followed 348 people in Ontario for 16 months during COVID (May 2020-Aug 2021) to understand how responsive people were to government restrictions and how this varied across different demographics. @msmacrophage.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The 2 ridings surrounding mine are currently both lead by <500 votes with 1 poll left to report 🤞
Swordheart by T Kingfisher ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ cozy read, but not in a nothing-happens way.