A timely call to establish an international convention on the rights of older people

Global pandemics inevitably reveal many vulnerabilities in national and global health systems, as well as society more broadly. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the importance of public health, the value of therapeutic medicine, and the power of vaccines. The pandemic has also made apparent stark inequities in access to testing, treatment, and vaccines

Extraction of the D13(1520) photon-decay couplings from pion- and eta-photoproduction data

We compare results for the D13(1520) photon-decay amplitudes determined in analyses of eta- and pion-photoproduction data. The ratio of helicity amplitudes (A_3/2 / A_1/2), determined from eta-photoproduction data, is quite different from that determined in previous analyses of pion-photoproduction data. We consider how strongly the existing pion-photoproduction data constrain both this ratio and the individual photon-decay amplitudes.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Macro-level efficiency of health expenditure: Estimates for 15 major economies

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the importance of strong and resilient health systems. Yet how much a society should spend on healthcare is difficult to determine because additional health expenditures imply lower expenditures on other types of consumption. Furthermore, the welfare-maximizing (“efficient”) aggregate amount and composition of health expenditures depend on efficiency concepts at three levels that often get blurred in the debate. While the understanding of efficiency is good at the micro- and meso-levels—that is, relating to minimal spending for a given bundle of treatments and to the optimal mix of different treatments, respectively—this understanding rarely links to the efficiency of aggregate health expenditure at the macroeconomic level. While micro- and meso-efficiency are necessary for macro-efficiency, they are not sufficient. We propose a novel framework of a macro-efficiency score to assess welfare-maximizing aggregate health expenditure. This allows us to assess the extent to which selected major economies underspend or overspend on health relative to their gross domestic products per capita. We find that all economies under consideration underspend on healthcare with the exception of the United States. Underspending is particularly severe in China, India, and the Russian Federation. Our study emphasizes that the major and urgent issue in many countries is underspending on health at the macroeconomic level, rather than containing costs at the microeconomic level

Climate and the spread of COVID-19

Visual inspection of world maps shows that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is less prevalent in countries closer to the equator, where heat and humidity tend to be higher. Scientists disagree how to interpret this observation because the relationship between COVID-19 and climatic conditions may be confounded by many factors. We regress the logarithm of confirmed COVID-19 cases per million inhabitants in a country against the country's distance from the equator, controlling for key confounding factors: air travel, vehicle concentration, urbanization, COVID-19 testing intensity, cell phone usage, income, old-age dependency ratio, and health expenditure. A one-degree increase in absolute latitude is associated with a 4.3% increase in cases per million inhabitants as of January 9, 2021 (p value < 0.001). Our results imply that a country, which is located 1000 km closer to the equator, could expect 33% fewer cases per million inhabitants. Since the change in Earth's angle towards the sun between equinox and solstice is about 23.5°, one could expect a difference in cases per million inhabitants of 64% between two hypothetical countries whose climates differ to a similar extent as two adjacent seasons. According to our results, countries are expected to see a decline in new COVID-19 cases during summer and a resurgence during winter. However, our results do not imply that the disease will vanish during summer or will not affect countries close to the equator. Rather, the higher temperatures and more intense UV radiation in summer are likely to support public health measures to contain SARS-CoV-2

The global economic burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for 204 countries and territories in 2020–50: a health-augmented macroeconomic modelling study

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide and imposes a substantial economic burden. Gaining a thorough understanding of the economic implications of COPD is an important prerequisite for sound, evidence-based policy making. We aimed to estimate the macroeconomic burden of COPD for each country and establish its distribution across world regions. Methods: In this health-augmented macroeconomic modelling study we estimated the macroeconomic burden of COPD for 204 countries and territories over the period 2020-50. The model accounted for (1) the effect of COPD mortality and morbidity on labour supply, (2) age and sex specific differences in education and work experience among those affected by COPD, and (3) the impact of COPD treatment costs on physical capital accumulation. We obtained data from various public sources including the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019, the World Bank database, and the literature. The macroeconomic burden of COPD was assessed by comparing gross domestic product (GDP) between a scenario projecting disease prevalence based on current estimates and a counterfactual scenario with zero COPD prevalence from 2020 to 2050. Findings: Our findings suggest that COPD will cost the world economy INT$4·326 trillion (uncertainty interval 3·327-5·516; at constant 2017 prices) in 2020-50. This economic effect is equivalent to a yearly tax of 0·111$1·363 trillion (uncertainty interval 1·034-1·801) and INT$1·037 trillion (0·868-1·175), respectively. Interpretation: The macroeconomic burden of COPD is large and unequally distributed across countries, world regions, and income levels. Our study stresses the urgent need to invest in global efforts to curb the health and economic burdens of COPD. Investments in effective interventions against COPD do not represent a burden but could instead provide substantial economic returns in the foreseeable future

Pedagogic model for Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering with quark-hadron duality

We show how quark-hadron duality can emerge for valence spin averaged structure functions, and for the non-forward distributions of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering. Novel factorisations of the non-forward amplitudes are proposed. Some implications for large angle scattering and deviations from the quark counting rules are illustrated.Comment: Version accepted by Phys. Rev.

Leading and higher twists in the proton polarized structure function at large Bjorken x

A phenomenological parameterization of the proton polarized structure function has been developed for x > 0.02 using deep inelastic data up to ~ 50 (GeV/c)**2 as well as available experimental results on both photo- and electro-production of proton resonances. According to the new parameterization the generalized Drell-Hearn-Gerasimov sum rule is predicted to have a zero-crossing point at Q**2 = 0.16 +/- 0.04 (GeV/c)**2. Then, low-order polarized Nachtmann moments have been estimated and their Q**2-behavior has been investigated in terms of leading and higher twists for Q**2 > 1 (GeV/c)**2. The leading twist has been treated at NLO in the strong coupling constant and the effects of higher orders of the perturbative series have been estimated using soft-gluon resummation techniques. In case of the first moment higher-twist effects are found to be quite small for Q**2 > 1 (GeV/c)**2, and the singlet axial charge has been determined to be a0[10 (GeV/c)**2] = 0.16 +/- 0.09. In case of higher order moments, which are sensitive to the large-x region, higher-twist effects are significantly reduced by the introduction of soft gluon contributions, but they are still relevant at Q**2 ~ few (GeV/c)**2 at variance with the case of the unpolarized transverse structure function of the proton. Our finding suggests that spin-dependent correlations among partons may have more impact than spin-independent ones. As a byproduct, it is also shown that the Bloom-Gilman local duality is strongly violated in the region of polarized electroproduction of the Delta(1232) resonance.Comment: revised version to appear in Phys. Rev. D; extended discussion on the generalized DHG sum rul

Multimessenger astronomy with the Einstein Telescope

Gravitational waves (GWs) are expected to play a crucial role in the development of multimessenger astrophysics. The combination of GW observations with other astrophysical triggers, such as from gamma-ray and X-ray satellites, optical/radio telescopes, and neutrino detectors allows us to decipher science that would otherwise be inaccessible. In this paper, we provide a broad review from the multimessenger perspective of the science reach offered by the third generation interferometric GW detectors and by the Einstein Telescope (ET) in particular. We focus on cosmic transients, and base our estimates on the results obtained by ET's predecessors GEO, LIGO, and Virgo.Comment: 26 pages. 3 figures. Special issue of GRG on the Einstein Telescope. Minor corrections include