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Society

Social distancing time frames: How our expectations affect compliance

Source: JournalistsResource.org

In a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, researchers surveyed nearly 900 Italian residents to explore what happens when expectations are shattered about how long social distancing measures, like self-isolation, would last. Participants were less willing to do more self-isolating when told that social distancing time frames would run much longer or shorter than they anticipated.

Digital divide: Rural broadband in the time of coronavirus

Source: JournalistsResource.org

Starr Gilmartin, 63, lives with her husband in Trenton, Maine. She’s a social worker in this rural town of about 1,500 near Bar Harbor. Gilmartin uses telehealth technology to help psychiatrists evaluate their patients. At Northern Light Acadia Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Bangor about a 35-mile drive from Trenton, she connects by video conference to patients and psychiatrists sometimes based in other parts of the country.