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We built a #DigitalHealth application to help people understand how #SocialDistancing #PhysicalDistancing helps protect your community from #COVID19. Background story below [thread] https://twitter.com/wittemanlab/status/1247878372769902594?s=20
PhD candidate @ina9896 has spent years on an avatar-based animation to explain herd immunity in a personalized way. It’s almost ready to be trialed & she’s got analysis code all scripted in R to pre-register. Preprint describing the intervention & lab work coming very soon!
We’ve seen other, more abstract visualizations that we like, but they aren't always clear to people who don't already understand the science of herd immunity. So Hina’s work uses avatars to make the science of infectious disease dynamics concrete and personal, not abstract.
We decided to follow an avatar-based approach because it was very promising in early user testing, and there’s some evidence suggesting that personal avatars help people identify with hypothetical scenarios. https://twitter.com/wittemanlab/status/1045687135746101250
For example, Yee & Bailenson (2007) showed that when people were randomized to have a more attractive or taller avatar, they subsequently acted more flirtatious and confident, respectively. https://academic.oup.com/hcr/article-abstract/33/3/271/4210718
So far, non-academics who have tested this found building the 9 avatars “fun!” while academics complained it “takes too long.” 
It does take a couple of minutes, and that’s the point: the activity & time are intended to get people really thinking hard about those close to them.
It does take a couple of minutes, and that’s the point: the activity & time are intended to get people really thinking hard about those close to them.
Hina & others have spent hours in the lab collecting psychophysiological data (eye tracking, galvanic skin response, EEG, facial emotions.) Hina then spent even more hours analyzing it.
We’ve iterated through 4 design cycles. When we saw that participants who came to the lab were not fully representative of the community, we spent a summer taking our lab to the community, specifically in areas of town where people self-report lower education in the census.
The team, led by @parent_liz, had to transport and set up the lab equipment every day—2.5 hours of setup time—because we couldn’t get insurance to cover it overnight if we were to leave it in locked rooms at the malls/library. It was a busy summer!
Code for the herd immunity app was developed by student research assistants @Magniol_Noubi, Nadège Touko Toudjeu, Donavan Aziaka, and research professional Martin Tremblay-Breault. https://twitter.com/wittemanlab/status/1147307584237514752
Martin left in January to take a job in another faculty. Since then, day-to-day project management has been handled by new PhD student @e_doriane, who joined us in January from France to do a PhD in digital health, having spent years working in hospital systems.
Side note: I am sending all my best wishes to all graduate students spending this pandemic far from home in another country on a student visa. What a way to have this be even more stressful. 
Thanks to everyone’s meticulous work and parameterized design and code, when COVID19 really hit here in Canada and directives were issued to practice distancing, we already had something that was close to ready to be adapted to this new context.
Nadège is on mat leave, but Magniol and Donavan took my adapted storyboard and reworked the code accordingly. Now, instead of aiming to demonstrate how herd immunity works in a personalized way, the goal is to do that for social distancing.
Everyone on our team who wanted to help with this was welcome (but not obliged—I told everyone I do not expect full productivity right now) to collaborate. Many thanks to other lab members @e_doriane @GVaisson @RutNdjab Catherine Fallon @ina9896 & Mostafa Mousavi for their help!
Many thanks also to colleagues @DubeEve @SE_MacDonald @NoahIvers @patarchambault @BeateSander @jsp261 @KindrachukJason for helping make sure the science is accurate and @aetiology @maiamajumder (+ Beate) for quickly answering modeling questions! Any errors are mine, not theirs.
N.B. We used this report by @neil_ferguson and colleagues to understand model parameters and to guide our animation of different ways COVID19 could spread in a community. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Fast-talking @DubeEve did the French voiceover with a proper Québécois accent, speaking almost as quickly as I did in the English version with my flat Saskatchewan accent with hints of Toronto & Michigan. We couldn’t use the AV studio at @facmedUL so had to improvise!
This was adapted from years of work funded mostly by @IRSC_CIHR, some summer student funds from Employment Canada, and salary support for me by @FRQS1 & more recently @CRC_CRC (funds have been flowing >7 months but it still isn’t announced … I hope it’s OK to tweet thanks?)
Publicly-funded research creates results for the public—be that vaccines, treatments, or #DigitalHealth communication tools to help everyone understand how to do our part while we await vaccines & treatments.
Science and public health have been underfunded for decades in Canada. It means we are less well-equipped than we could be to address fast-moving problems like COVID19. Coronavirus vaccine researchers have already pointed out: they were making progress working towards vaccines...
...but then the funding dried up: “‘It’s kind of pathetically funny that great [coronavirus] vaccine work done by scientists with SARS and MERS, both times the taps were shut off,’ says Arts.” https://nationalpost.com/news/we-gotta-go-inside-global-race-to-find-a-vaccine-for-covid-19
Lack of sustained investment in science means we are also less well-equipped to address other health problems like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, etc. They aren’t pandemics--they devastate lives more steadily and slowly. https://twitter.com/MHendr1cks/status/1247182871804116992
Want science to solve problems and be there when it’s urgently needed? You have to invest for the long haul. It takes years or decades to train scientists and to painstakingly answer research questions and generate robust new knowledge. https://twitter.com/Protohedgehog/status/1246442379176902661
It isn’t a tap you can turn on and off. I mean, you *can* turn a tap back on and, after a glug-glugging, shuddering start, something will flow. But, let’s be honest, we all know that it would be faster, better, cleaner water if we ran it regularly & didn’t let so many pipes rust.
I beg our federal government @Bill_Morneau @JustinTrudeau @NavdeepSBains @PattyHajdu @tylermeredith to please follow the recommendations of the Fundamental Science Review they commissioned. Canadians need a robust scientific enterprise, now more than ever. http://sciencereview.ca
Anyway, please share the website with anyone who doesn’t yet understand how distancing works and why it is important, who is already doing it and could use a boost re: why they are doing the right thing, or who just likes making avatars. 
http://wlab.fmed.ulaval.ca/projects/socdist/#/
http://wlab.fmed.ulaval.ca/projects/socdist/#/
