This study examines the phenomenon of “foolishness for Christ” as reflected in the contemporary Orthodox figure of Elder Gerontius of Tismana. Starting with a general review of the diverse phenomena of divine madness present in various world religions, we then move onto the Orthodox Christian tradition, where such apparent eccentric behavior is interpreted as an expression of deep asceticism and spiritual insight. Based primarily on memorial and testimonial sources (oral accounts, written recollections, and biographical notes), the research employs a hermeneutical and phenomenological approach to interpret how such figures are perceived within ecclesial life. Using Christos Yannaras’ theological criteria for discerning authentic “holy folly”, our paper argues that Elder Gerontius convincingly fits this ascetic paradigm. The study further suggests that the presence of such charismatic and unconventional figures may signal a form of spiritual renewal within contemporary Orthodoxy, revealing the dynamic interplay between prophetic charisma and institutional order in the life of the Church.
World models that forecast scene evolution by generating future video frames devote the bulk of their capacity to photometric details, yet the resulting predictions often remain geometrically inconsistent. We present VGGT-World, a geometry world model that side-steps video generation entirely and instead forecasts the temporal evolution of frozen geometry-foundation-model (GFM) features. Concretely, we repurpose the latent tokens of a frozen VGGT as the world state and train a lightweight temporal flow transformer to autoregressively predict their future trajectory. Two technical challenges arise in this high-dimensional (d=1024) feature space: (i) standard velocity-prediction flow matching collapses, and (ii) autoregressive rollout suffers from compounding exposure bias. We address the first with a clean-target (z-prediction) parameterization that yields a substantially higher signal-to-noise ratio, and the second with a two-stage latent flow-forcing curriculum that progressively conditions the model on its own partially denoised rollouts. Experiments on KITTI, Cityscapes, and TartanAir demonstrate that VGGT-World significantly outperforms the strongest baselines in depth forecasting while running 3.6-5 times faster with only 0.43B trainable parameters, establishing frozen GFM features as an effective and efficient predictive state for 3D world modeling.
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models are a promising path toward embodied intelligence, yet they often overlook the predictive and temporal-causal structure underlying visual dynamics. World-model VLAs address this by predicting future frames, but waste capacity reconstructing redundant backgrounds. Latent-action VLAs encode frame-to-frame transitions compactly, but lack temporally continuous dynamic modeling and world knowledge. To overcome these limitations, we introduce CoWVLA (Chain-of-World VLA), a new "Chain of World" paradigm that unifies world-model temporal reasoning with a disentangled latent motion representation. First, a pretrained video VAE serves as a latent motion extractor, explicitly factorizing video segments into structure and motion latents. Then, during pre-training, the VLA learns from an instruction and an initial frame to infer a continuous latent motion chain and predict the segment's terminal frame. Finally, during co-fine-tuning, this latent dynamic is aligned with discrete action prediction by jointly modeling sparse keyframes and action sequences in a unified autoregressive decoder. This design preserves the world-model benefits of temporal reasoning and world knowledge while retaining the compactness and interpretability of latent actions, enabling efficient visuomotor learning. Extensive experiments on robotic simulation benchmarks show that CoWVLA outperforms existing world-model and latent-action approaches and achieves moderate computational efficiency, highlighting its potential as a more effective VLA pretraining paradigm. The project website can be found at https://fx-hit.github.io/cowvla-io.
The study defines the typology of philosophical worldviews, from naturalistic (various types of materialism and positivism) to pantheistic (naturalistic and mystical or panentheistic) and transcendent, underlying world religions and the corresponding philosophy. The last two types are classified by the authors as metaphysical or idealistic. It is noted that ancient thought is characterized not by materialism as such, which is a product of modern European thinking, but by hylozoism, which does not exclude spirituality. The materialistic is defined in the interpretation of G.V.F. Hegel, Vl. Soloviev, V. Zenkovsky, A. Losev and others as “metaphysical”, unreasonably attributing to itself “scientific nature”. Metaphysical concepts (idealistic ones - pantheism and transcendentism) do not deny the concept of matter, but along with it they also think of other principles, which allows developing dialectics and, based on contradictions, constructing reality in one way or another. While recognizing the Absolute, metaphysical concepts, however, think of it differently: pantheism in all its varieties faces the problem of substantiating freedom, morality and, ultimately, theodicy. Creationist transcendentism, especially in its personalistic (theistic) version, taking the Absolute beyond the limits of existence, turns out to be capable of constructing a theodicy, relying on the concept of free will as the source of evil. In this case, matter and the body turn out to be not a prison and a cage of the soul (as in Orphism, Pythagoreanism and Platonism), not a source or receptacle of evil (as in Neoplatonism), but a “co-worker” of the soul, for everything created is good. Not only the spirit, but also the body is sanctified. Thus, it is precisely in transcendentism that matter takes its worthy and necessary place.
Trained on internet-scale video data, generative world models are increasingly recognized as powerful world simulators that can generate consistent and plausible dynamics over structure, motion, and physics. This raises a natural question: with the advent of strong video foundational models, might they supplant conventional vision encoder paradigms for general-purpose multimodal understanding? While recent studies have begun to explore the potential of world models on common vision tasks, these explorations typically lack a systematic investigation of generic, multimodal tasks. In this work, we strive to investigate the capabilities when world model priors are transferred into Vision-Language Models: we re-purpose a video diffusion model as a generative encoder to perform a single denoising step and treat the resulting latents as a set of visual embedding. We empirically investigate this class of models, which we refer to as World-Language Models (WorldLMs), and we find that generative encoders can capture latents useful for downstream understanding that show distinctions from conventional encoders. Naming our best-performing variant Dynamic Vision Aligner (DyVA), we further discover that this method significantly enhances spatial reasoning abilities and enables single-image models to perform multi-frame reasoning. Through the curation of a suite of visual reasoning tasks, we find DyVA to surpass both open-source and proprietary baselines, achieving state-of-the-art or comparable performance. We attribute these gains to WorldLM's inherited motion-consistency internalization from video pre-training. Finally, we systematically explore extensive model designs to highlight promising directions for future work. We hope our study can pave the way for a new family of VLMs that leverage priors from world models and are on a promising path towards generalist vision learners.
The field of robotics has made significant strides toward developing generalist robot manipulation policies. However, evaluating these policies in real-world scenarios remains time-consuming and challenging, particularly as the number of tasks scales and environmental conditions change. In this work, we demonstrate that world models can serve as a scalable, reproducible, and reliable proxy for real-world robot policy evaluation. A key challenge is generating accurate policy videos from world models that faithfully reflect the robot actions. We observe that directly inputting robot actions or using high-dimensional encoding methods often fails to generate action-following videos. To address this, we propose Policy2Vec, a simple yet effective approach to turn a video generation model into a world simulator that follows latent action to generate the robot video. We then introduce WorldEval, an automated pipeline designed to evaluate real-world robot policies entirely online. WorldEval effectively ranks various robot policies and individual checkpoints within a single policy, and functions as a safety detector to prevent dangerous actions by newly developed robot models. Through comprehensive paired evaluations of manipulation policies in real-world environments, we demonstrate a strong correlation between policy performance in WorldEval and real-world scenarios. Furthermore, our method significantly outperforms popular methods such as real-to-sim approach.
Embodied navigation in open, dynamic environments demands accurate foresight of how the world will evolve and how actions will unfold over time. We propose AstraNav-World, an end-to-end world model that jointly reasons about future visual states and action sequences within a unified probabilistic framework. Our framework integrates a diffusion-based video generator with a vision-language policy, enabling synchronized rollouts where predicted scenes and planned actions are updated simultaneously. Training optimizes two complementary objectives: generating action-conditioned multi-step visual predictions and deriving trajectories conditioned on those predicted visuals. This bidirectional constraint makes visual predictions executable and keeps decisions grounded in physically consistent, task-relevant futures, mitigating cumulative errors common in decoupled "envision-then-plan" pipelines. Experiments across diverse embodied navigation benchmarks show improved trajectory accuracy and higher success rates. Ablations confirm the necessity of tight vision-action coupling and unified training, with either branch removal degrading both prediction quality and policy reliability. In real-world testing, AstraNav-World demonstrated exceptional zero-shot capabilities, adapting to previously unseen scenarios without any real-world fine-tuning. These results suggest that AstraNav-World captures transferable spatial understanding and planning-relevant navigation dynamics, rather than merely overfitting to simulation-specific data distribution. Overall, by unifying foresight vision and control within a single generative model, we move closer to reliable, interpretable, and general-purpose embodied agents that operate robustly in open-ended real-world settings.
Recent years have witnessed remarkable progress in world models, which primarily aim to capture the spatio-temporal correlations between an agent's actions and the evolving environment. However, existing approaches often suffer from tight runtime coupling or depend on offline reward signals, resulting in substantial inference overhead or hindering end-to-end optimization. To overcome these limitations, we introduce WPT, a World-to-Policy Transfer training paradigm that enables online distillation under the guidance of an end-to-end world model. Specifically, we develop a trainable reward model that infuses world knowledge into a teacher policy by aligning candidate trajectories with the future dynamics predicted by the world model. Subsequently, we propose policy distillation and world reward distillation to transfer the teacher's reasoning ability into a lightweight student policy, enhancing planning performance while preserving real-time deployability. Extensive experiments on both open-loop and closed-loop benchmarks show that our WPT achieves state-of-the-art performance with a simple policy architecture: it attains a 0.11 collision rate (open-loop) and achieves a 79.23 driving score (closed-loop) surpassing both world-model-based and imitation-learning methods in accuracy and safety. Moreover, the student sustains up to 4.9x faster inference, while retaining most of the gains.
This article builds on and supplements an earlier one in this journal about theodicy. It focuses on species extinctions and on the possible role of humanity as fallible co-creators. Christopher Southgate has suggested that co-creators might shoulder the task of curtailing extinctions. In appraising this view, I distinguish between extinctions resulting from evolution, which humans have limited power to reverse, but which are held to be indispensable for the evolution of complexity, consciousness and self-consciousness, and those caused by humanity itself, which humans should reduce, even if they cannot be halted. Human creativity, however, extends further to the development of skills, trades, the arts and literature. Church Fathers, such as Ambrose, Theodoret and Cosmas Indicopleustes, held that God left the creation incomplete so that humanity could enhance it; certainly, human creativity has introduced agriculture, navigation, technology and culture, adding to the value of the world. Granted belief in creation, this can be understood as co-creation. Granted the value that humanity continues to add to the world, the belief that such creativity flows from the creator’s overall plan emerges as a coherent one.
Ahmad Salman Farid, Rizka Ar Rahmah, Irmasani Daulay
et al.
This research explores the intersection of theology and ethics within the realm of values-based journalism, with a specific focus on the communication of Islamic perspectives. In the contemporary media landscape, where journalism plays a crucial role in shaping public discourse, it becomes imperative to analyze how Islamic values are communicated through the lens of ethical journalism. The study aims to investigate the application of Islamic theology and ethical principles in values-based journalism, emphasizing the role of media in reflecting
and shaping societal norms. By employing a qualitative research approach, content analysis will be conducted on a sample of news articles, opinion pieces, and other journalistic content with an Islamic focus. The analysis will delve into how these pieces adhere to or deviate from established theological principles and ethical guidelines. Furthermore, the research seeks to identify challenges faced by journalists and media organizations when attempting to integrate
Islamic values into their narratives. It also explores potential strategies and best practices for overcoming these challenges, fostering a more nuanced and ethical communication of Islamic perspectives. The findings of this study aim to contribute to the ongoing discourse on the role of theology and ethics in journalism, providing insights into how media professionals can effectively communicate Islamic values while upholding ethical standards. Ultimately, the
research aspires to encourage a more informed and respectful portrayal of Islamic perspectives in the media, promoting dialogue and understanding in an increasingly diverse and interconnected global society.
Over the last 50 years, the English philosopher Richard Swinburne (b. 1934) has been a very influential proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God (natural theology). His major philosophical contributions lie in the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of religion. From a general philosophical point of view, Swinburne stimulated much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion. He has also played a role (a) in the recent debate over the mind-body problem, and (b) in the debate on libertarian free will. Swinburne is also noted as one of the foremost current Christian apologists, arguing that faith in Christian God is rational and coherent in a rigorous philosophical sense. My discussion with Richard Swinburne revisits the analytic and non-analytic philosophy of religion. Above all, however, it aims at shedding light on Swinburne’s thought regarding some important philosophical issues, such as the Kantian arguments on the existence of God, the relationship between ratio and one’s immediate experience of God (empireia), “strong possibilities” the problem of the existence of evil in the world, but also the theological significance and value of Orthodoxy in contrast to other Christian creeds or even religions.
Understanding, navigating, and exploring the 3D physical real world has long been a central challenge in the development of artificial intelligence. In this work, we take a step toward this goal by introducing GenEx, a system capable of planning complex embodied world exploration, guided by its generative imagination that forms priors (expectations) about the surrounding environments. GenEx generates an entire 3D-consistent imaginative environment from as little as a single RGB image, bringing it to life through panoramic video streams. Leveraging scalable 3D world data curated from Unreal Engine, our generative model is rounded in the physical world. It captures a continuous 360-degree environment with little effort, offering a boundless landscape for AI agents to explore and interact with. GenEx achieves high-quality world generation, robust loop consistency over long trajectories, and demonstrates strong 3D capabilities such as consistency and active 3D mapping. Powered by generative imagination of the world, GPT-assisted agents are equipped to perform complex embodied tasks, including both goal-agnostic exploration and goal-driven navigation. These agents utilize predictive expectation regarding unseen parts of the physical world to refine their beliefs, simulate different outcomes based on potential decisions, and make more informed choices. In summary, we demonstrate that GenEx provides a transformative platform for advancing embodied AI in imaginative spaces and brings potential for extending these capabilities to real-world exploration.
A global crisis of the magnitude of COVID-19 needs churches that have a deep wealth of knowledge, faith and wisdom to provide leadership when such a pandemic shakes the very foundations of human society. Such a crisis can lead to seismic changes, but often does not; it simply clarifies current challenges and possibilities for society. In Christian churches, the
widespread virtual streaming of important Easter and Sunday sermons had a palpable impact on church life as such. This study investigates the challenges and opportunities of being a Church during the worst of times in the history of the Church. It uses a qualitative methodology. Four of the churches in KwaZulu-Natal were used as a case study. One leader
in each church was purposively selected to participate in the data generation process. Furthermore, two ordinary members in each church were interviewed to explore how the faith communities are coping with responding to lockdown, social isolation, and physical distancing. The findings revealed that both church leaders and congregants were
psychologically traumatised, and thought this crisis was a wake-up call to capacitate the church to respond to such eventualities with one voice. The study recommends swift and immediate intervention that will change the outlook of the Church to reform business as usual
to be technologically oriented.
Pontas Surya Fernandes, Philip Suciadi Chia, Donna Crosnoy Sinaga
Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most famous scientists in the United States. In particular, Tyson has expertise as an astrophysicist and hehas written several books and received extraordinary awards as an Astrophysician. Tyson is not only a scientist, he also recognizes
himself as an agnostic. Tyson’s disbelief in the existence of God by seeing various event such as volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, pestilences, and birth defects that produce suffering is totally against the Nature of Almighty God. Tyson considers God's intelligent Design as a philosophy of ignorance or neglect. The subject raised by Tyson that rejects God’s omnipotence and His Intelligent Design is categorized as a Problem of Evil. This article rejects Neil deGrasse Tyson's opinion built on God's teleological and theodicy philosophy as a form of defense of God's intelligent design and God's omnipotence. It is evident that a plan is
needed for the existence of every creature by looking at integrated goals and structures. The beauty of the world also shows the existence of God's intelligent design as the Great Creator. Because the universe has been designed for the life of living things themselves, a plan is needed that is produced through a Person for the lives of the living things themselves. God's omnipotence means that God has no limits and He is able to do something that is impossible for anyone else who is limited through one’s nature and ability. Evil itself arises from humans who are God's creations, but they have free will. The very existence of Evil cannot detract from God's purpose in the creation of the universe. Evil itself requires the existence of an objective standard of goodness with a metaphysical foundation, namely God himself. Christianity cannot ignore the existence of evil itself. Crime is a reality. Crime itself is divided
into three types: moral crime, physical crime and natural crime. Evil is in a sense very dependent on the existence of God who opposes evil. Evil cannot take away the Providence of God who has a wise, good and holy purpose. James has taught that there are different attitudes in the face of trials (James 1:2-18). Believers are encouraged to be diligent in facing
trials that make one's personality mature and give one spiritual strength. People who believe Jesus Christ is God, have hope as the children of God to obtain certainty of the afterlife in the future based on striving for ideal conditions in their earthly human life. These notions support the existence of God's intelligent design and His Omnipotence.
Pontas Surya Fernandes, Philip Suciadi Chia, Jevri Terok
The Arfak tribe lives on the island of Papua as a part of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia. In 2022 there was a division by adding four new provinces namely South Papua, Central Papua, Highlands Papua, Southwest Papua Provinces in accordance with the laws in force in Indonesia. Papuans belong to the Melanesian race and the Arfak tribe consists of four
sub-tribes namely the Hatam, Meyah, Molei, Sough.The Arfak tribe has its livelihoods in gardening, hunting, trading, raising livestock, collecting forest products. Most of the Arfak people are Christians. However, the people of the Arfak tribe still believe in Animism (a belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the entire material universe) and Dynamism (a belief that there are powers that exist in natural objects in the world e.g. a rock
or a tree might become an object of awe and veneration because it is believed to have great power) which is often termed Suanggi. Belief in Suanggi is in harmony with other religions which are considered to accept Animism and Dynamism in their beliefs such as those evident
in Hinduism, Ancient Egyptian Religions, and even Confucianism. This is driven by the search for a figure in power. However, there are differences in the beliefs of the people of the Arfak tribe about the resurrection of a person such as in Judaism Buddhism and some Christian sects. Christianity of course believes in the existence of an Ultimate Person, namely Jesus
the God-man as well as belief in the possibility of resurrection in the future life. Resurrection is a certainty in the Christian faith. The Arfak people who are Christians in orientation must also have the belief in death as an advantage towards life in eternity in God’s heavenly Kingdom. Christians must follow the teachings of the Holy Bible. As Christians, people who
have believed in Jesus Christ should not practice Suanggi in any shape or form because it is based on a malevolent spirit in the folklore of some islands in Indonesia. A discourse on Suanggi and malevolent spirits was carried out in this study using careful reflection on Holy Scripture and other relevant literature from academic books and journals.
There is low commercial availability of goat meat in retail outlets such as supermarkets and butcheries due to the limited supply and cultural beliefs in many nations of the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. This study aimed to find potential customers for goat meat if it were made readily available in retail outlets. Two hundred respondents from cities and towns (Port Elizabeth, East London, Mthatha, King’s Williams town, Grahamstown, Alice, Butherwotth, Fort Beaufort, Queenstown, Craddock, Adelaide, Port Alfred, Stutterheim, and Peddie) in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, were randomly selected and interviewed using structured Google form questionnaires. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. Participants answered questions about goat meat consumption in relation to other meats. Factors limiting the consumption of goat meat were also investigated. About 66% of respondents had positive views of goat meat, while 23.5% were neutral. Only 10.5 % had unfavourable views concerning goat meat. The availability of goat meat in the market was the most limiting factor for 60% of the respondents, while 15% said price was their limiting factor. Other factors limiting goat meat consumption were personal preferences, religion, aversion to testing, price of goat meat, aversion to smell, and fattiness, with 15%, 9%, 6.5%, 5%, 4%, and 0.5% of respondents, respectively. About 46% of the total respondents preferred goat meat from a supermarket or butchery, and only 6.5% preferred vendors. Only 26% preferred live goats, while 61.5% preferred a portion of meat from slaughtered goats. The chi-square test also revealed a significant association (P0.05). Although demand for goat meat is expected to rise as people receive more information on nutritional benefits and cooking methods, it could be concluded that consumers are willing to consume it and that there is market potential for it as a major store product. Key words: availability, goat meat, consumer perceptions, purchasing drivers, limiting factors, future consumption, major stores, market, South Africa
Abstract Alcohol is a causal factor in more than 200 disorders, communicable and injuries. Harms results at even relatively low levels of consumption, and it is estimated that alcohol use causes 3 million deaths globally each year. In parallel to the ever-growing evidence on alcohol-related harm, evidence also continues to accumulate on the effectiveness of policy interventions which tackle the commercial determinants of alcohol consumption, not least on labelling, marketing, pricing and availability. While it is imperative that States introduce national measures to tackle alcohol harms, alcohol is not merely an issue of national policy as it is manufactured, marketed, bought and sold across borders. The WHO Global Alcohol Strategy illustrates the importance of regulation in contributing to the development of robust, comprehensive interventions to tackle alcohol use. However, what States can do at the national level is constrained by international rules. In particular, international trade law under the World Trade Organization is often invoked in opposing national rules. This litigation can result in expensive, time-consuming and distracting disputes with no certainty of winning. Even before policies are challenged, ‘regulatory chill’ often results in preventing, watering down and delaying policies. This is unfortunate not least because many policies, if framed correctly, could be defended successfully. The objectives of this roundtable workshop are to: 1. To understand the relationship which trade law has with national and regional alcohol policies. 2. To explore how various stakeholders can contribute to the development rules which are not constrained by international trade law. Five short 5-minute presentations will be mixed with discussions. The first presentation sets the scene through giving an overview of the existing developments of alcohol policies in Europe and the context States find themselves in. The second presentation explores the role of WHO and the work it is undertaking, as well as the interventions envisaged by the WHO Global strategy, Global action plan and the European framework. The third presentation will discuss the various policies which have been discussed in international trade law forums by States, and the roles some States have played in promoting or challenging proposals by other States. The fourth presentation will continue the discussions on trade law by showing how policies can progress through increased recognition on the right to know and efforts to grant this right through standardising alcohol labelling internationally. The fifth presentation will reflects on the work by civil society in promoting more effective policies and the barriers faced from the alcohol industry in particular. The workshop will be moderated by the chair, who will draw on links and common themes and facilitate discussions between panellists, and between the panel and members of the public health community in the audience. Key messages • Trade law has a significant impact on national alcohol policies. • Trade law barriers can be overcome through effective strategies.
Abstract Issue Governments and organizations must demonstrate accountability and delivery of results. Results-Oriented Monitoring is a European Commission mechanism to enhance internal control and management. The Health System Strengthening for Universal Health Coverage program - the largest Commission grant to the World Health Organization - provides support towards achieving Universal Health Coverage through policy dialogue in 119 countries. Description We employ a Results-Oriented Monitoring review of the program conducted in October 2021- April 2022 as a case study to examine the question: what is the value of the Commission's Results-Oriented Monitoring system as a tool to enhance accountability of large Global Health interventions?. We conducted 87 face-to-face/remote interviews to engage stakeholders in assessing specific criteria such as relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and human rights, in 12 purposively selected countries including Timor Leste, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Mongolia, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. Results The Health System Strengthening for Universal Health Coverage program is a relevant intervention that responds to the needs of target groups because it is demand driven, flexible, and well-integrated within national health plans/regional frameworks. The absence of robust Monitoring and Evaluation frameworks for Universal Health Coverage at country level is a missed opportunity to pull the case for continued investment in health systems strengthening. Co-developing country level monitoring and evaluation frameworks could enhance multi-stakeholder policy dialogues anchored in the Universal Health Coverage concept. Lessons Our innovative adaptation of Results-Oriented Monitoring approaches to assess a large Global Health intervention (+100 countries) provided critical data to inform program implementation and fostered consensus building over subsequent steps. Key messages • The European commission’s results-oriented monitoring system is a valuable instrument to assess large scale global health interventions. • Co-developing monitoring and evaluation frameworks at country level could serve as a tool to facilitate multi-stakeholder policy dialogues and to track progress towards universal health coverage.
Abstract Background The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared an ‘infodemic’ in 2020, that resulted in distrust in health authorities and impacted public mental health promoting confusion, worry, and fear. The aim of this study is to identify indicators associated with mental distress during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland. Methods A nationally representative cross-sectional telephone survey conducted data collection during 3 study periods: May, July, September 2020. Mental health outcomes were assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire Anxiety Depression Scale (PHQ-ADS), mental distress defined as a score of 10 or more. Analysis included descriptive and logistic regression. Results Of the 2,914 participants, 27.6% experienced mental distress during 2020(n = 804). The prevalence of mental distress did not significantly change over time, from 28% in May2020 to 25.3% in Sept2020. Women were significantly more likely to experience mental distress than men; 34% compared to 21% (OR:1.91;95%CI:1.62-2.26). Mental distress was highest in the youngest age groups (43% in < 30years,OR:3.24;95%CI:2.36-4.45), with a significant decreasing trend with increasing age. Mental distress was associated with trust in the pandemic response, those with the lowest levels of trust had the highest levels of mental distress at 37% (OR:1.84;95%CI:1.26-2.68), with a significant decreasing trend with increasing trust. During May2020, those experiencing mental distress were significantly less likely to seek healthcare when required, 41% compared to 21% (OR:2.59;95%CI:1.94-3.46). Education, employment and household income were also studied. Conclusions This study identified indicators associated with mental distress, such as trust and healthcare avoidance, which can inform future emergency management policy. The WHO recommends promoting the understanding of risk to mitigate harm to the public's mental and physical health, which could increase public trust and reduce mental distress. Key messages • The COVID-19 ‘infodemic’ impacted the public's mental health, with 27.6% of the study experiencing mental distress. • Mental distress is associated with trust and healthcare avoidance which can inform future management strategies.