MARTA ABATEPAULO DE FARIA Considered the most severe respiratory syndrome since the Spanish flu (an H1N1 pandemic) in 1918, which killed between 20 and 50 million people worldwide[1], the Covid-19 pandemic has been spreading fear and uncertainty in the population. Ornell et al. (2020)[2] e Schmidt at al. (2020)[3] discourse about how efforts to contain…
Category: Co-existing with COVID-19
Lives and Deaths with Dementia During Covid-19: Our Shameful (But Hopefully Transformative) Post-Pandemic Legacy
CRISTINA DOUGLAS “How do I escape from here?” The question took me by complete surprise. “This is a care home, Muriel. Your daughter brought you here because it’s safe for you.” Little did I know at that time, only about two months ago, that this will change so dramatically in a matter of weeks. Muriel…
It’s More Than A Juxtaposition: On Discussing Black Lives Matter Demonstrations in the ‘Land of the Free’ and the COVID-19 Pandemic
TIFFANY LOERA NOTE: Blog article edited by author 1st December 2022 No te preocupes hija, estamos bien, my mom says reassuringly to me over the phone as we discuss the current state of the United States. As nations around the world begin to ease their lockdown restrictions, the U.S. reports over 100k deaths from the…
Pain and Plight of People with Disabilities during COVID-19 Pandemic: Reflections from Nepal
OBINDRA B. CHAND Recently, in a public forum Lindsay Lee, a WHO Technical Officer with expertise in disability issues, mentioned, “What worries me perhaps more than anything is just the existing barriers that people with disabilities face. I can speak for this myself, personally. Lindsay further explained that health care access is already difficult for some people with disabilities,…
Goethe wears a mask against COVID-19
INAYAT ALI Did Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—the eminent German intellectual of the modern era—wear a mask in his lifetime? Although the question is interesting, the answer is unknown. Nonetheless, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Goethe is wearing a mask–on his statue on Vienna’s renowned Ringstrasse (Ring Street), near to Austria’s National Opera House. Masks are…
Patterns of Contamination: From Fukushima to COVID-19
MAXIME POLLERI In the spring of 2016, I was invited to witness the work of citizen scientists in Fukushima. These citizen scientists were mostly farmers attempting to revitalize the sociocultural life of their region, which had been heavily affected by residual radioactivity in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. At 5:30 on a…
Vectors And Viruses: What Coexisting With Mosquitoes Can Teach Us About Living With Coronavirus
ROSIE SIMS My mask is green with zebras on it, a feeble attempt to liven up the veil of cotton protecting me from others, or others from me. An artefact of a new era. Interaction with other humans reduced to deciphering expressions conveyed by eyes and crinkling foreheads, voices muffled by layers covering mouths. A…
‘Maybe When All This Is Over Jesus Will Come Back’: Crisis, Post-Crisis And Millenarian Time
GARETH BREEN The Pursuit of the Millennium is an influential book by Norman Cohn. In it, Cohn shows quite precisely how in Medieval times millenarian movements periodically rode and arose from within waves of social, political and economic unrest. The book has been influential upon our understandings of why Protestantism took hold in China at…
How Our Behaviour Affects Virus Evolution
DR GUL DENIZ SALALI COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2), but coronaviruses have been among us for years. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, and different strains (genetic variants) choose different species as their hosts. Many people may have first heard about coronaviruses during the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, when a strain was…