Posts Tagged ‘pandemic’
“The threat of a pandemic is different from that of a nerve agent, in that a disease can spread uncontrollably, long after the first carrier has succumbed”*…
We were, of course, warned. As we do our best to digest the news of emergent new strains of the COVID-19 virus, a look back at Annie Sparrow‘s 2016 New York Review of Books essay on pandemics…
Pandemics—the uncontrolled spread of highly contagious diseases across countries and continents—are a modern phenomenon. The word itself, a neologism from Greek words for “all” and “people,” has been used only since the mid-nineteenth century. Epidemics—localized outbreaks of diseases—have always been part of human history, but pandemics require a minimum density of population and an effective means of transport. Since “Spanish” flu burst from the trenches of World War I in 1918, infecting 20 percent of the world’s population and killing upward of 50 million people, fears of a similar pandemic have preoccupied public health practitioners, politicians, and philanthropists. World War II, in which the German army deliberately caused malaria epidemics and the Japanese experimented with anthrax and plague as biological weapons, created new fears…
According to the doctor, writer, and philanthropist Larry Brilliant, “outbreaks are inevitable, pandemics are optional.”
…
Much of human history can be seen as a struggle for survival between humans and microbes. Pandemics are microbe offensives; public health measures are human defenses. Water purification, sanitation, and vaccination are crucial to our living longer, better, even taller lives. But these measures of mass salvation are not sexy. While we know prevention is better and considerably cheaper than cure, there is little financial reward or glory in it. Philanthropists prefer to build hospitals rather than pay community health workers. Pharmaceutical companies prefer the Western market to the distant and poor Global South where people cannot afford to buy treatments. Education is a powerful social vaccine against the ignorance that enables pathogens to flourish, but insufficient to overcome the corruption of public goods by private interests. The current enthusiasm for detecting the next panic-inducing pathogen should not divert resources and research from the perennial threats that we already have. We must resist the tendency of familiarity and past failures to encourage contempt and indifference…
An important (and in its time, sadly, prescient) read: “The Awful Diseases on the Way,” from @annie_sparrow in @nybooks.
See also “6 of the Worst Pandemics in History” (source of the image above) and “A history of pandemics.”
[TotH to MK]
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As we prioritize preparation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1935 that physicist Erwin Schrödinger published his famous thought experiment– now known as “Schrödinger’s cat“– a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
“At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold. The days are short as any dream.”*…
Tis the season. Kathryn Jezer-Morton explores…
We are burrowed deep within cozy season on social media. It surrounds us in clouds of neutral-toned knits, it shrouds us in the steam of freshly-brewed hot drinks. Our socks encase our ankles with soulful seasonal droopiness. Our beanies threaten to envelop our entire heads in their snuggly embrace. We have a candle burning, we have a new book ready to crack. We are not getting up from this spot.
The momfluencers are big into representations of coziness, but this is one social media theme that it seems like everyone embraces. At the start of the season, I noticed that coziness was coming on with extra ferocity this year, although one never can be sure — seasons always seem so loud online. I can say for certainty that over the last year or so, coziness has become a powerful social media aesthetic, probably due to the pandemic and people being homebound.
Whatever the origins of the aesthetic of coziness online might be, it started out as a feeling, not a collection of objects. The aesthetic tries to conjure the feeling, and I have two questions: How well does it succeed, and why do we want that feeling so bad?..
Find out: “Is ‘cozy season’ a cry for help?,” from @KJezerMorton.
C.f. also: “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherf**kers.”
* E.B. White
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As we settle in, we might recall that today is National Bundt Cake Day, an annual celebration on this date of the Bundt cake and the Bundt pan that makes it possible.
“24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?”*…
Social distancing makes a soul thirsty– and as the Journal of the American Medical Association reports, that has had consequences…
Alcohol consumption has substantially increased during the COVID-19 pandemic… We examined national changes in waiting list registration and liver transplantation for ALD and the association with alcohol sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that waiting list registrations and deceased donor liver transplants (DDLTs) for alcoholic hepatitis (AH), which can develop after a short period of alcohol misuse, would disproportionately rise…
This cross-sectional study found that waiting list registrations and DDLTs for AH increased significantly during COVID-19, exceeding the volumes forecasted by pre–COVID-19 trends by more than 50%, whereas trends for AC and non-ALD remained unchanged. While we cannot confirm causality, this disproportionate increase in association with increasing alcohol sales may indicate a relationship with known increases in alcohol misuse during COVID-19. Since less than 6% of patients with severe AH are listed for transplantation, increasing waiting list volume during COVID-19 represents a small fraction of the increase in AH, a preventable disease with 6-month mortality up to 70%.
Pandemic drinking is up– way up. So, it turns out, is serious liver disease: “Association of COVID-19 With New Waiting List Registrations and Liver Transplantation for Alcoholic Hepatitis in the United States.”
And lest we think think that waning COVID-19 pressure will be the end of all of this, a warning: “The Coming Age of Climate Trauma.”
[Image above: source]
* Steven Wright
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As we muse on moderation, we might recall that it was on this date in 2012 that Charles Darwin received about 4,000 write-in votes in the election in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District. Republican Paul Broun, an M.D. who was running unopposed for re-election, had given (the September before) a campaign speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet in which he said “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell.”
In response, radio talk show host Neil Boortz and University of Georgia plant biology professor Jim Leebens-Mack spearheaded a campaign to run the English naturalist and evolutionary theorist against Broun, a young earth creationist. They had no expectation of unseating him (and indeed, Broun carried his district handily) but hoped to draw attention to these comments from the scientific community and to have Broun removed from his post on the House Science Committee– at which they also failed.
“It is what it is”*…
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have topped 700,000, which means that more Americans have died in the pandemic than died in every foreign conflict the U.S. has ever fought (combined combat deaths in all U.S foreign wars are estimated at 659,267).
This graphic is from r/dataisbeautiful.
Two things to note:
- Deaths in the American Civil War were equal or higher (they’re estimated to have been 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties).
- On a death-per-100,000-population basis, COVID-19 deaths are at roughly 211 per 100,000. That’s materially more than deaths in any U.S. foreign war except World War II (which had a death toll of 307 per 100,000). See here and here for the underlying data.
* then-President Donald Trump, on COVID deaths
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As we mourn, we might recall that it was on this date in 1945 that Desmond Doss received the U.S. Medal of Honor. A conscientious objector serving as a U.S. Army medic, he saved 75 men during the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. (Prior to that, he had twice been awarded the Bronze Star for heroism in Guam and the Philippines.) He was the only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor for his actions during the war; his story has been told in several books, a documentary (The Conscientious Objector), and the 2016 Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge.
“Demographics are destiny”*…
And demographics can help us shape our destiny…
The research seemed straightforward: Analyze 2020 death records in Minnesota and, among other things, quantify which deaths were attributable to Covid-19 in various slices of the population — young and old, black and white, people living in advantaged versus disadvantaged neighborhoods.
But when University of Minnesota demographer Elizabeth Wrigley-Field began to dig in, the numbers revealed complex trends.
The records showed that last year more Minnesotans — especially non-whites — died at home than in a typical year, having avoided hospitals because of the pandemic. Such deaths were almost never reported as Covid-related, even though many probably were. The analysis suggested that Covid deaths in minority groups were going underreported.
It’s the sort of intriguing finding that is likely to percolate to the surface more frequently as researchers study Covid-19 from a population — or demographic — perspective.
Soon after the pandemic hit, demographers leaped into action. Today, there are studies afoot to examine a broad swath of inquiry: from questions about life expectancy to whether school closures really averted infections to how a single Covid death affects surviving family members’ physical and mental health. Even the relationship between exercise habits and social-distancing trends in US counties is under scrutiny…
A sample of the findings that could– and surely should– shape the future of public health: “Demographers tackle Covid-19,” from Eryn Brown (@TheErynBrown).
[Via David Kotok]
* Arthur Kemp, Peter Peterson, Bill Campbell, and many others
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As we count on counting, we might recall that it was on this date in 1896 that the U.K. recorded its first automotive fatality. While on a terrace in the grounds of Crystal Palace, London, Mrs. Bridget Driscoll was knocked down by a car owned by the Anglo-French Motor Car (Roger-Benz) Company that was giving demonstration rides to the public, driven by employee Arthur Edsell. It was said that he was talking to the young lady passenger beside him. He had had been driving for only 3 weeks, and had tampered with a belt to cause the car to travel faster than the 4 mph to which it was meant to be limited. After a six-hour inquest, the jury’s verdict was “Accidental Death,” and no prosecution resulted against the driver or the company. The first car-driver crash fatality in Britain occurred in 1898.
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