Healthcare researchers will mine stories about the COVID pandemic for decades to come. It stretched both American and global society to their limits to a degree not seen since the flu pandemic of 1918. Many expected federal coordination of the response, but they swiftly became disappointed. Both the White House and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) left the pandemic looking really bad, and I suspect history’s judgment upon each will only worsen with time.…
The COVID pandemic continues to shape the face of the global workforce in 2024. This book, written in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, sought to bring prior research about remote work to the forefront of business leaders. Written by a Wharton School professor, it briefly summarizes earlier studies and speculates on the pandemic’s future business outcomes. Given that it was written in the middle of a global crisis, this work is tightly coupled…
For most of us, the COVID-19 pandemic was one that we would not choose to relive. Unfortunately, epidemics on an international stage occur with relative frequency, every decade or so. While how to avoid major outbreaks is an important target, so is learning social lessons from COVID so as not to repeat them in the future. In this academic primer, Iwao Hirose seeks to distill such ethical lessons into a short, digestible format so that…
Pandemics were on global leaders’ agendas before 2020, but since no global catastrophe happened since 1918, most did not prioritize these concerns. I hope that will not happen as much going forward. Preventative work has gained a new life. Bill Gates, co-founder of both Microsoft and the philanthropic Gates Foundation, uses his privileged, bird’s-eye view to organize what work can be done to avoid the “next pandemic.” Though humanity has moved onto other challenges, doing…
The pandemic era provided the world many types of stories that have not been seen in generations, at least since the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. Healthcare workers and governmental leaders had the most stress refracted their way. Jahangir, a colleague and trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt Medical Center and chair of the board of health in Metro Nashville, served in both roles. What was naively thought to last perhaps only weeks or even a few…
In anthropology, an ethnography is an account of the culture as told by the people in that culture. As such, it’s basically a fancy word for a series of interviews within a group of people linked together. In this work, Mendenhall, a medical anthropologist working at Georgetown University, offers us an ethnography of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in rural America. She does so in a personal account while she visits her hometown…
“Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.” “The primary problems we now face are not scientific problems but social problems involving science.” Such statements certainly provide an impetus to read this classic about the early history of AIDS in America. Though this book is over thirty years old, its meticulous research still communicates how human nature often denies diseased persons respect, compassion, and the resources necessary to recover. Such was certainly true in…
Understanding the origins of AIDS is important for at least three reasons. First, HIV/AIDS is an important biomedical global disease that is still not conquered. Second, much cultural rhetoric due to stigma exists in society about this disease, and blame for the AIDS pandemic have been wrongfully placed at the feet of many oppressed groups. Third, contemporary events with coronavirus have shown that humans aren’t as safe from disease and pandemic as we might imagine,…
I just got off a helpful call with Vanderbilt Medical Center (VUMC) leadership about COVID and the holidays. From a public-health perspective, I feel that I need to pass along the notes that I took. The presenter was Gordon Bernard. He is an Executive Vice President at VUMC and is respected worldwide both as a researcher and as a clinician. He has worked for over forty years as a Critical Care pulmonologist. This information is…
When it comes to pandemics – the worst version of an epidemic – the flu virus (influenza) still strikes the most fear in officials of public health. It is highly contagious and leaves us with few options to counteract. The year 1918 had the worst attack of the flu worldwide. In this book, Barry traces the history of what happened in that year and extracts lessons for us to follow in our age. The 1918…