Tag: COVID-19 pandemic
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Happy hypoxia
Khyati GuptaMumbai, India Poet’s statement “Happy hypoxia” is a poem I wrote while trying to capture the thoughts of a patient in solitude infected with coronavirus amidst the second wave of the pandemic. Happy hypoxia I wake up at the noise of a tray put next to my bedI know what’s in it even before…
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The Call of the Wild and COVID-19
Liam ButchartStony Brook, New York, United StatesSamantha RizzoWashington DC, United States The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a terrible toll upon all of us and has brought the medical system—and the providers who inhabit it—to its knees. There is a tradition in medicine, following Sir William Osler’s “Aequinimitas,” of compassionate detachment: as physicians or trainees, we…
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A return to The Plague
Bonnie SalomonChicago, Illinois, United States For the past fifteen months, I have been reading and returning to Albert Camus’ 1947 novel, The Plague. Chronicling a fictional plague epidemic in Oran, Algeria, the narrator Dr. Rieux tells the saga of a city’s horrific struggle. When Covid-19 hit American shores in March 2020, scholars and journalists alike…
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Covid battleground
Elena WilsonRockville, Maryland, United States Up and down, up and down they riseForgetting so easily all of the criesCries for help, cries for changeCries for more, cries for days Down and up, and down they fallSeeking hope, finding wallsWalls of iron, walls of steelWalls of words, walls of kneels Change is brewing, slowly soonA coming…
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Ancient Greek plague and coronavirus
Patrick BellBelfast, Northern Ireland Introduction Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War have been termed “the three earliest, and arguably most influential, representations of the plague in Western narrative.”1 This essay uses these historical sources to examine attitudes toward plague in ancient Greece and parallels in the modern response…
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A wrong time to die
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Death is the one absolute and unexceptional certainty in life. In the Bible we read that there is a time for everything, including a time to die [Ecclesiastes 3:2]. Is there ever a “right” time to die? Faced with such a question, we often consider that anyone who has achieved their aims…
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Enlightenment from Sherlock Holmes on COVID-19 associated perilous boredom
Daniel GelfmanIndianapolis, Indiana, United States Boredom can useful. It can motivate people to do great things. It can also be dangerous by increasing the risk of depression and the risk of participation in unhealthy activities.1 It is an emotional state of weariness through lack of interest that can result in the “pursuit of novel (even negative)…
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What does the zoonotic origin of COVID-19 teach us about preventing future pandemics?
James A. Marcum Waco, Texas, United States The history of medicine reveals that epidemics and pandemics have plagued humanity throughout the centuries.1 Examples include the Antonine plague (165-180 A.D.), the Justinian plague (541-542 A.D.), the Black Death (1347-1351 A.D.), pandemics such as the Spanish flu (1918-1919) and the Asian flu (1957-1958), and now the COVID-19 pandemic.…
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Jack London’s cloudy crystal ball
Edward McSweeganKingston, Rhode Island, United States The COVID-19 pandemic has given quarantined readers new opportunities to discover the literature of plagues and epidemics. Many people—in order to give context to the present pandemic—have turned to books like Albert Camus’ classic novel The Plague, Daniel DeFoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Steven King’s The Stand,…