Tag: Covid 19
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Finding our way back to healing
Frances MilatMelbourne, Australia “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” —Mary Oliver Early in 2020, as my family flew home to Australia from a medical sabbatical in the United States, we started to hear reports of serious illness and death among our colleagues. Soon, the medical institutions and communities that had…
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The silent struggles of a healer
Biplab AdhikariLouisville, Kentucky, United States A regular day, it’s time for work,News of a virus, where shadows lurk.No treatment, no vaccine, no known fix,Symptoms vague, it’s all in the mix. Don a mask, the silent plea,Will this new case find its way to me?At work, I change, suit up tight,Double mask, face shield, ready for…
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Book review: Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom Simon Schama, the eminent historian and broadcaster, has turned his attention to medical history. His new book, gestated and born during the COVID pandemic, is a chronicle of three pandemic diseases that have afflicted humans for centuries: smallpox, cholera, and plague. He opens the book with a quote from Pliny…
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From Sophocles to the frontline
Alexandra PliakopanouIoannina, Greece In the deserted misty land of Lemnos, a wailing voice echoes, emanating from a wounded warrior abandoned by his comrades nine years ago. Philoctetes, the titular character of Sophocles’ 409 BC play and once a great hero of the Greeks, now lies in misery with a festering wound that oozes pus and…
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The Mind of Covid-19
Terrance JonesChicago, Illinois, United States The Mind of Covid-19 reflects and recalls the one year and two months stuck in my home during the pandemic. Lots of reflection, creation, curiosity, worry, stress, fear, loss, and inspiration. An explosion of color depicts the ugliness of the fight transforming into the beauty of victory. Working in the…
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Remembering your COVID birth
Laura KahnChicago, IL The thing about having your first baby at the beginning of a pandemic is that everything seems equally strange, because you don’t have a prior kid for comparison. I wait anxiously for my son to poop, I wear a mask when I leave the house, I sanitize everything, I wake every hour—it…
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A pandemic of emotions: Navigating vaccine hesitancy in a post-pandemic world
Nidhi Bhaskar Providence, Rhode Island Photo by CDC on Pexels Four years before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was registering community members at a local health fair. An elderly man in line mentioned that he would never receive a flu shot because his healthy cousin had died of an aneurysm after receiving one. I spoke…
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A series of messages
Fung Kam YanHong Kong It was a Sunday. I sat outside the ward in my white coat, my eye protection fogging up, trying to catch my breath through the KF94 mask. My grandmother was inside, also struggling to breathe. The nurse said that only two visitors were allowed because of COVID-19 restrictions. It did not…
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Questioning immunology and the soul
Vani GhaiPune, India The long and tiring battle with COVID has stimulated modern medicine to investigate new approaches to understanding the science of immunity. It has long been apparent that immune systems exist almost ubiquitously across the living and that all diseases involve the immune system. But even though immunology plays a decisive role in…