Tag: Covid 19
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Book review: Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, United Kingdom Cover of Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations by Simon Schama 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…
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From Sophocles to the frontline
Alexandra Pliakopanou Ioannina, Greece Ulysses and Neoptolemus Taking Hercules’ Arrows from Philoctetes. François-Xavier Fabre, 1800, Musée Fabre. Via Wikimedia. 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…
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The Mind of Covid-19
Terrance Jones Chicago, 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…
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Remembering your COVID birth
Laura Kahn Chicago, IL Artwork by Jill Littlewood and Morgan Kinney based on photo by author. 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…
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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 Yan Hong Kong Sign outside the author’s grandmother’s hospital ward. 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…
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Questioning immunology and the soul
Vani Ghai Pune, India Healing ulcers on the lower leg. The ulceration may have been due to varicose veins. Watercolor drawing by S. A. Sewell. Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. The long and tiring battle with COVID has stimulated modern medicine to investigate new approaches to understanding the science of immunity. It has long…
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Book review: How the NHS Coped with COVID-19
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom This work is a timely and important contribution to the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has wreaked havoc worldwide. Following the cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, things would never be the same again. In this book, the author has…
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Rapid testing for the masses
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ten young girls are queueing outside the makeshift surgery. They are between eleven and fifteen, they wear face masks, they giggle and tease each other and try to encourage the timid ones before the coming ordeal. What is this going to be? Their first visit to a gynecologist? Nothing so memorable. They…