Exhibition Review by Prof Desmond O’Neill, MD, FRCPI The closing of an innovative exhibition of medical history in the ancient German city of Speyer may seem to be a small loss in the context of the many enormous tragic losses of life and livelihood of Covid-19. However, medical history has insights to offer on how […]
Tag: covid-19
Death in Isolation: The Covid-19 Dead Are More Than Numbers
Blog by Avril Tynan We are in the midst of a pandemic for which we are woefully unprepared. Our priorities now, quite rightly, are to minimize the losses—both personal and ultimately economic. Our anticipative strategies for prevention have become plans for mitigation and—hopefully, one day—recovery. We are growing accustomed, in a terrifying—and, for most generations, […]
Things and Trends: Images of COVID-19
Blog by Annamaria Carusi Images of COVID19 are powerful in their own right and subtly or not so subtly inform how we relate to this pandemic. There are, of course, many COVID19 images, which will no doubt yield rich analyses in good time. I offer here just a quick impression of two kinds of images […]
“Make COVID-19 Visuals Gross”
Provocation by Kristin Marie Bivens and Marie Moeller The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) medical illustration that represents the novel coronavirus has become the emblem of COVID-19 and the pandemic. In a recent reverse image search, the image returned 5,260,000,000 results in 1.84 seconds. These numbers—over five billion—suggest that the CDC’s image of […]
Better Access for the Disabled–Insights from the COVID 19 Pandemic
Blog by Aneesh Basheer Much of the response to the COVID 19 pandemic from governments, health authorities and volunteer organizations has neglected people with disabilities. While this is generally true during concerted response to any sort of disasters, the current COVID 19 situation offers particular insights into the intrinsic ableism of our society while also […]
Homelessness in a Time of Social Distancing
Blog by Joshua Mizels, Lauren Holt, and Madeline Hooper In all honesty, social distancing hasn’t been too tough for us medical students. Sure, it’s been frustrating to sit on the sidelines while our various medical colleagues are on the front lines fighting this COVID-19 pandemic; after all, this is what we signed up for. But […]
Naming and Shaming: Covid-19 and the Medical Professional
Blog by Luna Dolezal and Arthur Rose On Saturday the 7th of March, Australia’s state of Victoria’s health minister Jenny Mikakos declared that she was “flabbergasted” that a Melbourne GP had continued to see patients while he had “flu-like symptoms”. The doctor in question, Dr Chris Higgins, had returned from a trip to the US […]
Classics in Time of Pandemic: Lockdown Reflections from the Ivory Tower
Reflection by Michiel Meeusen Michiel Meeusen received his PhD in Literature from KU Leuven in 2013. He specialises in ancient science and medicine and the literature and culture of the High Roman Empire (Orcid). Western literature starts with a disease. At the beginning of the Iliad, Homer sings of an “evil pestilence” sent by […]
Unintended Impacts of COVID-19 Social Distancing
Blog by Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy Thurka Sangaramoorthy is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an expert on issues of infectious disease outbreaks, health equity, and social justice. She is the author of Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention (Rutgers University, 2014) and Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A […]