Departments

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COVID-19

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    12/21/2022

    National Parks Not Immune from National Tantrums

    by Tiya Miles

    Yellowstone National Park's 150th anniversary saw visitors and staff dealing with the same kinds of frayed civility and random abuse plaguing the rest of the nation. For better or worse, our parks are us. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    11/7/2022

    What Links COVID and Curriculum Conflicts in Schools?

    Education historians Jack Schneider and Natalia Mehlman Petrzela explain why there's a significant overlap between parents, especially conservatives, who objected to pandemic school closures and those who are demanding more control over curriculum decisions. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    10/12/2022

    The Selective Politics of the "Learning Loss" Debate

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    Discussions of the disruption to learning caused by COVID-related school closures often ignore the endemic inequalities in American education and exposure to harm from COVID, and sideline the voices of teachers who have been sounding the alarm about the dangerous state of their facilities for years. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    9/23/2022

    The Risks of Declaring the Pandemic Over

    by Molly Nebiolo

    As long as America has had pandemics, it has had leaders who sought political benefit by declaring them over, so Joe Biden is in good company. But moving on needs to include planning ahead. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    9/23/2022

    COVID Shows the US as a Country Kept from Grieving

    Historians Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams have edited a new collection of essays putting the pandemic in historical perspective, with contributors showing how the pandemic robbed us of both life and time. 

  • SOURCE: Texas Observer
    9/8/2022

    I was Fired for Asking My Students to Wear Masks

    by Michael Phillips

    Sometimes academic freedom is about the ability of professors to advocate on behalf of the campus community's health against administrators who prefer silence as a matter of political expediency. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    4/14/2022

    Using DDT to Fight Polio was a Mistake, but Learning from it was Valuable

    by Elena Conis

    Recent Ivermectin mania echoes the moment in 1940s America when spurious science led American communities to demand to be sprayed with the noxious insecticide, believing it would prevent polio outbreaks; the episode underscores the need for patience in pursuing public health. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    3/8/2022

    How did this Level of Death Become Normal?

    In absolute and relative terms, The United States has fared horribly in the coronavirus pandemic. Historians and social scientists help writer Ed Yong explain why the nation meets mass death with a collective shrug. 

  • SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
    2/16/2022

    The Paranoid Style Comes to Canadian Politics

    by Eric Merkley

    Canadian politics, until recently, seemed free of the kind of extreme sorting taking place in other democracies, where partisan affiliation, cultural values, and religious or ethnic identity all align closely. The Ottawa protests show cracks in the nation's liberal order that the far right is trying to exploit, says a political scientist.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    2/10/2022

    Why Following Joe Rogan Seems Easier than Following the Science

    by Yair Rosenberg

    "But in order for this science to be followed, it has to include the science of how people interact with each other. In other words, there has got to be a science of the virus, and there’s also got to be a science of society."

  • SOURCE: London Review of Books
    2/1/2022

    Whack-a-Mole

    by Rivka Galchen

    Reviewer Rivka Galchen looks at two recent books that highlight the importance of cultural beliefs in the acceptance or rejection of vaccines. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    2/1/2022

    How America's Two Pandemics Merged

    by Tom Engelhardt

    In pandemics past, disease was the single contagion threatening society; today there is also a pandemic of political nihilism. 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    2/3/2022

    Wishful Thinking on COVID is as Dangerous as Prior Episodes of Denial

    by Gregg Gonsalves

    A convergence has emerged between the right and the center that the Omicron variant is the last hurrah of the COVID pandemic and a signal to go back to "normal." A public health scholar warns this is potentially sacrificing the vulnerable to the wishes of the powerful.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/25/2022

    The Antivax Right is Bringing Human Sacrifice to America

    Past debates about closing schools and businesses to control the pandemic at least could claim to be about balancing costs and benefits. The campaign to refuse vaccination will kill people for no purpose whatsoever.