COVID-19

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• 5/9/2021
  

  India's COVID Crisis Has Roots in its Colonial-Era Tax Structure

  by Roderick Matthews

  India's COVID crisis is being exacerbated by a health system that uses an anemic 3.5% of GDP. Continuities from the era of the British Raj, when powerful rural landowners went untaxed, are a big part of the problem. 

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• 5/2/2021
  

  Remember The Essential Workers After COVID: They Deserve Better

  by Joshua B. Freeman

  All of us literally owe our lives to our essential workers.  Let’s not forget it.  Giving them a fair shake is not only a moral obligation, it will make a better city for all of us.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/28/2021
  

  Vaccine Hesitancy Is as Old as Vaccines. I Take Comfort in That

  by David Motadel

  Resistance to vaccination is nothing new. But historical episodes of "vaccine hesitancy" have tended to dissolve. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  

  COVID Protesters Must Stop Exploiting Symbols of the Holocaust

  by David M. Perry

  "We all need to keep asserting basic truths: vaccinations are safe, public health measures are often complicated and require tradeoffs that we need to be transparent about, and these people cosplaying Holocaust victims are dangerously trivializing the history of the Holocaust."

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• SOURCE: Zcomm
  4/25/2021
  

  Amid Widespread Disease, Death, and Poverty, the Major Powers Increased Their Military Spending in 2020

  by Lawrence Wittner

  You might assume that the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged the world's leading military powers, starting with the US, to reconsider their priorities and direct fewer resources to weapons. You would be wrong. 

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• SOURCE: NIH Director's Blog
  4/15/2021
  

  Fauci Donates Model to Smithsonian’s COVID-19 Collection

  Dr. Anthony Fauci's model of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been a prop in numerous informational sessions since the beginning of the pandemic. Now, the plastic germ will reside in the Smithsonian's collections. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  

  Teaching: More Pandemic-Driven Innovations Professors Like

  "The themes running through all of these innovations are flexibility and engagement: The more ways in which people can participate in the classroom, contribute to discussions, and share their ideas, readers found, the more learning improves."

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• SOURCE: WEMU
  4/12/2021
  

  U-M Medical Historian Says It Appears History Is Repeating Itself In Our Current Pandemic

  Medical Historian Alex Navarro warns that resistance to vaccines and public health measures are likely to prolong the COVID pandemic the way they did the 1919 influenza. 

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• SOURCE: BBC
  4/12/2021
  

  How US History Explains Vaccine Passport Skepticism

  Opposition to requiring documentary proof of vaccination to participate in some activities is rooted both in the weak traditions of public health in the United States and legitimate fears that such "passports" will work to disadvantage the poor, minorities, and others who are less able to access vaccination. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/10/2021
  

  A Once-in-a-Century Crisis Can Help Educate Doctors

  by Molly Worthen

  The COVID-19 pandemic has offered valuable lessons on the necessity of humanistic education in the training of medical professionals. 

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• SOURCE: Salem News
  3/24/2021
  

  SSU Faculty Retrenchment Plan Accidentally Released

  Salem (MA) State University's General Counsel disputed that a spreadsheet accidentally relased in response to a records request and circulated by a faculty member constitutes a plan to terminate faculty positions for budgetary reasons. Faculty argue that it is consistent with pressure they face to accept furloughs and doubt administration assurances that retrenchment is off the table.

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• SOURCE: ABC 10
  3/21/2021
  

  Historian Brooke Newman on the Front Lines of COVID Vaccination

  Historian Brooke Newman, after careful research, is allowing her daughter to participate in the a trial of a vaccine, already tested for teens, on younger children. They cite the personal desire to return to normalcy, the documented safety of the vaccine in earlier trials, and advancing the collective cause of public health in their decision.

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• SOURCE: Scientific American
  3/20/2021
  

  We Need Social Science, Not Just Medical Science, to Beat the Pandemic

  by Nicholas Dirks

  "In order to ensure that scientific advances work not just to create new medicines but to help lead to a healthier and more just world, we need to ensure that science and social science work hand in hand as well."

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/15/2021
  

  The Race to Collect COVID Ephemera Before It’s History

  "Last year, on March 13th, as Americans began to restructure daily life in response to covid-19, one curator, Rebecca Klassen, had an idea."

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  3/22/2021
  

  Medical Racism has Shaped U.S. Policies for Centuries

  by Dierdre Cooper Owens

  Medical racism is as old as America, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been no exception in terms of unequal vulnerability to disease. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  3/18/2021
  

  The Sports Pages of Death

  by Tom Engelhardt

  The developing effort to control and contain the COVID pandemic raise the question of why governments and industry are not doing more to avoid the worst case scenarios of climate change. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/12/2021
  

  Aruká Juma, Last Man of His Tribe, Is Dead

  As the last fluent speaker of the tribe’s language, Mr. Juma’s death means that much of the tribe’s language and many of its traditions and rituals will be forever lost.

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  3/9/2021
  

  Thucydides, Historical Solidarity, and Birth in the Pandemic

  by Sarah Christine Teets

  A classicist reflects on Thucydides' account of the Athenian plague, and concludes that the point of historical knowledge is to empathize, not to strategize. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/11/2021
  

  The Coronavirus Killed the Gospel of Small Government

  by Zachary D. Carter

  Revisiting the work of Keynes highlights the fact that struggles to deal with the pandemic are not only public health failures but economic failures — an inability to marshal resources to solve a problem. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/8/2021
  

  Transcript: Race in America: History Matters with Erika Lee & Helen Zia

  Historian Erika Lee and Asian-American civil rights activist Helen Zia discuss the way that COVID-19 has reignited hostility against Asian Americans.