One tweet asks for help finding a hospital bed in Delhi, India’s capital. Another asks where to find oxygen. These tweets joined a sea of similar pleas for assistance over social media amidst India’s second-wave surge of COVID-19 in the spring of 2021, which led to oxygen and hospital bed shortages across the country. People tweeted asking for help for …
Tag Archives: pandemic
What A 1993 Outbreak Can Tell Us About Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pandemic Preparedness
In 1993, the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States experienced an unknown virus outbreak that killed its victims within 48 hours. While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) turned to biomedical science to understand the mysterious virus, the affected Indigenous community turned to their own history. Ultimately, Navajo oral history offered answers that streamlined the research process and …
On borrowed time: Living with chronic terror in the United States’ insulin crisis
As the United States began closing its borders in March 2020, Americans with diabetes, already under threat from the coronavirus, faced another pandemic hazard: pharmacies were regularly running out of insulin. As Americans emptied store shelves of toilet paper, cleaning detergents, and canned foods, they also stocked up on the prescriptions they needed to obey stay-at-home orders. Health insurance companies …
‘Weather-ing’ the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the UK
This article is part of the series: The Age of COVID-19
Few things are more stereotypically British than discussing the weather. A sense of national pride seems to pervades this discussion. In fact, during our time in the UK (as three of the co-authors grew up outside the UK), we have viewed it as an art form, and one we very much enjoying trying our hand at. It is almost comforting …
The Hospital Multiple: Introduction
This article is part of the series: The Hospital Multiple
Since COVID-19 has come to haunt the globe, hospitals in all their guises have featured centrally in the pandemic response. As the flagships of health systems, hospitals have rapidly become the primary locus of medical care for COVID-19. They provide staff and beds for acute medical care; they can be rapidly deployed in the form of military field hospitals, mobile …
Fit for Purpose? Prime Minister Johnson’s Two Bodies and the UK Better Health Strategy
This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Amongst the UK’s current Conservative Government, rhetorically invoking the body politic is common practice. For example, in 2019 Number 10 Special Advisor Dominic Cummings argued that a European reformist faction within the Tory party “should be treated like a metastasising tumour and excised from the UK body politic” while UK Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson deployed the metaphor as a …