Avril Tynan // 2021 began with both good news and bad news. The roll out of the AstraZeneca-Oxford, BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines across the world has brought a glimmer of hope to strained communities and exhausted healthcare workers. At the same time, the rampant spread of new variants has provoked a slew of border closures…
Tag: coronavirus
Anxiety and acceptance: A ritual death under pandemic conditions
Miki Chase // On Wednesday, October 7th, 2020, an unnamed Jain woman in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India, died on her 64th birthday. Local news reported that she had recently been discharged from a private hospital, having recovered from coronavirus and tested negative following treatment for Covid-19. A doctor at the hospital, however, who pointed out that she had…
Thanksgiving, Tradition, and Ted Cruz: A Public Health Crisis
John A. Carranza // On November 21, 2020, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) tweeted the cover image of a trussed and cooked turkey with a black star immediately above it and the words “Come and Take It” below. The tweet is a take on the flag used at the Battle of Gonzales in Texas, in…
Already Quarantined: Yes, the “Spanish” Flu was Racist Too
Salvador Herrera // After the outbreak of racialized violence against Asian communities across the world, President Donald Trump, his staff, and supporters maintained that calling the COVID-19 disease “the Chinese virus” is harmless and has nothing to do with race.[1] Their willful ignorance attributes the phrase to the supposed source of the virus. However, the…
T in the Time of Coronavirus
Diana Rose Newby // Why has COVID-19 killed more men than women? As the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 continues its global spread, infection patterns and fatality rates have prompted this question both among medical experts and in the popular media. As of late April, data confirmed this disparity in multiple regions of the world: in China,…
Attentional Avoidance: America’s “War” on COVID-19 and Narco-Terrorism
Salvador Herrera // In a White House press briefing on Wednesday, April 1st, 2020, the Trump administration and the Coronavirus Task Force announced their “enhanced counter-narcotics operations” under U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM).[1] Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump explained that these measures would include a doubling of USSOUTHCOM’s capabilities to surveil, disrupt, and seize drugs shipped overseas from…
Nursing, Social Drama, and the Coronavirus Pandemic
John A. Carranza // Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has disrupted daily life for people around the world as medical experts, scientists, and nations rush to halt the spread of this virus. In the United States, Americans have put their lives on hold to practice social distancing and quarantine when infected. Grocery store employees, delivery service workers,…
Coronavirus at the Border: The Nation-State as Involuntary Quarantine
Bojan Srbinovski // On the evening of November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in the metropolitan area of Paris. Six different locations were targeted in a combination of mass shootings and a suicide bombing. In the deadliest attack on France since World War II, and the deadliest attack on the…