Tag Archives: COVID-19 Narratives

COVID-19 Narratives (9): From Nebraska to New Jersey and Back

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From Nebraska to New Jersey and Back: College Life Under Pandemic
Catherine Lentsch

The COVID-19 pandemic first became a reality for me when I was flying back from my home state of Nebraska to New Jersey after spring break. I was chatting with members of the Columbia University baseball team on our plane when they received a notification that Columbia was canceling school for the next few days, and would then be holding online classes for the next two weeks. We were all a bit shocked. It was a bit hard to believe that they’d cancel school over a virus. Nor was it clear what this meant for the future. Continue reading →

COVID-19 Narratives (3): A Physician’s View of the Front Lines

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[An anonymous submission by a physician at a New York City-area hospital.]

If you wanted to concoct a story of a cruel, vengeful god who plotted to induce madness upon all of humanity, you could not do better than the COVID-19 pandemic. Under normal circumstances, all it takes is a few sensible, simple, commonsense hygiene practices to prevent infectious illness from becoming a major public health problem. As diseases go, the usual suspects are pathogens we know well (influenza, rhinovirus, etc.), whose disease courses tend to follow a familiar and predictable narrative: prodrome, syndrome, convalescence, immunity. Serious illness is an exception to the rule with these players, and it clusters predictably in familiar groups of outlier hosts: the very old, those with severe medical problems, the very young. These individuals are at risk roughly as to how old, close to being newborns, or medically complicated they are. Continue reading →

COVID-19 Narrative (2): Chris Matthew Sciabarra

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This is the second in my series of COVID-19 Narratives, by my dear friend Chris Sciabarra, sheltering in place in Brooklyn, New York. Though the series is primarily about what I called the “supply side” of the health care equation during this crisis, I wanted to run some posts that described the “demand side” as well, that is, what it’s like to be a patient during the pandemic. Particularly valuable about Chris’s post is how it illustrates the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for people with serious medical conditions whose previously scheduled medical procedures have now been deemed “elective.” “Elective” in this context doesn’t mean “optional.” It means downgraded to second or third priority out of sheer, dire necessity: hospital beds, equipment, and personnel have to be left vacant or unused to absorb the overwhelming crush of COVID-19 patients we expect to see. And even at the center of the pandemic, we haven’t yet reached the peak of that crush. Continue reading →

COVID-19 Narratives (1): Jennifer McKitrick

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This is the the first of what I hope to be many installments in my “COVID-19 Narrative Project.” 

Making Fabric Masks
Jennifer McKitrick

I am a philosophy professor and department chair.  I started staying at home March 13th, 2020, when my university cancelled classes in advance of  transitioning to online instruction two weeks later.  I was trying to figure out how to finish my course on early modern philosophy online.  As department chair, I was dealing with nervous staff and colleagues making the transition to working from home, and administrations wanting documented contingency plans, etc., as the crisis deepened. Continue reading →