COVIDCalls

EP #304 - 07.06.2021 - Year of the Nurse w/ Cassie Alexander

Today I am joined by Cassie Alexander, a registered nurse who has just published the book The Year of the Nurse about critical care in the pandemic.

Cassie Alexander is a registered nurse of fourteen years -- burn, critical care transport, and ICU -- and a paranormal romance author. Her most recent novel is Year of the Nurse (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B095PWYG3B/ forthcoming late July), about her experiences working in a COVID ward in 2020. 

 

 

EP #303 - 07.05.2021 - COVID-19 in India w/ Sonali Vaid

Today I am joined by doctor Sonali Vaid, a public health advocate based in India—we will be talking about COVID-19 in India.

Dr. Sonali Vaid is a medical doctor with a Master’s in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. For over a decade she has worked to improve the quality and safety of healthcare. Her work has spanned several countries in Asia and Africa. She has consulted for international organizations such as WHO and UNICEF. She supports teams of health workers in improving their healthcare services.  Some areas of care she has helped improve include - maternal and neonatal health, injection safety, infection control, emergency care, surgical safety, health worker safety etc.

Dr Vaid is also currently an Aspen New Voices Fellow; this is a year-long program that provides media and advocacy training for frontline development experts. She is based in India & is speaking to us from the small and beautiful small town of Bir in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

EP #302 - 07.01.2021 - Covid-19 & the Medical Imagination

Today I am joined by Sari Altschuler, founding director of the Health, Humanities, and Society program at Northeastern University

Sari Altschuler is associate professor of English and founding director of Health, Humanities, and Society at Northeastern University. Her work has appeared in leading journals, including American Literature, American Literary History, PMLA, and the medical journal Lancet. She is the author of The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and co-editor of Keywords for Health Humanities (under contract with NYU Press).

EP #301 - 06.30.2021 - COVID and the LGBTQ Community w/co-host Eleanor Mayes

Today I am joined by a co-host, Eleanor Mayes—and let me introduce Eleanor!

Hi I’m Eleanor Mayes, I currently serve as a production assistant and transcription director for COVIDCalls. I recently completed my masters in materials science and engineering at the University of Minnesota this past semester, and previously attended the university of Chicago for my undergraduate degree. I will attend UC Berkeley this fall, in their new Master’s of Design program.  In my spare time I enjoy reading about typography, disability studies, LGBTQ+ activism, and the history of science.

You can hear COVIDCalls anytime recorded as podcasts on spotify, iTunes, podbean or anywhere you get podcasts.

Stewart Landers, JD, MCP, is a Senior Consultant at John Snow, Inc. with over 30 years of

experience working on public health systems and practice related to chronic disease, wellness,

HIV/AIDS, mental health/substance abuse treatment, LGBTQ health, emergency preparedness, and immunization. Mr. Landers conducted two of the first large scale LGBTQ health needs assessments in Santa Clara County, CA and the state of Rhode Island.

Mr. Landers is an associate editor for the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) focused on LGBTQ health, including HIV and chronic disease prevention and control. He is currently curating a collection of articles on “COVID-19 and the LGBTQ Community.” He has published in a wide variety of journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as AJPH. Stewart served on the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth from 2010-2018.

EP #300 - 06.29.2021 - Controlling COVID-19 in South Korea w/special guest Kiheung Kim

Today I welcome medical sociologist Kiheung Kim to talk about the many different aspects of COVID in South Korea.

Before I get started with Kiheung Kim, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that today marks the 300^th episode of COVIDCalls.  When I started doing COVIDCalls in March of 2020 it was a resource for daily discussion when information about how to react to the pandemic was literally evolving minute by minute.  To me the urgency of the daily calls was about getting disaster experts into conversation about their research, and getting their expertise into the news cycle.  Over time the project became a site of exploration—a place (among many) where the widest variety of experts/survivors/witnesses could be in dialogue (I was lucky to be on the mic with them).  Everyday we have been trying to make sense of the pandemic, and trying to also make sense of the tools we have to create and sustain this knowledge. 

Over the past couple of months—especially as the pandemic has moved into its next act in North America, I’ve noticed a shift.  Not that the search for knowing COVID is by any means at an end, but rather that people are turning to COVIDCalls as a way to take stock of what happened over the past 18 months.  I should say, for guests who are expert in Brazil or India, or here where I am in S. Korea—this is not yet time for a post action report or a eulogy—COVID is still a very serious daily threat to life.  Still, there is among many a sense of passage—a movement out of one life and into another.  For me that means waiting for a vaccination—but the wait isn’t endless—I see it on a calendar.

I have heard people say that they are eager just to forget and move on—I even had one person chastise me on Twitter for wanting to linger with the memory of COVID, almost as if I’ve made a choice to reside in the darkness of it.  I’ve thought about that a lot—and you know what maybe there is a truth there—even when my own daily risk goes down through vaccination (not yet!) I know I will want to reside in this space of uncertainty and concern a while longer—this is a place of vigilance, and of action, and I worry that I will—that society will—move to closure and forgetting before the power of the uncertainty and fear provokes us to act.  And act we must—we have so much to do for our health systems, our struggles for justice, our schools, our care workers—COVID shows the need for reform at every turn.  So let’s get vaccinated and live, but let’s not let go of this feeling of—what else can I call it—fear, of deep concern—until we’ve done what we can do for a safer future. 

Disaster Memory is not apolitical, it is not uncritical, it is not behind glass at a museum——memory can provoke—and the future of COVID memory is literally being made right now—we are making it. The memory of COVID is already a battleground of competing explanations and ideologies—not all of them in good faith, and some of them very dangerous.

It’s not a choice to remember or forget COVID.  It’s a choice among competing narratives, competing memories.  Don’t let anyone tell you it wasn’t that bad—or that those many months were all bad or wasted—it wasn’t one thing or another.  COVID was, and is, as diverse as life and society itself.  COVID forced us to create new practices of work and sociability, even some new ways of living—some attention to the brokenness of the old ways--that we might not want to give up so quickly.  That’s good and useful.  But at the core there is also a struggle to learn hard lessons from it. Let’s work together to sustain the lessons based in the grim truth of unnecessary deaths, compassion for those still suffering, and a just recovery to come.

Let me thank Shivani Patel, Bucky Stanton, Hyunah Keum, and Eleanor Mayes.  AND let me tell you that in a few weeks time the CCalls research portal will launch—plus we have more guest hosts coming: including Kim Fortun, Jacob Steere-Williams, and Kristin Urquiza (thanks Felicia Henry).  Stay tuned.

Kiheung Kim is a professor at Postech (Pohang University of Science and Technology) in South Korea. He graduated from the sociology department at Sogang University and did his PhD at Science Studies Unit of the University of Edinburgh where he worked on the social studies of infectious diseases, in particular, mad cow disease (BSE, scrapie and vCJD). 

Kiheung worked at the Welcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London and moved to do laboratory studies at the Chemical Engineering Department, Imperial College London.

He is interested in the social aspects of animal and human infectious diseases like Foot-and-Mouth Disease, MERS and Covid-19.

He published a book, "Social Construction of Disease: From Scrapie to Prions" (Routledge, 2007). 

EP #299 - 06.28.2021 - Racial Justice and COVID-19 w/ Felicia Henry & Pastor Issac Scott

Today, I will be closing out my guest hosting! For the past two Mondays, I’ve been honored to spend this time with you all. One year ago, Scott invited me to be a guest on the podcast to discuss disaster research, race, emergency management, and vulnerable communities. On that episode, I talked about the importance of redefining concepts like vulnerability and expanding how we understood the social construction of disasters. As a guest host, I’d like to continue that discussion by inviting guests to talk about structural violence, incarceration, and environmental injustice, incorporating my own background as a scholar-activist. One year after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, calls for racial and economic justice still resound across the country. It is my hope that we have amplified these calls in the past few episodes.

Today I welcome Pastor Isaac Scott. Pastor Isaac Scott is an Award-Winning, Social Impact Multimedia Artist and Human Rights Activist. He is a Fellow at the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School and Founder & Lead-Artist for The Confined Arts at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, where he spearheads the promotion of justice reform through the transformative power of the arts. His research at Columbia investigates social and institutional methods of dehumanization in the carceral system to decrease punitive triggers in the US criminal justice system. Pastor Scott’s passion for equal human rights runs deep and comes as a result of being directly affected by the criminal justice system and its disenfranchising nature. Since returning to society in 2013, he's combined fine art, graphic design, and film & media to counter the existing negative narratives of people in prison and of those formerly incarcerated and directly impacted. Through The Confined Arts, Pastor Scott has organized art exhibitions, poetry performances, and storytelling projects to interrogate and bring about awareness around several important issues, such as juvenile justice, solitary confinement, prison conditions, the rising rate of women in prison and the media’s role in shaping public perception. As a result of the impactful work of The Confined Arts, Pastor Scott received the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Change Agent Award from the School of General Studies at Columbia University, where he currently studies Visual Arts and Human Rights as a Justice in Education Scholar.

Today, Pastor Scott holds the esteemed title of Associate Pastor at God’s Touch Healing Ministry, located in East Harlem, NY, where he serves on Manhattan Community Board 11 on the nomination of City Council Bill Perkins. Pastor Isaac understands the healing power of the arts; it holds the power to transform both the artist and the audience. He also believes that art, in every form, can and does, effectively change perceptions and conquers stigma. Through his own lived experience, Pastor Scott personally understands the need for realistic representations of individuals, like himself, convicted of a crime in the past. Pastor Scott has dedicated his life to using his creativity, in every way possible, to continue educating and promoting change.

EP #298 - 06.24.2021 - Science Writing and the Pandemic with Adam Rogers

Today I welcome Wired magazine writer Adam Rogers back to COVIDCalls.

Today’s guest is Adam Rogers.  Adam writes about science for Wired Magazine. Before coming to WIRED, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a reporter for Newsweek. He is the author of the New York Times science bestseller Proof: The Science of Booze. NEW story up yesterday titled, An Old Source for Potential New Covid-19 Drugs: Blood Serum—great read.  We will talk about the COVID-19 test snafu, vaccines, silicon valley and the tech economy in the age of COVID-19 and more.

EP #297 - 06.23.2021 - Pandemic Stress on the Healthcare Workforce

Today I welcome Agnes Agnes Arnold-Forster and Sam Schotland to discuss pandemic stress and burn out among health care workers.

Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster is a historian of medicine, work, and the emotions. She is a postdoctoral researcher in the Social Studies of Medicine Department at McGill University, and has published on the history of cancer, surgery, and the emotions of healthcare labour.

Sam Schotland is a historian of medicine, emotions, and capitalism. He is pursuing an MD at the University of Michigan and a PhD in History of Science and Medicine at Yale University, and has published on the history of children's health and doctors' emotions.  

EP #296 - 06.23.2021- COVID19 in India Update

Today I welcome political scientist Prakash Kashwan to discuss COVID-19 in India.

Prakash Kashwan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Research Program on Economic and Social Rights, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs. He studies how social and political context shapes outcomes related to the environment, economic development, and social justice, with a specific focus on the role of political and economic inequalities. He is the author of the widely reviewed and acclaimed book Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2017) and a Co-Editor of the journal Environmental Politics. He currently finalizing an edited volume on Climate Justice in India to be published by Cambridge University Press, and another book manuscript on Rooted Radicalism, which focuses on Climate Justice in the global North and is under an advanced contract with Oxford University Press. 

EP #295 - 06.22.2021 - Ideology & the Virus with Emma Green

Today I welcome Emma Green, staff writer for the Atlantic magazine and author of the recent article “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown.”

My guest today! Emma Green is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers politics, policy, and religion. In 2019, she won three first-place awards from the Religion News Association, and she was recently named the laureate of the 2020 George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Excellence in Journalism, Arts, & Letters. Emma has spoken at universities across the U.S., and her work has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR. She lives in New York City.