Category: Psychological and Sociological Impact
How the pandemic altered the restaurant industry forever
(Washington Post) Pandemic restaurant-going was like a series of twists on the old Yogi Berra quip about how nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded. First, restaurants stood cavernously empty by mandate as we pined for them. Then we got scared to be cheek-to-jowl with fellow customers. As patrons surged back, a dearth of […]
Jan 3, 2023
(STAT – by Helen Branswell) People who study infectious diseases and who work in public health have long known a bad pandemic would one day come. They knew such an event would overwhelm hospitals, strain supply chains, and place stresses on society that we would be ill-equipped to meet. Countries like the United States have […]
Dec 27, 2022
Trends in Homicide Rates for US Children Aged 0 to 17 Years, 1999 to 2020
(JAMA) What are the recent changes and long-term trends in homicide rates for children aged 0 to 17 years and precipitating circumstances and characteristics most commonly associated with these deaths? Findings In this cross-sectional study of 38362 homocide victims, homicide rates for some geographic and child demographic groups declined; however, rates recently increased across several subpopulations.
Dec 20, 2022
How did COVID warp our sense of time? It’s a matter of perception
(NPR) [Listen to Audio] The pandemic did something strange to our sense of time. For Ruth Ogden, lockdown spent confined to her 3-bedroom duplex in Manchester, England, with a newborn and two boys home from school, “was like climbing a mountain that never ended.” Time stood still, she says, filled with children moaning of boredom, […]
Dec 14, 2022
Plans for a Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy
(US Dept of State) Health threats such as COVID-19, Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and many others continue to demonstrate that health security is national security. A virus can spread quickly across borders and around the globe, endangering lives, disrupting how countries and communities function every day, and impacting our safety, security, and stability – here at home […]
Dec 13, 2022
Plunge in US imports accelerates; volumes near pre-COVID levels
(Freight Waves) The situation remains far from normal at some U.S. ports. There were still 18 container ships at anchor waiting for a berth in Savannah, Georgia, on Monday. But for the country overall, plummeting inbound cargo volumes are bringing imports close to where they were before the pandemic-induced spending splurge. Descartes reported Monday that […]
Dec 13, 2022
Covid Depression Is Real. Here’s What You Need to Know.
(NYT) The World Health Organization noted this year that anxiety and depression increased by 25 percent across the globe in just the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. And researchers have continued to find more evidence that the coronavirus wreaked havoc on our mental health: In a 2021 study, more than half of American adults reported symptoms of major […]
Dec 6, 2022
Gauging Our Return to Office and the Subways, One Tip at a Time
(NYT) It has been over a year since buskers, and their music, returned underground, and their slightly fuller tip jars and instrument cases suggest things may be looking up. Subway ridership hit a pandemic-era record on Oct. 27, with close to 3.9 million people — the most on a single day since the pandemic struck, but still […]
Nov 22, 2022
What Does It Mean to Care About COVID Anymore?
(The Atlantic) After nearly three years of constantly thinking about COVID, it’s alarming how easily I can stop. The truth is, as a healthy, vaxxed-to-the-brim young person who has already had COVID, the pandemic now often feels more like an abstraction than a crisis. My perception of personal risk has dropped in recent months, as has […]
Nov 22, 2022
How infectious disease experts are responding to Covid nearly three years in
(Stat) The world is fast approaching the third anniversary of those days when we got our first inkling that a new disease was spreading in China. In the months that followed, normal life was suspended, then upended. At this point, everyone is well and truly sick of Covid-19 and the accommodations we have had to make to […]
Nov 22, 2022