#the way I posted this 2 months into the pandemic before I had fully lost my mind | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

laynemorgan · 3 years

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I'm sure you've already provided it, but I'd be curious to hear your road to becoming a staffed writer. What first got you interested in it? Does it go back to school days?

Man it goes back far. I mean, I guess in some ways it doesn't. Since you asked more about what got me interested in where it goes back to, I'll give you the lest technical and more biographicl explanatin. My first goal was just to become a writer. I've been writing since I was a really little kid. I actually recently found journals from like the elementary and middle school days just filled with them. And it was never small scale, I'd always be planning out the whole fucking setting, how all the characters were connected, full universes. I made a fake fantasy. land in my backyard because my parents live on a lot of land. I called it Teleterania. I remember very little about it besides that that was the name hahah but I did do it!!! Everything I read only made me want to write. Everything I watched made me want to write.

Sometime around late middle school and early high school, I started watching more TV. I found soap operas and was OBSESSSED with their flare for drama. I found BTVS, Charmed, Smallville, Veronica Mars, OTH, etc. And all of those shows really got me actually looking at TV in a way I had never before. I got obsessed with their worlds and into their fandoms. I became the liek TV guy in my high school. There was even a group of girls I never got to really hang out with that would always call me over to their table to ask about what I knew about OTH stuff hahaha and 17 year old me thought that was awesome. Before my sister passed away, she and I took a road trip down to North Carolina to tour the One Tree Hill set. OTH was like the one thing that she and I agreed on. And it was so awesome. For me it was a first look at what the industry actually looked like, to see the sets and what went into it and all of that.

But I don't think my eyes really opened to actually WORKING in tv until college. I went to school for English Lit and Creative Writing in New Hampshire. My school had a great writing program and I was right at home there. i still credit my first writing professor who was only a grad student for really teaching me what I know about writing and editing and reading my own work for error and she passed me on to her favorite professor which was a hugely flattering moment for me. AND THEN -- I fell in love with PLL. And for me, that was really where shit started. I didn't realize it at the time and it wasn't even the show that did it it was what the show showed me. Through my tumblr at the time which had very little to do with fandom, I actually wound up running into Patrick Adams and Troian Bellisario. We all were always sharing each other's posts and at the time I was working for a journalist covering random TV out of a shitty free magazine in Boston doing work for peanuts. But I was going out to LA to meet up with a friend and we all decided to meet for lunch and they let me interview them for my magazine and stayed really rad people. They also helped boost my PLL photo recaps which I was doing at the time and those got the attention of the Director, Normal Buckley who asked me out to coffee and talked to me about my goals and what I was doing. He was the person who first really helped me understand that there's an approachability to the TV world that to me had always been this like magical hollywood bubble I didn't understand.

I went home THRILLED about LA, dropped out of college and set out to go to film school. From there, I hated film school because it was too technical adjacent, dropped out again, spent all the money I had on that move twice, and went home to boston broke and lost. I spent two years after that maybe more saving money, working in fandom, and waitressing while I went back to college online. That era wasn't super writing focused but it's where I found myself. I realized I was queer, I came out, I got into tumblr rpg, I met my fandom friends, I found tumblr fandom in a way I hadn't before. And then a couple years later I found tl100.

From there, the rest is kind of wonky. I had a big fan blog for the show and talked a lot about it on my twitter which lead me to many interactions with the writers who then invited me to dinner at comic con one year. I had a long talk with Shumway abut my goals and what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to be in TV somehow. I knew I wanted to be in writing somehow but I couldn't figure out how those two things aligned. I was doing a lot of journalism and critic stuff because that felt like the clsoest way to be both a fan and workin in the world I loved but it was really Kim and Shawna that opened my eyes to the ability to just .... be a TV writer. Film school had made me terrified of the wrtiing side but I think it was because film school was so much more about writing for film which I learned isn't my thing. But TV is a writers' medium, unlike film which is more fo a directors medium and suddenly I was like -- MIND BLOWN. It was everything I wanted in a career and married all of the things I loved. It was something that had previously felt like unattainable but they made it seem human and approachable.

They helped me get my first WPA job, I saved up 3 grand working and with the help of some friends and moved to LA to start that. And suddenly I was in a whirlwind of catching up on everything I felt like I had missed. I was reading scripts, learning what the process looked like, doing everything I coudl to figure out what being a TV writer looked like. After that job, I got another WPA job at Millar Gough on Into the Badlands and later Shannara.

THEN I got hired on Daybreak which I can fully credit with being a huge stepping stone for me and changing my life in a lot of ways. Aron was the best showrunner. He was educational and he taught us shit, he let us in the room, he let us write stuff, he let us pitch and try and fall on our faces and never judged us for it. My second season there he moved me up to writers assitant and patiently walked me through all the stuff I didn't know yet because he had faith in me and my voice and my ideas. He let me writ e afreelance episode that year and pitch it in the room and do all the things that real w riters get to do.

So after Daybreak season 2 got cancelled I was pretty ready to spend my next year or two just writing, finding an agent and moving forawrd. And then I got an email to go and work for Moira Walley Beckett. She was looking for an assistant with serious room experience to help develop something in a small room and stay on with her later. I took the job becuase she's MOIRA and I was stoked to learn from her and work for a woman for once. I ernded up very fortunate becuase a month later we were all surprised by the covid mess and I was fully employed that whole year while many people weren't which was a huge help. Moira was a STELLAR boss. I had thought I was ready and what she taught me was that ther's always so much more to learn. She walked me through the process of applying notes and taking notes and changing draft after draft of your story. SHe walked me through breaking a whole season of television. We had a great partnership for the year and I'm so grateful. And then that project didn't end up seeing hte light of day and we our separate ways as well.

Cut to a few months ago, I was still at home in Boston, post-covid, having been sick for most of january. My friend Rachel dared me to write a spec in a weekend for the Warner Bros fellowship deadline. So I did. It was a Legacies Spec. Given that we didn't have access to the WGA library because of the pandemic, Legacies was an easy and obvious choice. I had already seen it inside and out and didn't need as much access to learning a show from scratch. So I wrote what I loved, wrote a season 2 legacies spec that embraced my favorite things about legacies: the high school soap of one tree hill, Lizzie doing wild dialogue, buffy-esque monsters, and themes of grief and humanity.

AND THE REST you know.

Here we are. I'm still lost as fuck. I'm still running full speed through a world I don't always feel like I"m ready for. I'm still a perfectionist and an obsessive overworker. I still take notes I don't need to take and do work at 10pm and come in early and stare at the story boards. There's a whole journey in all of this about representation and coming to find myself and queer media and wanting to make more of it but that's one I don't feel like I can fully get into until I'm decades out of it and the world is truly made better. But I'm here. And it feels like the end of a journey and liek I'm standing at the edge of a brand new clif because I've only just started.

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commander-rahrah · 3 years

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RESIDENCY: SECOND CHANCES (AN OPEN HEART FIC): PART FOUR

Pairing: MC (Jordynne Holland) X Ethan Ramsey X Bryce Lahela; MC X Bryce; MC X Ethan. Please note that both pairings are present in this fan fiction — off & on, at the same times, and the relationships do ebb & flow. Please keep this in mind. Thank you.

Masterlist: Click Here

Chapter Rating: T

Word Count: 3940+

Description: Everybody’s first day back at Edenbrook. Is this second year everything they will need it to be?

Disclaimer: Characters, storyline, and parts of the dialogue are taken from Pixelberry’s Choices. They fully own the characters, dialogue, backgrounds, etc. MC Jordynne’s background is my own creation, based loosely off of MC in-game’s personality and provided with more details.

Author’s Note: Ha. Soooo, its been a while. A long while. Many factors went into delaying updating this fic. First of all -- the pandemic. I am an essential worker. I am tired, and stressed. Yes, still. I am tired. I wake up, drive, work, drive, home, eat, sleep. That’s it. My freetime, creativity. mental health, etc. has been at an all time low. Second of all -- life. Soooo much has happened for my little family. My partner and I bought our first home and rescued our absolutely gorgeous puppy from a rescue shelter. It can be a bit hard to find time to write between putting your entire life into boxes, not having any furniture for 3 months and chasing after a puppy. Third -- I honestly felt like I lost my touch with my characters after reading Open Heart 2. The hiatus was understandable but long. There were chapters that were amazing, and heartbreaking and made me feel like I was soooo excited to write them. And then... by the end of Book 2... I felt lost? My favorite characters voices seem muffled. And I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep going. Do I ignore scenes/rewrite them? Would that compromise the premise of my fic? Being a fic that is in addition to the original PB story? I’m still a little lost if I am completely honest. Fourth -- general posting anxiety. Which I try so hard to avoid, and not think of. But comparison games, lack of notes and activity can get to you when you open yourself creatively online.

But messages of encouragement and inquiries into the next update helped! And I thank everyone who checked in on the fic and on me to see what was going on ♡♡♡ Honestly, I felt like I had no time to write, and even if I did I wasn’t motivated or inspired enough to do it. Tonight, I felt good. The news of OH3 was a bit of a kick starter for me I won’t lie. But I want to get back into these character’s heads -- I want to figure out the god damn mess that Jordynne has made for herself with Ethan and Bryce!!

As always any likes, reblogs and comments are very appreciated. If you would like to be added/removed from the tag list please just let me know! It has been a long time since the fic updated so please let me know if you no longer want to be tagged or want to be tagged.

Taglist: @drakewalkerfantasy @owleyes-374 @lahelable @mayah-mahdy @paisleylovergirl @nicquix @emilymay100 @octobereighth @llamasgrl @timmagicktoad @lilyofchoices @msjpuddleduck @mfackenthal @paulfwesley @ccolz88-blog @mindlessdreaminxo @jooous @lapisreviewsstuff @choicesarehard @themingdynasty @omgjasminesimone @hopelessly-shipper @binny1985 @perriewinklenerdie @jens-diamondchoices @indiacater @chasingrobbie @writingsbymissy @dimitriwife @tacohead13 @amy-choices @mrsmatsuo @checkurwindow @imrookieramsey @bitchloveskcbaseball @mrs-ramsey

Previous Updates: Residency — Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven Part Eight Part Nine Part Ten Part Eleven Part Twelve Part Thirteen Part Fourteen Part Fifteen Part Sixteen Part Seventeen Part Eighteen Part Nineteen

Residency: Second Chances – Part One Part Two Part Three

Bryce stood near the entrance to Edenbrook — shuffling from one foot to another. Both hands were wrapped around paper coffee cups — one of which he took a careful sip of.

So he had stopped to get her a latte from her favorite café. He knew she would probably be in a huge rush to get to work early and wouldn’t stop to get one. He wanted her day to start off right. At least he hadn’t shown up to the apartment.

Well, the thought had crossed his mind but he had quickly pushed it away. This was about being her friend. He just wanted Jordynne to have a good first day.

His dark eyes kept flicking towards the subway stairs, waiting patiently for that familiar blonde head to come bobbing up. Placing one of the cups on top of the other, he balanced them carefully as he dug into his jeans pocket for his phone. Maybe she had texted —

“Oh Bryce — hey!” His ears perked up at the voice, and was met with a warm smile. The smile that occupied his waking dreams. He liked being the reason for that smile.

“Hey Jordy!” God, why did he sound so breathless.

“Happy first day as a resident!” He shoved his phone back into his pocket, before grabbing onto her latte and extending it out, “I thought you should be extra caffeinated for your day, so I got you...” But his voice trailed off as he realized she was already clutching a travel mug to her chest. “Oh you already got one.”

“Uh, yeah,” Her smile turned sheepish, “I had the exact same thought process as you actually.”

“Heh—,” he chuckled, “I guess I know you pretty well.”

Her green eyes flashed with a look he couldn’t quite read, “Guess you do.” “Well, do you want it still...?” He held out the lukewarm latte again, unsure what to do with it.

“Hey, I’m still Jordynne Holland. When have I ever denied extra caffeine?” Bryce’s white teeth bit his lip as they stretched into a smile. He handed her the cup — their fingers grazing slightly.

“Thanks.”

They fell into step behind the other roommates, trailing into the hospital. As they walked together, Bryce suddenly struggled to find what to say. He had never been one to stay quiet — usually he was the outspoken one. But now he just watched her grasp onto her two coffee cups tightly, her eyes low as she walked into Edenbrook.

Once they made there way into the staff locker room, they separated to their own lockers. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she carefully sat her two drinks down, before grabbing her white coat. She slipped it on effortlessly, before wrapping her stethoscope around her neck. Flipping her blonde ponytail out, she turned to speak with Sienna — her voice to low for him to hear.

Jordynne looked amazing — her lean legs and hips wrapped in a deep green skirt that showed off just enough that it was both sexy and tasteful. Her high necked pale blouse brought out her olive skin. She could be the woman on the front of the pamphlets they hand out to pre-med undergrads. She already was the doctor she was aspiring to be — and he knew she would fit in well with the Diagnostics team. He thought of Ramsey — his pressed trousers, and leather dress shoes. His watch that probably cost more then Bryce’s car. Grinding his molars, he looked down at the wrinkles trousers and Nikes in his hands. Peeling his shirt off he tossed it gently into his locker, letting out a sigh.

But he quickly masked it as Jordynne went to leave the locker room. “Hey,” He caught her attention before she went to leave, “You’re gonna kill it, Holland.”

“Thanks Lahela,” She gave him that smile again. The one that made everything flutter.

“I’ll save you a seat at lunch?”

“Oh—“ Her eyebrows furrowed slightly in the middle, “I’m not sure how my day will look with the team... I’ll play it by ear?” She offered, looking a little guilty.

“Yeah— yeah of course...” His voice sounded a little strained. “We’ll catch you later.”

She nodded at him, pushing her hands into her pockets, “Okay, yeah. See you guys in the atrium,” She called out over her shoulder, her blonde ponytail swinging as she walked away.

Bryce’s brown eyes flickered over to the rest of her roommates, who were all watching with slightly worried looks. It was starting to settle in. Maybe this second year, this second chance — was the beginning of everything changing. ________________________________________________________________ He had originally come up here to get accustomed to his new surroundings. Get a lay of the land. The board had spared no expense with the new wing expansion — and the Diagnostic team’s new office was no joke.

Ethan was standing across the hall from the room — staring into the room through the glass walls. Everything inside was sleek, shiny and new. His hands were bunched up fists in the pockets of his trousers, and the tie around his neck felt a little tight. Had he forgotten what all of this was like while he was away?

Thirty minutes he had stood there.

Thirty.

Standing there and imagining where he would sit at the table — discussing with the team, leading them to the right diagnosis. Researching at the desk, pouring over the hundred books that was supplied for them in there.

But the picture in his head was fuzzy. Even in his imagination Ethan felt like something didn’t feel right. What was it?

The team? No. Mirani and Hirata always did excellent work. He could rely on them.

Was it that Naveen was missing? So many of his biggest successes with the team was with Naveen. And he definitely felt his absence this past year. He had also never really adjusted to the idea of being the team lead for the department. It was thrust upon him, not once but twice. And both times he had been unprepared. Being a leader wasn’t exactly what he had always hoped for in his career.

Ethan’s thick brows were furrowed as he thought, the gears in his mind whirling. Why had he been staring at the office for thirty minutes? What was stopping him from going inside and just doing his damn work? That’s what he came back for — so what was his trepidation?

The light flickering on in the diagnostic teams office brought him back to reality. The room was illuminated, the white light shining through the glass walls and spilling into the hall.

There she was.

Jordynne stood at the entrance of the office, her back facing him as she took it all in. She hadn’t notice him from across the large hallway. Ethan stepped back into the shadows — hoping she wouldn’t see him capturing the moment. A silent laugh escaped him as he watched her set not one, but two coffee cups down onto the table. His lips remained upturned as he watched her wander deeper into the room, running her fingers over the smooth surface of the whiteboard. She had a soft smile on her face as she looked around her.

“Good morning Dr. Ramsey!”

Ethan almost hissed at the sound of the cheerful voice next time. Looking over he saw Dr. Baz Mirani standing next to him with a wide smile spread across his face.

“Morning,” He grumbled, looking back to his view of the diagnostics office where Jordynne had started to settle in.

“That’s Dr. Holland right?” Baz followed his line of sight, and watching her for a moment. “Are you going to head in?” The young doctor questioned, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

He cleared his throat, before shaking his head, “You go ahead.”

The young man didn’t think anything of it, and marched over into the office. Ethan could hear their muffled voices through the glass as they introduced each other.

He noticed the next person that came up to him — Dr. Hirata. She gave him a nod, before pausing for a moment and staring at him in the dark side of the corridor. He could tell she was calculating, attempting to deduce what was keeping him out of their new office. But her face remained neutral and she turned on her heel and headed into the room.

Maybe there were too many variables for her to figure it out too.

His blue eyes watched as the three colleagues got familiar with each other, shaking hands and pleasantries. Maybe this would be a perfect time to go in. He had missed the awkward introductions — the worst part was over. He just had to go into the room.

Running his hands over his white coat, Ethan crossed the hall and stepped into the brand new office.

“Introductions done?” He asked, his thick brows raised. He glanced over them quickly, not long enough to make any eye contact. “Great. We’ve got work to do.” The glass door behind him gently hissed as it closed — leaving them all in the office together.

Ok. First step done.

“We have an incoming patient from Manhattan Presbyterian.” The trio slid apart to make room for him as he marched to the board, pining up an abdominal CT scan.

Jordynne, June and Baz grabbed a spot at the circular wooden table in the middle of the room.

“Can you describe the patient?”

“Male, aged 45. Asian American.” He watched as Jordynne took out her trusty little black notebook, and started jotting down notes.

“Symptoms?”

“He presented with a fever, vomiting and diarrhea, and was treated for the flu. He returned several days later with enlarged lymph nodes, abdominal pain, and a rash on his shoulder.” Grabbing onto a black marker, he started to write the known symptoms down on the white board. With his back turned to the group for a moment, he let the corners of his lips turn up for a split second. This felt good. “What did his former doctors think it was?”

“Hodgkin lymphoma.” He made sure he kept his face neutral -- to not give any answers away.

June scoffed, “Amateurs. And his blood?”

He almost laughed.

As the conversation started to amp up, Ethan slipped back into his role on the diagnostics team easier then he had imagined. Bouncing off of each other during the differential — he had missed this.

Then he realized Jordynne hadn’t said anything. She was sitting in her chair, looking slightly awestruck. But she was still writing notes diligently and observing them going back and forth.

“Six months ago, however, he was admitted for flu-like symptoms and a rash on his arm.” Ethan continued, drawing his eyes away from her and focusing back on the conversation.

“That could be the key. Did they biopsy it?” Baz asked, eyebrows raised and face hopeful.

He pursed his lips, “They didn’t.”

“Any history of dermatitis?”

“Was he on any medication prior to being admitted?”

June and Baz asked one after the other, going through their mental lists. “No and no.”

“It could be cutaneous Kikuchi disease.” Hirata suggested. But she didn't do suggestions -- she diagnosed.

Interesting.

June had gotten there first. But she was always like that. It was a race for her.

“The symptoms do add up.” Dr. Mirani nodded, giving his colleague a look of approval.

“I agree.”

There was a knock on the door, and they looked up to see Danny on the other side of the glass. Ethan waved him in where he announced the patient's arrival at Edenbrook.

“Excellent. Dr. Holland,” He spoke directly to her for the first time that morning —holding his breath as he waited for her reaction. But her face remained neutral, looking up at him through her lashes as she waited for him to finish, “Run a biopsy on the patient’s rash. If we’re correct, we’ll begin the patient on a treatment of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories and prednisone.”

He noticed her swallow for a moment, listening to her instructions. “And if we’re wrong?”

“We’ll re-evaluate.”

“But we won’t need to,” June said confidently, leaning across the table at Jordynne with a wink.

“Team dismissed. I’ll page you if I need you again today.” He turned around, going back to the white board to add their final notes and treatment plan.

Out of his peripheral vision he saw Baz put a gentle hand on Jordynne’s shoulder. He lowered his head to speak in her softly, “I made the same face my first few days on the team. You’ll get used to it.”

Ethan crossed over to his desk to find the patient's file. Rummaging in his pockets, he found his glasses and slid them on. Without looking up from his file, he spoke to Jordynne who had remained in the room, “After you’re done with our patient, you can see Ines and Zaid for further assignments. You’ll be balancing your work here with your usual resident duties. Now that you’re in your second year, that will include rotations at the free clinic.”

“Yes, Dr. Ramsey.” Her voice was so professional, so trained. He had never heard her sound like that. It was like she had practiced.

He heard the sound of her crossing the room, and stepping towards the door. But then she hesitated. “Will we always diagnose a patient without seeing them?” She asked.

“No, but we’re often asked for help by other hospitals all over the country, so it’s a good habit to keep our blind diagnosis skills sharp.” He finally looked up from his file, using his finger as a bookmark in it. But when he looked over to, his stomach flipped slightly as he found that her green eyes already staring at him.

He could see her hesitation, and maybe some nerves. She had just been thrown into the deep end -- and it seemed she was struggling to stay afloat.

“Is everything alright, Jordynne?”

He couldn’t help himself. Plus, it was his responsibility to ensure her success on the team now. It was apart of his job to check in on her.

“Actually...,” She made sure the glass door closed, before stepping further into the room, “Could we talk?” Her fingers were knotted together in front of her -- she looked nervous, and vulnerable.

Ethan studied her for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek, “About the job? Or about us?”

Her eyebrows furrowed for a moment, like she was in pain. But it was for just for the smallest moment -- he had barely even caught it. “The job.”

Placing the file down, he pulled a chair from the center table out for her where they sat down together. He adjusted his glasses on the crook of his nose, before settling into his chair. “I’m all yours,” He said, folding his hands carefully on top of each other on the table as he waited for her to speak up.

“Dr. Ramsey...," A flicker of doubt crossed her face, before she opened her mouth, "How are you sure you made the right diagnosis?"

Grabbing the file in front of him, he pulled out the patient's previous charts and placed them in front of them. “In medicine, the most logical answer is usually the correct one. In this case, the most obvious answer was Hodgkin lymphoma.”

“But the other hospital had already eliminated Hodgkin lymphoma.” She finished for him.

“Correct. Which allowed us to take it off the board and considered the next most logical answer.” He pointed back over his shoulder to the symptoms he had written on the board in his chicken scratch, “The patient had a persistent rash. Paired with the symptoms present, the most logical answer is Kikuchi disease." He met her eye easily across the table, before matching her vulnerability, "But as to how I’m so sure, I’m not. Which is why you’ll be running a biopsy. We need to trust in our diagnostic instincts, but the second we let arrogance overrule the results, we fail as doctors.”

“So I should use logic... and be humble?” Her eyebrows were tugging in the middle as she processed his advice.

“And read journals. I want you to turn yourself into a walking disease encyclopedia. You can’t diagnose the patient if you don’t study up. If the patients we saw had more common diseases... they’d never have been referred to us in the first place.”

“Got it.” She nodded -- eyeing the bookshelves behind them that were filled with textbooks.

“So what did you think of the team?" He asked curiously, "It was the three of us under Naveen last year, until he put himself out to pasture.”

A soft chuckle escaped her, “You mean became Chief of Medicine?”

He smiled at the sound, “Precisely.”

“Well, we just met but I think I liked Baz.” Jordynne offered, pursing her lips.

“He’s hard to dislike. Walking proof that genetics aren’t everything.”

“When did he join the team?”

“A couple years ago, when Zaid began his residency. He sought a position here to be closer to his brother.”

Her eyebrows raised in surprise, “Can’t believe Zaid would be okay with that.”

“Supposedly, the old chief cleared it with Zaid before he approved the transfer. But I heard a rumor that it was Baz, dressed up pretending to be Zaid.”

Her mouth fell open, “He wouldn’t!”

He shrugged, a cheeky smile spreading across his face. “I don’t pay any mind to rumors.”

She smirked back at him -- and he could feel the nervousness and ice melting between them. They could do this.

Two colleagues conversing normally. This was fine.

“So if I want to get on Baz’s good side, how do I go about that?” She leaned in a bit more towards him, putting her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her fist.

Ethan thought for a moment before replying, “Baz is earnest to a fault. He respects authenticity more than anything so... as much as I despise saying anything so incredibly banal, my advice would be... “be yourself”,” He grimaced as the words left his mouth.

“Oof—“ She chuckled, “That must have hurt to say aloud.” She knew him well. “That’s why you’ll never hear it again.”

She let out another laugh, but this one sounded more sad. Then a sigh escaped her, and she started picking at her lip, “I thought I was so ready for this year. How do I feel like a clueless intern all over again?”

“Because you are clueless, relatively speaking.”

She frowned, “Gee, thanks.”

His stomach dropped -- that's not what he meant. “It wasn't an insult," He scrambled to get out, "You get to spend the second year of your residency in a small room with over three decades of collective medical knowledge and experience. Learn from it. Be inspired to become a better doctor from it.” He looked up, and found her already looking at him again. His thick brows furrowed, “What is it?”

“Oh uh... your glasses...," Her words trailed off as she looked at him, "They make you look smart.” She sounded a little breathless.

He did his best to ignore how that made him feel, the blush that might have been creeping up on his cheeks. So he hid between cheek and tongue. “You’ve caught me. The illusion behind my status. Without these I’m a simpering moron.”

The pair was quiet for a beat, before bursting out laughing. As they laughed, she casually tapped his hand with hers. “Thank you,” She spoke again, but this time her voice was quiet.

Her fingers had lingered on his hand, so she gave it a squeeze. They were cold on his warm skin.

Ethan's jaw set as he felt those familiar sparks. Jordynne...” His voice was a warning. It was only the first hour of their first day.

“I know.” She said carefully, but she looked down at the table.

“We’ll be okay. We’ll make it work.”

He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.

“Yeah,” She breathed out.

He moved his thumb gently across her fingers, daring to give her just that smallest bit of comfort. But the sound of the glass door whooshing open caused him to rip his hand away.

“Whoops! Forgot my pager! That could have been very bad!” Baz strolled back into the office -- oblivious to what he had just walked in on.

Both Ethan and Jordynne bolted out of their chairs, stepping away from each other.

“Hmm. Yes. It’s right over there on the table.” Ethan pointed before shoving his guilty hands into his lab coat.

“I’ll get those tests run.” Jordynne had moved to the door, her arms crossed over her chest and face flushing red with embarrassment.

“Excellent. Thank you.” He said with a nod, watching as she turned on her heel and marched down the hallway.

Why was nothing ever easy with Jordynne Holland?

Would this year be any different?

_______________________________________________________________

"Cholecystitis." Jordynne said as she finished adding it to the whiteboard in the diagnostics room. Her perfect block letters standing out drastically against Dr. Ramsey's messy scratch. "Inflamed gull bladder which explains the abdominal pain after eating. Which is entirely separate from Kikuchi disease."

She turned around, capping the pen with a confident smile. Esme was standing near the door, watching the scene unfurl with crossed arms.

"I have to say, I'm not sure I would have spotted that." June spoke first -- looking mildly impressed.

"Nice catch, Jordynne." Baz gave her a big smile.

"Indeed. Especially since we had been diagnosing based on reports, not our own face-to-face interviews. Dr. Holland's specialty has always been listening to her patients. Well done." He gave her a nod, a smile threatening to show on his face.

"It wasn't just me. Dr. Ortega assisted." She nodded to her intern at the door. She knew that drove Ethan crazy -- passing along credit to her colleagues. But Esme deserved it.

"Hey," Esme nodded her head at the trio from the corner of the room, attempting a smile.

"So this is your intern?" Ramsey stepped forward, eyebrows raised. "Well, Dr. Ortega...," He sized her up for a moment, before moving his steely eyes over to Jordynne. "Dr. Holland's one of our best. Consider yourself lucky."

Jordynne felt warmth spread in her chest -- feeling proud of herself. High praise from Dr. Ramsey -- everything between them aside.

"I do, Dr. Ramsey."

"Keep me updated on his treatment." Ethan asked politely, before filing out of the room with the rest of the diagnostics team.

"So I guess you're pretty good at this." Her intern looked at her with a little smirk. "You saw for yourself, I learned from the best. Edenbrook has some of the best doctors in America, and you'll learn from them all. And not just the attendings, but your fellow interns too. I wouldn't have made it through without my friends."

"You telling me to what... be more social?" Esme looked up at her -- her face filled with doubt.

She shrugged, the corners of her lips tugging up, "It can't hurt."

"It definitely can."

"Donahue's from the other night? That's where everyone goes. But first, let's get you back to your patients." Jordynne started to shuffle out of the office, but Esme's voice stopped her.

"Right... Hey, Dr. Holland? Thanks for not bailing on me. Gotta say, that's a new one." She sounded genuine.

"Sure thing, Ortega. I got your back."

This year could be different.

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xseildnasterces · 3 years

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if.

I’ve never been a fan of ice-cream. I remember when I was younger everyone thought I was a complete weirdo (not just because I didn’t like ice-cream…), but it was certainly something that people thought was strange. However, there is one particular flavour of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream that I absolutely ADORE. It’s a ‘special’ flavour that is only available for very limited periods, so imagine my absolute excitement when I was trying to find something to order for dessert yesterday on my delivery app and I saw that it was currently the special flavour!? I ordered a full tub for the freezer and also a scoop to eat last night. It is literally the best flavour of ice-cream I have ever had, and I love it so much! It certainly cheered me up.

I had Finnish this morning but felt completely lost. I felt like I didn’t know anything and just didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I just need to do some more work at home and actually spend more time on it, but considering the other two students in my class have Finnish partners, I cannot be too surprised that I am not learning as fast as they are. They can practice everyday and already have bilingual children or have lived in Finland, so of course, this makes a huge difference.

The weather was beautiful yesterday, but as always, I was in a bit of a weekend lull and spent the whole day doing absolutely nothing. I was feeling a little down for a number of reasons. My sister is home and being an absolute nightmare daughter and driving my parents crazy. Minutes after arriving home and surprising my parents she went mental about her room and just exploded like a volcano. To say she had been away for one year and this was her attitude when she returned is just ridiculous. I’m surprised my parents didn’t tell her to just get back on a plane and go back to Bangladesh. I feel sad that they are having to deal with her but also jealous that I am not there. It almost feels like someone is in my place – as stupid as that may sound. I’m anxious for when I do go home because I know it’s not going to be the same. Don’t get my wrong. I am very pleased she is home and safe, but her attitude sucks and I know that we will argue like hell when I am at home. The last few times I have been home have been some of the best in my life, but knowing that my sister will be there next time I go home makes me sad in one way, because I know it will not be the same. This also means Christmas will not be the same, and the last two Christmas’ really have been the best I can remember from my adult life. R hasn’t replied to my voice messages since Thursday which also makes me feel a little down. Although I do not believe I have done anything wrong, my anxiety does not recognise that and believe I did indeed do something wrong. Not only that, but it just increases my feelings of loneliness which really are rife right now. Feelings of loneliness are also coming from D not replying as actively as usual, and H, M and F going out for days out without me. I feel horrendous feeling sad about this. They are a family and I am always telling H to ensure they do things as a family and not with me because I do not want to take up all their time, yet when I see they have been out and adventuring somewhere I feel sad that I was not invited. When I think about it properly, I do not believe I am sad about not being invited, I am sad that I do not have friends to do it with.

I have noticed that I am feeling sad a lot at the moment. I feel very in my head and full of confusion. I definitely miss physical touch from just about anyone, in terms of hugs or just being held. I really miss just being held and comforted, but I also miss making-out and sex. Both of which I have not indulged in for almost two years (or more?)… blah. For some reason this is something that has really been on my mind recently and I am not too sure why. It’s just ‘there’ in my head, and… nothing helps to make it go away. Nothing.

My face hurts today. My skin is still a mess despite my new skincare prescriptions. I know it will take about three months to see any difference, but regardless its painful. Having weird lumps on your face, a.k.a. cystic acne is just so sore and attempting to pop then to relive the pressure doesn’t only not work, but also makes the whole thing worse. Yet, it’s really hard to restrain.

I feel that this post is very much like little thoughts and bits ‘n’ pieces just being thrown together, and I guess it sort of is. I am missing travel so very much. I want to explore, and I feel as though I have been tied down with a ball and chain for the last year and beyond. I know most people have felt the same, yet I still feel incredibly sad and depressed about it. I feel frustrated, anxious, agitated and more than anything just so fatigued. I feel a constant sense of exhaustion each and every day. If I do not make myself to into the office during the week, I could very happily lay down on the sofa and do nothing else but sleep. I had my monthly massage on Wednesday which certainly made me feel better, but I also ended up feeling pressured into buying some melatonin gummies to aid my sleep. I’m usually not someone easily pressured into buying things, but for some reason I was not in the mood to make the situation awkward, so I bought them anyway. I think they are helping slightly with aiding my sleep. Perhaps they are in fact just acting as a placebo, but either way I appear to be falling asleep early in the evening so that has to be worth something right?

In two weeks, I will be fully vaccinated and hope I will feel a little safer doing things. Of course, not right away, nor directly after the two weeks have passed to ensure utmost immunity. Yet it will ease my fear whenever I am able to fly home, and it will ease my fear of spending so much time in the office. It will also ease my fear of removing my mask for a couple of seconds whilst I take a sip of my drink whilst walking down the street, and it will ease my fear of just doing things in general. This can only be positive. It may also help my poor little dry hands that have certainly become a victim of the pandemic with my excessive handwashing and hand sanitising every single time I move.

* * * * * * *

To prove my point regarding my constant need to sleep… I wrote all of the above around 2 hours ago, put the laptop down for five minutes and found myself asleep for over an hour. I just can’t help it. I honestly find it hard to get through the day without having a nap to reset and enable me to feel more focused and alive. I have also woken up to absolutely crazy weather. The windows are shaking, and the rain is hitting the windows at full force. The week has been wonderful regarding weather. It has been so hot and sunny and now this. I have no idea what is going on. It honestly feels like I woke up some place else! As much as I hate the rain, it certainly makes me feel much less guilty about not doing anything and spending my day indoors doing very little.

It’s less than a month until my birthday. This time last year it was a weird feeling to be celebrating a birthday during a pandemic, now it seems the norm. My birthday was made special last year by a number of people, yet I’m unsure if that will be the same this year. L is no longer my ‘friend’ due to them ghosting me, yet everyone else who made my day special will still be doing what they can to do the same this year. I know it sucks for everyone to celebrate their birthday during the pandemic, but even more so here when I am so far from everyone I love, and I live completely alone. I think in a way it emphasises the loneliness I have been feeling throughout this period.

This has been such a random post. I feel like I wanted to write, and had so much today, yet when it came to put ‘pen to paper’ I had no idea what I wanted to say, nor how to. I guess I feel a little overwhelmed – yet do not know why. Let’s hope it’s a good week. I’m ready for something exciting to happen, because right now, life is just bobbing along and as I said in therapy this week – I feel like by the end of this we will have lost at least two years of our lives. Even more annoying, is the fact it was the last two years of my 20s. There was so much I wanted to do and ‘cross off my list’ before turning 30, and I know I’m not there yet, but it’s certainly coming and I feel as though I will spend time grieving for the time I have lost. I know some people will think that is dramatic, and perhaps it is, but at the end of the day we will most likely have lost two years of life, and losing two years of the ability to do anything you love is something to be sad about.

[Blog title: If - Lucy Spraggan].

#lucy spraggan #if #me #life #update #personal #diary #journal #write #writing #thoughts #feelings #memories #memory #thought #feeling

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writenaw · 4 years

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starting august with a good shred!

oh, tumblr, we got lots of things to catch up to. so, long post ahead.

i started my weight loss/ fitness journey late april this year. my initial weight was nearly 60kg/ 130lbs with only a height of 5'2"/ 159cm; now after 3months, i weigh 47.8kg/ 105lbs and with plus half a centimetre in my height. i lost around 25lbs, and i swear i have never felt this kind of fulfillment in my life. now, let me tell you why i started in the first place.

february and july 2020

i was never too fat nor too thin my whole life, it had always been in between and just right. that's before my life went on a ruckus. last october, i went through the deepest trench- stress, depression, problems. binge eating became my getaway. aside from that, last january, i learned i have pcos and it was the very reason why i gained weight fast despite being physically active due to commuting everyday to our univ. i gained a lot of pounds in less than a month. but i never really cared about how my body looked until i received series of body shaming by several people i know. loathing myself, i remember crying by just looking at the mirror.

january and july 2020

being stuck at home this quarantine made me reflect on myself. i'm not saying i'm thankful of the pandemic, but because of it i had the time to focus on my self-improvement. i accepted myself, this urged me to redeem myself from my downfall. i did exercising everyday with the aid of a fitness program from a mobile app i downloaded (i shifted to youtube after a month), i also did intermittent fasting and a balanced calorie deficit diet, cut out my sugar intake, and skipped fatty oily processed food. finally, i am up to just maintaining my current weight. upon reaching my goal, i can now look back and be proud of what i achieved within myself. that was my weight loss journey, now let's talk about my workout session for today.

anxious for days, i got no will and drive to do my workouts fully. today was the momentum i've been waiting for. surprised bc i am energized to do a workout, i proceeded despite the fact i ate very little for the whole day (just 2 buns of bread and black coffee for my first meal; small amount of cookies for my snack; steeped tea, and 2 boiled eggs for my last).

i had a total of 35 mins of full body workout with weights. it consisted of a 10-min standing ab workout, 15-min full body workout with weights, and 10-min cooldown exercises. it really felt good right after, it's quite a while since i felt this way after a workout. looking forward for more energized shreds this month ♥.

look how happy i am after the workout ♥ now, i'm gotta go get some sleep!!

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darkgeminisworld · 3 years

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This is gonna be a rant about a probably toxic friend so if you don't wanna read it, this is a heads up.

Okay so for several reasons, most of them being that I need to move on, I decided to write this lengthy rant about a friend I'm pretty sure will not be a friend of mine for much longer, which sucks bc he's almost my only irl friend but also feels good bc he's exhausting and I'm pretty sure he's also toxic.

I've met this guy like 6 and a half years ago, and we pretty much bonded over shared interests pretty fast. The first thing that bothered me was that he'd always be late, which would be absolutely fine if he'd been honest about it. But writing that it's five minutes until he's there and then showing up 30 minutes after that, or writing "I'm on your doorstep" and taking another ten minutes to show up, almost every single time, isn't, especially since I strained to be on time the first months (meaning I'd be too early bc my brain only does too early or too late, nothing in between). And his being late wasn't just 20 or 30 minutes, several times he was over an hour late. Oh, and once when we had agreed to meet he legit wasn't home and I waited around 2 hours, which I really should have held a grudge for back then and been way more pissed at him.

The second thing that bothered me was that he was way too nosy. He'd ask if I'm free to meet and play video games or whatever and whenever I said no he'd ask what I'm doing and if I can't manage my time another way to make time for him. And the thing is, not only did I not ask several times after he told me that he's busy that day, but I actively told him, several times over the course of about the last two years, that it bothers me and asked him to tone it down. My problem here is only that he didn't stop after I asked him to, bc before I told him and asked him, how was he supposed to know.

Coming out to him went well, though he did ask me whether I'm into him, which... No. Obviously it could've gone a lot worse, but still.

The next is more a small annoyance, a small itch, although it might have been a warning sign. He couldn't handle defeat very well. In most video games he was better, but he low-key aggressively denied it when I pointed out the win-lose ratio in my all-time favourite video game series and he'd try to cheat at other games. If it was only about him being competitive I'd understand, but that doesn't mean trying to rewrite the past by blatantly lying about it and ridiculing me for pointing out that that's bullshit, especially since it's only games, played for the fun of it.

We also went to the cinema sometimes, though if it had been up to him it'd have been way more often and that's another point where he really didn't let it go after getting a no. Whether he wanted to watch a horror movie after being told, several times, that I really don't like horror movies, or just the general question of whether we'd be going to the cinema, he'd ask again and ask what I'm doing, why did I not want to go, would another time be good, couldn't I ask my parents for money (which, to be fair, I could have. But I preferred not to bc back then it was really stressful bc we had to move and renovate and I just didn't wanna add more frustration if that makes sense? Plus I wanted to get my hands on some things, which required to save up) etc. Almost every time we did end up going, it was he who initiated it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wanted to see some of the movies just as badly as he did, but... And if he can't even accept "no" from a friend of several years (also a 100% guy friend as far as he is aware bc I didn't start to address gender issues with him), I'm worried about other contexts with that word. Also we did some kind of text role play (just texting back and forth with OCs inserted into several fantasy works like the Inheritance Cycle, who would parttake in the storyline, no set rulebook or anything) and his characters did some questionable and even outright deplorable things and when I wanted his character to suffer consequences, he always wanted him to get away with it. Like, his idea for one of his characters "pranking" mine in reaction to a prank which in itself was a retaliation to his character's pranks was kidnapping and waterboarding my character. And he kept defending it as a prank and demanded that my character should just forgive his character, like... It really made (and continues to make) me wonder and worry just how much of his darker thoughts I don't know about. And I don't know how accurate it is but I once saw a post with a quote that went along the lines of "man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." (btw I couldn't think of a satisfactory way to phrase it so I ended up looking up the quote and apparently it's from Oscar Wilde)

So I spent a fair amount of time arguing with him over that and trying to explain to the best of my ability why it was wrong, and for some time it went better.

Fast forward a few months to the blm protests or more specifically news coverage of it and info I sent him. He defended cops and blamed the protestors and even justified the atrocities of the cops, so that was the first instance where we had a huge fight. I practically drowned him in links and videos etc and some weeks into that I thought I'd managed to get through to him (Spoiler: I didn't really get through to him) so I kept it in mind but continued to have contact with him and everything (bc at the time I didn't know that I didn't really get through as much as I thought).

From there on it pretty much went downhill. We had been thinking about doing a trip to London for a few days (his idea but at the time I really wanted to go, it was around 2 years ago when I still practically worshipped that one author, she who must not be named) and to this very day he's not letting it go completely. Even though the pandemic puts lots of obstacles in the way and I have more important things to worry about, namely final exams and applications. Even though London is expensive as shit and I still have no way to earn money atm. And about the vacation, I finally canceled last summer (and gave the aforementioned reasons) and he completely lost his shit and got super aggressive, insulted me and tried to guilt-trip me into taking that back and agreeing to still go on that vacation with him. Then we got into another fight where he wanted me to cancel the vacation with my grandparents, which was already planned and booked and everything in order to make time for the vacation I'd already said I don't want to go on with him anymore and aggressively demanded (he didn't ask, he sent a demand and bombarded me with exclamation marks) to know when exactly I'd be going on vacation with them. Then he went offline after I refused and ignored the next few messages I sent him and only replied when I asked "what I'd I reconsidered my stance on the trip?". I mean, baiting him with that definitely was shitty of me, but the result showed that that was basically what he wanted, pressure me into still going on that vacation. That specific conflict had been going on for weeks, bc despite me telling him that it's counterproductive and detrimental to my mental health to increase the pressure and therefore my anxiety about getting a job to pay for the trip, he kept pressuring me while acknowledging that he's giving me lots of pressure and anxiety and even using that against me.

He also didn't acknowledge that most times we try to meet, he goes offline for hours before replying and disappearing again. That would be absolutely fine if he didn't accuse me of doing that, which btw is his standard technique and it took me a long time to realize that. He always tries to shift the blame to make me look like the one at fault, and he always, always demands that I apologize when we had a fight via WhatsApp.

And when I started enforcing my boundaries and telling him to stop asking again and again why I can't meet, what I'm doing, or demanding other explanations, he started to attack me for the kind of language I use, so when I'm ever so slightly sarcastic he immediately latches onto that and creates a new conflict.

But this still isn't all, oh no. He's also basically an ecofascist, and is fully okay with sacrificing social justice to save the environment, completely choosing to ignore that the people he's protecting are the ones at fault and that the ppl who contribute the least are the ones experiencing the hardest ecological consequences.

He's said multiple times that he thinks both sides are equally bad, in the context of left and right in general as well as antifascism and fascism and that he doesn't "condone the oppressed defending themselves with any means necessary" bc that, too, would include violence. He's defending the "right to free speech" even when right-wingers say really disgusting shit, he disagrees with prohibiting demonstrations of ppl who think that Corona is a hoax, he has zero empathy for ppl who are affected, who suffer long-term consequences from infections, not even for ppl who die from it (he literally said "people die anyway, that doesn't justify imprisoning everyone else") and somehow still thinks he has the moral high ground.

And the last bit he did was explaining to me, from his endocisallohet white guy perspective, how I'm "not discriminated against" bc gay ppl in my country can get married (only since 2017 btw) and when I, despite the fact that I shouldn't have had to and that it was a real blow to my mental health, wrote him a message that was almost the length of an essay, he calmly started to question my replies with the detachedness of someone who's discussing whether pineapple belongs on pizza and demanding further explanation. To top it off, he said that marginalized ppl have to always reply to everyone calmly and politely, no matter if it was offensive bc the person asking might be unaware of that. Otherwise, he said, everyone would be right to stop listening to us. Like, he literally said that we don't deserve human rights if we're not licking the boots of our oppressors if that way of thinking is followed through to the end.

I almost forgot, he also thinks that white ppl should have a say in whether something is a racist slur, or whether something is racist in general (we're both white, but at least I'm trying my best to unlearn what my upbringing taught me instead of being the cliché of the white person who goes "how dare you call me racist, I've never been more insulted in my whole life!", which is basically his reaction)

So up until this last fight, I conceded some ground to him to end the fights and keep him as a "friend" not only bc I feel horrible when I imagine losing one of my only irl friends but also bc I was hoping I could get through to him and educate him, to the best of my ability, on how to be a good ally to marginalized people. But the disregard with which he treats my explanations why the way he talked (wrote) about marginalized people is absolutely not okay and the fact that he just told me that he genuinely doesn't see how he did anything wrong even after I explained it to him in detail is just too much to bear at this point.

Oh, and while looking through the chat to prove him a liar I found that apparently, to him a promise is a promise, no matter whether it was given under pressure or voluntarily, so do with that what you will.

#toxic friendship?#rant

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, January 25, 2021

Americans remain sorely divided as Biden’s quest for unity begins (Washington Post) The other day, Stu Ross, a retired elementary school teacher, threw his neighbor out of his townhouse in Harrisburg, Pa. The guy had said he saw nothing wrong with the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The two haven’t spoken since. So when Ross heard President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day appeal for a lowered temperature, for unity, he wasn’t seeing a realistic path to that goal. Ross called the new president’s first speech “soothing and calm.” But unity? Normalcy? A return to how things used to be, to Biden’s idea that “politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire?” Come on. At the dawn of an administration that seeks to return to a less fractious, even boring, politics, many Americans grant that Biden’s quest for a quieter culture is a nice enough goal, but, from the left and right, many say the country’s divisions remain too deep to allow for such a shift. In Topeka, Kan., Ed Myers has no patience for the debate over whether to hold Donald Trump to account for his role in inciting the attempted insurrection at the Capitol. A retired farm equipment factory worker, Myers says he was suspended by Twitter after he wrote that Biden is “an illegitimate president.” The way Myers sees it: That puts him in the same boat as Trump, whose Twitter account was banned for “incitement of violence,” which Myers views as a move to stifle free speech. So no, Myers sees no reason to unify, no cause to rally around the new president to combat the virus and revive the economy.

Barred From U.S. Under Trump, Muslims Exult in Biden’s Open Door (NYT) As the results of the American presidential election rolled in on Nov. 4, a young Sudanese couple sat up through the night in their small town south of Khartoum, eyes glued to the television as state tallies were declared, watching anxiously. They had a lot riding on the outcome. A year earlier, Monzir Hashim had won the State Department’s annual lottery to obtain a green card for the United States only to learn that President Trump, in his latest iteration of the “Muslim ban,” had barred Sudanese citizens from immigrating to the United States. The election seemed to offer a second chance, and when Mr. Trump was eventually declared to have lost the vote, Mr. Hashim and his wife, Alaa Jamal, hugged with joy. Few foreigners welcomed Mr. Biden’s election victory as enthusiastically as the tens of thousands of Muslims who have been locked out of the United States for the past four years as a result of the Trump-era immigration restrictions popularly known as the “Muslim ban.” By one count, 42,000 people were prevented from entering the United States from 2017 to 2019, mostly from Muslim-majority nations like Iran, Somalia, Yemen and Syria. But the human cost of Mr. Trump’s measures, stitched into the fabric of disrupted lives stained with tears and even blood, can hardly be counted—families separated for years; weddings and funerals missed; careers and study plans upended; lifesaving operations that did not take place.

A Digital Dragnet Is Coming For The U.S. Capitol Insurrectionists (HuffPost) The insurrectionists might have been able to leave without being arrested. Their friends and family members may not have turned them in. But slowly but surely, the digital surveillance net is tightening on the supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Most of the cases being unveiled by federal authorities are still originating with tips from the public, and there are hundreds of future defendants who have yet to be identified and charged. But a few of the criminal charges appear to be built on wider-spanning search warrants to social media companies that appear to have given federal authorities investigative leads they’ve used to identify lawbreakers. The cellphones that the Capitol insurrectionists carried with them when they tried to overturn the results of the presidential election through force were feeding information to a variety of tech companies that now hold incriminating information about their users’ violations of the law. “We’re all carrying tiny tracking devices with us all the time, and people aren’t necessarily conscious of the extent to which that information is obtainable from a variety of sources,” said Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at Cato and an expert on technology, privacy and civil liberties.

Mexican president Lopez Obrador tests positive for COVID-19 (AP) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday he had tested positive for COVID-19, amid an intense second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that has pushed the health system of the country’s vast capital city close to saturation. The 67-year-old president said in a tweet that his symptoms were light and he was receiving medical treatment. Lopez Obrador has maintained a busy public schedule during the pandemic and has said he enjoys good health, after suffering a serious heart attack at the age of 60 in 2013.

Spain’s virus surge hits mental health of front-line workers (AP) The unrelenting increase in COVID-19 infections in Spain following the holiday season is again straining hospitals, threatening the mental health of doctors and nurses who have been at the forefront of the pandemic for nearly a year. A study released this month by Hospital del Mar looking at the impact of the spring’s COVID-19 surge on more than 9,000 health workers across Spain found that at least 28% suffered major depression. That is six times higher than the rate in the general population before the pandemic, said Dr. Jordi Alonso, one of the chief researchers. In addition, the study found that nearly half of participants had a high risk of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks or substance- and alcohol-abuse problems. Spanish health care workers are far from the only ones to have suffered psychologically from the pandemic. In China, the levels of mental disorders among doctors and nurses were even higher, with 50% reporting depression, 45% reporting anxiety and 34% reporting insomnia, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.K., a survey released last week by the Royal College of Physicians found that 64% of doctors reported feeling tired or exhausted. One in four sought out mental health support. “It is pretty awful at the moment in the world of medicine,” Dr. Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in a statement accompanying the study. “Hospital admissions are at the highest-ever level, staff are exhausted, and although there is light at the end of the tunnel, that light seems a long way away.”

French Roosters Now Crow With the Law Behind Them (NYT) The crow of a rooster and the ringing of a church bell at dawn. The rumble of a tractor and the smell of manure wafting from a nearby stable. The deafening song of cicadas or the discordant croaking of frogs. Quacking ducks, bleating sheep and braying donkeys. Perennial rural sounds and smells such as these were given protection by French law last week, when lawmakers passed a bill to preserve “the sensory heritage of the countryside,” after a series of widely publicized neighborhood spats in France’s rural corners, many of them involving noisy animals. The disputes symbolized tensions between urban newcomers and longtime country dwellers, frictions that have only grown as the coronavirus pandemic and a string of lockdowns draw new residents to the countryside. Perhaps the most prominent of these noisy animals was Maurice, a rooster in Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, a town on an island off France’s western coast. His owner had been sued by neighbors—regular vacationers in the area—because he crowed too loudly. Politicians and thousands of petitioners rushed to the Gallic rooster’s defense, and a court eventually ruled in 2019 that Maurice, who died last summer at the age of six, was well within his rights. It is too late for Maurice. But his successor, Maurice II, can now crow with the full-throated confidence of someone who has the law on their side.

Davos ski resort eerily quiet without economic talkfest this year (Reuters) Student protesters who urged world leaders at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos to “Stop (f)lying to us” must be pleased this year, at least as far as the flying is concerned. The streets of the little Alpine town that welcomed around 3,000 business chiefs, political thinkers and state leaders for last year’s annual meeting lie deserted. Discussions have moved online, starting Monday, and COVID-19 restrictions are also keeping regular tourists away. “Look around, it’s empty. Normally, all hotels would be fully booked at this time,” Reto Branschi, head of Davos Klosters tourism, told Reuters in an interview this week. There are no helicopters patrolling the skies, no protesters trying to outwit security forces sealing off the Alpine resort. But not everybody is sad about the lack of buzz. “Complete peace and quiet,” a local woman wearing a mask said. “I don’t miss it at all.”

Trapped for 2 weeks, 11 workers rescued from China gold mine (AP) Eleven workers trapped for two weeks inside a Chinese gold mine were brought safely to the surface on Sunday, a landmark achievement for an industry long-blighted by disasters and high death tolls. Hundreds of rescue workers and officials stood at attention and applauded as the workers were brought up from the mine in Qixia, a jurisdiction under Yantai in the eastern coastal province of Shandong. The cause of the accident is under investigation but the explosion was large enough to release 70 tons of debris that blocked the shaft, disabling elevators and trapping workers underground. Such protracted and expensive rescue efforts are relatively new in China’s mining industry, which used to average 5,000 deaths per year. Increased supervision has improved safety, although demand for coal and precious metals continues to prompt corner-cutting. A new crackdown was ordered after two accidents in mountainous southwestern Chongqing last year killed 39 miners.

U.S. carrier group enters South China Sea amid Taiwan tensions (Reuters) A U.S. aircraft carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has entered the South China Sea to promote “freedom of the seas”, the U.S. military said on Sunday, at a time when tensions between China and Taiwan have raised concern in Washington. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement the strike group entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the same day Taiwan reported a large incursion of Chinese bombers and fighter jets into its air defence identification zone in the vicinity of the Pratas Islands. The U.S. military said the carrier strike group was in the South China Sea, a large part of which is claimed by China, to conduct routine operations “to ensure freedom of the seas, build partnerships that foster maritime security”. China has repeatedly complained about U.S. Navy ships getting close to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan all have competing claims.

Israel targets flights, religious scofflaws, as virus rages (AP) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel will be closing its international airport to nearly all flights, while Israeli police clashed with ultra-Orthodox protesters in several major cities and the government raced to bring a raging coronavirus outbreak under control. The entry of highly contagious variants of the virus, coupled with poor enforcement of safety rules in ultra-Orthodox communities, has contributed to one of the world’s highest rates of infections. Experts say that a lack of compliance with safety regulations in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox sector has been a major factor in the spread of the virus. Throughout the pandemic, many major ultra-Orthodox sects have flouted safety regulations, continuing to open schools, pray in synagogues and hold mass weddings and funerals despite broader lockdown orders. This has contributed to a disproportionate infection rate: The ultra-Orthodox community accounts for over one-third of Israel’s coronavirus cases, despite making up just over 10% of the population.

Arab Spring exiles look back 10 years after Egypt uprising (AP) The Egyptians who took to the streets on Jan. 25, 2011, knew what they were doing. They knew they risked arrest and worse. But as their numbers swelled in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, they tasted success. Police forces backed off, and within days, former President Hosni Mubarak agreed to demands to step down. But events didn’t turn out the way many of the protesters envisioned. A decade later, thousands are estimated to have fled abroad to escape the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi that is considered even more oppressive. The significant loss of academics, artists, journalists and other intellectuals has, along with a climate of fear, hobbled any political opposition. Human Rights Watch estimated in 2019 that there were 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. The Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Egypt third, behind China and Turkey, in detaining journalists. El-Sissi maintains Egypt has no political prisoners. The arrest of a journalist or a rights worker makes news roughly every month. Many people have been imprisoned on terrorism charges, for breaking a ban on protests or for disseminating false news. Others remain in indefinite pretrial detentions.

Severe winds wreck homes, displace thousands in Mozambique (Reuters) Severe winds and heavy rains wrecked thousands of buildings, ruined crops and displaced almost 7,000 people in Mozambique over the weekend, officials said in their first detailed report on the disaster. Tropical cyclone Eloise hit Mozambique’s Sofala coastal province on Saturday morning before weakening and heading inland to dump rain on Zimbabwe, eSwatini—formerly known as Swaziland—and South Africa. The region’s Buzi district had been particularly hard hit with wind speeds of up to 150 kph.

Raising kids bilingual can make them more attentive and efficient as adults (CNBC) Adults who grew up speaking two different languages can shift their attention between different tasks quicker than those who pick up a second language later in life, according to a new study. This is just one of many cognitive benefits of being bilingual. Research has shown that bilingual kids are constantly switching between two languages in their brain, which increases “cognitive flexibility,” the ability to switch between thinking about different concepts or multiple concepts at once, and “selective attention abilities,” the mental process of focusing on one task or object at a time. Other studies have shown that bilingual children can complete mental puzzles quicker and more efficiently than those who only speak one language. The reason? Speaking two languages requires “executive functioning,” which are higher-level cognitive skills like planning, decision making, problem solving and organization. Basically, this task is a workout for the brain. The mental benefits of starting a new language early appear to last even as children grow into adulthood.

#headlines #news

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giapism · 4 years

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I took a Harvard course on dealing with pandemics. Here’s what I learned about the Corona Virus.

A couple of weeks ago, I enrolled in an online course named “Lessons from Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic” from Harvard University in hope of gaining a more educated standpoint on how to deal with the current COVID-19 situation.

In this post, I’ll combine what I’ve learned in the course with my own research and observations into lessons applicable to COVID-19 in 5 sections: 1) A comparison of COVID-19 to Ebola, the most recent pandemic; 2) Trust and Community Engagement as essential elements for success in the fight against pandemics; 3) What you can do as an individual to fight COVID-19; 4) What nations can do to fight COVID-19 and 5) Helpful Resources. Feel free to read all or skip to the sections that interest you the most.

1. “Not enough people die from Corona for it to be dangerous! Ebola’s death rate was way higher!”

Opening up the long post, let’s talk about how COVID-19 has been continually compared to past epidemics and how these comparisons seem to make sense, but really don’t. With the overall mortality rate of COVID-19 at only 4% compared to the double digits of its predecessors, many people—like the young man below—are skeptical of whether it’s really that dangerous at all.

The tweet then follows with a specific comparison of COVID-19′s then 3.4% mortality rate to the 2014 outbreak of Ebola’s 50% mortality rate in attempt to downplay COVID-19′s dangers and justify OP’s “you only live once” mentality.

Looking at this gap, COVID-19′s dangers couldn’t possibly compare to past outbreaks, right? Well... not quite. While the statistics are correct, the way they’re used here completely disregards other important factors regarding the context of how these diseases are spread, making it hard to compare whether one is “more dangerous” than the other at all.

If you really want to compare, you need a holistic comparison of the contexts, resources available, responses and much more. I’ll give a few examples below to show how the two epidemics are different:

A. International and Local Response

In case of the 2014 Ebola epidemic, WHO took extremely long to declare the situation an international emergency. The first Ebola cases hit in December 2013, but only 8 months later did WHO announce “emergency” status. By then, with no funds/aid to buy medical equipment and no volunteer health workers mobilized to aid the severe lack of doctors on site, the damage done was already too great. More than half of the 2500 patients had already lost their lives. With no resources and no international help in those entire 8 months, local governments struggled immensely, resulting in responses so weak that many citizens lost faith in the system. This meant there was no unanimous cooperation to fight Ebola in the beginning.

With COVID-19, WHO’s pandemic warning came much faster: less than 4 months after the first case in November 2019. This means that countries will have more time to prepare themselves in advance before the virus reaches its peak in their own lands, and that funding/aid can be efficiently funneled to places currently that need them the most. In China, where COVID-19 first appeared, the government were incredibly robust in responding to the crisis, immediately locking down the region, mobilizing resources and educating their people. Unlike the West Africans with Ebola, the Chinese had trusted their governments and been highly involved in the fight against corona since the beginning. It only took China 2 months to shut down schools, whereas it took the West Africas 6-7 months. For the Ebola epidemic, these delays dealt a fatal blow to their already sky-high number of casualties.

B. Resources Available in Countries of Breakout

In Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia where most cases of Ebola broke out, there were severe shortages human resources, medical equipment and training on how to handle the disease. Already tiny, under-equipped clinics couldn’t handle the influx of patients. Sierra Lione had roughly 51 physicians for 5 million people, that’s a 1:98,000 physician to citizen ratio, and protective equipment was so lacking that people initially had to use plastic bags in place of gloves. Without personal protective equipment, many health workers ended up dying from the disease, leaving less people to care for increasing cases. Countries like America also discouraged volunteering, firing everyone who wanted to help in Africa for fear of them bringing back Ebola, driving down the number of outside helpers even more.

While there were definitely shortages in Wuhan, the first epicenter of COVID-19, China definitely had better resources and medical facilities available for its citizens. Following the outbreak, 23 000 doctors and nurses were mobilized to Hubei Province (Wuhan is the capital of Hubei), that’s a ratio of around 1:2,500 physicians to citizens. Still a crazy stretch, of course (even assuming that not every citizen will fall sick), but already way, way better than the ratio in Ebola hotspots. China is also much richer than the West Africas, and besides the money the Chinese Government was pouring into the COVID-19 fight, many wealthy Chinese businessmen and celebrities donated millions of dollars worth of medical equipment, masks and money to fund research and treatments.

China had far better capabilities to deal with COVID-19 than the West Africas had with Ebola. Perhaps you could consider Ebola’s high death rate a reflection of the struggling African response, and COVID-19′s lower one a reflection of the more prepared Chinese one. It’s NOT, however, a direct reflection of which diseases is more dangerous on its own and by how much. If COVID-19 had broken out in a country with the same resources as West Africa, the death toll would undoubtedly be much higher.

But that was at the beginning of the outbreak. Now, the situation around the world isn’t looking too great. COVID-19 in over 190 countries, many whose medical systems are sorely under-prepared to handle the virus, placing nations at risk of healthcare collapse. As medical supplies, human resources and hospital beds run out, more people will unquestionably die. The mortality rate has already risen from 2% to 4% since I started writing this article.

C. Infectiousness and Scale of Disease

Miraculously as it seems, Ebola mostly stayed within the African nations with only 14 cases outside (USA-11, Italy-1, Spain-1, UK-1). This was because Guinea, Sierra Leone and Libera (regions most affected) were already fairly isolated nations, and being right next to the sea prevented the virus from spreading in that direction. Local governments set-up strict border control, and international airlines/private companies basically stopped flying to Africa so few people could carry the virus outside affected areas.

While Ebola spreads through direct contact, COVID-19 is spread through droplets that can cling to hard surfaces, making it much more infectious. Despite Hubei’s lockdown, the virus managed to spread to over 190 countries across the world where cases will only continue to rocket unless governments act fast. Just for comparison, yes Ebola killed 50% of cases, but its scope was much smaller with 28,637 cases in contrast to Corona’s 430,000 cases (and counting). COVID-19’s scope is wider than not just Ebola, but also 2003′s SARS (26 countries, 8098 cases) and 2012′s MERS (27 countries, 2494 cases) which it is often compared to. An outbreak of this scale hasn’t been present since the Spanish Flu in 1918 (which affected over 500 million people).

Now how does that translate in terms of danger? Well, with outbreaks focused in few regions like Ebola, it’s much easier to coordinate support from international organizations (MSF, WHO...) and other nations. People know exactly where they should be sending resources and supplies, and where to direct help. But when all 195 countries are infected with the virus, it’s impossible for WHO to help all nations that need it because there just aren’t enough resources! When everyone’s struggling to contain their own cases, helping other countries just isn’t a priority anymore. The world can come together to help 3 countries, maybe even 30, but all 195? That’s a completely different story.

Mini conclusion: Don’t be fooled by COVID-19′s seemingly low mortality rate into thinking it isn’t dangerous. COVID-19 is of larger scale than all recent pandemics, including Ebola, and threatens to bring a bigger danger: the collapse of healthcare systems worldwide. Governments can lower cases and deaths by taking strict preventative measures and ensuring enough resources/supplies are always available at hand.

2. Community Engagement + Trust = Success (well that’s the gist of it, anyway)

A. Community Engagement vs. Individual Satisfaction

In countries like China, Vietnam, South Korea, and recently Italy, governments have taken strict measures to control the virus, including but not limited to cancelling schools and events, issuing detailed quarantine/treatment protocols and educating people of the disease nationwide. Citizens have banded together and are closely cooperating with their government to overcome the epidemic. The Vietnamese Prime Minister has even called the effort “Chống Dịch Như Chống Giặc” which roughly translates to “Fighting the virus like fighting against invaders/enemies.” This is not an exaggeration. With every single person and community fully engaged and playing their part to stop COVID-19, it really does feel like we’re “going to battle.”

Countries with the highest levels of community engagement and strongest government responses have proven to be most successful in dealing with pandemics time and again. They don’t even need the most money or best medical equipment, just complete trust in their government’s efforts and the mindset of everyone doing their part for the greater good.

Interestingly enough, many countries successfully containing COVID-19 are Asian despite being closer to the initial outbreak, which might reflect the emphasis on “community” in Asian cultures, while Western nations that prioritize “individuality” generally end up doing worse. For example, at one time Italy and South Korea both had around 7000 cases, but Italy’s death toll was 366 while South Korea’s was 50. Koreans had shut down schools and public events, issued tens of thousands of tests, and were all self-quarantining. Italy had seen thousands of cases the week before, yet citizens at that time showed little concern and still gathered en-mass, allowing the virus to spread more quickly. This was right before the Italian Government announced COVID-19 as a national emergency and locked down the entire country—only then did people start taking it seriously.

Notice how both situations dealt with viral spreads, but Koreans’ strict abidance to community guidelines early on helped lower the number of fatalities drastically, and now Korea is reporting fewer and fewer new cases every day while Italy’s numbers are still increasing exponentially. Likewise, in America where governments ignored WHO’s emergency warning and failed to take precautionary measures against COVID-19, numbers are soaring with over 30,000 cases accumulating in 3 weeks. Countries where people choose to indulge in short-term individual satisfaction end up facing far worse consequences than countries which choose to sacrifice some personal liberties early on for the greater good.

B. The Problem of Trust

So now let’s talk about trust, another crucial factor in dealing with pandemics. When Ebola hit the West Africas in 2014, one of the biggest hurdles hindering recovery early on was the complete lack of trust between citizens, the government and even international helpers. When physicians from abroad first showed up, they were shunned—locals didn’t trust these strangers in plastic suits and goggles, speaking tongues different from their own. Locals didn’t trust that the healthcare system could actually cure them, and in many districts people stopped going to clinics entirely for fear of contracting Ebola. Imagine the complications that arose because of that lack of trust! People refusing to visit clinics meant more severe infections, more deaths, more transmissions, and lack of cooperation with government efforts.

The early days of Ebola were a medical disaster. It was only when the government solidified trust with citizens by training community health workers and educating nationwide about the disease that things started looking up. Likewise, to successfully control and overcome COVID-19, governments and their citizens must trust each other wholeheartedly and closely cooperate to push back dangers.

“Learn to trust the government if they're taking action. It’s not because they're more intelligent or more prepared than you, certainly, but they are the only people with access to all of the available information. Knowledge is power, now more than ever. We are able to evaluate and predict the effect of the measures, so there's a reason they've been taken.” — Angelo Sidonio.

Right now, trust is a big problem. People all over the world are in panic because they don’t believe their governments are doing everything possible to keep them safe. And they’re rightfully concerned! As food banks and shelters close down due to lack of volunteers, over 320,000 homeless people in the UK, unable to self-isolate, face even greater dangers than before. In America, where almost 40 million people live in poverty and another 3 quarters live paycheck to paycheck, sky-high medical bills can either discourage citizens from seeking treatment, or push those who do into bankruptcy. And that’s assuming they even get treated, for although America is taking some measures like “social distancing” only a tiny number of cases are being dealt with. As of March 23rd, Spain and America both have around 30 000 cases, yet Spain has finished treating 4,400 cases while America has only treated 636 — that’s a difference of seven times!

Until governments can prove themselves trustworthy to their citizens, the efforts to contain COVID-19 will be long, arduous and without unanimous support. This means ensuring even the most vulnerable groups feel protected and assuring citizens that should they contract the virus, they will get quality treatment that won’t break the bank. Trust minimizes panic, boosts morale and creates unity, putting the country in a better position to defeat the pandemic.

Mini conclusion: To overcome pandemics 1) Citizens must trust that the government is doing everything possible to protect them (gov. should actually be doing this by the way!) and 2) Everyone must be fiercely involved in community engagement, playing their part to stop the disease spread. Personal sacrifices are sometimes necessary for the greater good. Trust minimizes panic, boosts morale and cooperation.

3. So what can YOU do about all this?

A lot of what I’ve just said points to systematic issues and government decisions that most of us can’t really change (unless you’re perhaps planning to become the next world leader, then yes, please go ahead and change them), so I’ll talk a bit about what we can do as students or individuals. There’s obviously all that stuff about washing your hands and self-quarantining which I won’t repeat—you can access WHO’s guidelines here and Vietnam’s guidelines here—but below are some other important things worth considering:

A. Raising Awareness and Educating Others

In many countries, there has still been no official nationwide efforts to educate the public on the risks of COVID-19, leading to many citizens either misunderstanding, trivializing or being ignorant of the topic. If you live in such an area, do your part by raising awareness on the following points, plus any more you can think of:

“Othering” and Exoticizing

COVID-19 brought about another disease: racism. Across the world, Asians are being shunned, discriminated against and seen as “carriers of the virus.” Many Chinese restaurants are losing customers, and some Asians are even getting beat up for wearing masks.

This is what you would call “othering”—somehow exoticizing COVID-19 as something intrinsically separate and different from oneself. “Oh that’s a Chinese disease that originated from exclusively Chinese practices of eating wild animals! It has nothing to do with me!” Saying this makes people feel “separated” from the risks because they don’t partake in these “distinctively Chinese” practices that lead to COVID-19. This is all false security, though. COVID-19 and its modes of transmission isn’t “distinctly Chinese” and consumption of wild animals is found across the globe (France, America...)

To exoticize human practices as “different” or “savage” is clearly racist and shouldn’t be condoned/ignored under any circumstances. However, do be careful as to how you go about responding to these people. If you’re aggressive, it will most likely backfire. If you can, try to remain calm and build understanding (most of these people are just ignorant, not inherently evil and incapable of love), as attacking them will only make them more defensive. More importantly, check on the victims of racism: let them know you support and stand by them.

“It’s only dangerous in ______! We’re safe here!”

But are you really? In a world as interconnected as ours, is there really such a thing as ‘only local’ anymore? Do you have family members or fellow citizens in epidemic hotspots? With millions of trains, cars and airplanes flying between cities, states and countries, do you really think there’s no chance that the virus will spread to where you currently live? At the start, we all thought COVID-19 could be contained in China, yet now it’s in 190 countries with rocketing numbers! There’s no such thing as completely safe, and many precautions are free and easy.

Trivializing: “It’s not even that dangerous! I’ll go to the pub if I want to! Plane tickets are on sale, so maybe I’ll go travelling too!”

Please don’t be irresponsible. You might not be at risk, but walking around and going to crowded places increases the chance of you picking up the virus and spreading it to others with who won’t survive! Perhaps you’ll end up passing it to your parents, grandparents, or someone with underlying health problems whose infection would be fatal. Perhaps you’ll pass it to someone without health insurance, who can’t pay for the cost of treatment. Remember that it won’t just be you suffering if anything bad happens, but those around you as well.

B. Educate Yourself: Study the Situation In Depth

Next! Other than teaching others the basic know-hows of COVID-19, it’s also important to educate yourself. And I don’t just mean knowing the basic symptoms and 6 steps of hand-washing. Most of us are self-quarantining with not much to do. Go deeper.

If you have the time, study how nations, NGOs and international organizations dealt with past pandemics, which methods succeeded or failed, and how they’re currently dealing with this epidemic. How is funding for research related to infectious diseases allocated and how can we improve the system for information sharing between scientists and nations? How and when does the WHO, World Bank, UNICEF and other UN Institutions allocate funding, humanitarian aid and expert help in a time when demand outweighs supply? What levels of involvement and accountability are to be expected at the level of individuals, communities, nations, and international organizations and how should they work together?

It’s a lot of knowledge, certainly, and you needn’t learn it all at once. But understanding the relationships between public health, economy and politics (even at a very basic level) will be tremendously helpful in making sense of why governments/organizations do what they do, and how our lives will be affected. At the end of this article I’ll list some resources I’ve found valuable for you to check out if you’re interested.

4. What Nations Can Do (Not an Expert Though So Maybe Don’t Quote Me On Your Essay)

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert on this so if someone actually does this and it ends up failing, don’t sue me. But alright, after taking the course on dealing with pandemics and observing how countries around the world are reacting, I’ve pieced together some basic steps that might work.

S. “TEST, TEST, TEST!”

In a press briefing on 16th March 2020, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announces “We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test!” He emphasizes testing, isolation and contact-tracing as the backbone of the response, and urges nations to ramp up on these measures. That’s not to say that social distancing isn’t important—it is and we MUST continue to do it —but quarantining alone is not enough to extinguish the pandemic.

South Korea’s success in driving down it’s number of cases from exponential increase to few new cases per day is largely credited to its efficient testing. South Korea has issued over 380,000 tests since the COVID-19 outbreak in its country, and is testing some 20,000 people everyday. By testing suspects or those with mild symptoms, carriers are isolated and treated before they can spread it to others, well before their condition becomes fatal. With the recent donation of testing kits from WHO and other organizations, hopefully many more countries will also see the lowering numbers of this nation.

A. Nationwide Education on Pandemic

Next, to put out the epidemic, countries must provide ongoing, consistent and thorough education to the public about COVID-19 nationwide, regardless of whether they’re epicenters or not. No, a government official going on TV to say 5 sentences about the breakout is not enough. You cancelled classes? All your students should deeply understand why it’s so important that we don’t gather in crowds and spend that time isolating, not gathering at parties to ‘celebrate.’ Instead of the occasional “just wash your hands” reminder, comprehensive hygiene protocols should be put up noticeably everywhere and everyone should be able to repeat them.

Schools, hospitals, companies, communities and families must all have guidelines for dealing with the virus (appropriate to the level of severity in their area), and constantly be reminding their members of these duties. Every individual must deeply understand what they’re dealing with, what the risks are and how they can play their part in fighting the epidemic.

B. Standardized Procedures & Training

To educate, there needs to be standardized guidelines, procedures and protocols to educate with. Perhaps it would wise to train physicians around the country instead of just those at epicenters: that way when new cases arise away from the epicenter, local physicians can treat them right there instead of transporting them to hospitals in other cities, increasing chances of spreading the disease along the way (Vietnam is doing this.) Train community workers too, so they know how to handle local cases and can educate their communities--in an emergency like this, no community must be left ignorant.

For the general public, training on remote working is necessary too: many companies and schools are struggling with effective online meetings and communications. It’s only when everyone’s forced to work online that you realize many teachers don’t know what the heck they’re doing and everyone’s webcam/mike is off because they’re actually looking at memes instead of studying.

C. Strengthening Emergency Responses

Perhaps two months ago this section would be named “improve your healthcare system to prepare for the worst” but now that we’re in the middle of the outbreak, it’s impossible to fix everything as we go along. Instead, right now nations must strengthen their emergency response systems. This means being able to re-allocate funds and human resources to necessary areas, build/transform new treatment/quarantine wards and hospitals quickly, and ensure no shortages of medical (and general) supplies.

To meet demands in dire conditions, this requires governments to think outside outside the box and be resourceful, transforming their current assets (even if lacking) into something usable. In Singapore, this means using the army to pack masks and supplies for the population. In Vietnam, it meant clothing factories switching gears to mass-produce affordable, safe cloth masks to make up for shortages. It could mean governments hiring airlines and restaurants to make food for people in quarantine, transforming army camps or hotels into quarantine wards, quickly finding ways to train new personnel or creating an online health reporting system for their citizens. Whatever the case, an emergency like this one requires governments to step up their game and respond faster.

D. 10 Recommendations for Reform Before The Next Pandemic

To get more onto the academic side of things, after the Ebola outbreak of 2014, the Harvard-LSHTM Independent Panel on Ebola came out with this report, outlining 10 reform recommendations to help deal with future pandemics. I feel like a lot of it is still relevant today and should be adopted by nations to tackle the COVID-19 situation. I will quickly summarize the report in bullet points below because it’s super long, but check it out for yourself if you have time:

Prevention:

Nations must invest domestically in their core capacities (strengthening healthcare system, education programs...) The global community should provide poorer countries with funding and help to invest in these capacities.

WHO should promote early reporting of epidemics. There should be financial incentives for countries that report early to 1) Help deal with the outbreak and 2) Compensate for economic losses.

Response:

WHO should create a Center for Outbreak Response with strong technical capacity, generous budgets and clear accountability lines.

WHO should create a transparent, politically protected Committee with the power of declaring public health emergencies (right now only the Director General can declare public health emergencies).

An independent UN Accountability Commission should be created to assess worldwide responses to major disease outbreaks.

Research and Development (R&D):

Rules/guidelines on operating during/between outbreaks should be developed to oversee efficient research and ensure access to the benefits of research.

Research funders should establish a worldwide R&D financing facility for outbreak-relevant drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and non-pharmaceutical supplies.

Governing global system on prevention and response:

Create a Global Health Commission in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

WHO should focus scale back expansive activities and focus on it’s core functions. In outbreaks, focus on 1) helping nations improve core capacities 2) rapid early response and assessment of outbreaks (including potential emergency declarations) 3) establishing technical norms, standards, and guidance and 4) convening global community to set goals, mobilize resources, and negotiate rules.

WHO needs to reform to be more effective. Member states should be vocal about choosing a strong, competent leader.

Again, these recommendations were made after WHO’s response to the Ebola outbreak of 2014. Although COVID-19 will bring about many new difficulties not yet covered in this report, it’s still a valuable guide for how we can prepare for the worst. WHO has since carried out multiple reforms, and despite the severity of the situation, are responding faster this time round to provide the world with information to tackle the crisis. Looking at successes to contain the disease around the world, we know what works. If all countries could apply those measures responsibly, we can pull through.

5. Helpful Resources

Lastly, I’d like to share some resources I’ve found tremendously helpful in understanding this COVID-19 ordeal. Check them out when you have time!

First, the “Lessons from Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic” online course from Harvard University that I mentioned at the beginning. The course runs for 1 month and is totally free! I got a lot of valuable insight from it on international responses to major infectious outbreaks. Although only Ebola is talked about in specific, a lot of it can apply to other diseases too, and I highly recommend it for basic understanding.

For general information:

Vietnam’s COVID-19 website from the Ministry of Health

World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 Updates and General Information

Worldometer (COVID-19 case tracker)

Interactive Map showing global COVID-19 spread - Johns Hopkins CCSE

Interactive Map showing global COVID-19 spread - WHO (out of the 3 trackers, Worldometer usually updates fastest)

This one Mark Manson article on Individual vs. Systematic risks and other risks and biases of COVID-19

New York Times has good articles for US coverage, CNBC for worldwide-ish coverage, but Western media has a bias against China, so check out South China Morning Post for coverage from the East.

Ghen Co Vy - A Bop to Wash Your Hands to

Scientific Journals/Sciencey sources to track research reports. While normally many journals charge fees, recently all information regarding COVID-19 has been changed to open-access:

The Lancet’s COVID-19 Resource Center

Cell Press COVID-19 Resource Center

Elsevier COVID-19 Information Center

The BMJ

WHO COVID-19 Global Research Database

That’s all I can think off right now! I’ve linked most of my sources in the article, and will provide additional updates to information when I can. For now I hope this article was useful and helped you learn something new about the COVID-19 pandemic, no matter now big or small.

Depending on the situation, our days of self-quarantine can last anywhere from a few weeks to months. In that time, remember to stay vigilant and take necessary precautions to protect yourself and your community, but also stay calm because panicking won’t help. Eat and drink healthily, stay clean and safe, learn things and look out for others. Let’s conquer this virus together!

All statistics are of 25th March 2020 and prior.

#virus corona vũ hán #coronavirus #covid-19 #world health organization #education #social problems #socialdistancing #quarantine #sars cov 2 #eng #science #healthcare

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innersoultyrant · 3 years

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Covid-19 has already exhausted the US. And it’s only the start of a dark and deadly winter

For weeks, experts have warned Americans in increasingly dire terms that this winter will be one of the darkest periods in the nation’s public health history.

Now that time is upon us.

From California to Kansas, Massachusetts to Florida, and everywhere in-between, doctors, nurses, funeral home directors and food bank organizers are bracing for a devastating season. They’re already stretched thin and exhausted after months of confronting the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, but they fear the worst is still yet to come.

“I think we’re past the breaking point,” said Dr. Adolphe Edward, CEO of El Centro Regional Medical Center in Southern California. “The staff is here, but they’re broken.”

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-borat-2-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

Edward’s hospital on Thursday had just two beds left before its intensive care unit reaches capacity. A second field hospital with 50 beds has been built in part of their parking lot — a scene reminiscent of the Air Force veteran’s time in Baghdad.

“I might really be back in a war zone,” he said. “We’re at war against Covid.”

Hospitals like El Centro have already been pushed to the brink as hospitalizations climb nationwide. But with colder temperatures pushing people indoors and a weary public eager to mark the holiday season, health care workers could be overrun.

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-tenet-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

The numbers paint a bleak picture. On Thursday, the US had its highest day of new cases and deaths, with 217,664 and 2,879, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University. And there were a record 100,667 hospitalizations, per the Covid Tracking Project.

And while vaccines are on the way, the US has a long road ahead before it can return to normal.

“The reality is, December and January and February are going to be rough times,” Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned Wednesday. “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult in the public health history of this nation, largely because of the stress that’s going to put on our health care system.”

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-after-we-collided-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

There’s a dire need for health care workers

Nurses at Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital in New Rochelle, New York — the East Coast’s first Covid-19 hotspot — took to the picket line this week, demanding better pay, more staffing and higher quality protective gear ahead of a potential surge in Covid-19 hospitalizations.

“Right now, we have less staff than we had in the spring … when Covid started,” nurse Kathy Santoiemma told CNN affiliate News12 Westchester. “So we’re not even worried — we’re terrified.”

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-come-play-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

The need for more staff is being felt in communities across the country. On Thursday, Massachusetts Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders announced plans to build a field hospital in Lowell, and she pleaded for people to step forward to staff the facility.

“If you have the skills, the can-do attitude and have time to work in a hospital, we need you,” she said. “Now is the time to step up and serve your neighbors, your community and your loved ones.”

Edward is also feeling the squeeze in El Centro. Despite the additional tent erected nearby, he’s not certain the facility can take on more patients without more staff. Those already working in the hospital are “severely exhausted,” he said, and some are falling ill.

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-the-new-mutants-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

He doesn’t expect the pandemic to let up any time soon, and he’s not sure how much longer his staff can keep going. “The resiliency starts to break down at some point, regardless of how much I know that this team is willing to do,” he said.

Nurses at Hutchinson Regional Medical Center in Hutchinson, Kansas, are also dreading a potential surge in cases.

“Two to three weeks we’re going to be just swamped,” nurse Mary Jones told CNN affiliate KWCH. Jones, who works in the Covid-19 unit, told the station she’s lost more patients in the last couple months than she has in the last decade.

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-the-croods-a-new-age-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

“There are days that you go home and you’re just not sure you’re going to come back, days you get here and find out someone you were taking care of two days ago is gone,” she said.

And yet, nurses are still dealing with patients who deny the virus is even real, she said. One patient told Jones that “masks don’t make any difference and Covid isn’t really a thing — it doesn’t exist.”

Funeral homes are inundated

That stress extends to all aspects of a community, including funeral homes like Frye Chapel & Mortuary in Blythe, California, along the state’s southeastern border with Arizona.

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-come-away-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

Sheila Kruger, the funeral home’s managing partner, told CNN her business has tripled. She’s booked with funerals for the next four or five weeks, with the coronavirus accounting for a growing share of deaths.

“We’ve had married couples that die within a day of each other, a husband and wife. We’ve had parents and children die within a week of each other. It’s heart wrenching,” she said.

Kruger’s staff was overwhelmed this summer, handling 135 deaths in one month compared to the average of 55. She’s since doubled her staff and purchased additional refrigerated units to store bodies. But now they’re filling up again.

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-the-war-with-grandpa-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

Experts believe the death toll is going to climb exponentially. Last week, Dr. Jonathan Reiner of George Washington University School of Medicine, predicted the rate of deaths would likely double in less than two weeks to an average of 4,000 a day.

Kruger’s not alone. In Rockford, Illinois, Tim Honquest, director of the Honquest Family Funeral Homes, told CNN affiliate WREX that his business ran out of refrigerated space to store bodies last month.

His business nearly doubled in November alone — conducting 54 funerals compared to the usual 30. Twenty-six of the funerals last month were due to Covid-19.

While Kruger feels her staff can handle the boom in business, she believes some are suffering from post-traumatic stress, partly due to having to repeatedly inform grieving families they can’t have a funeral for five weeks. “We’re all just kind of cringing and saying, ‘We do not want to do this again,’” she said.

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-freaky-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

The demand for food is through the roof

The needs aren’t limited to medical staff. Many families are just trying to make ends meet.

Karen Sosa waited in line at a Los Angeles food bank this week for the first time. She’s been out of work for just two weeks, but her family has four children to feed, so they’re taking advantage of the resources available.

“We don’t know when we’re going to have income, so that means we don’t know when we’re going to be able to buy groceries,” she said. “This is a good lifesaver. We don’t know when we’ll have money, but we’ll at least have food.”

Sosa isn’t alone. There are lines across the country, including in Miami, where Paco Vélez, President and CEO of Feeding South Florida, said more than a thousand families lined up at a food distribution event on Thursday, to pick up boxes filled with milk, pre-cooked chicken and a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.

https://philomathesian.sites.wfu.edu/forums/topic/full-watch-honest-thief-2020-movie-online-free-hd/

But those boxes are funded in part by the US Department of Agriculture’s Coronavirus Food Assistance program — and that help ends this week.

“These food boxes run out at the end of this week … and then the rest of December we’re going to have to figure out how we’re going to bring in food to make sure that these families have enough food for the rest of the month,” Vélez said.

Los Angeles Regional Food Bank President and CEO Michael Flood says his organization’s food distribution is up 145% — unprecedented demand. Every day, he sees families worried about keeping a roof over their heads and where they’ll get their next meal. And many of those seeking help are doing so for the first time, like Sosa.

“We don’t really know when this is going to end,” he said.

A couple from Hawaii was arrested over the weekend after allegedly flying home knowing that they both had tested positive for Covid-19.

https://aldeliana.medium.com/covid-19-has-already-exhausted-the-us-and-its-only-the-start-of-a-dark-and-deadly-winter-b94b0343f220

Wesley Moribe and Courtney Peterson of Wailua traveled with a child on a United Airlines flight out of San Francisco to Lihue, Hawaii, on November 29.

According to a preliminary report, the couple had been instructed by the Quarantine Station at the San Francisco International Airport not to fly and to isolate, a Kaua’i Police Department news release said.

Fully aware of their positive Covid-19 test results, they nevertheless boarded the flight, endangering other passengers, according to the release.

Moribe, 41, and Peterson, 46, were arrested upon arrival in Lihue and charged with second-degree reckless endangering, the release said. They were each released on $1,000 bail.

The couple was banned from flying United Airlines while the airline is investigating, United said in a statement to CNN. The child was released into the care of a family member and Child Protective Services was notified, the release said. The child’s relationship with the suspects was not disclosed.

https://www.guest-articles.com/news/covid-19-has-already-exhausted-the-us-and-its-only-the-start-of-a-dark-and-deadly-winter-06-12-2020

“We continue to request visitors and residents alike to follow the Governor’s Emergency Rules and take all necessary precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” Kaua’i Police Chief Todd Raybuck said in the news release. CNN was not able to find contact information nor an attorney listed for the couple on Wednesday evening.

The White House coronavirus task force offered some direct recommendations to states in its weekly report after telling officials that “the Covid risk to all Americans is at a historic high.”

CNN has obtained weekly reports from dozens of states that warn the US is “in a very dangerous place” in the pandemic as the nation sees record-high daily death counts and hospitalizations with the fear of additional surge after the Thanksgiving holiday.

That fear is so great that the task force this week has told public health officials to take matters into their own hands if policies aren’t stringent enough to match the moment.

“If state and local policies do not reflect the seriousness of the current situation, all public health officials must alert the state population directly,” reports sent to each state dated November 29 said.

They also outlined behavior guidelines depending on age or risk factors, such as those older than 65 getting groceries and medicine delivered, because the risk is so high.

“If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household. Most likely, you will not have symptoms; however, you are dangerous to others and you must isolate away from anyone at increased risk for severe disease and get tested immediately,” the reports said.

#news #covid

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sciencespies · 4 years

Text

The Great Koala Rescue Operation

https://sciencespies.com/nature/the-great-koala-rescue-operation/

The Great Koala Rescue Operation

I arrived on Kangaroo Island bracing myself for the sight of acres of blackened trees and white ash, but I had not expected the parasitic bright green vines wrapped around almost every charred trunk, glowing phosphorescent in the sunlight. This was no parasite, I learned. It was epicormic growth, bursting directly from the burnt trunks themselves, a desperate bid for photosynthesis in the absence of a leaf canopy.

The growth looks nothing like a eucalyptus tree’s normal adult leaves. It’s soft and waxy, with rounded edges instead of long pointy tips, and it blooms from cracks in the trunks or right from the tree’s base, rather than along the branches where leaves typically grow. It is beautiful, and also very strange, in keeping with the surreal phenomena that became almost commonplace over this past apocalyptic Australian summer, even before the coronavirus pandemic further upended life as we know it. A few weeks earlier, in Sydney, I’d watched red-brown rain fall to the ground after rain clouds collided with ash in a smoke-filled sky. During a recent downpour here on Kangaroo Island, burnt blue gum trees foamed mysteriously, as if soap suds had been sprayed over them.

Even in less strange times, Kangaroo Island can feel like the edge of the earth. Although it sits fewer than ten miles off the southern coast of Australia, about 75 miles from Adelaide, it is a geographical Noah’s Ark; its isolation from the mainland 10,000 years ago because of rising seas transformed it into an ecological haven. It is vast and rugged, with dramatic views of bush or sea- or cliff-scapes in every direction. National parks or protected wilderness areas make up a third of the island’s 1,700 square miles. Much of the rest of the island is farmland or privately owned backcountry. In recent years, the island has rebranded itself as a high-end tourist paradise, with unspoiled wilderness, farm-to-table produce, fresh oysters, and wine from local vineyards. But while there are luxury accommodations here and there, the island’s few small settlements feel decidedly unglamorous, befitting laid-back country and coastal towns.

Left, Kangaroo Island sits a few miles off the coast of South Australia. Right, at the height of the fires, in January, most of the island’s western half was ablaze, as seen in these images based on data from a NASA satellite.

(Guilbert Gates; NASA Worldview (2))

The fires started here in December, after dry lightning strikes on the island’s north coast and remote western bushland areas, and then escalated and jumped containment lines, ripping through the island in early January, with high winds and hot temperatures fueling the front. Two people died, and hundreds of properties were affected, many of them farms. Tens of thousands of stock animals were lost in the blaze. While the bushfires all over Australia were horrific, burning more than 16 million acres—nearly eight times the area lost to fire in Brazil’s Amazon basin in 2019—people around the world focused on Kangaroo Island because of the relative scale of the fires, which consumed close to half the island, as well as the concentrated death and suffering of the island’s abundant wildlife, including wallabies, kangaroos, possums and koalas. Wildlife experts worried that certain vulnerable species endemic to the island, such as the glossy black-cockatoo and a mouse-like marsupial known as the Kangaroo Island dunnart, might be lost forever.

Flinders Chase National Park, the vast nature preserve encompassing the island’s western edge, is closed indefinitely. There were rumors that parts of this natural bushland, which depends on fire to propagate, might never fully regenerate, because the heat from the fires was so intense that the soil seed bank may have been destroyed. Climate change researchers are warning that while fires in Australia are “natural,” they’re now so hot and frequent that even fire-adapted plants don’t have the chance to recover. A major fire burned 85 percent of Flinders Chase just 13 years ago. Matt White, an ecologist at the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, in Victoria, told me the fires are almost certainly decreasing biodiversity, despite “the oft-repeated rhetoric about the resilience of Australian flora.” Now the fires are out, and the immediate danger has passed, but life on the island is very far from normal. On certain parts of the northern coast, coves are silted with ash, black tide marks on the sand. Outside several towns are signs directing people to a Bushfire Last Resort Refuge, a chilling reminder of how bad things can get.

A lone koala clings to a charred trunk in a severely burned plantation of eucalyptus trees.

(David Maurice Smith)

Kangaroo Island’s east coast, where I disembarked from the ferry, seemed relatively unscathed, but as I drove west through the central agricultural area, known as the Heartlands, I crossed a line into devastation. The color palette shifted from the beige and olive green of roadside scrub to charcoal trunks and scorched leaves in shades of orange, an uncanny simulacrum of autumn. The deeper into the fire grounds I went, the more the shock of that green epicormic growth scrambled my perceptions, as did the long green shoots of grass trees, emerging from their blackened, pineapple-shaped trunks. These trees are pyrophytic—they thrive after fires.

In Parndana, a small agricultural town, I saw a handwritten sign outside a makeshift store offering free groceries to families affected by the fires. A newsletter posted in a gas station reported on wineries going under, tourism businesses destroyed, and burned buildings requiring asbestos cleanup. In a roadside café near Vivonne Bay, on the south coast, I found mental health pamphlets and notices of counseling services and depression hot lines for a community reeling from losses. An Australian Psychological Society handout was stacked on the counter: “Now, a few months after the fires, many people are feeling tired and stressed, and they know that their daily struggle isn’t going to be over any time soon.”

The news media’s fixation on the island as the fires raged has created a complicated legacy for any reporter who turns up a month or two later. I was aware of being viewed with distrust by locals who’ve felt justifiably used in the media storm’s sudden descent and then abrupt disappearance. The press attention, combined with social media’s refraction of certain stories into trend roller coasters, has had the undeniable upside of an outpouring of genuine sympathy and generosity. An effort to recruit 120 volunteers to set up food and water stations for wildlife throughout devastated areas, organized by Australia’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was inundated by more than 13,000 applications in a matter of days. Online crowdfunding has raised close to $2.5 million for Kangaroo Island bushfire recovery. But there’s a downside, too: a trading in the suffering of others. In the midst of the fires, one foreign journalist demanded of a shellshocked local resident, “I want to see burnt animals, and where those two people died.”

The immediate compassionate response of people pulling together in a crisis is now wearing thin. Tendrils of suspicion are snaking their way through the community, as locals assess the distribution of government and crowdfunded resources. Almost everybody has their heart in the right place, but the reality is that these decisions are political and contested. Old divides are widening—between, say, stock farmers in the Heartlands and those motivated to protect the island’s unique wildlife, to say nothing of the divide between locals and outsiders.

Tens of thousands of koalas were killed in the island blaze, and an additional number perished from starvation or dehydration after the blue gum plantations where they lived were destroyed.

(David Maurice Smith)

The remains of a Tammar wallaby. Where the fires raged, populations of kangaroo and wallabies were devastated; up to 40 percent of the island’s unique kangaroo subspecies may have been killed.

(David Maurice Smith)

In every conversation, whether with a lodge manager, the owner of a feed business, or at the corner-store café, people wanted me to know that they’re upset about the way resources were being distributed. Special anger was reserved for rogue operators who have raised huge amounts of cash for wildlife work on the island, but with no real right to be there. Many singled out a Japanese outfit, reportedly run by a guy who turned up on the island with good intentions but zero clue. He had set himself up in a house in Kingscote, the island’s largest town (pop. around 1,800), and without coordinating with any recognized wildfire rescue operations was bringing in koalas from the wild that were healthy and didn’t need rescuing. Yet he had raised a small fortune through his organization’s website, from good people donating to the wrong cause. One islander told me, “I never realized disaster would be like this. At first, everyone helped. Then it got scary. It became about money, fame, randoms making an absolute killing.”

* * *

Kangaroo Island was given its modern name by the British navigator Matthew Flinders, who sailed the HMS Investigator to its shores in March 1802. The island was then uninhabited, but archaeologists later found stone tools and other evidence that ancestors of modern Aboriginal Tasmanians lived there thousands of years ago, at least until the island was cut off from the mainland, and possibly afterward. Rebe Taylor, a historian, writes that the Ngarrindjeri people of the coast opposite Kangaroo Island call it the “land of the dead,” and have a creation story about rising seas flooding a land bridge to the island.

Flinders and his men were amazed to find kangaroos—a subspecies of the mainland’s western greys—that were so unused to humans that they “suffered themselves to be shot in the eyes,” Flinders recalled in his expedition notes, “and in some cases to be knocked on the head with sticks.” In gratitude for this meat after four months without fresh provisions, he named it Kanguroo Island (misspelling his own). The French explorer Nicolas Baudin, sailing the Géographe, was disappointed not to have arrived before his English rival—their ships crossed paths as Flinders was leaving the island—but Baudin took 18 kangaroos with him, in the name of science. He made two of his men surrender their cabins to the animals in a bid to keep them alive. Baudin himself died from tuberculosis on the return journey, but some of the kangaroos survived, and they reportedly became part of the menagerie outside Paris owned by Napoleon’s wife, the Empress Josephine.

The recent fires killed as many as 40 percent of the island’s 60,000 or so kangaroos, yet worldwide attention has focused mostly on the fate of the koalas. At least 45,000 koalas, or some 75 percent or more of the island population, are thought to have died, and the crisis has revived an old controversy, with battle lines drawn anew between those who believe the koalas don’t deserve all the attention they’re getting and those who do.

Koalas have always had the species advantage of being considered cute, cuddly Australian icons, but they are not native to Kangaroo Island. They were introduced by wildlife officials only in the 1920s, from a breeding program on French Island, off mainland Victoria, with a founding population of fewer than 30 animals. The effort was an early attempt at conservation; habitat loss and hunters trading in their fur had driven koalas on the mainland to near extinction. Since then, the island had become overpopulated with koalas, which some people think are in danger of eating themselves out of house and home. In fact, since the late 1990s a government-run koala sterilization program has tried to stem population growth, not only for the koala population’s sake but also because the animals wreak destruction on native vegetation, including rough-bark manna gums, a type of eucalyptus that is key to preventing soil erosion, and paddock trees.

Charred eucalyptus trees sport green epicormic growth— shoots emerging from cracks in the bark to give the trees another chance at life.

(David Maurice Smith)

New growth springs from the trunk of a charred blue gum tree after the bushfires on Kangaroo Island.

(David Maurice Smith)

In addition, tens of thousands of koalas lived in eucalyptus plantations owned by a timber company with plans to harvest and export those trees; those animals would have to be moved eventually. Finally, the Kangaroo Island koalas are so highly inbred that some experts argue they may be of little use in bolstering northern Australia koala populations, which are classified as vulnerable.

Some wildlife advocates believe that preventing species extinction, or saving species that are endemic or unique to the island, should be the priority. They argue that funding would be better channeled toward specialists working to save the few remaining Kangaroo Island dunnarts, or Tammar wallabies (which are almost extinct in mainland South Australia), or pygmy possums, or endangered glossy black-cockatoos, which mainly feed on the seeds of casuarina trees (many of the trees burnt), or Ligurian bees, introduced in 1885 and believed to be the species’ last genetically pure population in the world.

Island farmers, meanwhile, feel that wildlife has unfairly consumed all the attention when so many stock animals burned during the fires. Many local farming families are descended from soldier-settlers who were given parcels of land after each of the world wars, which they worked hard to make productive in difficult circumstances. (The island’s natural soil quality is so poor, and the lack of surface water so severe, that most British colonists backed by the South Australian Company who settled the island in 1836 left after just five months.)

One islander confided to me that, while he felt bad for the farmers, stock animals are “replaceable,” and often covered by insurance, but wildlife is not; and while it may seem from news media coverage that Australia cares about its wildlife, the government in fact has an appalling track record when it comes to protecting wildlife and biodiversity. “Australia is a global deforestation hotspot,” Suzanne Milthorpe, from the Wilderness Society Australia, told me. “We are ranked second in the world for biodiversity loss, and three unique animals have gone extinct in the last decade alone. In comparison, the United States’ Endangered Species Act, which contains real protections against harm and habitat destruction, has been 99 percent successful at preventing extinction.” (Critics of American species conservation efforts point out that less than 3 percent of listed species have recovered sufficiently to be removed from protection.)

The koalas on Kangaroo Island were also fortunate in being able to be rescued at all; many were found sheltering high enough in the treetops to have escaped the flames. Hundreds were saved, treated and survived, and many were set free. Even young, orphaned koalas that must be bottle-fed and tended by hand would survive in captivity. By contrast, kangaroos and wallabies often couldn’t outrun the fires, and most of the rescued animals were badly burned and had little chance of recovery.

All of this helped me understand why legitimate, professional koala rescues on the island really do matter, and why the stakes feel so high for those who are skilled at and committed to this grueling work. For people desperate to help in the aftermath of the fires, rescuing and treating injured koalas and relocating koalas stranded in devastated forest areas has become a kind of humane religion, something to cling to and thus avoid descending into despair. Each and every rescue becomes a small but holy and tangible act to stem the wider suffering.

* * *

As soon as the story began to circulate, during the fires, that the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, outside Parndana, had become the impromptu center for the emergency treatment of burned wildlife, the place was inundated with journalists. The largely open-air park, which was already home to 600 or so animals, including snakes, wombats, cassowaries and an alligator, is owned by Dana and Sam Mitchell, a couple in their late 20s who moved to the island in 2013, after meeting while working at a wildlife park in Victoria. Journalists turned up even as the fires were burning, sleeping uninvited on the floor of the park’s café, barging into the Mitchells’ house at all hours.

This, to be fair, had some positive outcomes. An Australian TV channel, for instance, arranged for a popular home renovation show to build a wildlife hospital in the park, and the Mitchells have raised more than $1.6 million through crowdfunding to pay for professional veterinary costs, new buildings for wildlife care, and an islandwide koala rescue and rehabilitation program.

Yet it was overwhelming, too. Dana had to evacuate twice with their toddler, Connor, during the peak of the fires, while Sam stayed with staff and other family members to defend the property; the park and its animals were spared only after the wind changed direction as the fires were bearing down.

Meanwhile, hundreds of injured wild animals were brought to the park by Army personnel, the State Emergency Service and firefighters. As the roads reopened, many locals also began to arrive with injured wildlife, unsure where else to take them. Since the start of January, more than 600 koalas have been brought to the park, though not all have survived. Kangaroos with melted feet and koalas with melted paws had to be put out of their suffering. Orphaned baby koalas, called joeys, arrived with ears or noses burnt off. There were severely dehydrated older koalas with kidney disorders, and possums and wallabies blinded by the heat. “We were having to make it up on the spot,” Sam told me. “We were just a small wildlife park. These animals weren’t my responsibility, but nobody else was doing anything. The government wasn’t giving any direction.” In the first weeks, they operated a triage center out of a tin shed, with no power.

Sam and Dana soldiered on, and by now they have an impressive setup for koala rescue, treatment, rehabilitation and release. Behind their house is a series of brand-new buildings and dozens of koala enclosures, tended to by vets and veterinary nurses from Australia Zoo, Zoos South Australia, and Savem, a veterinary equivalent of Doctors Without Borders, as well as trusted local volunteers.

Oliver Funnell, a veterinarian at Zoos South Australia, and veterinary nurse Donna Hearn attend to an injured koala at the Wildlife Park.

(David Maurice Smith)

A hospitalized koala has pink spots on its paw that are healed burn areas.

(David Maurice Smith)

Sam has a grim sense of humor to help deal with the trauma of the past months, but he and Dana are physically and emotionally exhausted, as is everybody I met on the island. I felt bad asking them to retell their experiences during the fires, the ins and outs of how they survived, aware of the symbolic violence of being forced to perform your own private trauma for outsiders over and over again. Yet they did so, graciously, describing the unusual warning of white ash hitting the park even before the smoke. Desperate for sleep after staying awake several nights, Sam eventually brought a blanket outside and laid it on the grass, setting his phone alarm to go off every 15 minutes. He was worried that if he slept inside he wouldn’t see the fire coming.

In spite of their fatigue, they welcomed me into the joey clinic one morning. Dana was in the middle of individually bottle-feeding some 15 baby koalas while also caring for Connor. He was toddling around holding a branch of acacia and following the family dog, Rikku, who is remarkably tolerant of human babies and a tiny kangaroo named Kylo that likes to practice its boxing on the dog’s face. Staff and volunteers swirled in and out of the clinic, eating breakfast, getting medical supplies, asking about treatment plans. Dozens of rescued, slightly older joeys under 18 months old live in enclosures outside, since they no longer depend on milk, along with 30 older koalas with names like Ralph, Bonecrusher and Pearl; the number changes constantly as they recover enough to be released. Dana sat on a sofa cradling a baby koala they’d named Maddie, feeding it a morning bottle of Wombaroo, a low-lactose formula. When Maddie was rescued, she weighed just two pounds. “She had no burns when we found her,” Dana said, “but also no mum.”

Dana Mitchell feeds an injured baby koala at the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, which Mitchell owns with her husband, Sam. The park has treated more than 600 koalas since January.

(David Maurice Smith)

Nearby sat Kirsten Latham, head keeper of Australia Zoo’s koala program, holding 10-month-old Duke, who was swaddled in a towel. He was rescued in January with second-degree burns and was missing several claws—which are crucial for tree-climbing—and had to be fed with a syringe before he started taking the bottle. “You have to really concentrate when you’re feeding them, as they can aspirate the milk when they’re young,” Kirsten said. “It helps to wrap them in a towel and keep a hand over their eyes, because when they’re drinking from their mums they keep their heads tucked right into the pouch, where it’s dark and quiet.” These feedings are done three times a day, and it can take each person three hours to feed all the baby koalas during a mealtime.

* * *

In the clinic’s kitchen, I found Kailas Wild and Freya Harvey, both fit and sunburned, wearing black T-shirts and cargo pants. They were studying a map of the island’s plantations and natural bushland, planning their next koala rescues. They are old friends and skilled climbers, and have been on the island for weeks, doing the dangerous work of climbing the tall, burnt blue gum trees to reach koalas perched at the very top, sometimes as high as 80 feet.

Kailas is an arborist and volunteer for the State Emergency Service in New South Wales, and Freya is currently based in New Zealand, but they both dropped everything to go to Kangaroo Island as soon as they realized their tree-climbing skills could help save wildlife. Kailas drove the 900-odd miles from Sydney to the ferry terminal in Cape Jervis in his pickup truck, sleeping in the back along the way, and bringing it across to the island on the ferry. It took them a little while to earn Sam’s trust; his classic Australian suspicion of “blow-ins” has been compounded by having been let down by others who turned up offering help but haven’t followed through. But now that they have it, I can see the three of them have formed a close-knit team, daily coordinating koala rescues and treatment.

Kailas Wild, an arborist from Sydney who aided rescue efforts on the island, with a young kangaroo. He saved more than 100 koalas.

(David Maurice Smith)

The ground rescue crew that Kailas and Freya have been working with is a local family of four: Lisa and Jared Karran and their children, Saskia and Utah. They live near Kingscote, where Jared is a police officer. They’ve spent almost every day since the fires out in the bush rescuing animals. At first, the ground was so hot it was smoking, and they had to wear special boots so the soles didn’t melt. Now the risk is falling trees. They work up to 12 hours a day, the kids uncomplaining and involved, outfitted with gloves and hard hats, handling the koalas like pros, and accompanying Jared for long drives at the end of each day to release rehabilitated survivors into a distant unburned plantation. As of last count, they’ve helped rescue 143 koalas.

Outside the clinic, in a nearby field, a Robinson R44 helicopter had just landed after an aerial survey using a thermal-imaging camera to locate koalas by detecting their body heat; this is one of several ways that Sam and the rescue team are now experimenting with technology to find where koalas are clustered and whether those habitats are burned or still viable. Sam was paying a lot to rent the helicopter, and the results have been promising, but Sam is still learning how to operate the infrared camera from the air—it’s no easy feat to adjust the focus and pan-and-tilt speed while fine-tuning koala heat signatures from inside a moving helicopter—and the data is complicated to interpret.

At this phase of the recovery effort, the goal is no longer strictly to rescue injured koalas and get them to the hospital for treatment. The team is also trying to figure out if koalas remaining in the wild have enough food to survive. The fear is there will be a second wave of koala deaths, from starvation. The team is also experimenting with drones, and Thomas Gooch, founder of a Melbourne environmental analytics firm called the Office of Planetary Observations, has donated recent satellite-observation maps that display vegetation cover to identify areas that have burned.

California wildlife rescuer Douglas Thron and environmentalist Freya Harvey launch a drone outfitted with an infrared camera to spot stranded koalas.

(David Maurice Smith)

A newer member of the koala rescue team is Douglas Thron, an aerial cinematographer and wildlife rescuer from Oakland, California, who was brought to the island by Humane Society International. In the 1990s, Thron used to take politicians and celebrities up in a little Cessna to show them the impact of clear-cutting old-growth redwood forests in California. Last year, he spent months after California’s devastating fires, and in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian, using a custom-made drone to spot dogs and cats trapped in the debris.

Douglas had been on the island since late February, using his drone—configured to carry an infrared camera and a 180x zoom lens and spotlight—to help the team identify where in the vast acreage of burnt blue gum plantations there were koalas needing rescue or resettlement. So far, he had spotted 110, of which 60 had been rescued.

Douglas, Kailas and Freya had spent most of the previous night in the bush, using the drone to do thermal imaging and closer spotlighting of the treetops in the darkness, when it’s easier to see the koalas’ heat signatures. From the ground, Douglas used a video screen attached to the drone controls to identify ten koalas in one section of a burnt eucalyptus plantation. Today, it would be up to the ground rescue team to head out and see what they could find by daylight.

* * *

“We were calling it Pompeii,” said Lisa Karran as we drove past a tragic tableau of carbonized Tammar wallabies huddled in a clearing beside rows of burnt blue gums. The hardest part, she said, was seeing the incinerated family groups together—baby koalas holding onto branches beside their moms, dead possums and kangaroos with their young beside them.

Standing amid rows of charred trunks, Utah, who is 13, was readying the koala pole—an extendable metal pole with a shredded feed bag attached to the end, which the climbers shake above the koala’s head to scare it down the tree. Saskia, who is 15, held the crate at the base of the tree. Jared had spotted this particular koala—“because I’m koalified!” he joked—curled right at the top of a black trunk with no leaves.

Upper left, a climber wielding a “koala pole” persuades an animal to leave its towering hideout and descend to the ground, where rescuers could examine it and crate it for later treatment. Upper right, Rescuers placed vegetables in devastated areas to feed animals. Some 13,000 people applied for 120 openings for volunteers to distribute food and water. Below, Utah Karran, 13, releases a recovered koala into an intact blue gum plantation. Karran and his sister and parents spent two months rescuing animals at risk.

(David Maurice Smith)

The luminous epicormic growth was sprouting from many of the trunks around us. The rescue team had begun to wonder if this growth, which is known to be more toxic than mature leaves, as the tree’s natural defense against insects and animal browsing while the tree itself struggles to survive, might be making the koalas sick. Some of the koalas they’d seen eating it, and had subsequently brought in for treatment, had diarrhea or gut bloat. They’d also observed koalas eating dead leaves rather than epicormic growth, suggesting the animals may not find it an ideal food source. Koalas are naturally adapted to the toxins in eucalyptus leaves, with gut flora that help digest the leaves and flush out the toxins. But the higher toxicity levels of the new growth may be beyond their tolerance. Ben Moore, a koala ecologist at Western Sydney University, said that there are no detailed studies that directly compare the chemical makeup of epicormic growth with adult leaves, but he hypothesized that any dramatic change in a koala’s diet would change that individual’s microbiome, and in turn affect its gut function.

In recent weeks, the group has rented a mechanized crane, which makes it easier to get to the tops of the trees, but there are still many rescues where the koala is so high up that Freya or Kailas need to clip in and use the arborist’s technique of throwing a weight and line to climb the burnt and brittle trees, and then shake the koala pole above the animal’s head. Typically, a koala grunts or squeals and climbs down a trunk amazingly fast. After Lisa or Utah plucks it off the trunk at the bottom and places it in a crate, it becomes surprisingly docile, gazing up at its human saviors.

The first koala rescued that day was underweight, and others had pink patches on their feet signaling healing burns, but some were healthy enough, the group decided, to be released elsewhere without needing to be checked by vets at the Wildlife Park.

Out of the hundreds of koalas that volunteers and staff have rescued, many are being raised in captivity. Older koalas are released into intact eucalyptus plantations.

(David Maurice Smith)

Hours and hours passed like this in the hot plantations. It was gripping to watch. Each rescue had a unique emotional texture—a dramatic arc of growing tension as those on the ground waited for the climbers to encourage the koalas down, the adrenaline spike of grabbing the animals behind their strong necks and getting them into the crate, and the communal relief if they were found to be healthy. Each of the ten koalas rescued that day was found almost exactly where Douglas’s drone had spotted them the night before.

During one rescue, a koala kept up a plaintive high-pitched wail but would not budge from its perch. Freya and Kailas both had to clip in and climb up in order to coax it down. Once on the ground the team knew this koala was seriously unwell: its paws were covered in fresh blood, from the loss of several claws—a sign of previous burns or infections. Kailas, in particular, was devastated, and sobbed openly. They knew from experience what fate awaited this koala. Later that night, after its condition was checked at the Wildlife Park, it was euthanized.

The next day, Kailas made his 100th rescue. It also happened to be Jared’s last day doing rescues with his family. The next Monday, he’d be back at work as a police officer. “There’ll be criminals robbing the bank, and I’ll be gazing up into the trees, looking for koalas,” he said wistfully. He’d been scrolling back through his photos, and had been struck by a picture of Saskia and Utah swimming in the sea the day before the fires started, two months before. “Every day since, it’s just been so different,” he said. “I was thinking this morning that I want to get back to that.”

At dusk, the Karrans drove out to one of the only plantations that didn’t burn, called Kellendale. They had six healthy koalas in the back seat and the trunk of their SUV, rescued from plantations with no leaf cover for food. After the eerie silence of another long day spent in burnt plantations—not a single insect hum or bird song—it was a joy to see a flash of pink from the belly of a rose-breasted cockatoo, and to hear the soft, wavelike rustling of living eucalyptus leaves in the breeze. It felt like paradise.

Utah and Saskia released the koalas from their crates one by one, and the family laughed together as one of their feistiest rescues, a female koala with lovely fluffy ears, sprinted for a tree, climbed about 15 feet up, then stopped and stared back down at the humans for a good long while. Then she climbed higher, cozily wedged herself in the fork of a branch, and held on tight as the narrow trunk rocked in the wind.

#Nature

#05-2020 Science News #2020 Science News #Earth Environment #earth science #Environment and Nature #Nature Science #News Science Spies #Our Nature #outrageous acts of science #planetary science #Science #Science Channel #science documentary #Science News #Science Spies #Science Spies News #Space Physics & Nature #Space Science #Nature

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Vaccinations: Education in a Post-COVID World

By William Biederman, Cornell University Class of 2022

July 7, 2021

As many colleges and universities across the United States look forward to welcoming their students back to campus for in-person instruction, there is still an issue of what public health measures should be put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Public health authorities continue to encourage vaccination against the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, vaccines are the best way to prevent hospitalization and death, while reducing community transmission. At the same time, it is common knowledge that colleges are often prime locations for spreading diseases, given the proximity that students are living in, whether that be in classrooms, dining halls, or off campus parties. To protect students living on campus, many colleges have announced they will be requiring their students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning in the fall. While to some this might seem completely understandable and reasonable, to others, who are skeptical of the vaccine, it is unacceptable and could, in their opinion, be illegal. In this article, I will attempt to address the question of whether or not it is legal for schools and other educational institutions to require COVID vaccination, with attention given to how education institutions can move forward in the safest, most considerate way possible in a post-COVID world.

Over the past 17 months since January 21, 2020, when the first case of COVID-19 was discovered in the United States [1], more than 33,425,231 Americans have been infected and 600,859 have died, as of June 23, 2021 [2]. Since the first vaccines were administered, new cases and deaths in the US continue to drop to record lows. Undoubtedly, the United States has made tremendous progress with its vaccination program and according to the CDC, as of June 22nd, 2021, 177,342,954 persons (53.4% of the total US population) have received one or more doses of the COVID vaccines, and 150,046,006 (45.2% of the total US population) have been fully vaccinated [2]. The decreasing prevalence of the virus has allowed many Americans to return to normal life, others continue to resist getting vaccinated. Due to this group of people who refuse to get the vaccine, the American government is at a crossroads with how to approach their public health policies moving forward -- should we cater towards the minority of persons who will not get vaccinated to keep them safe from the dangerous variants (especially delta)? Or should we force all persons to get the vaccine, regardless of their personal or religious reservations? Such a dilemma is difficult to resolve, but the question becomes quite a bit more complicated for incoming university students.

In Amelia Nirenberg and Kate Taylor’s article, “Can Colleges Require COVID-19 Vaccines?”, they discuss the legal and political challenges to this requirement that many colleges are mandating to maintain public health and safety. As they explain, “[Although] most U.S. colleges and universities already require on-campus students to show proof of vaccines for illness, like bacterial meningitis, that can spread rapidly in close quarters… COVID-19 is a much more complicated story” [3]. Vaccine requirements are nothing new -- they have been in place for decades to stem the spread of preventable diseases that, if an outbreak occurred, would cripple a student population and could potentially expose the institution to legal consequences. As we observed in the previous school year, “College outbreaks...led to waves of infections in the surrounding communities… [and] found that deaths in some counties where college students comprise at least 10 percent of the population had risen disproportionately fast” [3]. Although we are most certainly in a different phase of this pandemic than many months before, it is important to recognize that dangerous, highly transmissible variants of COVID-19 continue to circulate and without a significant portion of the population vaccinated against the disease, the progress we have made is threatened. Like mask-wearing at the beginning of the pandemic, requirements for vaccination and vaccine documentation have become a political issue. Despite the suffering incurred by many at the beginning of the pandemic, the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ solution, vaccines, are being denied and in jeopardy of losing their effectiveness due to a select group of persons who believe that, for one reason or another, these vaccines are used to surveil them, or will intentionally harm their health.

This discussion around political and personal objections to the COVID-19 vaccines brings us to the core question this article attempts to answer: can vaccination against COVID-19 be legally required? As with any legal question, this question is more complicated than you might think. In Sarah Fujirwara’s 2006 article from the AMA Journal of Ethics on mandatory vaccination, she focuses on the legality of potential public health measures (which were ultimately not put in place), principally vaccine requirements, during the severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, epidemic. Fujirwara uses the example of a hypothetical student, ‘Joseph’, “A 21-year-old student at a state university in Illinois, is spending 3 months in China for a summer study program abroad. While he is there, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) breaks out in Canada and is traced back to China” [4]. In this fictional situation, Joseph claims that “He is willing to submit to a physical but does not want the “experimental” vaccination and its side effects. He also feels that this mandatory vaccination affronts his bodily integrity and violates his 14th Amendment rights” [4]. To contextual this hypothetical argument, which is likely to be made this fall when many colleges and universities will resume in-person instruction, Fujirwara draws upon the 1905 Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a dispute about smallpox vaccine requirements. In Jacobson, the court ruled, “The police power of a state absolutely included reasonable regulations established by legislature to protect public health and safety” [4] and that “such regulations do not violate the 14th Amendment right to liberty because they fall within the many restraints to which every person is necessarily subjected for the common good” [4]. Despite this case being over 115 years old, the court has not had a legal challenge since this case was decided. And as is clear from previous my previous analysis, the legal precedent established in Jacobson continues to be applicable, especially in the post-COVID world. The court made clear that while the 14th amendment broadly requires due process and liberty generally, there was a compelling governmental interest to protect the health of the larger community and the application of the law was narrow in scope. Thus, because the law satisfied these standards, and there existed a threat to society (smallpox) that necessitated government action to intervene and neutralize said threat (even though some freedoms would be diminished), the court decided this was an acceptable compromise.

In addition to the established legal precedence in Jacobson, there is a long history of guidance issued by both state and federal health and occupation agencies. According to Dr. Howard Forman, the director of the Yale University MD/MBA program, “Schools are allowed to require vaccinations to protect both the students and teachers. And there are reasons for that,” he said, noting that, “my mother was a school teacher in New York in the 1950s and 60s… And in the 1950s, she was exposed to rubella during the second-to-last rubella epidemic” [5]. Dr. Forman explains that his mom’s accidental exposure to Rubella as a school teacher is precisely why schools are granted more broad authority by public health officials and legislators to implement policies that protect their student body, even at the cost of some freedoms that the rest of the community enjoys. Furthermore, Renee Mattei Myers, an attorney, and contributor to CNBC explained that “Under everything that we’ve seen, and the guidance from agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education, it’s been stated that just like how [colleges] can require other vaccines like meningitis and measles and hepatitis for incoming students, that they could require this vaccine as well” [5]. And despite the legal precedent pointing towards educational institutions having the ability to require vaccines, or mandate other public health measures to protect their students, state and local governments are still trying to stop these schools from requiring the COVID vaccines. Whether for political or other reasons, it is clear that the intervention of numerous governors around the country in these institutions’ ability to protect their students, will ultimately harm more people than restore any kinds of ‘freedoms’ that would potentially be lost. Unfortunately, in a world where a highly transmissible and deadly virus is spreading around the world, there is a need for greater measures to protect persons in vulnerable situations, and colleges and universities are perfect, vulnerable targets for a virus such as COVID-19. And while there have not been many recent legal challenges, higher education institutions will likely mandate these vaccines no matter what but expect many lawsuits this fall.

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William Biederman is a rising senior at Cornell University, majoring in History and minoring in Law and Society. He has a strong interest in healthcare and criminal law, and the medical sciences.

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A timeline of covid-19 developments in 2020. (n.d.). AJMC. Retrieved June 25, 2021, from https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020

CDC. (2020, March 28). Covid data tracker. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker

Nierenberg, A., & Taylor, K. (2021, April 7). Can colleges require covid-19 vaccines? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/us/college-covid-19-vaccines-passport-requirement.html

Fujiwara, S. (2006). Is mandatory vaccination legal in time of epidemic? AMA Journal of Ethics, 8(4), 227–229. https://doi.org/10.1001/virtualmentor.2006.8.4.hlaw1-0604

Hess, A. J. (2021, February 3). Can colleges make students get Covid vaccines? Here’s what experts say. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/can-your-college-make-you-get-a-covid-vaccine-what-experts-say.htm

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