The problem with the handling of COVID-19 in the United States has been more political than public health-related. When a country has a president who «didn’t know» and thought that «most people didn’t know» that the flu can kill people, what can be expected in terms of the handling of a pandemic?
Early criticism of COVID-19 rhetoric cautions against the use of war metaphors that can shift us toward authoritarian and nationalistic sentiment, evoking xenophobia and racism.
An international study coordinated by Vicent Balanzá, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Valencia, tries to learn more about the impact of confinement measures in the healthy lifestyle behaviours of the citizens, to plan post-pandemic health recommendations in the best possible way.
The biochemist Vicent Pelechano, together with his team in Sweden, has developed a simple, fast, and affordable method to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in patients. He explains in this interview.
Although the coronavirus is a microbe, the author uses two animal analogies to explain the sudden and unexpected (or otherwise) appearance of phenomena such as COVID-19, but also other «unexpected» disasters of an economic, social, or political nature.
During the quarantine, the song of swallows at sunset or the soft dance of the leaves have become shows bringing spring to our balconies.
We need to rethink many aspects of our daily lives, of our values, of our economic and cultural practices; in short, of our coexistence with the rest of nature and, especially, of our respect for non-human animals.
Most probably, the current coronavirus1 pandemic represents the uncertain epilogue of an epidemiological period marked by the renewed prominence of the infectious disease in the last decades of the twentieth century
The threat of infectious diseases has been constant in the history of humankind. 75 % of new emerging human infectious diseases in the last thirty years have an animal origin, and 17 % are transmitted by a vector.
Next time we could be facing an even deadlier virus than SARS-CoV-2. Now is the perfect time to start working.