scholarly journals The Law of the Excluded Middle: Discourse as Casualty of the Post-Truth Extremist Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 174387212199973
Author(s):  
Yogi Hale Hendlin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Governmental Response ◽  
Excluded Middle

The unprecedented World Health Organization orchestrated lockdown and public health measures in response to the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic were enacted by virtually every government worldwide. In many countries, but especially the United States, long-standing political animosities congealed into a discourse of dehumanization between liberal establishment adherents and anti-state revolutionaries. Left out from the field were the plural voices fitting neither camp. Mikhail Bakhtin’s lens of Ideologiekritik offers a diagnosis, and the symbolic destabilizing tool of the carnivalesque provides a discursive tool to soften the political polarization and depoliticized technocracy of the coronavirus pandemic state of exception. The conflagration of the global coronavirus governmental response and the often violent counter-responses warrants examining the democratic dangers of dualistic discourses. Disrupting this explosive polarization requires reintroducing plural discursive spaces which widen the conversation to include liminal and oblique perspectives via spectacle and jest—the carnival—providing a potential nonviolent path forward.

scholarly journals Wayfaring in Taiwan during COVID-19: Reflections on Political Ontologies of Disease and Geopolitics

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Simon
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
World Health ◽  
The Political ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Ethnic Tensions ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

What are the political and ontological implications of COVID‑19? I had plenty of time to reflect on this from March to July after I ended fieldwork in Guam and unexpectedly spent four months in Taiwan. Because of Taiwan’s proximity to China, where the pandemic began, it initially seemed as if it would be among the most serious cases. Instead, Taiwan’s public health measures allowed it to become one of the few places in the world relatively untouched by the virus. The experience of Taiwan with COVID‑19 was shaped most of all by tense relations with China and the non-recognition of the country by the World Health Organization (WHO). There are also intriguing differences within Taiwan where historically Chinese settler groups and Indigenous peoples related to other Pacific Islanders find their place in the world through a broad spectrum of non-Western ontologies. In travelogue genre, I reflect upon their different stories and practices of worlding as fears of the pandemic ontributed to a heightened sense of crisis, ethnic tensions, and a rise in nationalism. This reveals important ontological differences that will continue to influence the geopolitics of the region even beyond the current pandemic.

(Mis)Information on Digital Platforms: Lessons from Twitter and Sina Weibo in the COVID-19 Pandemic (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kreps
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Relative Prevalence

BACKGROUND Misinformation about COVID-19 has presented challenges to public health authorities during pandemics. Understanding the prevalence and type of misinformation across contexts offers a way to understand the discourse around COVID-19 while informing potential countermeasures. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to study COVID-19 content on two prominent microblogging platform, Twitter, based in the United States, and Sina Weibo, based in China, and compare the content and relative prevalence of misinformation to better understand public discourse of public health issues across social media and cultural contexts. METHODS A total of 3,579,575 posts were scraped from both Weibo and Twitter, focusing on content from January 30th, 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” and February 6th, 2020. A 1% random sample of tweets that contained both the English keywords “coronavirus” and “covid-19” and the equivalent Chinese characters was extracted and analyzed based on changes in the frequencies of keywords and hashtags. Misinformation on each platform was compared by manually coding and comparing posts using the World Health Organization fact-check page to adjudicate accuracy of content. RESULTS Both platforms posted about the outbreak and transmission but posts on Sina Weibo were less likely to reference controversial topics such as the World Health Organization and death and more likely to cite themes of resisting, fighting, and cheering against the coronavirus. Misinformation constituted 1.1% of Twitter content and 0.3% of Weibo content. CONCLUSIONS Quantitative and qualitative analysis of content on both platforms points to cross-platform differences in public discourse surrounding the pandemic and informs potential countermeasures for online misinformation.

scholarly journals Epidemiological surveillance of West Nile virus in the world and Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. e164335
Author(s):  
Erica Azevedo Costa ◽  
José Joffre Martins Bayeux ◽  
Aila Solimar Gonçalves Silva ◽  
Guilherme Alves De Queiroz ◽  
Beatriz Senra Álvares da Silva Santos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
West Nile Virus ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Public Health Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
West Nile ◽  
Serological Screening ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

West Nile virus (WNV) is a neurovirulent mosquito-borne Flavivirus that is maintained in nature by a zoonotic transmissioncycle between avian hosts and ornithophilic mosquito vectors, mostly from the Culex genus. Until the 1990s, WNV wasconsidered to be an old-world arbovirus, but in 1999, WNV emerged in the United States (US) and spread rapidly, becoming amajor threat to public health. WNV adapted to the transmission cycle involving American mosquitoes and birds and reachedCentral and South America in subsequent years. In 2003, the National West Nile Fever Surveillance System was created in Brazilbased on serological screening of animals and sentinel vectors, as recommended by the Pan American Health Organization(PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Since 2008, serological evidence of WNV infection in Brazilian horseshas been reported, and the circulation of WNV has been monitored through the regular serological screening of sentinel horsesand reporting of encephalomyelitis cases. Horses are highly susceptible to WNV infection, and outbreaks of neurologicaldisease among horses often precede human cases. In this regard, equine surveillance has been essential in providing earlywarning to public and animal health authorities in several countries, including Brazil. This demonstrates the need for animaland public health intervention programs to allocate resources to make veterinarians aware of the role they can play in thehuman surveillance processes by monitoring horses. This review discusses the importance of equine surveillance and the gapthat veterinarians can fill on the front line in human surveillance, in Brazil and worldwide, in the context of “One Health”

scholarly journals Logarithmic versus Linear Visualizations of COVID-19 Cases Do Not Affect Citizens’ Support for Confinement

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Semra Sevi ◽  
Marco Mendoza Aviña ◽  
Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski ◽  
Emmanuel Heisbourg ◽  
Paola Vegas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
World Health ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Health Organization

The SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and it quickly spread to many countries. By March 2020, the virus had triggered a global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020). In response to this crisis, governments have implemented unprecedented public health measures. The success of these policies will largely depend on the public's willingness to comply with new rules. A key factor in citizens’ willingness to comply is their understanding of the data that motivate government action. In this study, we examine how different ways of presenting these data visually can affect citizen's perceptions, attitudes and support for public policy.

scholarly journals Vietnamese Public Health Practices in the Advent of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Developing Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-164
Author(s):  
Jeconiah Louis Dreisbach
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Short Communication ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
World Health ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) presents a great challenge to developing countries with limited access to public health measures in grassroots communities. The World Health Organization lauded the Vietnamese government for its proactive and steady investment in health facilities that mitigate the risk of the infectious disease in Vietnam. This short communication presents cases that could benchmark public health policies in developing countries.

scholarly journals Policy liberalism and source of news predict pandemic-related health behaviors and trust in the scientific community

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. e0252670
Author(s):  
Madeleine Reinhardt ◽  
Matthew B. Findley ◽  
Renee A. Countryman
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Behaviors ◽  
News Media ◽  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Health Measures

In March of 2020, the United States was confronted with a major public health crisis caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This study aimed to identify what factors influence adherence to recently implemented public health measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing, trust of scientific organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) on information pertaining to the pandemic, and level of perceived risk. Data were collected from June 30, 2020 to July 22, 2020 on 951 adult residents of the United States using an online survey through Microsoft Forms. Multiple linear regression was used to identify the strongest predictors for compliance to pandemic-related health measures, trust in the scientific community, and perceived risk. Results showed that the strongest predictor of all variables of interest was degree of policy liberalism. Additionally, participants who consumed more conservative news media conformed less to the pandemic health guidelines and had less trust in the scientific community. Degree of policy liberalism was found to have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between gender and conformity to pandemic-related health behaviors. These findings have concerning implications that factors like degree of policy liberalism and source of news are more influential in predicting adherence to life-saving health measures than established risk factors like pre-existing health conditions.

scholarly journals Anxiety disorder and consumption of social media in Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 316-326
Author(s):  
Tarcisio Torres Silva
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
World Health ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The City

Brazilian population spends a lot of time on social media. The average access from any device is 3 hours and 39 minutes (The Global, 2018). On the other hand, the country leads the numbers of anxiety disorder among the population. According to the World Health Organization, the incidence in the country is 9.3%, while the world average is 3.5%. This number is even higher in big cities, reaching 19.9% in the city of São Paulo (Horta, 2019). Possible causes are economic instability, social changes and violence (Horta, 2019). Add to that the political polarization in recent years and the intensive use of gadgets, private chat applications, such as Whatsapp, and social networks. In this work, we focus on the influence of social networks in the development of Brazilian anxiety. Our hypothesis is that the intensity of use reinforces the existence of other factors of anxiety increase (economy, violence, political division, etc.) through the sharing of news, besides adding others, such as self-display, performativity and the need of always being in evidence in social networks. As a method, we will work with content analysis (news and images) from the main social networking platforms used in Brazil.

scholarly journals Coronavirus and Pharmacists

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-6
Author(s):  
Ken Thai
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Emergency ◽  
World Health ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wuhan City ◽  
The World ◽  
High Season ◽  
Health Organization

Pharmacists and our fellow healthcare colleagues typically expect a break from our “high season” of cough, cold, and flu patients that have filled our pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals by this time of the year. Everyone is prepping for the end of the winter and the dawning of spring. This year was unlike many as we have heard loud cries across the globe regarding the outbreak of the novel “new” coronavirus. The virus was first detected from the Wuhan City of China. It has since infected tens of thousands of people in China and across the world. In fact, the World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency for the United States to aid the nation's healthcare community in responding. A proclamation was signed on January 31, 2020, by the United States to suspend entry of anyone who poses a risk of transmitting the coronavirus.

scholarly journals Is Samoa Prepared for an Outbreak of COVID-19?

2020 ◽  
pp. 101053952092728
Author(s):  
Lawal Olatunde Olayemi ◽  
Ramona Boodoosingh ◽  
Filipina Amosa-Lei Sam
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Task Force ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Joint Task ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Joint Task Force ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Imminent Threat

The global pandemic of COVID-19 poses a public health danger to the Pacific island countries. Due to the imminent threat of the SARS-COV-2, the World Health Organization in collaboration with other regional stakeholders had initiated a joint task force on epidemic preparedness and management. Since Samoa is a tourism destination in the south pacific, it is highly prone to an outbreak of COVID-19 if stringent public health measures and regulations are not enforced. This article, thus, highlights different opinions and various stand points regarding epidemic preparedness and emergency response in case there is an outbreak of COVID-19 in Samoa.

scholarly journals Between “Essential Services” and Culpable Homicide

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 129-151
Author(s):  
Danielle N. Boaz
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Essential Services ◽  
The World ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Health Organization

Abstract On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared covid-19—the disease caused by the novel coronavirus—a global pandemic. As this coronavirus spread throughout the world, most countries implemented restrictions on public gatherings that greatly limited religious communities’ ability to engage in collective worship. Some religious leaders objected to these regulations, opining that faith would spare their congregants from illness or that their religious freedom is paramount to public health. Meanwhile, growing numbers of covid-19 infections were being traced back to religious leaders or gatherings. This article explores how governments have balanced freedom of worship and public health during the 2020 pandemic. Through the comparison of controversies in South Korea, India, Brazil and the United States, it highlights the paradoxes in debates about whether to hold religious communities accountable for the spread of this highly contagious and deadly disease.

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