Items

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  2021-04-04

  464 new COVID cases in Arizona on Sunday, April 4

  Only six states reported lower COVID-19 cases than Arizona on Sunday, April 4. Though averages and daily counts for the state have trended down, the total cases and deaths are still among the worst.
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  2021-04-04

  Buying KN95 masks

  Today I bought a package of KN95 masks for the first time. Between my partner and I, we have more than a dozen cloth masks, and sometimes we double-up on them, but more than a year after the start of the pandemic, it is funny to think that this is the first time I have bought a package of medical-grade masks. The reason I did it contains another irony—I am vaccinated so I am considering going out slightly more often, when I do so, I want to be sure that I am still practicing as much safety as possible.
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  2020-04-06

  Evangelical missionaries, COVID-19, and the rationalizing of infection

  Excerpt from the article: "One talking point that commonly arises in evangelical subculture is that “there is no safer place to be than in the center of God’s will.” If God needs you not to have coronavirus, in other words, you won’t get it; and why would God want people to get coronavirus in church after all? Following the same principle, if God wants you to preach to uncontacted peoples, God will make a way. You don’t need to worry about diseases; if the people you’re trying to convert die, that will turn out to have been God’s will."
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  2021-01-16

  An Eco-Socialist model for fixing the COVID-19 crisis

  Rob Wallace, an evolutionary epidemiologist with the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps, reflects on the state of the US's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He lists a set of demands, per se, that outline how focusing on an environmental ethic based on the principle of meeting the needs of each person can provide a way out of the pandemic.
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  2021-01-08

  Where Campuses Reopened, Covid-19 Cases Spiked. Where Colleges Went Remote, They Declined.

  This article compares the responses taken by higher ed institutions during the pandemic.
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  2021-01-31

  Phoenix Municipal Stadium to Serve as Valley's Second State-Run Vaccination Site

  Already more than a month into Arizona's vaccination program, the state has just announced its second vaccination site for the Phoenix area, one of the largest metro areas in the US. The rollout has been slow, with only a little more than half of one million people having received the vaccine as of 30 January, 2021.
• 0202-10-15

  Fears of COVID from within the archive

  Yesterday was my first official day as a curator at A Journal of the Plague Year. The only feelings I had were of complete joy and gratitude to be able to have a job, one where I get to do something that interests me, at that. But as the day went on, I began to feel something that many have tweeted about. I started to feel achy and I was coughing. Some have tweeted something like, "is it allergies or COVID?", and while I should have reflected on the fact that I had not taken my crucial allergy medicine in two days (I am severely allergic to dogs, yet I have two of them in my small apartment), I spent a good hour bundled up and lying in bed. By the afternoon, I felt completely fine. It was one thing when I would have these fleeting moments of panic, or see people online posting about their own, in the past. But it seemed to be a particularly interesting moment that right when I start a job at an archive documenting the COVID-19 pandemic, I experience one of the specific anxieties of actually living in that pandemic. I think this short instant shows how the the pandemic is both all-encompassing of everyday life and shows up in particular moments. It is at the same time impersonal and extremely personal. Despite the fact that even the illusion of being an observer is inherently participation, in one moment I went from being an outside observer of the pandemic to being subject to the worries it causes.