Dear Readers,
We’re living in strange times. As we try to make sense of the moment, LPE Blog wants to offer some COVID 19 coverage from our regular contributors. We’re starting today with some work that Amy Kapczynski has done with various colleagues.
To our LPE community, please send us links to your own educational and mutual aid efforts at managingeditor@lpedev.wpengine.com for these posts.
Above all, we hope you are well.
-LPE Blog
- Five Ways public health officials should respond to coronavirus in the Philadelphia Inquirer, by Scott Burris, Amy Kapczynski, and Albert Ko.
- Sneak peak: “Firstly, measures like contact tracing and quarantine will not work unless they are used in accordance with the law and accompanied by comprehensive social support measures and protections. Voluntary self-isolation measures are more likely to induce cooperation and protect public trust than coercive measures. If people expect hardship, they will avoid public health officials or not honestly report their contacts. Mandatory quarantine, regional lockdowns, and travel bans are difficult to implement, have large societal and economic costs, and disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. They should only be used if they are necessary, the least restrictive means needed to protect public health, justified by scientific evidence, and accompanied by strong support and legal protections.”
- Alone Against the Virus in Boston Review, by Amy Kapczynski and Gregg Gonsalves.
- Sneak peak: “Though we’ve had months to prepare, we have yet to reckon with the extraordinary risks that a pandemic like this poses in a country like ours. Those hardest hit will be the most vulnerable—the elderly and those with chronic diseases, particularly those in nursing homes, crowded homeless shelters, and prisons. We have no natural immunity to this new virus, and there is no vaccine. It will spread unchecked, from human to human and across our social gradients, unless we create social immunity, woven of the ways we interact and care for one another. But what kind of social immunity can we build in a body politic that has been ravaged for decades by neoliberal policies?”
- Coronavirus and the Politics of Care here at LPE Blog, by Amy Kapczynski
- This open letter by hundreds of public health experts on a fair and effective COVID 19 response.
