covid 19 essay with headings

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words

Updated on
Apr 30, 2024

COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus, is a global pandemic that has affected people all around the world. It first emerged in a lab in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and quickly spread to countries around the world. This virus was reportedly caused by SARS-CoV-2. Since then, it has spread rapidly to many countries, causing widespread illness and impacting our lives in numerous ways. This blog talks about the details of this virus and also drafts an essay on COVID-19 in 100, 200 and 300 words for students and professionals.

Table of Contents

1 Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words
2 Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words
3 Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words
4 Short Essay on Covid-19

Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a global pandemic. It started in late 2019 and has affected people all around the world. The virus spreads very quickly through someone’s sneeze and respiratory issues.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our lives, with lockdowns, travel restrictions, and changes in daily routines. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we should wear masks, practice social distancing, and wash our hands frequently.

People should follow social distancing and other safety guidelines and also learn the tricks to be safe stay healthy and work the whole challenging time.

Also Read: National Safe Motherhood Day 2023

Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words

COVID-19 also known as coronavirus, became a global health crisis in early 2020 and impacted mankind around the world. This virus is said to have originated in Wuhan, China in late 2019. It belongs to the coronavirus family and causes flu-like symptoms. It impacted the healthcare systems, economies and the daily lives of people all over the world.

The most crucial aspect of COVID-19 is its highly spreadable nature. It is a communicable disease that spreads through various means such as coughs from infected persons, sneezes and communication. Due to its easy transmission leading to its outbreaks, there were many measures taken by the government from all over the world such as Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and wearing masks.

There are many changes throughout the economic systems, and also in daily routines. Other measures such as schools opting for Online schooling, Remote work options available and restrictions on travel throughout the country and internationally. Subsequently, to cure and top its outbreak, the government started its vaccine campaigns, and other preventive measures.

In conclusion, COVID-19 tested the patience and resilience of the mankind. This pandemic has taught people the importance of patience, effort and humbleness.

Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a serious and contagious disease that has affected people worldwide. It was first discovered in late 2019 in Cina and then got spread in the whole world. It had a major impact on people’s life, their school, work and daily lives.

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets produced and through sneezes, and coughs of an infected person. It can spread to thousands of people because of its highly contagious nature. To cure the widespread of this virus, there are thousands of steps taken by the people and the government.

Wearing masks is one of the essential precautions to prevent the virus from spreading. Social distancing is another vital practice, which involves maintaining a safe distance from others to minimize close contact.

Very frequent handwashing is also very important to stop the spread of this virus. Proper hand hygiene can help remove any potential virus particles from our hands, reducing the risk of infection.

In conclusion, the Coronavirus has changed people’s perspective on living. It has also changed people’s way of interacting and how to live. To deal with this virus, it is very important to follow the important guidelines such as masks, social distancing and techniques to wash your hands. Getting vaccinated is also very important to go back to normal life and cure this virus completely.

Also Read: Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words

Short Essay on Covid-19

Please find below a sample of a short essay on Covid-19 for school students:

Also Read: Essay on Women’s Day in 200 and 500 words

to write an essay on COVID-19, understand your word limit and make sure to cover all the stages and symptoms of this disease. You need to highlight all the challenges and impacts of COVID-19. Do not forget to conclude your essay with positive precautionary measures.

Writing an essay on COVID-19 in 200 words requires you to cover all the challenges, impacts and precautions of this disease. You don’t need to describe all of these factors in brief, but make sure to add as many options as your word limit allows.

The full form for COVID-19 is Corona Virus Disease of 2019.

Simran Popli

An avid writer and a creative person. With an experience of 1.5 years content writing, Simran has worked with different areas. From medical to working in a marketing agency with different clients to Ed-tech company, the journey has been diverse. Creative, vivacious and patient are the words that describe her personality.

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Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

Writing about COVID-19 in your college admission essay

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

Are my experiences different from others’?
Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
Am I aware of my privilege?
Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

Grading scales and policies
Graduation requirements
Instructional methods
Schedules and course offerings
Testing requirements
Your academic calendar
Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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How to Write About the Impact of the Coronavirus in a College Essay

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many -- a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

[ Read: How to Write a College Essay. ]

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

[ Read: What Colleges Look for: 6 Ways to Stand Out. ]

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

Above all, she urges honesty.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

[ Read: The Common App: Everything You Need to Know. ]

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic -- and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

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http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1512-4471 Emily Long 1 ,
Susan Patterson 1 ,
Karen Maxwell 1 ,
Carolyn Blake 1 ,
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7342-4566 Raquel Bosó Pérez 1 ,
Ruth Lewis 1 ,
Mark McCann 1 ,
Julie Riddell 1 ,
Kathryn Skivington 1 ,
Rachel Wilson-Lowe 1 ,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4409-6601 Kirstin R Mitchell 2
1 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
2 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Institute of Health & Wellbeing , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
Correspondence to Dr Emily Long, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G3 7HR, UK; emily.long{at}glasgow.ac.uk

This essay examines key aspects of social relationships that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses explicitly on relational mechanisms of health and brings together theory and emerging evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to make recommendations for future public health policy and recovery. We first provide an overview of the pandemic in the UK context, outlining the nature of the public health response. We then introduce four distinct domains of social relationships: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy, highlighting the mechanisms through which the pandemic and associated public health response drastically altered social interactions in each domain. Throughout the essay, the lens of health inequalities, and perspective of relationships as interconnecting elements in a broader system, is used to explore the varying impact of these disruptions. The essay concludes by providing recommendations for longer term recovery ensuring that the social relational cost of COVID-19 is adequately considered in efforts to rebuild.

inequalities

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated and/or analysed for this study. Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated or analysed for this essay.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2021-216690

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Introduction

Infectious disease pandemics, including SARS and COVID-19, demand intrapersonal behaviour change and present highly complex challenges for public health. 1 A pandemic of an airborne infection, spread easily through social contact, assails human relationships by drastically altering the ways through which humans interact. In this essay, we draw on theories of social relationships to examine specific ways in which relational mechanisms key to health and well-being were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Relational mechanisms refer to the processes between people that lead to change in health outcomes.

At the time of writing, the future surrounding COVID-19 was uncertain. Vaccine programmes were being rolled out in countries that could afford them, but new and more contagious variants of the virus were also being discovered. The recovery journey looked long, with continued disruption to social relationships. The social cost of COVID-19 was only just beginning to emerge, but the mental health impact was already considerable, 2 3 and the inequality of the health burden stark. 4 Knowledge of the epidemiology of COVID-19 accrued rapidly, but evidence of the most effective policy responses remained uncertain.

The initial response to COVID-19 in the UK was reactive and aimed at reducing mortality, with little time to consider the social implications, including for interpersonal and community relationships. The terminology of ‘social distancing’ quickly became entrenched both in public and policy discourse. This equation of physical distance with social distance was regrettable, since only physical proximity causes viral transmission, whereas many forms of social proximity (eg, conversations while walking outdoors) are minimal risk, and are crucial to maintaining relationships supportive of health and well-being.

The aim of this essay is to explore four key relational mechanisms that were impacted by the pandemic and associated restrictions: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy. We use relational theories and emerging research on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response to make three key recommendations: one regarding public health responses; and two regarding social recovery. Our understanding of these mechanisms stems from a ‘systems’ perspective which casts social relationships as interdependent elements within a connected whole. 5

Social networks

Social networks characterise the individuals and social connections that compose a system (such as a workplace, community or society). Social relationships range from spouses and partners, to coworkers, friends and acquaintances. They vary across many dimensions, including, for example, frequency of contact and emotional closeness. Social networks can be understood both in terms of the individuals and relationships that compose the network, as well as the overall network structure (eg, how many of your friends know each other).

Social networks show a tendency towards homophily, or a phenomenon of associating with individuals who are similar to self. 6 This is particularly true for ‘core’ network ties (eg, close friends), while more distant, sometimes called ‘weak’ ties tend to show more diversity. During the height of COVID-19 restrictions, face-to-face interactions were often reduced to core network members, such as partners, family members or, potentially, live-in roommates; some ‘weak’ ties were lost, and interactions became more limited to those closest. Given that peripheral, weaker social ties provide a diversity of resources, opinions and support, 7 COVID-19 likely resulted in networks that were smaller and more homogenous.

Such changes were not inevitable nor necessarily enduring, since social networks are also adaptive and responsive to change, in that a disruption to usual ways of interacting can be replaced by new ways of engaging (eg, Zoom). Yet, important inequalities exist, wherein networks and individual relationships within networks are not equally able to adapt to such changes. For example, individuals with a large number of newly established relationships (eg, university students) may have struggled to transfer these relationships online, resulting in lost contacts and a heightened risk of social isolation. This is consistent with research suggesting that young adults were the most likely to report a worsening of relationships during COVID-19, whereas older adults were the least likely to report a change. 8

Lastly, social connections give rise to emergent properties of social systems, 9 where a community-level phenomenon develops that cannot be attributed to any one member or portion of the network. For example, local area-based networks emerged due to geographic restrictions (eg, stay-at-home orders), resulting in increases in neighbourly support and local volunteering. 10 In fact, research suggests that relationships with neighbours displayed the largest net gain in ratings of relationship quality compared with a range of relationship types (eg, partner, colleague, friend). 8 Much of this was built from spontaneous individual interactions within local communities, which together contributed to the ‘community spirit’ that many experienced. 11 COVID-19 restrictions thus impacted the personal social networks and the structure of the larger networks within the society.

Social support

Social support, referring to the psychological and material resources provided through social interaction, is a critical mechanism through which social relationships benefit health. In fact, social support has been shown to be one of the most important resilience factors in the aftermath of stressful events. 12 In the context of COVID-19, the usual ways in which individuals interact and obtain social support have been severely disrupted.

One such disruption has been to opportunities for spontaneous social interactions. For example, conversations with colleagues in a break room offer an opportunity for socialising beyond one’s core social network, and these peripheral conversations can provide a form of social support. 13 14 A chance conversation may lead to advice helpful to coping with situations or seeking formal help. Thus, the absence of these spontaneous interactions may mean the reduction of indirect support-seeking opportunities. While direct support-seeking behaviour is more effective at eliciting support, it also requires significantly more effort and may be perceived as forceful and burdensome. 15 The shift to homeworking and closure of community venues reduced the number of opportunities for these spontaneous interactions to occur, and has, second, focused them locally. Consequently, individuals whose core networks are located elsewhere, or who live in communities where spontaneous interaction is less likely, have less opportunity to benefit from spontaneous in-person supportive interactions.

However, alongside this disruption, new opportunities to interact and obtain social support have arisen. The surge in community social support during the initial lockdown mirrored that often seen in response to adverse events (eg, natural disasters 16 ). COVID-19 restrictions that confined individuals to their local area also compelled them to focus their in-person efforts locally. Commentators on the initial lockdown in the UK remarked on extraordinary acts of generosity between individuals who belonged to the same community but were unknown to each other. However, research on adverse events also tells us that such community support is not necessarily maintained in the longer term. 16

Meanwhile, online forms of social support are not bound by geography, thus enabling interactions and social support to be received from a wider network of people. Formal online social support spaces (eg, support groups) existed well before COVID-19, but have vastly increased since. While online interactions can increase perceived social support, it is unclear whether remote communication technologies provide an effective substitute from in-person interaction during periods of social distancing. 17 18 It makes intuitive sense that the usefulness of online social support will vary by the type of support offered, degree of social interaction and ‘online communication skills’ of those taking part. Youth workers, for instance, have struggled to keep vulnerable youth engaged in online youth clubs, 19 despite others finding a positive association between amount of digital technology used by individuals during lockdown and perceived social support. 20 Other research has found that more frequent face-to-face contact and phone/video contact both related to lower levels of depression during the time period of March to August 2020, but the negative effect of a lack of contact was greater for those with higher levels of usual sociability. 21 Relatedly, important inequalities in social support exist, such that individuals who occupy more socially disadvantaged positions in society (eg, low socioeconomic status, older people) tend to have less access to social support, 22 potentially exacerbated by COVID-19.

Social and interactional norms

Interactional norms are key relational mechanisms which build trust, belonging and identity within and across groups in a system. Individuals in groups and societies apply meaning by ‘approving, arranging and redefining’ symbols of interaction. 23 A handshake, for instance, is a powerful symbol of trust and equality. Depending on context, not shaking hands may symbolise a failure to extend friendship, or a failure to reach agreement. The norms governing these symbols represent shared values and identity; and mutual understanding of these symbols enables individuals to achieve orderly interactions, establish supportive relationship accountability and connect socially. 24 25

Physical distancing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 radically altered these norms of interaction, particularly those used to convey trust, affinity, empathy and respect (eg, hugging, physical comforting). 26 As epidemic waves rose and fell, the work to negotiate these norms required intense cognitive effort; previously taken-for-granted interactions were re-examined, factoring in current restriction levels, own and (assumed) others’ vulnerability and tolerance of risk. This created awkwardness, and uncertainty, for example, around how to bring closure to an in-person interaction or convey warmth. The instability in scripted ways of interacting created particular strain for individuals who already struggled to encode and decode interactions with others (eg, those who are deaf or have autism spectrum disorder); difficulties often intensified by mask wearing. 27

Large social gatherings—for example, weddings, school assemblies, sporting events—also present key opportunities for affirming and assimilating interactional norms, building cohesion and shared identity and facilitating cooperation across social groups. 28 Online ‘equivalents’ do not easily support ‘social-bonding’ activities such as singing and dancing, and rarely enable chance/spontaneous one-on-one conversations with peripheral/weaker network ties (see the Social networks section) which can help strengthen bonds across a larger network. The loss of large gatherings to celebrate rites of passage (eg, bar mitzvah, weddings) has additional relational costs since these events are performed by and for communities to reinforce belonging, and to assist in transitioning to new phases of life. 29 The loss of interaction with diverse others via community and large group gatherings also reduces intergroup contact, which may then tend towards more prejudiced outgroup attitudes. While online interaction can go some way to mimicking these interaction norms, there are key differences. A sense of anonymity, and lack of in-person emotional cues, tends to support norms of polarisation and aggression in expressing differences of opinion online. And while online platforms have potential to provide intergroup contact, the tendency of much social media to form homogeneous ‘echo chambers’ can serve to further reduce intergroup contact. 30 31

Intimacy relates to the feeling of emotional connection and closeness with other human beings. Emotional connection, through romantic, friendship or familial relationships, fulfils a basic human need 32 and strongly benefits health, including reduced stress levels, improved mental health, lowered blood pressure and reduced risk of heart disease. 32 33 Intimacy can be fostered through familiarity, feeling understood and feeling accepted by close others. 34

Intimacy via companionship and closeness is fundamental to mental well-being. Positively, the COVID-19 pandemic has offered opportunities for individuals to (re)connect and (re)strengthen close relationships within their household via quality time together, following closure of many usual external social activities. Research suggests that the first full UK lockdown period led to a net gain in the quality of steady relationships at a population level, 35 but amplified existing inequalities in relationship quality. 35 36 For some in single-person households, the absence of a companion became more conspicuous, leading to feelings of loneliness and lower mental well-being. 37 38 Additional pandemic-related relational strain 39 40 resulted, for some, in the initiation or intensification of domestic abuse. 41 42

Physical touch is another key aspect of intimacy, a fundamental human need crucial in maintaining and developing intimacy within close relationships. 34 Restrictions on social interactions severely restricted the number and range of people with whom physical affection was possible. The reduction in opportunity to give and receive affectionate physical touch was not experienced equally. Many of those living alone found themselves completely without physical contact for extended periods. The deprivation of physical touch is evidenced to take a heavy emotional toll. 43 Even in future, once physical expressions of affection can resume, new levels of anxiety over germs may introduce hesitancy into previously fluent blending of physical and verbal intimate social connections. 44

The pandemic also led to shifts in practices and norms around sexual relationship building and maintenance, as individuals adapted and sought alternative ways of enacting sexual intimacy. This too is important, given that intimate sexual activity has known benefits for health. 45 46 Given that social restrictions hinged on reducing household mixing, possibilities for partnered sexual activity were primarily guided by living arrangements. While those in cohabiting relationships could potentially continue as before, those who were single or in non-cohabiting relationships generally had restricted opportunities to maintain their sexual relationships. Pornography consumption and digital partners were reported to increase since lockdown. 47 However, online interactions are qualitatively different from in-person interactions and do not provide the same opportunities for physical intimacy.

Recommendations and conclusions

In the sections above we have outlined the ways in which COVID-19 has impacted social relationships, showing how relational mechanisms key to health have been undermined. While some of the damage might well self-repair after the pandemic, there are opportunities inherent in deliberative efforts to build back in ways that facilitate greater resilience in social and community relationships. We conclude by making three recommendations: one regarding public health responses to the pandemic; and two regarding social recovery.

Recommendation 1: explicitly count the relational cost of public health policies to control the pandemic

Effective handling of a pandemic recognises that social, economic and health concerns are intricately interwoven. It is clear that future research and policy attention must focus on the social consequences. As described above, policies which restrict physical mixing across households carry heavy and unequal relational costs. These include for individuals (eg, loss of intimate touch), dyads (eg, loss of warmth, comfort), networks (eg, restricted access to support) and communities (eg, loss of cohesion and identity). Such costs—and their unequal impact—should not be ignored in short-term efforts to control an epidemic. Some public health responses—restrictions on international holiday travel and highly efficient test and trace systems—have relatively small relational costs and should be prioritised. At a national level, an earlier move to proportionate restrictions, and investment in effective test and trace systems, may help prevent escalation of spread to the point where a national lockdown or tight restrictions became an inevitability. Where policies with relational costs are unavoidable, close attention should be paid to the unequal relational impact for those whose personal circumstances differ from normative assumptions of two adult families. This includes consideration of whether expectations are fair (eg, for those who live alone), whether restrictions on social events are equitable across age group, religious/ethnic groupings and social class, and also to ensure that the language promoted by such policies (eg, households; families) is not exclusionary. 48 49 Forethought to unequal impacts on social relationships should thus be integral to the work of epidemic preparedness teams.

Recommendation 2: intelligently balance online and offline ways of relating

A key ingredient for well-being is ‘getting together’ in a physical sense. This is fundamental to a human need for intimate touch, physical comfort, reinforcing interactional norms and providing practical support. Emerging evidence suggests that online ways of relating cannot simply replace physical interactions. But online interaction has many benefits and for some it offers connections that did not exist previously. In particular, online platforms provide new forms of support for those unable to access offline services because of mobility issues (eg, older people) or because they are geographically isolated from their support community (eg, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) youth). Ultimately, multiple forms of online and offline social interactions are required to meet the needs of varying groups of people (eg, LGBTQ, older people). Future research and practice should aim to establish ways of using offline and online support in complementary and even synergistic ways, rather than veering between them as social restrictions expand and contract. Intelligent balancing of online and offline ways of relating also pertains to future policies on home and flexible working. A decision to switch to wholesale or obligatory homeworking should consider the risk to relational ‘group properties’ of the workplace community and their impact on employees’ well-being, focusing in particular on unequal impacts (eg, new vs established employees). Intelligent blending of online and in-person working is required to achieve flexibility while also nurturing supportive networks at work. Intelligent balance also implies strategies to build digital literacy and minimise digital exclusion, as well as coproducing solutions with intended beneficiaries.

Recommendation 3: build stronger and sustainable localised communities

In balancing offline and online ways of interacting, there is opportunity to capitalise on the potential for more localised, coherent communities due to scaled-down travel, homeworking and local focus that will ideally continue after restrictions end. There are potential economic benefits after the pandemic, such as increased trade as home workers use local resources (eg, coffee shops), but also relational benefits from stronger relationships around the orbit of the home and neighbourhood. Experience from previous crises shows that community volunteer efforts generated early on will wane over time in the absence of deliberate work to maintain them. Adequately funded partnerships between local government, third sector and community groups are required to sustain community assets that began as a direct response to the pandemic. Such partnerships could work to secure green spaces and indoor (non-commercial) meeting spaces that promote community interaction. Green spaces in particular provide a triple benefit in encouraging physical activity and mental health, as well as facilitating social bonding. 50 In building local communities, small community networks—that allow for diversity and break down ingroup/outgroup views—may be more helpful than the concept of ‘support bubbles’, which are exclusionary and less sustainable in the longer term. Rigorously designed intervention and evaluation—taking a systems approach—will be crucial in ensuring scale-up and sustainability.

The dramatic change to social interaction necessitated by efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 created stark challenges but also opportunities. Our essay highlights opportunities for learning, both to ensure the equity and humanity of physical restrictions, and to sustain the salutogenic effects of social relationships going forward. The starting point for capitalising on this learning is recognition of the disruption to relational mechanisms as a key part of the socioeconomic and health impact of the pandemic. In recovery planning, a general rule is that what is good for decreasing health inequalities (such as expanding social protection and public services and pursuing green inclusive growth strategies) 4 will also benefit relationships and safeguard relational mechanisms for future generations. Putting this into action will require political will.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not required.

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Twitter @karenmaxSPHSU, @Mark_McCann, @Rwilsonlowe, @KMitchinGlasgow

Contributors EL and KM led on the manuscript conceptualisation, review and editing. SP, KM, CB, RBP, RL, MM, JR, KS and RW-L contributed to drafting and revising the article. All authors assisted in revising the final draft.

Funding The research reported in this publication was supported by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00022/1, MC_UU_00022/3) and the Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU11, SPHSU14). EL is also supported by MRC Skills Development Fellowship Award (MR/S015078/1). KS and MM are also supported by a Medical Research Council Strategic Award (MC_PC_13027).

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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What you write about COVID-19 in a headline matters

Plus, nursing home staff vaccination rates are low, us mask companies are going broke, why a delta peak may or may not occur soon, and more..

This is a study in how to report a story that is both accurate and true. Accurate means you get the facts right. True is when you get the right facts, too.

Look at the below headlines from yesterday. The TV stations focused on deaths after vaccinations while the newspaper websites put the figures in context. The Boston Herald was especially thoughtful.

(Screenshots/Google)

The below headline jumps out, but the real news, unfortunately, is a few paragraphs below it. The headline from Modern Healthcare says :

(Screenshot/Modern Healthcare)

It is factual and real. I give them that. But the real news, the context that matters comes after you have consumed the alarming headline and opening paragraph, is this:

Look, friends, we are in a pandemic. People are scared and doubtful. This is not the time to play games with SEO and headlines.

Nursing home infections are low, but so is the vaccination rate among nursing home workers

Nursing homes, with their high rate of vaccination among residents, are so far faring fairly well in this new COVID-19 outbreak. But everyone is nervous. And for good reason.

During the pandemic, 133,000 nursing home residents died of COVID-19 . They accounted for nearly one-third of the nation’s pandemic fatalities. Seniors now have the highest vaccination rate of any demographic in America, with more than 80% of nursing home residents fully vaccinated, but the newest data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows a big gap between patients and staff vaccinations:

National percent of vaccinated residents: 81.8%
National percent of vaccinated staff: 59.3%

You can get local easily using the government’s vaccination tracker for nursing homes. Here are instructions from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website:

Search for a nursing home map: Click the map below to search for a nursing home and view data for the individual nursing home, including recent resident and staff vaccination rates.

(Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)

Listing of vaccination rates for individual nursing homes: Click to see a list of every nursing home with recent resident and staff vaccination rates . There’s also a separate tab for nursing homes with a staff vaccination rate of 75% or more.

I want to walk you through a few charts that tell some interesting stories about nursing home patients and staff. First, the good news: New infections among patients is low and not moving much:

Now, the less encouraging news: The people taking care of the nursing home patients are getting infected because, as I told you, a large percentage of them is not vaccinated. The increase in new cases is not as bad as we see in the general population … yet. Keep your eye on this.

The next two charts will help you to get local and ask questions. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why Florida, a nursing home capital, has one of the lowest percentages of vaccinated nursing home residents. Other lower-vaccinated states on the chart reflect the overall vaccination rate, I suppose.

Again, it is odd that states that have large nursing home populations would have such low vaccination rates among employees. You wonder when or if states will require more of these workers to get vaccinated and how many workers would refuse and quit, which nursing homes cannot afford.

You can also see the positive test rate for every nursing home in America here .

The New York Times did a deep dive into this topic recently, which is worth a look.

Why US mask-making companies are going broke

Used protective masks are prepared for disinfecting at the Battelle N95 decontamination site in Somerville, Mass., on April 11, 2020. Although it will take years for researchers to understand why the pandemic was disproportionately worse in the U.S., early studies that compare different countries’ responses are finding that U.S. shortages of masks, gloves, gowns, shields, testing kits and other medical supplies indeed cost lives. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

American mask-making companies say they can’t make a go of it, even with demand for masks rising again, because Chinese-made masks cost so much less. The Hill reports :

“With the virus getting worse, and we’re not even into the cold months, we’re really worried that this industry won’t be here to help when it’s needed most,” said Brent Dillie, managing partner at Premium-PPE and chairman of the recently formed American Mask Manufacturer’s Association (AMMA). Premium-PPE, like many companies in the small U.S. mask industry, began manufacturing face coverings at the onset of the pandemic as the nation faced a mask shortage driven by China’s export restrictions. The Virginia Beach, Va., firm steadily ramped up its production to 1 million masks per day earlier this year, but it has since laid off most of its employees. “The industry is in a situation where we are needed, there are shortages of masks, but we’re all laying off our employees and sitting on huge inventories of products that we can’t sell,” said Luis Arguello Jr., vice president of DemeTech. DemeTech was the largest surgical mask manufacturer last year before governments stopped buying American masks. The Miami company has since laid off 1,500 workers in its mask division and built up a stockpile of nearly 200 million masks.

This is an interesting story considering how we made such a big deal a year ago about how our essential supplies were all imported and how we needed to get more American manufacturers producing the things we need in an emergency. You can read more from the mask industry itself here .

Can we expect a peak in delta variant virus cases soon? Maybe.

This is by no means certain, but we could see a peak of this latest COVID-19 surge within weeks. There are several reasons why … and some reasons why not.

The United Kingdom saw a rapid surge of COVID-19 delta variant cases followed by a steep and fast decline in cases after a peak.

There is no shortage of experts who say the U.S. and the U.K. are different enough that the data may not apply. Close to 90% of the U.K.’s population has at least one dose of the vaccine. And so many Brits have been exposed to the virus that there may be a high percentage of people who have developed a level of immunity in addition to the vaccines. So when they got infected recently, they recovered faster.

Look at these projections from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation:

Data from Aug. 9, 2021. (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation)

The group, which has been a clarion for what’s ahead in the pandemic, says we could be in for a sharp and horrific increase or a decline, depending on whether we wear masks and keep getting vaccinated.

The Hill reports :

Justin Lessler, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, said so far, the contagious variant has increased faster than any of their models, calling it “a little bit scary.” “Given the rate is going up, it’s either going to peak earlier than we anticipated or peak much, much higher than we anticipated,” Lessler said. “I think probably both are going to be true.” Many Americans have quit wearing masks, and travel is at a peak since the pandemic took grip of the country in March 2020.

Charging unvaccinated college students for testing and supplies

The Associated Press reports, “West Virginia Wesleyan College says it will charge a $750 fee to students who aren’t vaccinated for COVID-19 for the fall semester.” The school says unvaccinated students who come down with the virus will be charged $250 for quarantine space if they do not have a place off campus. The $750 pay for the testing and resources that the school says will be needed to keep the place safe. Unvaccinated students will also have to take weekly tests. We will see if this catches on.

Will you earn less if you work from home?

Reuters has an interesting piece about how some companies are toying with the notion of a stratified pay rate according to where you work. The story includes this passage:

Screenshots of Google’s internal salary calculator seen by Reuters show that an employee living in Stamford, Connecticut — an hour from New York City by train — would be paid 15% less if she worked from home, while a colleague from the same office living in New York City would see no cut from working from home. Screenshots showed 5% and 10% differences in the Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas. A Google spokesperson said the company will not change an employee’s salary based on them going from office work to being fully remote in the city where the office is located. Employees working in the New York City office will be paid the same as those working remotely from another New York City location, for example, according to the spokesperson.

It seems to me it would make sense if people who worked from home were paid more, not less. Think of the money the company would save in office space costs. Heck, even water and electricity use add up if you spread it across a bunch of employees. And I don’t know about you, but I do not use a company printer or office supplies when working at home. I just buy my own.

We’ll be back tomorrow with a new edition of Covering COVID-19. Are you subscribed? Sign up here to get it delivered right to your inbox.

Opinion | Gannett fires editor for talking to Poynter, and other media news

Firing a single mother of three who was speaking up for more newsroom resources is a horrible look that deserves scrutiny and criticism.

Donald Trump repeated inaccurate claims on the economy in a local news interview in Pennsylvania

Trump repeated a bevy of inaccurate claims about the economy during an interview with WGAL-TV, a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, station

Opinion | Gannett fired an editor for talking to me

Sarah Leach spoke to Poynter in an attempt to staff up her team. She may have been successful, even if she won't be at Gannett to see it through.

Opinion | Kristi Noem’s media headaches now extend to conservative outlets

The South Dakota governor’s past few days have been so bad that she’s canceling on conservative media. Conservative media might soon cancel on her.

Q&A: HBO Max’s new ‘Girls on the Bus’ set out to show a cool, fun side of journalism

Former New York Times reporter and show co-creator Amy Chozick on how fact inspired fiction, pitfalls she avoided and today’s media environment

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Our COVID-19 Research Summary - 2021

The published literature on COVID now exceeds 211,000 papers, books, and documents, which include: 22,866 observational studies, 19,591 reviews, 1496 meta-analyses and 781 randomized control trials. These publications comprise the backdrop for our research and writing. The project began in the spring of 2020 based on a limited source of cumulative COVID-19 data and has broadened considerably. Here is what we have learned.

Our objectives remain to

Describe trends and the geographic extent of the pandemic, including associated predictors
Evaluate the effectiveness of vaccinations and exposure limitations.
Provide public health perspectives.

“We know that people’s behavior, the mode of transmission, and the virus‘s characteristics all play a role but we don’t have a clear quantitative understanding of how all of these forces interact. With COVID, the biggest wild card has been human behavior.”

Dr. R. Rosenfeld , Head, Department of Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon

Our findings along with other COVID studies are observational , focusing on numbers rather than people. Since the annual COVID mortality rate is about is only about 1 in 700, achieving reliable statistics by state would require a cohort approaching a million subjects, each of which would have to be tracked over time in order to estimate exposures. Observational studies are thus the only practical option and uncertainties about causality vs. association are inevitable.

COVID-19 trends continue to defy analysis in large part because of unpredictable variants, the latest of which is still unfolding. However, some aspects remain and will continue to dominate:

Daily cases, deaths, and incidence of long-haul COVID can be reduced more than 10-fold by vaccination, notwithstanding deterioration over time that requires boosting.
Acceptance of vaccination remains a personal choice - a choice that may be associated with personal characteristics including income, education, and political perspective.
COVID-19 comprises a major cause of death in the United States and may continue to do so.

Findings In 2021 .

January . We showed that COVID-19 cases increased 10-fold, by 30% per month, during the 2020-21 winter; deaths generally followed suit, while case fatality rates (CFRs) decreased up to 10-fold. The Northeast region had shifted from worst to best, so that urban predictor variables like population density were no longer important. Regional rates coalesced in January.

February . The regional trend analyses showed declining cases but not deaths, with steady CFRs. We reported that “No plausible hypotheses have been advanced for the order-of-magnitude increases in cases and deaths since September”, now referred to as the “winter surge”. We compared urban and rural rates and noted the shift towards higher cases, deaths, and CFRs in rural areas.

March . We found that cases and deaths declined while CFRs increased 5-fold. Regional trends, which had ranged 4-fold for cases and deaths now coalesced. We analyzed short-term deaths and found a strong day-of-week effect, probably due to reporting error, but no evidence of important holiday surges.

April . We tried explaining the cyclical behavior of cases in terms of “susceptibles;” predicting an underlying trend of 5000 new cases per million per month. By contrast, the average case rate is now about 8000 cases per million per month - 53 million cases in total. However, after vaccinations got underway and prior to the Delta variant, new cases dropped to levels similar to those at the beginning of the pandemic. CFR’s ranged from about 0.015 in northern regions to 0.05 in the Southwest by April. We showed that Caucasian and mixed-race subjects had far lower COVID death rates than persons of color, and that COVID death rates increased with age at the same rate as non-COVID deaths.

May . COVID rates remained low in May. Comparing states, we reported significant relationships between COVID rates and political preference along with situational factors like household crowding. An increase in Republican voters of 60 percentage points, used as a marker of political perspective, was associated with a doubling of cumulative cases.

June . We revisited our previous consideration of airborne virus transmission, which had been espoused by CDC and the epidemiological community. We estimated ventilation rates and concluded that exposures in a small apartment were likely worse than in subways or aircraft. We also revisited urban-rural differences in more detail and showed that regional COVID rates had continued to coalesce.

July . We did a detailed analysis of vaccination rates and benefits. Daily vaccination rates peaked in April, at about 50% higher in the Northeast than elsewhere. We showed a strong significant decrease in daily state-level cases associated with full vaccination. We estimated unvaccinated case rates to be hundred-folds higher than with full vaccinations. We compared vaccination effects with education, and air pollution concluding that such personal characteristics could also be important. We also showed a negative state-level relationship between voting Republican and cumulative vaccination rates. Interestingly, vaccination rates correlated with COVID rates in 2020 before mass vaccinations began, and vaccinations at this time, also apparently, reduced mortality not associated with COVID. “ Could the decision to vaccinate have been more critical than the vaccination itself? ”

August . We reported that COVID case rates showed a sharp upturn, followed by death, likely due to the arrival of the Delta variant. Death rates and cases had decreased steadily until July to about 30 per million or 10,000 per day – a level the CDC considered as a “tolerable” endemic. We have not had these low levels since then. CFRs peaked in July, growing six-fold with substantial geographic variability.

September . We examined cyclical variations in daily infection rates and found substantial heterogeneity. State-level vaccination rates predicted both cases and death; and complete vaccination decreased case and death rates about 100-fold, even in the presence of the Delta variant.

October . We compared October’s COVID rates with those of the 2018-19 influenza to obtain a public health perspective. Total COVID-19 and influenza cases were similar at about 30 million and both were controlled by vaccination. Compare to influenza, COVID hospitalizations were 4-fold higher and deaths were 20-fold higher - COVID is clearly the more serious disease. We concluded that 178,000 lives may have been saved by COVID-19 vaccination.

November . We continued examining vaccine effects and found no difference in the real-world effectiveness of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. We found that COVID vaccinations were associated with reduced non-COVID deaths by 3-fold. We built an empirical mathematical model of the temporal variation of cases that fit the existing data very well but grossly underestimated the current situation. We predicted that full vaccinations for the U.S. might reach 72% in the next year, but with a range of 50-90% among states.

December . Cases began a sharp upward trend at years end, with deaths lagging behind. Regional gradients shifted, with Northwest highest and Northeast lowest. Vaccination rates continued to increase slowly, led by the Northeast. Previous beneficial effects of vaccination had been overshadowed by the severity of the Delta variant. We reported that vaccine effectiveness appears to decrease substantially over time. Long-haul COVID, neglected by the epidemiology community, was inversely associated with vaccination rates and the socioeconomic factors underlying vaccine reluctance or refusal. We estimated trends and the contributions of immunity acquired from previous infection, which we found to be statistically modest.

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By Fred Lipfert, PhD

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

Interested in thought-provoking discussions on abortion? Read our persuasive essay about abortion blog to eplore arguments!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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8.4 Annotated Student Sample: "U.S. Response to COVID-19" by Trevor Garcia

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify the genre conventions of an informal analytical report.
Analyze the organizational structure of a report and how writers develop ideas.
Recognize how writers use evidence and objectivity to build credibility.
Identify sources of evidence within a text and in source citations.

Introduction

The analytical report that follows was written by a student, Trevor Garcia, for a first-year composition course. Trevor’s assignment was to research and analyze a contemporary issue in terms of its causes or effects. He chose to analyze the causes behind the large numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the United States in 2020. The report is structured as an essay, and its format is informal.

Living by Their Own Words

Successes and failures.

student sample text With more than 83 million cases and 1.8 million deaths at the end of 2020, COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. By the end of 2020, the United States led the world in the number of cases, at more than 20 million infections and nearly 350,000 deaths. In comparison, the second-highest number of cases was in India, which at the end of 2020 had less than half the number of COVID-19 cases despite having a population four times greater than the U.S. (“COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic,” 2021). How did the United States come to have the world’s worst record in this pandemic? An examination of the U.S. response shows that a reduction of experts in key positions and programs, inaction that led to equipment shortages, and inconsistent policies were three major causes of the spread of the virus and the resulting deaths. end student sample text

annotated text Introduction. Informal reports follow essay structure and open with an overview. end annotated text

annotated text Statistics as Evidence. The writer gives statistics about infection rates and numbers of deaths; a comparison provides context. end annotated text

annotated text Source Citation in APA Style: No Author. A web page without a named author is cited by the title and the year. end annotated text

annotated text Thesis Statement. The rhetorical question leads to the thesis statement in the last sentence of the introduction. The thesis statement previews the organization and indicates the purpose—to analyze the causes of the U.S. response to the virus. end annotated text

Reductions in Expert Personnel and Preparedness Programs

annotated text Headings. This heading and those that follow mark sections of the report. end annotated text

annotated text Body. The three paragraphs under this heading support the first main point in the thesis statement. end annotated text

student sample text Epidemiologists and public health officials in the United States had long known that a global pandemic was possible. end student sample text

annotated text Topic Sentence. The paragraph opens with a sentence stating the topic. The rest of this paragraph and the two that follow develop the topic chronologically. end annotated text

student sample text In 2016, the National Security Council (NSC) published Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents , a 69-page document on responding to diseases spreading within and outside of the United States. On January 13, 2017, the joint transition teams of outgoing president Barack Obama and then president-elect Donald Trump performed a pandemic preparedness exercise based on the playbook; however, it was never adopted by the incoming administration (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020). A year later, in February 2018, the Trump administration began to cut funding for the Prevention and Public Health Fund at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leaving key positions unfilled. Other individuals who were fired or resigned in 2018 were the homeland security adviser, whose portfolio included global pandemics; the director for medical and biodefense preparedness; and the top official in charge of a pandemic response. None of them were replaced, thus leaving the White House with no senior person who had experience in public health (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020). Experts voiced concerns, among them Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the NSC, who spoke at a symposium marking the centennial of the 1918 influenza pandemic in May 2018: “The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern,” she said. “Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no” (Sun, 2018, final para.). end student sample text

annotated text Audience. The writer assumes that his readers have a strong grasp of government and agencies within the government. end annotated text

annotated text Synthesis. The paragraph synthesizes factual evidence from two sources and cites them in APA style. end annotated text

annotated text Expert Quotation as Supporting Evidence. The expert’s credentials are given, her exact words are placed in quotation marks, and the source is cited in parentheses. end annotated text

annotated text Source Citation in APA Style: No Page Numbers. Because the source of the quotation has no page numbers, the specific paragraph within the source (“final para.”; alternatively, “para. 18”) is provided in the parenthetical citation. end annotated text

student sample text Cuts continued in 2019, among them a maintenance contract for ventilators in the federal emergency supply and PREDICT, a U.S. agency for international development designed to identify and prevent pandemics (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020). In July 2019, the White House eliminated the position of an American public health official in Beijing, China, who was working with China’s disease control agency to help detect and contain infectious diseases. The first case of COVID-19 emerged in China four months later, on November 17, 2019. end student sample text

annotated text Development of First Main Point. This paragraph continues the chronological development of the first point, using a transitional sentence and evidence to discuss the year 2019. end annotated text

student sample text After the first U.S. coronavirus case was confirmed in 2020, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was named to lead a task force on a response, but after several months, he was replaced when then vice president Mike Pence was officially charged with leading the White House Coronavirus Task Force (Ballhaus & Armour, 2020). Experts who remained, including Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, were sidelined. Turnover of personnel in related government departments and agencies continued throughout 2020, leaving the country without experts in key positions to lead the pandemic response. end student sample text

Inaction and Equipment Shortages

annotated text Body. The three paragraphs under this heading support the second main point in the thesis statement. end annotated text

student sample text In January and February of 2020, the president’s daily brief included more than a dozen detailed warnings, based on wire intercepts, computer intercepts, and satellite images by the U.S. intelligence community (Miller & Nakashima, 2020). Although senior officials began to assemble a task force, no direct action was taken until mid-March. end student sample text

annotated text Topic Sentences. The paragraph opens with two sentences stating the topic that is developed in the following paragraphs. end annotated text

student sample text The stockpile of medical equipment and personal protective equipment was dangerously low before the pandemic began. Although the federal government had paid $9.8 million to manufacturers in 2018 and 2019 to develop and produce protective masks, by April 2020 the government had not yet received a single mask (Swaine, 2020). Despite the low stockpile, a request by the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early 2020 to begin contacting companies about possible shortages of necessary medical equipment, including personal protective equipment, was denied. This decision was made to avoid alarming the industry and the public and to avoid giving the impression that the administration was not prepared for the pandemic (Ballhaus & Armour, 2020). end student sample text

annotated text Topic Sentence. The paragraph opens with a sentence stating the topic that is developed in the paragraph. end annotated text

annotated text Objective Stance. The writer presents evidence (facts, statistics, and examples) in mostly neutral, unemotional language, which builds trustworthiness, or ethos , with readers. end annotated text

annotated text Synthesis. The paragraph synthesizes factual evidence from two sources. end annotated text

student sample text When former President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, federal agencies began placing bulk orders for masks and other medical equipment. These orders led to critical shortages throughout the nation. In addition, states were instructed to acquire their own equipment and found themselves bidding against each other for the limited supplies available, leading one head of a coronavirus team composed of consulting and private equity firms to remark that “the federal stockpile was . . . supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use” (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020, April 2, 2020). end student sample text

Policy Decisions

annotated text Body. The paragraph under this heading addresses the third main point in the thesis statement. end annotated text

student sample text Policy decisions, too, hampered the U.S. response to the pandemic. end student sample text

student sample text Although the HHS and NSC recommended stay-at-home directives on February 14, directives and guidelines for social distancing were not announced until March 16, and guidelines for mask wearing were inconsistent and contradictory (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020). Implementing the recommendations was left to the discretion of state governors, resulting in uneven stay-at-home orders, business closures, school closures, and mask mandates from state to state. The lack of a consistent message from the federal government not only delegated responsibility to state and local governments but also encouraged individuals to make their own choices, further hampering containment efforts. Seeing government officials and politicians without masks, for example, led many people to conclude that masks were unnecessary. Seeing large groups of people standing together at political rallies led people to ignore social distancing in their own lives. end student sample text

annotated text Synthesis. The paragraph synthesizes factual evidence from a source and examples drawn from the writer’s observation. end annotated text

student sample text Although the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States in January, genetic researchers later determined that the viral strain responsible for sustained transmission of the disease did not enter the country until around February 13 (Branswell, 2020), providing further evidence that the failed U.S. response to the pandemic could have been prevented. Cuts to public health staff reduced the number of experts in leadership positions. Inaction in the early months of the pandemic led to critical shortages of medical equipment and supplies. Mixed messages and inconsistent policies undermined efforts to control and contain the disease. Unfortunately, the response to the disease in 2020 cannot be changed, but 2021 looks brighter. Most people who want the vaccine—nonexistent at the beginning of the pandemic and unavailable until recently—will have received it by the end of 2021. Americans will have experienced two years of living with the coronavirus, and everyone will have been affected in some way. end student sample text

annotated text Conclusion. The report concludes with a restatement of the main points given in the thesis and points to the future. end annotated text

Ballhaus, R., & Armour, S. (2020, April 22). Health chief’s early missteps set back coronavirus response. Wall Street Journal . https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-chiefs-early-missteps-set-back-coronavirus-response-11587570514

Branswell, H. (2020, May 26). New research rewrites history of when COVID-19 took off in the U.S.—and points to missed chances to stop it . STAT. https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/26/new-research-rewrites-history-of-when-covid-19-arrived-in-u-s-and-points-to-missed-chances-to-stop-it/

COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic . (2021, January 13). Worldometer. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Goodman, R., & Schulkin, D. (2020, November 3). Timeline of the coronavirus pandemic and U.S. response . Just Security. https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

Miller, G., & Nakashima, E. (2020, April 27). President’s intelligence briefing book repeatedly cited virus threat. Washington Post . https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/presidents-intelligence-briefing-book-repeatedly-cited-virus-threat/2020/04/27/ca66949a-8885-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html

Sun, L. H. (2018, May 10). Top White House official in charge of pandemic response exits abruptly. Washington Post . https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/

Swaine, J. (2020, April 3). Federal government spent millions to ramp up mask readiness, but that isn’t helping now. Washington Post . https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/federal-government-spent-millions-to-ramp-up-mask-readiness-but-that-isnt-helping-now/2020/04/03/d62dda5c-74fa-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html

annotated text References Page in APA Style. All sources cited in the text of the report, and only those sources, are listed in alphabetical order with full publication information. See the Handbook for more on APA documentation style. end annotated text

Discussion Questions

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Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.” Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Prospects 49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.” BioRxiv (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.” Jama 323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

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What the <i>Black Twitter</i> Docuseries Gets Wrong

What the Black Twitter Docuseries Gets Wrong

B lack Twitter will not save us for what’s to come. As the days towards the 2024 presidential election draw near and the rage-filled screams of college students fill the halls of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, the United States finds itself at a crossroads. Will the most powerful country in the world revert back to when Donald Trump won the White House, or will we vote for Joe Biden to maintain his stronghold? This is the question that every American must answer before and on November 5.

If the everyday American (specifically the everyday Black American) was undecided about which candidate to vote for, it only takes one watch of Black Twitter: A People’s History , a three part docuseries based on journalist Jason Parham’s 2021 WIRED article “ A People’s History of Black Twitter ,” to understand that we must vote for Biden.

The series attempts to archive, document, and chronicle the force that is known as Black Twitter, two words that have been used to characterize Black digital life on the social media platform. It’s a platform that the series will remind you was not created by Black people, but brought into prominence by the attitudes, mannerisms, and behaviors of Black users on Twitter. But despite incessant commentary about how Black people are not a monolith, the docuseries—in its attempt to associate the Black Twitter community with an era that supposedly no longer exists—ultimately treats Black Twitter as such.

Creation is at the core of the series’ story. The words of Amiri Baraka’s " Technology & Ethos " essay are repeated and paraphrased throughout the three-part series in a fashion similar to a mother reading her child’s favorite tall tale before tucking them into bed. The essay opens with the following: “Machines (as Norbert Weiner said) are an extension of their inventor-creators. That is not simple once you think. Machines, the entire technology of the West, is just that, the technology of the West.” Baraka continues: “Nothing has to look or function the way it does. The West man’s freedom, unscientifically got at the expense of the rest of the world’s people, has allowed him to xpand his mind–spread his sensibility wherever it cdgo, & so shaped the world, & its powerful artifact-engines.”

The next line is where Black Twitter, or more broadly the relationship between Black people and technology, come into play. “Political power is also the power to create—not only what you will—but to be freed to go where ever you can go—(mentally physically as well). Black creation—creation powered by the Black ethos brings very special results.”

In the case of both Twitter the platform and also Twitter the company—where Black people acquired leadership positions at one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, used their presence online to enact change in the areas of racial justice and police reform, and increased diversity and representation from Hollywood to Silicon Valley and everywhere in between—what did those very special results bring? That answer is complicated, and one that the docuseries tries to grapple with but falls short.

As seen in the series, #OscarsSoWhite corrected a decades long practice of exclusion by the Academy and created opportunities for actors of color to receive membership into the voting body that decides the Oscars. In the nine years since the hashtag’s creation, gradual efforts were made towards greater representation on screen. Yet, the subsequent mass exodus of women of color in Hollywood leadership positions and the low number of films directed by women and people of color seems to contradict the docuseries’ overarching narrative of a hashtag's singular impact. Yes, the hashtag narrative as an idiom to bring forth change is powerful, but the counter response to them is just as telling.

The most blatant example of this is the #BlackLivesMatter portion of the docuseries. The docuseries chronicles the pivotal role Twitter played in the rise of citizen journalism, particularly during the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It also looks at the creation of #SayHerName, a social media response to the erasure of Black women, such as Sandra Bland, and Black trans women, like Mya Hall, who lost their lives to police violence, but were often overlooked by the male-centered BLM movement.

This is where Baraka is felt the most: Black creators have harnessed the power of technology, in order to counteract the West’s political power, which puts them in danger of losing their lives. Minute after minute, frame after frame, the docuseries asks the viewer to bear witness to the ways in which Black Twitter, through the creation and utilization of hashtags, on-the-ground reporting, and 24/7 news coverage, has long been victimized by police violence.

But like Baraka said, the machine is an extension of its inventor-creator, and the creator, or in this case the executive producers of the docuseries, have a hand in its invention. It's a creation that feels foreign to those who birthed and have maintained Black Twitter as a living and breathing cultural archive of Black digital life. A life that has no singular partisan belief or political agenda. A life that, in many ways, bites the hand of the docuseries creators. It’s a hand that delicately weaves the ascension of Barack Obama to the presidency with the birth and rise of Black Twitter. The two are in a covenant of holy matrimony.

Just ask Brad Jenkins, former associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, who frequently appears throughout the docuseries. Or Carri Twigg, the former Associate Director of Public Engagement of the White House, who serves as one of the series’ executive producers. There is no direct mention that the Black Lives Matter movement started under the Obama administration—or acknowledgment of the overwhelming collective action by Black students at the University of Missouri during that time, as well as the solidarity actions that occurred across college campuses in the U.S.

The series goes on to connect the rise of misinformation, the proliferation of Russian bots, and the 2016 election of Donald Trump as a reaction to the Obama presidency and Black Twitter. In fact, the series’ somber moments—where anti-Black sentiment is seen in reports of algorithms being altered to increase traffic towards users that display racist and misogynistic behaviors online, and clips of white women calling the police to inflict harm and violence on Black people for simply living — are linked to the Trump portion of the series. But that is ahistorical in and of itself because Black women have been calling attention to the ways in which they are subjected to anti-Black violence and harassment online since the 1990s . BBQ Becky is just Carolyn Bryant by another name.

Read More: Twitter Offers More Transparency on Racist Abuse by Its Users, but Few Solutions

If the Obama years of Black Twitter were fun, the docuseries posits, the Trump years of Black Twitter were hell. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the global uprisings over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the year 2020 within the docuseries is marked by culture shifts towards violence, including the misogynoir Megan Thee Stallion experienced online after she came forward about being physically assaulted by Tory Lanez. The year is also peppered with glimmers of a Black Twitter of yesteryear: a communal moment of gathering to live tweet “Verzuz” challenges or to watch The Last Dance as a family. Communal moments that are thought to be associated with the Obama administration.

And just like that, the docuseries pivots to showcase the Black voters in South Carolina, who are thanked for their votes for Biden in the 2020 election. Biden is even described as Obama’s right hand man. It is in this moment that the series wants the audience to remember the joy of the Obama years, the hope of the Obama years, and most importantly, the impact of Black voters in the Obama years.

I do not mean to spoil the climax of the 2020 section of the docuseries, but Biden won and Elon Musk replaced Trump as the villain of the series. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, is met with despair, exodus, and rage. Efforts to humble and humiliate Musk are flashed across the screen as former Black employees at Twitter in one-on-one interviews discuss the destruction of their years of labor and hard work to diversify the platform. Black academics, celebrities, and personalities lament as they say a goodbye to the good days of Twitter. Mastodon, BlueSky, Spill, LinkedIn, and of course TikTok are depicted as places of solace for Black users who feel unwelcome on X. (X has since eliminated any protections for marginalized and disenfranchised users on the platforms.)

Four years after the election of Biden to the presidency and with the forthcoming election looming, the series bids Black Twitter adieu with the foresight that Black people will always continue to innovate, despite not being given the tools or resources to create. This is exemplified by a reference to soul food, and a call to action to create our own archives—the thesis of Black Twitter: A People’s History.

But what Black Twitter fails to realize—and simply can’t capture—is that we are not in 2008 anymore. Or 2012. Or 2020. The Obama coalition is dead. The Biden coalition is falling apart by the day and culturally resonant programming falls flat compared to the citizen-led reporting that is coming to life in front of our very eyes. Just look at the actions of the student journalists at WKCR , the Columbia University radio station that covered the raid of Hamilton Hall by the New York Police Department. Or the wave of anti-war protests by Black students at HBCUs. Guess where these students learned how to organize from? Black Twitter. They’re not just archiving their own stories—they’re creating them.

But that’s the flaw of content like this. It doesn’t have the capacity to capture the legacy of a movement because it’s a movement that isn't over. It is still unfurling—still morphing and coming to life in front of our very eyes. These are children who came of age on Black Twitter. They’re still using those tools to make us laugh, to inspire change, to create community.

If there is anyone who will save us (and in turn, if there’s anything worth saving), it's them. Not Black Twitter.

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Perspective

When pto stands for 'pretend time off': doctors struggle to take real breaks.

Mara Gordon

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off.

A few weeks ago, I took a vacation with my family. We went hiking in the national parks of southern Utah, and I was blissfully disconnected from work.

I'm a family physician, so taking a break from my job meant not seeing patients. It also meant not responding to patients' messages or checking my work email. For a full week, I was free.

Taking a real break — with no sneaky computer time to bang out a few prescription refill requests — left me feeling reenergized and ready to take care of my patients when I returned.

But apparently, being a doctor who doesn't work on vacation puts me squarely in the minority of U.S. physicians.

Research published in JAMA Network Open this year set out to quantify exactly how doctors use their vacation time — and what the implications might be for a health care workforce plagued by burnout, dissatisfaction and doctors who are thinking about leaving medicine.

"There is a strong business case for supporting taking real vacation," says Dr. Christine Sinsky , the lead author of the paper. "Burnout is incredibly expensive for organizations."

Shots - Health News

Health workers know what good care is. pandemic burnout is getting in the way.

Researchers surveyed 3,024 doctors, part of an American Medical Association cohort designed to represent the American physician workforce. They found that 59.6% of American physicians took 15 days of vacation or less per year. That's a little more than the average American: Most workers who have been at a job for a year or more get between 10 and 14 days of paid vacation time , according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, most doctors don't take real vacation. Over 70% of doctors surveyed said they worked on a typical vacation day.

"I have heard physicians refer to PTO as 'pretend time off,'" Sinsky says, referring to the acronym for "paid time off."

Sinsky and co-authors found that physicians who took more than three weeks of vacation a year had lower rates of burnout than those who took less, since vacation time is linked to well-being and job satisfaction .

And all those doctors toiling away on vacation, sitting poolside with their laptops? Sinsky argues it has serious consequences for health care.

Physician burnout is linked to high job turnover and excess health care costs , among other problems.

Still, it can be hard to change the culture of workaholism in medicine. Even the study authors confessed that they, too, worked on vacation.

"I remember when one of our first well-being papers was published," says Dr. Colin West , a co-author of the new study and a health care workforce researcher at the Mayo Clinic. "I responded to the revisions up at the family cabin in northern Minnesota on vacation."

Sinsky agreed. "I do not take all my vacation, which I recognize as a delicious irony of the whole thing," she says.

She's the American Medical Association's vice president of professional satisfaction. If she can't take a real vacation, is there any hope for the rest of us?

I interviewed a half dozen fellow physicians and chatted off the record with many friends and colleagues to get a sense of why it feels so hard to give ourselves a break. Here, I offer a few theories about why doctors are so terrible at taking time off.

We don't want to make more work for our colleagues

The authors of the study in JAMA Network Open didn't explore exactly what type of work doctors did on vacation, but the physicians I spoke to had some ideas.

"If I am not doing anything, I will triage my email a little bit," says Jocelyn Fitzgerald , a urogynecologist at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the study. "I also find that certain high-priority virtual meetings sometimes find their way into my vacations."

Even if doctors aren't scheduled to see patients, there's almost always plenty of work to be done: dealing with emergencies, medication refills, paperwork. For many of us, the electronic medical record (EMR) is an unrelenting taskmaster , delivering a near-constant flow of bureaucratic to-dos.

When I go on vacation, my fellow primary care doctors handle that work for me, and I do the same for them.

But it can sometimes feel like a lot to ask, especially when colleagues are doing that work on top of their normal workload.

"You end up putting people in kind of a sticky situation, asking for favors, and they [feel they] need to pay it back," says Jay-Sheree Allen , a family physician and fellow in preventive medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

She says her practice has a "doctor of the day" who covers all urgent calls and messages, which helps reduce some of the guilt she feels about taking time off.

Still, non-urgent tasks are left for her to complete when she gets back. She says she usually logs in to the EMR when she's on vacation so the tasks don't pile up upon her return. If she doesn't, Allen estimates there will be about eight hours of paperwork awaiting her after a week or so of vacation.

"My strategy, I absolutely do not recommend," Allen says. But "I would prefer that than coming back to the total storm."

We have too little flexibility about when we take vacation

Lawren Wooten , a resident physician in pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco, says she takes 100% of her vacation time. But there are a lot of stipulations about exactly how she uses it.

She has to take it in two-week blocks — "that's a long time at once," she says — and it's hard to change the schedule once her chief residents assign her dates.

"Sometimes I wish I had vacation in the middle of two really emotionally challenging rotations like an ICU rotation and an oncology rotation," she says, referring to the intensive care unit. "We don't really get to control our schedules at this point in our careers."

Once Wooten finishes residency and becomes an attending physician, it's likely she'll have more autonomy over her vacation time — but not necessarily all that much more.

"We generally have to know when our vacations are far in advance because patients schedule with us far in advance," says Fitzgerald, the gynecologist.

Taking vacation means giving up potential pay

Many physicians are paid based on the number of patients they see or procedures they complete. If they take time off work, they make less money.

"Vacation is money off your table," says West, the physician well-being researcher. "People have a hard time stepping off of the treadmill."

A 2022 research brief from the American Medical Association estimated that over 55% of U.S. physicians were paid at least in part based on "productivity," as opposed to earning a flat amount regardless of patient volume. That means the more patients doctors cram into their schedules, the more money they make. Going on vacation could decrease their take-home pay.

But West says it's important to weigh the financial benefits of skipping vacation against the risk of burnout from working too much.

Physician burnout is linked not only to excess health care costs but also to higher rates of medical errors. In one large survey of American surgeons , for example, surgeons experiencing burnout were more likely to report being involved in a major medical error. (It's unclear to what extent the burnout caused the errors or the errors caused the burnout, however.)

Doctors think they're the only one who can do their jobs

When I go on vacation, my colleagues see my patients for me. I work in a small office, so I know the other doctors well and I trust that my patients are in good hands when I'm away.

Doctors have their own diagnosis: 'Moral distress' from an inhumane health system

But ceding that control to colleagues might be difficult for some doctors, especially when it comes to challenging patients or big research projects.

"I think we need to learn to be better at trusting our colleagues," says Adi Shah , an infectious disease doctor at the Mayo Clinic. "You don't have to micromanage every slide on the PowerPoint — it's OK."

West, the well-being researcher, says health care is moving toward a team-based model and away from a culture where an individual doctor is responsible for everything. Still, he adds, it can be hard for some doctors to accept help.

"You can be a neurosurgeon, you're supposed to go on vacation tomorrow and you operate on a patient. And there are complications or risk of complications, and you're the one who has the relationship with that family," West says. "It is really, really hard for us to say ... 'You're in great hands with the rest of my team.'"

What doctors need, says West, is "a little bit less of the God complex."

We don't have any interests other than medicine

Shah, the infectious disease doctor, frequently posts tongue-in-cheek memes on X (formerly known as Twitter) about the culture of medicine. Unplugging during vacation is one of his favorite topics, despite his struggles to follow his own advice.

His recommendation to doctors is to get a hobby, so we can find something better to do than work all the time.

"Stop taking yourself too seriously," he says. Shah argues that medical training is so busy that many physicians neglect to develop any interests other than medicine. When fully trained doctors are finally finished with their education, he says, they're at a loss for what to do with their newfound freedom.

Since completing his training a few years ago, Shah has committed himself to new hobbies, such as salsa dancing. He has plans to go to a kite festival next year.

Shah has also prioritized making the long trip from Minnesota to see his family in India at least twice a year — a journey that requires significant time off work. He has a trip there planned this month.

"This is the first time in 11 years I'm making it to India in summer so that I can have a mango in May," the peak season for the fruit, Shah says.

Wooten, the pediatrician, agrees. She works hard to develop a full life outside her career.

"Throughout our secondary and medical education, I believe we've really been indoctrinated into putting institutions above ourselves," Wooten adds. "It takes work to overcome that."

Mara Gordon is a family physician in Camden, N.J., and a contributor to NPR. She's on X as @MaraGordonMD .

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Guest Essay

This Isn’t the China I Remember

An illustration shows a mother with her arm around her young son while she looks out a window at magnolia flower petals falling from a tree.

By Gish Jen

Ms. Jen, an American novelist whose family hails from Shanghai, wrote from Shanghai.

In 1979 my mother pulled out a Band-Aid in a Nanjing hospital. The nurses clustered around it, amazed. “The West has everything!” they said.

We were on a family visit to China, where my Shanghai relatives were similarly wowed by our excellent teeth and ample body fat, not to mention our descriptions of American dishwashers, refrigerators and air-conditioning. And with the general awe came V.I.P. treatment. Hosts broke out bottles of expensive orange soda that they freely mixed with expensive warm beer. We could not escape drinking this any more than we could escape our government-assigned “guide,” whose job was to strictly monitor visitors like us. Relatives or not, we were foreigners.

I returned to teach English at the Shandong Mining Institute in 1981. My students were coal mining engineers preparing to study abroad, so that they might bring back safer mining techniques. I was their “foreign expert.” As such, I had not only a sit-down toilet in the apartment provided to me, but also running hot water, an unheard-of luxury. My ayi, or housekeeper, would make a fire under a vat of water on the roof and, when it was ready, turn the faucet handle in my bathtub.

After class, my students would bring stools out to the basketball court where, each facing a different direction, they would sit and study for hours on end. Loving their country and wanting to make it strong, they were grateful for Westerners like me. Foreign as we were, we were a help.

Fast forward a few decades to a booming China. In my many visits over the years — as a teacher, as a visiting artist and as a tourist — Shanghai hotel staffers had always returned my credit card to me with two hands, a bow of the head, and a smile. But with a quarter of the world’s construction cranes said to be in the city during China’s boom years, raising skyscrapers from what had been rice paddies, attitudes had changed. My credit card was returned with one hand; the receptionist barely looked up. My relatives no longer asked that I bring American goods for them, either. “China has everything,” they said then. As many proudly proclaimed, the 20th century was America’s; the 21st was China’s.

One seldom hears that triumphalist tone today. Instead, the talk is of a loss of confidence and trust in the Chinese government. People remain proud of their city, which now boasts excellent, cosmopolitan food and spotless streets. There are huge new sports centers featuring tennis and paddle-boarding, there is an artificial beach with pink sand. The city is far greener than in years past, too. Magnolia and cherry trees bloom everywhere and even the strips under the freeways have been landscaped. And thanks to the ubiquitous security cameras, Shanghai is spectacularly safe.

Yet below the surface lurks a sense of malaise. In this famously cosmopolitan city, there are weirdly few foreigners compared with before, many having left because of the stifling policies during the pandemic or because international companies have pulled out employees, or other reasons. Clothing shops are empty and many other stores have closed. The Nanjing West Road shopping district, previously a sea of humans, is strangely underpopulated.

Shanghainese are still outraged at having been locked down for two months in the spring of 2022 to stem a surge in Covid-19 cases with little time to prepare. Such were the shortages of essentials that Tylenol was for sale by the pill. And so heavy-handed were even the post-lockdown policies that residents took to the streets in protest .

But for many, the pandemic debacle only capped a series of governmental blunders starting with Premier Li Keqiang urging young people to open their own businesses in 2014. This and other missteps cost wave after wave of people their life savings, and many Chinese now blame government ineptitude and erraticism for bringing the economy to a standstill. As a Shanghainese friend put it, the government has turned China around and around until, like spinning cars, people’s engines have stalled and their wheels have locked up.

The result has been so steep and unrelenting a fall in real estate prices that elderly people, like my friend’s parents, can’t sell their apartments to pay for nursing or assisted living. And they are hardly the only ones affected by the downturn. Doctors find themselves squeezed — many patients don’t have money for operations — while businesspeople sit on their hands, unwilling to make investments in so unpredictable an environment. Many college graduates, faced with a grim job market, are essentially dropping out, or “lying flat,” as it’s called in China. Not even schoolchildren, it seems, have been spared the general despondency. As one teacher I spoke to observed, when the society is sick, the children pay the price. Too many parents know a child who has had to leave school because of depression.

Of course, for all of this the West is scapegoated — having opposed, people say, China’s rise — as is China’s other favorite enemy, Japan, whose brutal 1930s invasion and ensuing occupation of China still rankles. (One sequence of a CGI video shown in my recent Shanghai spin class featured giant images of the coronavirus studded with Japanese temples.)

Whoever is to blame, emigration is on the rise . According to U.N. figures, more than 310,000 Chinese left the country in each of the past two years, a 62 percent increase from the earlier average of around 191,000 per year over the decade through 2019. Those in Shanghai with the means to do so talk endlessly about “running away,” even to officially reviled countries like the United States .

This is not always an answer. One friend of mine has come back to China to stay, having spent six years attending graduate school in Boston, saying she missed the warmth of Chinese family life. And no one has illusions about the difficulty of getting established in another country. People in China speak of a whole new class of emigrants, women who have left high-powered careers to accompany their children to the United States early enough for them to assimilate — ideally, in middle or high school. As for the fruits of their sacrifice, it’s too early to say. Can the children really become Westerners? Will they — like me decades earlier — become the foreigners?

Things in China could change. Those “lying flat” are not asleep. They are watching and could someday rise up. But in the meantime, people in Shanghai are simply, as they put it, “xin lei ” : Their hearts are tired.

Gish Jen is an American novelist and the author of “Thank You, Mr. Nixon.” She is currently teaching at N.Y.U. Shanghai.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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GoT-ChA: New tool reveals how gene mutations affect cells

By jim schnabel weill cornell medicine.

A team co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the New York Genome Center has developed an advanced method for revealing how gene mutations disrupt the normal packaging of DNA. These structural changes, which alter patterns of gene activity in a cell, are known as epigenetic changes and can lead to malignancy.

The new method, described in a paper published May 8 in Nature , offers biologists a powerful tool that can be applied in many fields of investigation, from basic cell biology to the study of how cancers originate. The researchers demonstrated the new method by using it to illuminate how a common gene mutation exerts its effects in two rare blood cancers.

“This new technique should permit broad future explorations of the links between mutations and epigenetic alterations in the context of cancers and related conditions,” said study senior author Dr. Dan Landau , a professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine and a core faculty member at the New York Genome Center.

The study was co-led by Dr. Franco Izzo, a postdoctoral researcher in the Landau Lab during the study, now an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The new achievement is the latest in a series of single-cell profiling innovations from Landau’s research group. Such methods, also called “single-cell multi-omics” methods, enable researchers to characterize DNA mutations, gene activity patterns, cell-surface proteins and other layers of information – all in an individual cell, using automation to process many thousands of cells at a time. In contrast, older methods are used on bulk samples, which typically contain mixes of different cell types as well as both mutated and non-mutated cells – greatly limiting any analysis.

In this case, the team developed a more sensitive and accurate single-cell method for detecting DNA mutations of interest. They then combined this with a new technique for mapping a cell’s “chromatin accessibility” – essentially the places where DNA is relatively open and accessible for gene transcription – as a broad picture of the cell’s epigenetic state. The researchers termed these paired techniques “Genotyping of Targeted loci with single-cell Chromatin Accessibility,” or “GoT-ChA,” and showed they could integrate GoT-ChA with single-cell methods for profiling other information layers such as RNAs and cell-surface proteins.

The scientists demonstrated the power of their new toolkit by using it to study blood cells sampled from patients with two rare blood cancers, polycythemia vera and myelofibrosis. These cancers are usually driven by a specific mutation in a gene called JAK2 – a mutation that has been implicated in other conditions and is also found in many seemingly healthy people.

Both cancers also feature disruptions of the normal blood cell maturation process, which implies that the JAK2 mutation induces significant epigenetic changes – but the limitations of older methods meant that these epigenetic changes and other downstream effects of the mutation were not well understood. With GoT-ChA, the researchers were able to catalogue these effects in great detail.

“It was thought that in myelofibrosis, for example, bone marrow inflammation is driven by the marrow microenvironment, but we discovered that inflammatory changes in blood stem cells directly result from the JAK2 mutation, and also depend on the cell type,” said Landau, who’s also a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center and of the Englander Institute of Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The results suggest that potent new JAK2 inhibitor drugs, currently in development, might be helpful in treating myelofibrosis patients, he said.

Landau noted that GoT-ChA should be generally useful for studying conditions in which DNA mutations – which can arise throughout life for various reasons – are present in only a minority of cells in an organ, and are therefore hard or impossible to study with traditional, pre-single-cell techniques.

The study’s co-first authors, in addition to Izzo, were M.D.-Ph.D. student Robert Myers, postdoctoral fellow Saravanan Ganesan and doctoral candidate Levan Mekerishvili, all of the Landau Laboratory.

Many Weill Cornell Medicine physicians and scientists maintain relationships and collaborate with external organizations to foster scientific innovation and provide expert guidance. The institution makes these disclosures public to ensure transparency. For this information, see profile for Dr. Dan Landau .

Jim Schnabel is a freelance writer for Weill Cornell Medicine.

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Mistrust, fights and blood sport: How COVID-19 trauma is shaping the 2024 election

During the global coronavirus pandemic ICU nurses working on a covid19 patient in the ICU unit at Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Much of the country has moved on from the COVID-19 pandemic, but Ruth and Mohammed Nasrullah keep a vigil from their Houston home, posting thousands of pictures and stories of those who have fallen: coaches, tax clerks, teachers, autoworkers and graphic designers.

“We spend our time immersed in death,” Ruth said of the couple’s COVID-19 Wall of Memories , which went on online when graveyards were widening and fear was spreading in January 2021. The wall holds more than 21,000 photographs and histories of those who died. “It gives us perspective. We’ve seen an arc of change in COVID response and grief.”

The pandemic is fading and Americans want to forget, said Mohammed. But people are still dying and the fallout from the virus is playing into attitudes over the divisive state of the country and its politics.

The coronavirus is seldom mentioned by the campaigns of President Biden and Donald Trump, even though its impact on voters and the way the pandemic altered how we live, work, die and mourn has been profound. It accelerated mistrust in government and institutions, emptied downtowns of workers, sparked fights over masks and science, turned school board meetings into political blood sport, hardened the lines between red and blue states and ignited a mental health crisis.

The lingering trauma — 1.2 million people died in the U.S. and an estimated 17 million suffer from long COVID — echoes through issues confronting voters, including inflation, education, crime, immigration and the unease many have for the future. These challenges are shaping a presidential rematch between two candidates most Americans don’t want at a time when the nation appears trapped in a despairing loop of restiveness and uncertainty over the fate of democracy and an economy that has raised rents and kept food prices stubbornly high.

“Society has become more disillusioned over the government’s ability to take on larger issues. The pool of people distrusting the government has gotten larger,” said Kristin Urquiza, who co-founded Marked By COVID , which is calling for an accounting of the government’s pandemic response and establishing a National COVID Memorial. “The pandemic exacerbated everything.”

Has California’s COVID-19 winter surge peaked? Here’s what the data show

It wasn’t that long ago that the country and the world slipped through the looking glass. Preachers warned of the end of days. Hospitals filled, ventilators failed and refrigerated trucks were stacked with corpses. The isolated and the lonely sang from windows and balconies. Final goodbyes were spoken over video links and smartphones. No one knew when it would end as collective grief and anger settled in amid news of broken supply chains and the latest from Wuhan, the city in China from where death crossed oceans and borders.

“It completely shifted our lives,” said Natalie Jackson, vice president of the polling firm GQR. “There are ways society has changed that we’re not totally aware of. Historians in a couple of decades will be able to tell us a lot more about how our behavior changed that we’re not able to understand right now.”

Former President Trump — who suggested injecting disinfectant to kill the virus in April 2020 — doesn’t reflect much on the early days of the pandemic, when his administration was criticized for its slow response. Instead, he tells voters, as he did at a recent rally, that America under his leadership was “stronger and tougher and richer and safer and more confident.” President Biden also seldom speaks of COVID, but he recently chided Trump’s handling of the outbreak when he told donors, “I hope everyone in the country takes a moment to think back when it was like in March of 2020.”

Biden, meanwhile, is contending with the consequences of his own pandemic policies.

His administration averted economic catastrophe by pushing through at least $5 trillion in stimulus checks, child tax credits and loans to help families, small businesses, airlines, local governments and others lessen the ravages of the pandemic. Those protections largely stopped as jobs and the economy began to recover. But the loss of subsidies collided with a sharp jump in inflation. That overall rate has fallen to 3.5%. But steep prices have remained a persistent burden — home mortgage interest rates are around 7.3% — on household incomes and are a constant target by Trump against Biden.

More parents are delaying their kids’ vaccines, and it’s alarming pediatricians

“That’s the problem Biden faces,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “It was inevitable that after all those price controls were gone people would notice. That’s the lasting impact of the pandemic.”

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that 73% of Americans believe the economy should be the top priority of the next president and Congress. The cost of living is particularly pronounced in California where inflation, high interest rates and escalating rents are demoralizing the working and middle classes. “We’re seeing it in spades,” said DiCamillo. “The American dream seems to be out of reach for renters, and homeowners are stuck.”

The pandemic also changed the dynamics of the nation’s long-standing failure to fix a broken immigration system, which became further politicized in 2022 when busloads of migrants sent from Texas and Florida began appearing in traditionally Democratic controlled cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Texas public safety officers work with migrants who crossed the border and turned themselves in Del Rio, Texas in June 2021.

Trump-era restrictions on immigration to prevent the spread of the virus during the pandemic, notably Title 42, limited the influx of illegal migrants. A loosening of those policies by the Biden administration resulted in a record surge of illegal border crossings, hitting 2.2 million in fiscal year 2022. Tough enforcement measures by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — praised by conservatives — to deter undocumented migrants from entering his state meant that San Diego in April became the main entry point for migrants along the southern border.

Immigration remains a dominant campaign theme for Republicans, even though the Pew survey ranks it behind the economy, healthcare costs, education and terrorism as Americans’ top priorities for the next Congress and president. Illegal crossings have declined since December, but Trump has become increasingly pointed in his attacks on migrants and Biden’s policies. “We need to stop the invasion now!” the Trump campaign posted on social media. “Biden has absolutely FAILED to secure our borders.”

The pandemic immediately altered our reality and influenced our perceptions afterward, agitating existing anxieties in American life, raising fears not only over a spreading virus but of the safety of our communities. Violent crime and murder soared at the start of the pandemic and the 2020 protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Gun violence and homicides declined significantly by the end of 2023, but many Americans, notably Republicans and Black voters, remain concerned about violent crime, said Jackson, adding: “Those narratives take time to reverse.”

Conspiracy theories flourished as the number of COVID-related deaths rose. Suspicions and outrage reverberated around the safety of vaccines, wearing masks, and how quickly children should return to the classroom. Battles over each issue broke along political lines that are playing into the 2024 campaign, including the support behind third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, and how parent groups demanding the reopening of schools became part of wider cultural war issues around book bans, race and gender identity.

“We still have the impacts of increased polarization. Were you a masker or not a masker?” said Mindy Romero, a political sociologist and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC. “We had a sustained period where our fellow human beings were a potential threat to our health and our lives. I do wonder what that impact will be long term. It’s been so politicized that people are hesitant or outright scared to talk” about what COVID did to their lives.

Politics and pandemic collide in a tiny red state: Masks? What masks?

Urquiza turned her personal grief into political action. After her father died of the virus in 2020, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention and blamed Trump’s handling of the pandemic: “My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” she said. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life.”

Her organization, Marked By Covid, is working to raise awareness about the consequences of the pandemic and setting up trust funds for more than 200,000 children who lost one or both parents to the virus. Americans need “a public memory and the truth of what happened,” she said. “We need a clear, unbiased record on the pandemic. What we did well and what we didn’t. We need a 9/11-like commission. The 2024 election is an opportunity to remember what COVID did.”

A lot of service industry and low-income workers “felt abandoned during the pandemic,” she said. “Isn’t it the government’s job to keep us safe? I think the rise of workers’ unions is somewhat related to COVID. It called attention to working conditions.”

Ruth and Mohammed Nasrullah started their online memorial after pandemic deaths rose to more than 100,000: “What was being reported on the news was just numbers,” said Mohammed, a retired project manager who worked with NASA. “But no one was talking about the people behind those numbers. The memorial provides a way to grieve. Families visit it like you would go to a cemetery. They come with stories and leave messages.”

The stories were at once startling and common. A mother and father dying of the virus and leaving behind two young children; an elderly couple who perished within minutes of one another.

“The pandemic became its own period of time. It’s its own era,” said Ruth, whose memorial has been archived by the U.S. Library of Congress. “But we want to minimize and forget that terrible time. I still see people rolling their eyes when I wear a mask. The divisiveness is still there.”

Did California or Florida handle COVID-19 better? The answer is complicated

Although it still influences voters’ attitudes, many people don’t mention the pandemic directly. It has been tucked away like a dark family history or a misbegotten war, even as its consequences play out daily. In the Pew survey, COVID was not listed by Americans as one of the top 20 concerns they see for the next president. “It’s not on anyone’s radar,” said Mohammed, who has been a local election judge for years. “The candidates don’t mention it. They look at the polls for the public’s priorities, and for 70 to 80% of the public, COVID is not an issue.”

Between March 31 and April 27, at least 1,589 people in the U.S. died from COVID. The latest vaccine booster is available, but the lines have long since dwindled. The country is engaged with other perils, although, at times, a mask can be glimpsed dangling from a stranger’s arm and a passing conversation can lead to memories of empty shelves and lockdowns.

“A bit of psychology has to come into this,” said Jackson. “You think about a big traumatic event. An individual is not going to realize the degree to which they changed their behavior. ... The same thing happens to a nation.”

Biden and Trump’s main challenge? The apathetic voters who could decide the election

April 4, 2024

FILE - This combo image shows Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, March 9, 2024 and President Joe Biden, right, Jan. 27, 2024. (AP Photo, File)

AP-NORC poll: Trump evokes more anger and fear from Democrats than Biden does from Republicans

March 26, 2024

President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Philadelphia, Friday, March 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Column: Biden says America is ‘coming back.’ Trump says we’re ‘in hell.’ Are they talking about the same nation?

March 11, 2024

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Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”

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Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic
Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic. Published: 2021/11/08. Number of words: 1220. As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the ...
A Short Essay On The Virus Called CoVID-19
The Current Status of the CoVID-19 Pandemic. CoVID-19 started infecting people in the city of Wuhan, China in mid-December of 2019. Within a month, more than ten thousand people were infected and ...
Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?
The F.D.A. is monitoring reports of tinnitus, but "at this time, the available evidence does not suggest a causal association with the Covid-19 vaccines," the agency said in a statement.
Introduction: Pandemic TV, Then and Now
This essay serves as the introduction to TVNM's special issue on "Pandemic TV," an analysis of the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic affected principally anglophone television and television-watching in 2020 to 2021 (including television's response to corresponding events such as the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings and the fall 2020 U.S. presidential election).
What the 'Black Twitter' Docuseries Gets Wrong
The essay opens with the following: "Machines (as Norbert Weiner said) are an extension of their inventor-creators. ... From the COVID-19 pandemic to the global uprisings over the deaths of ...
When doctors can't take real breaks from work, the health care ...
What's a typical vacation activity for doctors? Work. A new study finds that most physicians do work on a typical day off. In this essay, a family doctor considers why that is and why it matters.
Why China's Most Can-Do City Is Tired
(One sequence of a CGI video shown in my recent Shanghai spin class featured giant images of the coronavirus studded with Japanese temples.) Whoever is to blame, emigration is on the rise ...
GoT-ChA: New tool reveals how gene mutations affect cells
A team co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the New York Genome Center has developed an advanced method for revealing how gene mutations disrupt the normal packaging of DNA.
How COVID-19 trauma is shaping the 2024 Biden-Trump election
Americans want to forget about COVID-19, but fallout from the pandemic is shaping voter attitudes about the nation's economy and divisive politics heading into a Biden-Trump rematch.

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Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words

Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words

Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words

Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words

Short Essay on Covid-19

Simran Popli

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Introduction

Social networks

Social support

Social and interactional norms

Recommendations and conclusions

Recommendation 1: explicitly count the relational cost of public health policies to control the pandemic

Recommendation 2: intelligently balance online and offline ways of relating

Recommendation 3: build stronger and sustainable localised communities

Ethics statements

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