Author: TheConversation

By Bhaskar Chakravorti, Dean of Global Business, The Fletcher School, Tufts University As we practice social distancing, our embrace of social media gets only tighter. The major social media platforms have emerged as the critical information purveyors for influencing the choices people make during the expanding pandemic. There’s also reason for worry: the World Health Organization is concerned about an “infodemic,” a glut of accurate and inaccurate information about COVID-19. The social media companies have been pilloried in recent years for practicing “surveillance capitalism” and being a societal menace. The pandemic could be their moment of redemption. How are...

By Carl Kurlander, Senior Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh The fear and uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic may feel new to many of us. But it is strangely familiar to those who lived through the polio epidemic of the last century. Like a horror movie, throughout the first half of the 20th century, the polio virus arrived each summer, striking without warning. No one knew how polio was transmitted or what caused it. There were wild theories that the virus spread from imported bananas or stray cats. There was no known cure or vaccine. For the next four decades, swimming...

By Richard Gunderman, Chancellor’s Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University He survived the last great plague in London and the city’s Great Fire. He was imprisoned and persecuted for his religious and political views. There was no happy ending for the journalist Daniel Defoe, author of “A Journal of a Plague Year.” When he died in 1731, he was mired in debt and hiding from his creditors. Yet Defoe, born in 1660, left behind a work of fiction that is one of the most widely published books in history and – other than the Bible –...

By Neil Shortland, Director, Center for Terrorism and Security Studies; Assistant Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell As the coronavirus spreads and demand for medical gear far outstrips the supplies, doctors in the U.S. may have to choose who among their patients lives and who dies. Doctors in Italy have already been forced to make such moral choices. In a recent news report, six doctors at five of the major city hospitals said they were worried they would soon have to make painful decisions regarding who should come off lifesaving ventilators. In addition to the...

By Adam Kamradt-Scott, Associate professor, University of Sydney President Donald Trump has announced the US is cutting its funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) – a decision that will have major implications for the global health response to the coronavirus pandemic. The United States contributes more than $400 million to the WHO per year, though it is already $200 million in arrears. It is the organization’s largest donor and gives about 10 times what China does per year. Trump has accused the organization of mishandling and covering up the initial spread of COVID-19 in China, and of generally...