Author: TheConversation

By Michael Cousineau, Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California As the number of cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, continues to grow, the nation is on edge. Doctors and scientists do not know what percentage of the general population has been infected and what percentage of the infected develops symptoms. State and local governments and the federal public health system are deploying strategies to contain the spread of the virus and consider ways to mitigate the effects of the disease on vulnerable groups, the health care system and the economy. But amid all...

By Jonathan Kanter, Director of the Center for the Science of Social Connection, University of Washington; and Adam Kuczynski, PhD Student, Department of Psychology, University of Washington To fight the spread of coronavirus, government officials have asked Americans to swallow a hard pill: Stay away from each other. In times of societal stress, such a demand runs counter to what evolution has hard-wired people to do: Seek out and support each other as families, friends and communities. We yearn to huddle together. The warmth of our breath and bodies, of holding hands and hugging, of talking and listening, is...

By Jacek Debiec, Assistant Professor / Department of Psychiatry; Assistant Research Professor / Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan As cases of COVID-19 proliferate, there is a pandemic of fear unfolding alongside the pandemic of the coronavirus. Media announce mass cancellations of public events “over coronavirus fears.” TV stations show images of “coronavirus panic shopping.” Magazines discuss attacks against Asians sparked by “racist coronavirus fears.” Due to the global reach and instantaneous nature of modern media, fear contagion spreads faster than the dangerous yet invisible virus. Watching or hearing someone else who’s scared causes you to be...

By Joel Christensen, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis University In the fifth century B.C., the playwright Sophocles begins “Oedipus Tyrannos” with the title character struggling to identify the cause of a plague striking his city, Thebes. Spoiler alert: It is his own bad leadership. As someone who writes about early Greek poetry, I spend a lot of time thinking about why its performance was so crucial to ancient life. One answer is that epic and tragedy helped ancient storytellers and audiences try to make sense of human suffering. From this perspective, plagues functioned as a setup for an...

By Vanessa Dennen, Professor of of Instructional Systems & Learning Technologies, Florida State University Rising concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus have led a growing number of colleges and universities to cancel in-person classes and move them online. 1. How hard will it be? Moving classes online in the midst of an emergency isn’t unprecedented. It has been done before with local disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. But contending with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is a different situation. This is a global problem. A sudden shift to temporary or long-term online learning...