This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
We are often told that anti-epidemic masks should not be politicised. Though often well intentioned, this admonition falls short of taking masks seriously as social and historical objects. For, in assuming these to be inherently neutral prophylactic devices whose politicisation is simply an epiphenomenon, this narrative fails to understand and acknowledge that the historical institution of anti-epidemic masks has been …
This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Even as pandemic response is focused on understanding, controlling and preventing COVID-19 among humans, a ghost haunts epidemiological concerns about the disease: reverse-zoonotic sylvatic Covid. Or, the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to spill-back from humans to domestic or farmed animals, and from there to wild-life, where the virus can establish ineradicable disease reservoirs. This scenario is not far-fetched: the case of …
This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Thirty-eight days have passed since the publication of Somatosphere’s COVID-19 Forum II. In the course of these days the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the globe has risen from 1.1 to 4,3 million, with coronavirus-related deaths rising from 60,000 to 294,997. While some countries, like Italy and Germany, have started relaxing their lockdowns, epidemic control measures in …
Since January 2020, governmental responses to COVID-19 across the globe have been marked by a communication strategy that portrays the measures taken against the pandemic as unprecedented. Examining the case of China, in this short article, I would like to argue that, beyond the level of mere propaganda, this discourse points at the way the party-state perceives itself and its …
This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Since the first installation of Somatosphere’s COVID-19 Forum was published on March 6, the cases of confirmed COVID-19 have risen more than ten times, from 100,000 to over 1.1 million, with coronavirus-related deaths rising from 3,400 to over 60,000. With daily new infections in China dropping to near zero, Italy, Spain and the USA have emerged as the largest hot-spots …
This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Since its emergence in December 2019, COVID-19 has led to a global pandemic, in everything but name. To date, over 100,000 people have been infected across the globe, with the vast majority of burden of the infection and of the 3,400 deaths so far being borne by China, where the disease originally emerged. There the epidemic has led to the …