This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Within days of discovering SARS-CoV-2, laboratory scientists and epidemiologists were speculating on whether the virus might take fecal passage, and thereby spread through contamination with bodily waste. But the fecal-oral route of transmission quickly proved a dead end, an etiological cul-de-sac. The pressure to inquire into shit, however, is always difficult to resist. Before long, experts in wastewater …
My engagement with the Covid origins question began in early January of 2020, when my network of biodefence experts, policymakers and practitioners began exchanging notes on the ‘mysterious lung infection’ in Wuhan. A naturally suspicious group, it wasn’t long before questions were privately raised about potential accidental or deliberate origins. This wasn’t conspiratorial. …
The debate on the origin of the virus causing Covid-19 has so far been framed in terms of a failure of biosecurity: it balances the risk of buying live animals in a wet market against the risk of studying zoonotic viruses in a laboratory. As such, it may at first appear to replicate debates that occurred around artificial mutation (or …
This article is part of the following series: The Hospital Multiple
Design by okb-buro.comDuring the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals have served a dual role in regards to infection control and management. Hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units have been overrun with COVID-19 patients coming from the community. Hospitals have also been sites of infectious disease spread as healthcare workers and patients share space, air, and ultimately, germs. Hospitals exist …
This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
Tests for Covid-19 and the politics of big numbers
We are incessantly flooded with data on the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic. WHO and the Johns Hopkins coronavirus resource provide information on the daily number of Covid-19 cases and deaths worldwide, while national media supply details on the dynamics of the pandemic in each state, region and city. These data …
This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
From my balcony, I see Tampa Bay’s calm water, the Dali Museum’s distinctive architecture, the Mahaffey Theater’s empty parking lot, the balconies and porches of St, Petersburg, Florida, around me, but I see no people. It is quiet, even the dogs seem to respect the ‘self-isolation’ I find myself practicing. The COVID-19 pandemic is like a leitmotif of fear in …