Outsmarting the Next Pandemic
Outsmarting the Next Pandemic

Author: Elizabeth Anne Kirley

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781003215769

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This book examines the role of law and policy in addressing the public health crisis of COVID-19 and offers reforms that could improve pandemic preparedness for future outbreaks. Focusing on a number of countries most expected to provide agility and organization in their crisis response - the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Taiwan - the book shows how failures in leadership from governments, executives, and institutions created a vacuum that was quickly filled by naysayers, conspiracy theorists, vaccine hucksters, and fake news generators. Through the key themes of healthcare, leadership, security, and education, the chapters address critical questions: Why have masks become such a polarizing force? How do you self-isolate if you don't have a home? How should equitable triage models for overwhelmed frontline healthcare workers be developed? Can we utilize artificial intelligence to educate the public about manipulated information they access concerning the pandemic? The book was written during the pandemic and weaves in to each chapter vignettes with personal revelations from a broad range of countries, including some also grappling with poverty, war, natural disasters, or revolution. It will appeal to academics, professionals, and policymakers interested in how law and health policy can converge on solutions for global infectious disease. It is suitable for use in upper-level courses.

Outsmarting the Next Pandemic
Outsmarting the Next Pandemic

Author: Elizabeth Anne Kirley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1000526968

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This book examines the role of law and policy in addressing the public health crisis of COVID-19 and offers reforms that could improve pandemic preparedness for future outbreaks. Focusing on a number of countries most expected to provide agility and organization in their crisis response – the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Taiwan – the book shows how failures in leadership from governments, executives, and institutions created a vacuum that was quickly filled by naysayers, conspiracy theorists, vaccine hucksters, and fake news generators. Through the key themes of healthcare, leadership, security, and education, the chapters address critical questions: Why have masks become such a polarizing force? How do you self-isolate if you don’t have a home? How should equitable triage models for overwhelmed frontline healthcare workers be developed? Can we utilize artificial intelligence to educate the public about manipulated information they access concerning the pandemic? The book was written during the pandemic and weaves in to each chapter vignettes with personal revelations from a broad range of countries, including some also grappling with poverty, war, natural disasters, or revolution. It will appeal to academics, professionals, and policymakers interested in how law and health policy can converge on solutions for global infectious disease. It is suitable for use in upper-level courses.

The Plague
The Plague

Author: Albert Camus

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1991-05-07

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0679720219

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“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature. The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.

Political Philosophy in a Pandemic
Political Philosophy in a Pandemic

Author: Fay Niker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1350225916

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Government lockdowns, school closures, mass unemployment, health and wealth inequality. Political Philosophy in a Pandemic asks us, where do we go from here? What are the ethics of our response to a radically changed, even more unequal society, and how do we seize the moment for enduring change? Addressing the moral and political implications of pandemic response from states and societies worldwide, the 20 essays collected here cover the most pressing debates relating to the biggest public health crisis in the last century. Discussing the pandemic in five key parts covering social welfare, economic justice, democratic relations, speech and misinformation, and the relationship between justice and crisis, this book reflects the fruitful combination of political theory and philosophy in laying the theoretical and practical foundations for justice in the long-term.

Economics in One Virus
Economics in One Virus

Author: Ryan A. Bourne

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 2021-04-07

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1952223075

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"A truly excellent book that explains where our pandemic response went wrong, and how we can understand those failings using the tools of economics." —Tyler Cowen, Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and coauthor of the blog Marginal Revolution Have you ever stopped to wonder why hand sanitizer was missing from your pharmacy for months after the COVID-19 pandemic hit? Why some employers and employees were arguing over workers being re-hired during the first COVID-19 lockdown? Why passenger airlines were able to get their own ring-fenced bailout from Congress? Economics in One Virus answers all these pandemic-related questions and many more, drawing on the dramatic events of 2020 to bring to life some of the most important principles of economic thought. Packed with supporting data and the best new academic evidence, those uninitiated in economics will be given a crash-course in the subject through the applied case-study of the COVID-19 pandemic, to help explain everything from why the U.S. was underprepared for the pandemic to how economists go about valuing the lives saved from lockdowns. After digesting this highly readable, fast-paced, and provocative virus-themed economic tour, readers will be able to make much better sense of the events that they've lived through. Perhaps more importantly, the insights on everything from the role of the price mechanism to trade and specialization will grant even those wholly new to economics the skills to think like an economist in their own lives and when evaluating the choices of their political leaders.

Uncontrolled Spread
Uncontrolled Spread

Author: Scott Gottlieb

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 550

ISBN-13: 0063080028

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Uncontrolled Spread is everything you’d hope: a smart and insightful account of what happened and, currently, the best guide to what needs to be done to avoid a future pandemic." —Wall Street Journal “Informative and well paced.”—The Guardian “An intense ride through the pandemic with chilling details of what really happened. It is also sprinkled with notes of true wisdom that may help all of us better prepare for the future.”—Sanjay Gupta, MD, chief medical correspondent, CNN Physician and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb asks: Has America’s COVID-19 catastrophe taught us anything? In Uncontrolled Spread, he shows how the coronavirus and its variants were able to trounce America’s pandemic preparations, and he outlines the steps that must be taken to protect against the next outbreak. As the pandemic unfolded, Gottlieb was in regular contact with all the key players in Congress, the Trump administration, and the drug and diagnostic industries. He provides an inside account of how level after level of American government crumbled as the COVID-19 crisis advanced. A system-wide failure across government institutions left the nation blind to the threat, and unable to mount an effective response. We’d prepared for the wrong virus. We failed to identify the contagion early enough and became overly reliant on costly and sometimes divisive tactics that couldn’t fully slow the spread. We never considered asymptomatic transmission and we assumed people would follow public health guidance. Key bureaucracies like the CDC were hidebound and outmatched. Weak political leadership aggravated these woes. We didn’t view a public health disaster as a threat to our national security. Many of the woes sprung from the CDC, which has very little real-time reporting capability to inform us of Covid’s twists and turns or assess our defenses. The agency lacked an operational capacity and mindset to mobilize the kind of national response that was needed. To guard against future pandemic risks, we must remake the CDC and properly equip it to better confront crises. We must also get our intelligence services more engaged in the global public health mission, to gather information and uncover emerging risks before they hit our shores so we can head them off. For this role, our clandestine agencies have tools and capabilities that the CDC lacks. Uncontrolled Spread argues we must fix our systems and prepare for a deadlier coronavirus variant, a flu pandemic, or whatever else nature -- or those wishing us harm -- may threaten us with. Gottlieb outlines policies and investments that are essential to prepare the United States and the world for future threats.

Looming Civil War
Looming Civil War

Author: Jason Phillips

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-20

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0190868171

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How did Americans imagine the Civil War before it happened? The most anticipated event of the nineteenth century appeared in novels, prophecies, dreams, diaries, speeches, and newspapers decades before the first shots at Fort Sumter. People forecasted a frontier filibuster, an economic clash between free and slave labor, a race war, a revolution, a war for liberation, and Armageddon. Reading their premonitions reveals how several factors, including race, religion, age, gender, region, and class, shaped what people thought about the future and how they imagined it. Some Americans pictured the future as an open, contested era that they progressed toward and molded with their thoughts and actions. Others saw the future as a closed, predetermined world that approached them and sealed their fate. When the war began, these opposing temporalities informed how Americans grasped and waged the conflict. In this creative history, Jason Phillips explains how the expectations of a host of characters-generals, politicians, radicals, citizens, and slaves-affected how people understood the unfolding drama and acted when the future became present. He reconsiders the war's origins without looking at sources using hindsight, that is, without considering what caused the cataclysm and whether it was inevitable. As a result, Phillips dispels a popular myth that all Americans thought the Civil War would be short and glorious at the outset, a ninety-day affair full of fun and adventure. Much more than rational power games played by elites, the war was shaped by uncertainties and emotions and darkened horizons that changed over time. Looming Civil War highlights how individuals approached an ominous future with feelings, thoughts, and perspectives different from our sensibilities and unconnected to our view of their world. Civil War Americans had their own prospects to ponder and forge as they discovered who they were and where life would lead them. The Civil War changed more than America's future; it transformed how Americans imagined the future and how Americans have thought about the future ever since.

American Crisis
American Crisis

Author: Andrew Cuomo

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 059323927X

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Governor Andrew Cuomo tells the riveting story of how he took charge in the fight against COVID-19 as New York became the epicenter of the pandemic, offering hard-won lessons in leadership and his vision for the path forward. “An impressive road map to dealing with a crisis as serious as any we have faced.”—The Washington Post When COVID-19 besieged the United States, New York State emerged as the global “ground zero” for a deadly contagion that threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions. Quickly, Governor Andrew Cuomo provided the leadership to address the threat, becoming the standard-bearer of the organized response the country desperately needed. With infection rates spiking and more people dying every day, the systems and functions necessary to combat the pandemic in New York—and America—did not exist. So Cuomo undertook the impossible. He unified people to rise to the challenge and was relentless in his pursuit of scientific facts and data. He quelled fear while implementing an extraordinary plan for flattening the curve of infection. He and his team worked day and night to protect the people of New York, despite roadblocks presented by a president incapable of leadership and addicted to transactional politics. Taking readers beyond the candid daily briefings that became must-see TV across the globe, and providing a dramatic, day-by-day account of the catastrophe as it unfolded, American Crisis presents the intimate and inspiring thoughts of a leader at an unprecedented historical moment. In his own voice, Andrew Cuomo chronicles the ingenuity and sacrifice required of so many to fight the pandemic, sharing the decision-making that shaped his policy as well as his frank accounting and assessment of his interactions with the federal government, the White House, and other state and local political and health officials. Real leadership, he shows, requires clear communication, compassion for others, and a commitment to truth-telling—no matter how frightening the facts may be. Including a game plan for what we as individuals—and as a nation—need to do to protect ourselves against this disaster and those to come, American Crisis is a remarkable portrait of selfless leadership and a gritty story of difficult choices that points the way to a safer future for all of us.

Rooted and Rising
Rooted and Rising

Author: Leah D. Schade

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-11-01

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1538127776

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Rooted and Rising is for everyone who worries about the climate crisis and seeks spiritual practices and perspectives to renew their capacity for compassionate, purposeful, and joyful action. Leah Schade and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas gather twenty-one faith leaders, scientists, community organizers, theologians, and grassroots climate activists to offer wisdom for fellow pilgrims grappling with the weight of climate change. Acknowledging the unprecedented nature of our predicament—the fact that climate disruption is unraveling the web of life and threatening the end of human civilization—the authors share their stories of grief and hope, fear and faith. Together, the essays, introductory sections, and discussion questions reveal that our present crisis can elicit a depth of wisdom, insight, and motivation with power to guide us toward a more peaceful, just, and Earth-honoring future. With a foreword by Mary Evelyn Tucker and a special introduction by Bill McKibben, the book presents an interfaith perspective that welcomes and challenges readers of all backgrounds.

What Covid-19 Can Teach Us
What Covid-19 Can Teach Us

Author: Thomas Hardtmuth

Publisher:

Published: 2021-06

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9780952836445

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"The picture we have of viruses and their significance for human beings and nature has fundamentally changed in the last two decades but with hardly any of this more widely known although this Organism has occupied the headlines for many months. Viruses are the oldest, the most common and the most broadly distributed organic structures that evolution has ever created. Viruses basically are the most ancient building blocks of life; without this knowledge we will not be able to understand their role and the part they play in the course of illness." (T. Hardtmuth) With this backdrop, Dr. Thomas Hardtmuth tackles issues related to the current Corona pandemic. We need to thoroughly understand the significance of viruses, not just as causes of illnesses, but also as a medium, under the right conditions, for building and maintaining health and as a carrier and modifier of genetic information in the service of evolution. The more we view them merely as enemies to be fought, the more we consign and limit ourselves to battleground stations. As Dr. Hardtmuth writes, this is perhaps even truer of Covid-19. The latest research and understanding is leading to very different conclusions. For generations, we have been deeply influenced by the domination of pathogenic studies of viruses, whereas the most astonishing recent research shows viruses--in their mutability and in their ability to change our DNA--to be essential life forms for maintaining health and allowing human beings to adapt to new situations--indeed, to evolve. How does this apply to illnesses and a pandemic? The simplistic view that viruses attack us and make us ill is outdated. Their effects depend on the situation and the host organism--us. It is not a simple matter of cause and effect. This is just one aspect of Hardtmuth's discussion. This short book takes the discussion further, delving in detail into subjects such as the PCR tests and the so-called Ct (or amplification) values; the psychology of fear and power; the inner-outer relationship between human health and environmental health; and the effects of fear as well as other factors on the immune system. In addition, the author introduces the welcome subject of alternative therapies and the controversial subject surrounding the uses and risks of vaccination, both in general and more specifically with regard to the current Covid vaccines. On the latter he details the processes by which the different types of vaccines are produced and their various means of affecting human cells and immune systems. He also considers the significantly shortened testing processes for Covid vaccines, the potential risks, and the immunological responses in the organism through vaccines in comparison to responses arising naturally through actual infections. Most important, the author explores these issues from an open-minded and holistic perspective, presented in an accessible way for the general reader.