How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness, and Community in Times of Global Crises - The Essay That Helped Change the Covid-19 Debate

We have become accustomed to culture being shaped “somewhere else” — by elected officials, especially national ones; by celebrities; by media. But we are dealing with a virus that is transmitted person to person, in small and large groups of actual people. This is not a virtual crisis — it is a local, embodied one. Local, embodied responses will qu

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I return to the early days of the COVID-19 health crisis and the concurrent racial uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd. At that time, the world community of human beings were “all in this together.” Compassion was at an all-time high as we suffered alongside communities as diverse as Italy, Brazil, and grieving black moms in, say, Minne

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