Thinking about a colleague who was interviewing ebola survivors, months to years after they were discharged ‘ebola-free’. He found lots of people who said they’d never quite recovered. But their symptoms were fatigue, anxiety, sadness—none of which compelled diagnosis + treatment The ‘easier’ to spot cases— folks w ophthalmological and neurological problems (e.g., seizures, blindness, hearing loss)— were tip of the iceberg. “Being extremely tired”, no one seemed to know what to do with that in a setting where ‘charismatic’ disease gets $$ and attention

was just thinking about students' papers on the film, contagion, and the thing that some of them keyed on: the 'mass hysteria' -- the mob violence-that emerged from scarcity presumably caused by panic and the virus itself. skimming an edited volume about imperial 'panics' particularly as they relate to mass disease events, and there's a theme: that officials/bureaucrats/policymakers appear to be more afraid of the response to the threat than the threat itself

Was editing a transcript of a doctor talking about what life was like after ‘surviving’ ebola. He talks about the seizure he had once he was out of the ICU. He temporarily lost eyesight. Suffered from short term memory loss. When I asked him how he was able to give a 20-30m grand rounds, he said he had some workarounds but he was still forgetting things. On the video, he repeated phrases as if he was saying them for the first time. I could see what he meant; he could hide it for 20m but not an hour

have long questioned STI as a category because of how a lot of (hetero) people characterize and think about sex. what contact counts as sexual, or intimate, and how does that facilitate transmission? if you are only thinking of anal or vaginal penetration w penis, then... if you maybe include oral stimulation, then ...

prompted to read reviews of a book that's a history of the CDC (published in the early 90s). I think the criticism is gentle and correct, but the thing that will never not bug me is the insistence that Atlanta changed (or wanted to change) from a southern city to an int'l one it's in the book as a goal of CDC - trying to not be a southern institution, for example - but also in a review: "how have issues of racial equity been addressed in *what was once* a very southern city"? WHAT WAS ONCE lol fiddle-dee Mr Rhett

Was just reminiscing about a summer internship I had with city government. I was based in utilities and engineering, which meant doing lots of random things. At first I was placed with the receptionist, who didn’t really have anything to do but she had been there for decades Then someone told the boss I was “smart” so I got placed with the clerks; turned out that the main clerk I worked with was the best childhood friend of my neighbors across the street. I typed up index cards that held information about water + property lines for tracts in the city

Been a good long time with this here epidemic and the use of “quarantine”... still makes me do a double-take Relatedly, I was thinking about the first ‘formal’ public health class I took as an undergrad, taught by a veterinarian who’d worked for the RI health department. We learned a lot of public health 101 stuff and even had to visit the health department and learn what each dept did.

might help if office of communications and the advisors crafting guidance just spent, as a requirement, a couple hours on social media, just watching/listening. also: if they talked to people in places where observations and discussions are happening - social research or whatever it's a govt agency that actually hires people with social science PhDs and who have specific training health comms and behavioral science and you have to wonder if they sat down and said, "hey this is an empirical question" maybe we can find out

That reminds me of the time i was on democracy now and the producer, during the pre-show interview, didnt want to use my title at the time, decided that ‘medical anthropologist’ was more legible to the viewing audience. The condescension by another guest - A science journalist who shall remain nameless but was spouting casually racist theories about west Africa also referred to me as “your other guest” because my expertise wasn’t legible to her either

Today the NYT published something about the pulse oximeter letter that came out in the NEJM last week. There are many things that piss me off about it -- knowing what I know about how all of this came to be -- but the basic thing is... how they name all of the men in the article and give their appropriate titles (!) but fail to note that the person whose work inspired this NEJM letter, Amy Moran-Thomas, is also a professor of anthropology at MIT, not simply a chick worried about her husband w covid.

in a terrible mood thinking about 2020.

I did a lot of things. February: thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2020/0…

These tweets about students going to the dean about a professor's syllabus upset me -- even when I think a student's concerns about course content are relevant and important. I'll say why: Because a former dept chair at another institution where I worked many years ago was intent on sabotaging my reviews via teaching evals. He first demanded that I change a 100+ person class mid-stream, after I'd planned with the learning center all summer, asked a TA to spy on me

Maybe the very idea of genius is sexist and misogynistic But I don’t mean ‘why isn’t women’s genius being acknowledged/valued’, while that might be the case.