Author: TheConversation

By Korey Pasch, PhD Candidate in Political Science and International Relations, Queen’s University, Ontario With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, China, stories of courage and strength have captured our collective attention as the disease spreads. We have also seen large-scale efforts in China to combat coronavirus, including the construction of new hospitals and facilities in provincial areas as well as the massive quarantine of millions of people. While efforts to address the disease move forward, the outbreak has also revealed the darker side of human nature and our responses to new diseases and other catastrophic...

By Karen Scott, PhD Student in Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The new coronavirus has spread rapidly around the globe since its discovery late last year in China. It has now infected tens of thousands of people worldwide and killed hundreds, prompting travel bans, citywide quarantines and mass hysteria. To combat its spread in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has offered some seemingly straightforward advice: “Stay home when you are sick.” That is easier said than done for the tens of millions of workers in the United States who don’t have paid sick days...

By Leslie S. Leighton, Visiting Lecturer of History, Georgia State University The recent global spread of a deadly coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, has led world leaders to invoke an ancient tradition to control the spread of illness: quarantine. The practice is first recorded in the Old Testament where several verses mandate isolation for those with leprosy. Ancient civilizations relied on isolating the sick, well before the actual microbial causes of disease were known. In times when treatments for illnesses were rare and public health measures few, physicians and lay leaders, beginning as early as the ancient Greeks, turned...

By Nadia Naffi, Assistant Professor, Educational Technology, Holds the Chair in Educational Leadership in the Sustainable Transformation of Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts, Université Laval As coronavirus continues to spread, the Trump administration has declared a public health emergency and imposed quarantines and travel restrictions. However, over the past three years the administration has weakened the offices in charge of preparing for and preventing this kind of outbreak. Two years ago, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates warned that the world should be “preparing for a pandemic in the same serious way it prepares for war”. Gates, whose foundation...