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Tag: pandemic care

Image of person in mask holding their head--illustrating stress
Taking Stock of Our Collective Stress and Moving Toward a Healthier World

Taking Stock of Our Collective Stress and Moving Toward a Healthier World

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I was teaching some of my classes about stress and effects this week, as I do every semester in all my classes, and I got around to looking up the American Psychological Association’s latest numbers for stress in the American public. And whew, it really hit me how much our collective stress levels have gone up in the last 20 years since just before 9/11. In this article I plan to unwrap some of the identified reasons our stress has…

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An image of a health worker giving a vaccination to introduce an article on COVID-19 vaccination
Working Together Toward COVID-19 Vaccination Goals

Working Together Toward COVID-19 Vaccination Goals

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I know we’ve been saying this for quite some time now, but this past week’s been quite the week. Thursday March 11 was the anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a year later we’re in the throes of the both frustrating and optimistic process of COVID-19 vaccination. Others have written helpfully on many aspects of this situation; in this piece I hope to talk about how all the competing types of rhetoric at play, especially scarcity rhetoric, affects the human…

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A picture of a person with head in hands introducing an article about a year of pandemic trauma
Grieving a Year of Pandemic Trauma and Golden Calves

Grieving a Year of Pandemic Trauma and Golden Calves

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Y’all, two days from now it will have been a year since I first published my first blog post in this space about the rhetoric of coronavirus. And I HATE HATE HATE how right I was in that post. I hate how much literal damage and death and disability the rhetoric from the previous president and other leaders in his party filtering down into their followers has caused in the US in the past year. This week culminated the past…

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an image showing caution tape saying stop and Covid19 to introduce an article about reaching toward healthy holidays 2020
Reaching Toward Pandemically Precautious Healthy Holidays

Reaching Toward Pandemically Precautious Healthy Holidays

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Okay, so as I described in this space back in the era I now call Early Pandemic, all of us who are seeking to be as pandemically responsible as possible are back to high alert (some of us never really came back down from it), trying to keep ourselves and others alive and reach toward healthy holidays in these challenging times. Despite the best efforts of those of us who continue to be as pandemically precautious as possible in the…

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Church Buildings as “Essential” and COVID-19: A Rhetorical Analysis

Church Buildings as “Essential” and COVID-19: A Rhetorical Analysis

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Yesterday the current head of the executive branch of the US government made an announcement advocating for the immediate reopening of churches and other houses of worship as “essential” as quickly as this weekend. That announcement understandably set off a firestorm in the spiritually-focused groups I’m a part of. In this blog post, as a result, I will be looking at the concept of “houses of worship as essential” and the rhetoric around it. In doing so, I will also…

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Assertively Countering #COVID19’s Abusive Effects

Assertively Countering #COVID19’s Abusive Effects

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As I’ve gone through the last few weeks, it’s been extremely obvious that the responses to this COVID-19 pandemic that are NOT denialist have fallen roughly along two different tracks, one of which is profoundly more disturbing than the other: (1) this is life, people die, and the economy and/or profits are more important than that; and (2) this is life, let’s band together, and there’s a lot to grieve here, so let’s make space to do that. In this…

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A Visual representation of the anxieties of influence that surround #COVID19
Managing Our Anxieties of Influence in an Age of #COVID19

Managing Our Anxieties of Influence in an Age of #COVID19

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This article is about my observations of the anxieties about being able to influence such a huge problem as a global pandemic like #COVID19. You know, that really overwhelming thing that the majority of reasonable people are looking to the best experts to help with right now, and following their advice. Which is why you’re super-anxious about your 79-year-old great aunt who thinks just running to Target for a few things rather than getting delivery is still a very normal…

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Picture of Eggs showing the Fragility of Pandemic Care
Doing Our Best to Maintain Our Pandemic Care Ecosystem

Doing Our Best to Maintain Our Pandemic Care Ecosystem

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Well, what I feared when I was researching the piece I wrote here two weeks ago on responding healthily to the coronavirus has happened. It’s here. And not just one death, as it was then. More. We still don’t know even close to the scope of how many cases there are in the US, because of the lack of testing. But things—major things—have been closing. It’s exhaustingly stressful and overwhelming for many of us—those who are taking it seriously and…

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