Galileo and COVID
mikefortunWe're still doing this Galileo schtick? Absolutely the worst model for the science-authority relationship, but scientists (well, at least physical scientists) still love it. More to come...
We're still doing this Galileo schtick? Absolutely the worst model for the science-authority relationship, but scientists (well, at least physical scientists) still love it. More to come...
Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan journalist and author tweeted: 'There were two anti-police brutality protests in Nairobi today. The one featuring white people made it's way to the US embassy undisturbed. The one led by working class and poor folks ended in teargas and arbitrary arrests.'
On March 25, 2020 the Kenyan government imposed a curfew to limit movement in Nairobi to prevent the spreading of COVID-19. In the ensuing months, the police 'enforced' the curfew by killing as many people as COVID-19 in Nairobi. The police have had a long and bloody history in Nairobi. Missing Voices Kenya have documented the shocking number of people who have lots their lives to police brutality over the years. Although groups in poor neighbourhoods such as Mathare have long held protests against police violence, the recent murder of George Floyd in the US has lent momentum to this movement. Thus, these groups took to the street to walk to the apartment where Yasin Moyo, a 13 year old playing on his balcony was killed by police, to demand that Black lives mattered- everywhere. The protests ended in the police tear gassing protestors.
A separate group comprising of many white protestors marched to the US Embassy to protest extrajudicial killings in the US and Kenya. From reports I have been reading about the protests on Twitter, these groups were left unharmed by the police. It is thus important that we recognize the the situatedness of protests agains police violence in different parts of the world, and the specific histories and contexts that shape each one of them, while recognizing their common themes.
The report was published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an independent, international medical humanitarian organization. They provide aid and high quality medical care to populations in locations of conflict, disease outbreak, and natural disasters.
The report is an NGO report; MSF has a page for its reports on its website.
MSF published this report a year after the largest Ebola outbreak that happened in West Africa in 2014.
The components of the report are a timeline of the ebola outbreak, MSF's actions in response, a conclusion regarding future outbreaks similar to ebola, and a map of the region affected by ebola.
Data was collected since the beginning of the ebola outbreak in 2014 till sometime in 2015 before the article was published.
The report addresses how strained public health infrastructures can get in the face of large scale epidemics like in the ebola outbreak. It analyzes the responses of local government, health care workers, and MSF in the ebola outbreak, discussing what could have been done to prevent the spread and severity of the disease.
The report implies that technical professionals have to be more careful when responding to large scale disasters; staff responding to emergencies need to have more training for the many internal challenges that would lmit care and assistance to victims. MSF discussed how they had limited man power, labs, and resources.
The report has several small sections dedicated to possible ways the MSF could have responded better to the 2014 ebola outbreak; such as the medical challenges they faced, MSF challenges within the organization, and a "Looking to the future" about the importance of learning lessons from this epidemic.