I am currently in the process of transitioning my M.A. level course on Science, Technology, and Development with 11 students to virtual instruction. One of my interests in engaging with COVID-19 is to examine how it (should) informs development ideologies and practices. How should students of development studies retool -- conceptually, methodologically, practically -- in wake of the pandemic?
1) “The current concern with new microbial threats has developed in at least four overlapping but distinct domains: emerging infectious disease; bioterrorism; the cutting-edge life sciences; and food safety”
2) “’Global health’ is a second field in which health threats have been problematized in new ways.”
3) “The regulation of what Ulrich Beck calls “modernization risks” comprises a third field in which biosecurity has been newly problematized.”
4) “Although there is a great sense of urgency to address contemporary biosecurity problems— and while impressive resources have been mobilized to do so — there is no consensus about how to conceptualize these threats, nor about what the most appropriate measures are to deal with them.”
One argument presented is that public engagement leads to increased vigilance and emergency preparedness. Nuclear emergency response should not be governed by one elite body of scientists. Information should be crowd sourced from the public to increase awareness and transparency and lead to more ideas as well as public support. Another argument presented is that risk prevention has historically been the focus of governing bodies instead of risk acceptance and emergency response. A nuclear reactor being placed near the ocean is more fiscally responsible but natural disasters are unavoidable, regardless of the amount of risk prevention that has been taken. Instead, the focus should be on emergency response after natural disaster strikes. Safety is also sometimes substituted for profitability.
More focus on the care, treatment, containment, and management of contagious diseases like Ebola would have increased its educational value, especially to first responders.
I have not found any opinions in the news about the program but several other educational institutions have released announcements about the program appearing to be advertisements.
With over 80 citations, and a wide variety of sources (few of which are repeated), we know that this research article was infer that a good deal of time and care was spent on this article. There are lots of citations to steel investigation, structural and architectural references, government building standards, similar historical disasters, and news articles reporting on 9/11. Without even reading the article, one can suppose a good deal about the article and how it was produced.
The report addresses disaster and health in how it describes actors' emergency response to the initial disaster as adequate but states the aid supplied does not allow progress to occur. The victims of the disaster were given temporary shelter in tents, but many still live in tents at the time of this report being written. These conditions led to a cholera outbreak which the actors did not seem to care about or provide aid for.
I looked more into the U.S. policy on uninsured patients, ER hospital policy, and how they are treated. If you go the ER without insurance, you are expected to pay the full bill; however you are guaranteed under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act to receive treatment regardless of your ability to pay it. There are assistance programs available to help those whom cannot afford to pay their medical bills. Some of these are private charities, there are government programs that help with those at or below the poverty line, and the hospitals themselves will often negotiate a much lower price than originally billed for to meet a patient’s financial need. Despite this, there are still many cases where all of the above are not sufficient enough to keep patients out of bankruptcy. (http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/go-to-er-without-insurance.htm)
“Mrs. Whitman and the agency put out press releases saying that the air near ground zero was relatively safe and that there were "no significant levels" of asbestos dust in the air. They gave a green light for residents to return to their homes near the trade center site”
“By these actions," Judge Batts wrote, Mrs. Whitman "increased, and may have in fact created, the danger" to people living and working near the trade center.”
The extensive citation show the work that went into the research to put the article together. The article cites other research articles as well as government publications and interviews.