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I teach anthropology and environmental studies at Haveford College, just outside of Philly. Currently, I'm holed up in a cabin in the Adirondacks in upstate New York with several family members, including my spouse and 4 year old daughter and 3 dogs. I started working on disasters by accident, when one day in 2001 I was walking to class at NYU and saw the World Trade Center buildings on flames. I have known Kim for a few year and I contacted her to connect with folks around Covid-19 and its imacts.

I'm particularly intersted in issues of communal grief, mourning, and bereavement. Also, I'm interested in the religious response to Covid-19.

The main argument is that the cultural translation of a patient’s history is a very complex and difficult process, and can almost eliminate any chance at getting to the root of the patient’s problem.

Fukishima's emergency response, public and corporate messages on Indian Point, Entergy Corporation

"To return to the story: with humanitarians effectively governing in crisis zones, it is not surprising that gender-based violence should become an issue; having been categorised as a human rights violation, one which garnered significant attention, it could not be easily ignored or brushed aside as a ‘private’ matter. Still, approaching gender-based violence as a humanitarian issue required some translation. Humanitarians are primarily concerned with saving lives and relieving suffering; humanitarianism of the sort practised by MSF is most significantly focused on health, and the lives and wellbeing of populations."

"The complications of treating gender-based violence as a humanitarian issue were raised early on by MSF in their work in the Congo Republic. In his essay, Marc Le Pape discusses how, because of rape and violence perpetrated by groups of armed men who set up roadblocks and then proceeded to do as they pleased with those they trapped, humanitarians had to decide whether to accept military escorts on aid convoys to protect against such roadblocks, again with serious political repercussions. Caritas did eventually allow trucks to carry military escorts, yet these escorts in turn invited their friends – armed militiamen – onto the trucks, even as they carried with them the spoils of their plunder"

"Humanitarianism’s mission has expanded so that it now occupies a dominant place in the global political arena – whether humanitarians asked for this or not. But the incorporation of genderbased violence shows humanitarianism at its limit; gender relations and gender-based violence cannot be contained by forms of crisis-driven, moral and medical intervention. In other words, this type of politics based on protecting a universal humanity cannot do all our political work for us; such violence renders visible inequalities that are simply unmanageable and unchangeable by its methods."

The entire study is focused on vulnerable populations – particularly those who due to racial or economic divides, do not have proper access to healthcare, or may be affected by factors such as poor housing and malnutrition.

Emergency response is incrediably relevant to this article. Although a lot of the focus is on humanitarian aid, EMS has these same issues. We have limitations on how much information about a patient we can discuss, although more information is available for statistical use. It is also hard in the short period of time with a patient to fully understand a lot of this information, and we don't go into the field as researchers. Finally, motive is completely unimportant to us most of the time. We see what is wrong and we treat it, we can't worry why the person has a laceration, that is the job of the police, except in the cases of child or elder abuse.

"Through close examination of concrete settings in which biosecurity interventions are being articulated, these chapters show that ways of understanding and intervening in contemporary threats to healt are still in formation: 'biosecurity' does not name stable or cleary define understanding and strategies, but rather a number of overlapping and rapidly changing problem areas."

"After considerable delay, we have recently seen the implementation of large-scale responses to these new infectious desiease threats that bring together governmental, multilater, and philanthropic organizations."

"...newly perceived threats to health... have placed greater pressure on public health departments and national security officials to develop an approach to disease events not easily managed thorugh the traditional paradigm of public health."