Full Description
In the early years of COVID-19, Americans witnessed the intersection of a global pandemic, an economic collapse, and civil unrest that galvanized the country and the world and ushered in an era of unprecedented disruption. Three years later, we can begin to reflect on the experience of the pandemic and ask ourselves how the lessons of that experience can inform a healthier present and future.
The Turning Point: Reflections on a Pandemic examines the first years of COVID-19 through the lens of population health, revealing a critical turning point in our engagement with key public health issues. Through a series of short, provocative essays, the authors leverage their experience as prominent public health leaders to untangle the social, economic, environmental, and political forces at work in our response to the pandemic. Combining cutting-edge data with philosophical insights, these bold and revelatory essays encourage us to broaden and sharpen our vision of health and renegotiate policies that can allow health to flourish in extraordinary-and ordinary-times.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Preface
Section 1. LESSONS
1. From Theory to Practice
2. Next Time, Testing First
3. The Irreplaceable Public Sector
4. Holding Our Breath
5. The Challenge of Addressing Multiple Crises
6. The Invisible Mental Health Burdens of a Pandemic
7. Pandemics and Prisons
8. The Necessity of Speaking with Care
9. Health Behavior
10. The Caring Infrastructure
11. Does Today Matter More Than Tomorrow?
12. Telling Different Stories with the Same Data
13. How Our Expectations Shape Our Perceptions of Reality
14. Can Contact Tracing Work Here?
15. Prescription Against Worry
Section 2. STORY
16. Political Decisions and Science
17. Should We Be More Upset By This?
18. The Responsibility of Experts
19. Defining Our Goalposts
20. The Limits of Our Science
21. The National Character
22. The Right to Bear News
23. The Story of COVID-19
24. Why Did We Close Schools?
25. The Limits of Our Tolerance
26. Mismanaging Messages
27. The Vaccination Glass Half Full
Section 3. ETHICS
28. Time for an Ethics Refresh?
29. Who Goes First?
30. What's Most Important?
31. Achieving Health Equity, Efficiently
32. The Long Shadow of Medical Racism
33. Health Inequities Beyond COVID-19
34. A Hard Weight
35. Mandating Vaccines
36. Leaving the World Behind
37. Digital Surveillance
38. Balancing Autonomy and Individual Responsibility
39. Profits and Profiteering
Section 4. EMOTIONS
40. Grief and Loss
41. Recognizing and Moving Beyond Our Collective Grief
42. Epistemic Humility During a Global Pandemic
43. The Selling of Vaccines
44. Will We Stop Being Afraid?
45. Hope Dies Last
46. Can We Forget?
47. The Centrality of Compassion
48. False Confidence
49. A Tale of Volition
50. Trust and COVID-19
Section 5. THE FUTURE
51. The New Us?
52. Who Decides?
53. Fixing Our Health System After COVID-19
54. HIV and COVID-19
55. Guns and the Unanticipated Consequences of COVID-19
56. Policies That Persist
57. The Invisible Work of Public Health
58. Will Better Public Health Funding Be Enough?
59. Chronic COVID
60. COVID-19 Collectivism
61. Can We Be Led?
62. COVID-19 and the Office
63. A COVID-19 Poverty Surprise
64. Is it Over Yet?
65. Now What?
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