Category: Medical Anthropology
The intersection of health and medicine with culture and society
When Algorithms Fail
After approval by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration on December 10, 2020, the Pfizer vaccine made its way to hospitals all over the country. By Monday the 14th, I started seeing colleagues and friends’ social media posts about receiving the vaccine – all very uplifting: excited, ecstatic, emotional about what people called the […]
Racism Issues and COVID-19
I read this article today about pulse oximeters, and I thought of several articles I read previously in September. Pulse oximeters are borne of racist bias in technology. I was today years old when I found out. And it makes sense. They work by sensing the color of blood flowing under the skin, based on […]
The Irony of Being Filipino in a world with COVID-19
Today, I read this article on COVID-19 and how it affects Filipinos in the diaspora, by Filipino-American Susan Araneta (she has a Masters degree in Public Health so she certainly knows what she is talking about). Access full article here: http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/a-virus-among-us-filipinos-and-covid-19 In her introduction, she writes about the first COVID-19 vaccine administered in the United […]
COVID-19: What Australia Did Right
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/by-trusting-in-their-scientists-australia-is-down-to-zero-new-covid-19-cases The government listened to scientists and physicians. They put partisan politics and ideology aside. Politicians on the national government level had consistent and clear messaging that “it’s a crisis, we will have trials, but we’re all in this together and we have to work together as a nation”. People complied (except maybe for the […]
Of Antacids and the Crazy Year of 2020
The article may be behind a paywall, but it offers commentary for the mental health issues as a secondary effect of the pandemic. TL, DR: There’s an increase in stomach acid when your body is stressed. The increase in stomach acid causes heartburn and reflux symptoms. A spike in heartburn and reflux cases at doctors’ […]
