ABSTRACT
The following conversation took place on 20 September 2020, during a virtual encounter jointly organised by Princeton University's Latin American Studies Programme, and the journal Cuadernos de Literatura, from the Pont!ficia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota. "Thinking in the Present" offered a critical opportunity to confront the interpretative volatility and paralysis of criticism of the current moment, the failure of liberal democracy, the deepening of inequality based on intersectionality, and the geopolitics of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus has disorganised and exposed the intrinsic failure of the algorithms set in the past few decades to predict our movements, to anticipate, and therefore to control, life on the planet, our behavioural patterns and wishes: from how we shop to how we vote. The interpretative failure vis-a-vis the virus's global behaviour - its universalisation in other words, that attempts an interpretation that could apply from New Zealand to Colombia, from Honduras to Singapore - summons forth two thinkers who have worked around the notion of uncertainty, thinkers who could be defined with a key word: suspicion. The photograph featured on the event poster (Figure 1) is by Lotty Rosenfeld, who had recently passed away in Santiago de Chile. The encounter also took place in memoriam of this unforgettable artist, who taught us how to cross the sign. Her crosses bear witness to an indelible act: Lotty Rosenfeld (1943-2020).
ABSTRACT
Aim: To evaluate the psychological impact of COVID-19 on undergraduate and graduate students of the Dental School of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo. Methods: Three questionnaires were used: sociodemographic, WHO Abbreviated Quality of Life Inventory, and General Anxiety Disorder-7. Data were analyzed using Graph Pad Prism 7a (α = 5%). Mann-Whitney or Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn post-tests were used for statistical comparisons. The Spearman test was used as the correlation test. Results: 257 students responded to the online form that assessed their quality of life and anxiety level. On a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being the best quality of life, the average obtained was 64.71 (± 13.36). In addition, 87.6% of the students rated their quality of life as good or very good. 74.7% reported good or very good health. The anxiety analysis resulted in an average of 10.04 (± 4.5), indicating moderate anxiety levels. There was an inversely proportional correlation between age and degree of anxiety (p = 0.008, r = -0.1628) and self-perceived learning and student commitment (r = 0.69). Conclusion: Despite the good quality of life and the students’ good self-perception of health, they showed a moderate degree of anxiety during the social distancing caused by COVID-19, also demonstrating a decrease in interest and commitment during distance education. © 2022,Brazilian Journal of Oral Sciences. All Rights Reserved.