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Objective To understand the knowledge of COVID-19 and plague prevention and control in Qinghai Province, so as to carry out targeted health education and improve people's ability to prevent and control COVID–19, plague and other publichealth emergencies. Methods Six counties were randomly selected from three cities (states) by two-stage sampling. A self- designed questionnaire was randomly distributed to the public to investigate the awareness and behavior of COVID-19 and plague prevention and control. The Chinese version of Epidate was used for database construction and data entry. After checking and verifying, the data was exported as an Excel file and analyzed by SPSS 21.0 software. Results Accordign to the recovered questionnaires, the passing rate of knowledge of COVID-19 prevention and control was 78.46%, and the average score was (75. 82±16.43). The passing rate of plague prevention and control knowledge was 91.89%, and the average score was (86.46±15.94). The survey area, occupation category, gender and education level affected the knowledge of COVID-19 prevention and control. The average score was statistically significant (P<0.05). The survey area, occupation category, age and education level affected the knowledge of plague prevention and control, and the average score was statistically significant (P<0. 05). Conclusion People in Qinghai have poor knowledge of COVID - 19 prevention and control, but have good knowledge of plague prevention and control. Health education and health promotion activities on COVID - 19 and plague prevention and control should be increased in the future. © 2023, Editorial Department of Medical Pest Control. All rights reserved.
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As the Covid-19 pandemic has swept across the world, the wearing of medical facemasks has become a hot topic on social media. In China, the relevant discourses are entangled with codes of medical science, national self-esteem and appropriated modernity. These discourses can be dated back to the narrative established by Dr Wu Lien-teh, the great fighter in the Manchurian plagues of 1910–1911 and 1920–1921. This paper reveals that Wu and his colleagues used different strategies when displaying to the Western world their achievements in the anti-plague battle and when proving the effectiveness of the Western medical and hygienic system to Chinese people. Wu and his colleagues used metonymies, analogues and metaphors on or related to medical facemasks to illustrate the possibility of building a modernised nation with sovereignty. Because the construction of a sanitary system in China has always been labelled as a patriotic movement (Rogaski, Ruth. 2004. Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 285–298), the wearing of medical facemasks has constituted an important part of the narrative of nationalism and hygienic modernity. This discourse continues to play a significant role in today's campaign against the coronavirus.
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The immunity (or vaccine) passport of the coronavirus pandemic, as a concept and object, is not unprecedented. This health and identity document features a history spanning over half-a-millennium and appearing across diverse geopolitical and sociocultural contexts. This article presents a documentary history of the immunity passport and its heterogeneous material instantiations, uses and effects across divergent historical settings. It illuminates how the immunity passport has helped shaped identities and public health, as well as impacted individual and institutional agency, during health crises. Four historical cases are explored, including the plagues ravaging the Renaissance Mediterranean region, the 1665 Great Plague of London, the yellow fever outbreaks in the antebellum slave-era southern USA and the chronic cholera conditions confronting colonial-era British India. Although disparate, these historical cases share the immunity passport as a non-pharmaceutical intervention into their respective health crises that played important roles in people's lives during these troubled times.
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This essay seeks to utilize ideas and texts found in the Hebrew Bible in order to historically contextualize the COVID-19 pandemic and to illuminate various existential, religious, political, and ethical issues raised by the current pandemic and our responses to it.
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The context of illness, plagues, and healing in early Christianity and late antiquity was a factor in the growth and expansion of early Christianity. The most prominent early images from early Christian art depict Christ healing. This essay will examine the historical context of plagues and the Christian response to show how the healing Christ affected the security of Christian ascendency. From this study, the essay offers insight into our present pandemic context of COVID-19 and evaluates the religious response.
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In China and around the world, the global spread of COVID-19 has made wearing a facemask more than a pragmatic or aesthetic individual-level issue: it has instilled in people deontic value. In Chinese anti-epidemic narratives, the semiotic ideology of wearing a facemask has been closely related to collectivism, patriotism and, to a certain degree, nationalism. The facemask not only serves as a protective biomedical device but also as a cultural, political and spatial sign of the line of defence against disorders of the natural system, to establish the order of the social system. This paper argues from the perspective of semiotics and life politics that such mask narratives have effectively helped China prevent the large-scale spread of the epidemic across the nation and have served as a means of collective psychotherapy, paradoxically transforming individual separation into collective spiritual cohesion. Previous semiotic studies of disaster have not paid much attention to plagues or disaster governance discourse, between which biomedicine plays an important role. Thus, this paper aims to shed light on how biomedicine works with politics in coding and decoding the relationship between the natural system of the plague and the social system of governance.
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We propose a reading of the plague in the tragedy of Sophocles Philoctetes, based on the interpretive paradigms of Paul Ricoeur, which emphasizes the role of the mythical model in updating the symbols of origin and especially the presence of evil. We go through the notions associated with dirt as guilt and wound as expiation. From there we offer lines of reflection to think about the non-physical implications of the current pandemic;if the cosmic plane of events connects with an ethical plane, the relationship with present evil demands new community responses.
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Introduction: The legal issue in this paper is the uncertainty regarding the recognition of the COVID-19 vaccination policy as a citizen's right or obligation. Vaccination is a medical procedure that provides a vaccine that stimulates the production of immunity in the body as a preventive measure. The vaccination program is an effort to realize the 3 SDGs. In Indonesia, the rules regarding health rights and obligations are regulated in the Health Law, but it is still not explicitly regulated in terms of vaccination, nor is vaccine approval legally regulated. Furthermore, the Outbreak Management Act provides legal consequences for anyone who refuses to be vaccinated because it is considered to hinder the control of the epidemic. This paper analyses the categories of rights and obligations. Methods: This research applies normative legal research while the legal approach and conceptual approach are used as approaches. Results: The implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine policy as a human right has an inherent obligation to humans. Therefore, in practice the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine policy as a citizen's right, in the end cannot be implemented, even though it is based on individual beliefs because there are obligations that require someone to fulfill the rights of others including the right to health and criminal sanctions are imposed if not implemented. onclusions: This research shows that the Covid-19 vaccination policy in Indonesia is not only a human right but also an obligation. So that criminal sanctions arise for people who do not implement them. © 2023 UPM Press. All rights reserved.
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During the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers and observers from various social fields noted a qualitative and quantitative increase in the most diverse antisemitic reactions. The history of antisemitism provides a solid explanation for this phenomenon. The social and economic crises and the epidemics - particularly the plague epidemic of the 14(th) century - show that societies had a violent reaction and blamed the Jews for the unwanted effects hard to explain under those circumstances. an overview of historical facts from open and public sources regarding these conspiracy theories and their violent outcomes makes up the former part of this paper. The latter part focuses on the antisemitic discourse and the multiplication of conspiratorial reactions during the Covid-19 pandemic and concludes the existence of three stances within this pattern, namely hate speech against the Jews, the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world and get rich, and Holocaust denial or trivialisation. numerous reports, studies, research, and scientific papers noted the increase in antisemitism against the pandemic backdrop. They represented resources for the qualitative analysis in this paper's latter part. The primary conclusion shows that - in the pandemic context and through social media - the antisemitic discourse and acts increased significantly, without adding any novelty or depth to the conspiratorial ideas.
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BACKGROUND: Africa sees the surge of plague cases in recent decades, with hotspots in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Peru. A rodent-borne scourge, the bacterial infection known as plague is transmitted to humans via the sneaky bites of fleas, caused by Yersinia pestis. Bubonic plague has a case fatality rate of 20.8% with treatment, but in places such as Madagascar the mortality rate can increase to 40-70% without treatment. MAIN TEXT: Tragedy strikes in the Ambohidratrimo district as three lives are claimed by the plague outbreak and three more fight for survival in the hospitals, including one man in critical condition, from the Ambohimiadana, Antsaharasty, and Ampanotokana communes, bringing the total plague victims in the area to a grim to five. Presently, the biggest concern is the potential plague spread among humans during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Effective disease control can be achieved through training and empowering local leaders and healthcare providers in rural areas, implementing strategies to reduce human-rodent interactions, promoting water, sanitation and hygiene practices (WASH) practices, and carrying out robust vector, reservoir and pest control, diversified animal surveillance along with human surveillance should be done to more extensively to fill the lacunae of knowledge regarding the animal to human transmission. The lack of diagnostic laboratories equipped represents a major hurdle in the early detection of plague in rural areas. To effectively combat plague, these tests must be made more widely available. Additionally, raising awareness among the general population through various means such as campaigns, posters and social media about the signs, symptoms, prevention, and infection control during funerals would greatly decrease the number of cases. Furthermore, healthcare professionals should be trained on the latest methods of identifying cases, controlling infections and protecting themselves from the disease. CONCLUSIONS: Despite being endemic to Madagascar, the outbreak's pace is unparalleled, and it may spread to non-endemic areas. The utilization of a One Health strategy that encompasses various disciplines is crucial for minimizing catastrophe risk, antibiotic resistance, and outbreak readiness. Collaboration across sectors and proper planning ensures efficient and consistent communication, risk management, and credibility during disease outbreaks.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , One Health , Plague , Male , Animals , Humans , Plague/epidemiology , Plague/prevention & control , Plague/microbiology , Madagascar/epidemiology , Pandemics/prevention & control , COVID-19/epidemiology , Disease Outbreaks/prevention & controlABSTRACT
Objective: To construct the database of Tibetan medicine prescriptions for "Gnyan-rims" disease,and to explore the invisible medication law of Tibetan medicine in the treatment of "Gnyan-rims" disease,such as prescription compatibility and combination of drug properties. Method: The prescriptions for treating "Gnyan-rims" were retrieved from four Tibetan medical literatures such as The Four Medical Tantras,Kong-sprul-zin-tig, Phyag-rdor-gso-rig-phyogs-bsgrigs and Sman-sbyor-lag-len-phyogs-bsgrigs, and the database was constructed under Python code,and the Apriori algorithm and the vector structure model of taste property flavor transformation were used for analysis. Result:According to the characteristics of Tibetan medicine prescription data,with six fields of prescription name,formula,dosage,efficacy,source and original text as the core,a Tibetan medicine treatment "Gnyan-rims" prescription database with functions of cleaning, searching and exporting was established. A total of 7 602 prescriptions were included in the database,among which 598 prescriptions had therapeutic effects of "Gnyan" and "Rims". The results of compatibility analysis showed that Shexiang,Hezi,Honghua,Mukuer Moyao,Tiebangchui,Tianzhuhuang and Bangga were the most frequently used drugs,while the correlation degrees of Shexiang-Mukuer Moyao,Honghua-Tianzhuhuang,Shexiang-Hezi and Shexiang-Tiebangchui were the strongest,and all the drug composition of Wuwei Shexiang pills appeared in the top ten correlations. According to the property analysis of 40 prescriptions containing high-frequency drugs,19 prescriptions were found to have excessive bitter taste,followed by 9 prescriptions such as Sanchen powders with excessive sweetish taste,and the ratios of sweetish and bitter tastes in six tastes were >35%. The total of sweetish and bitter prescriptions accounted for 70% of the total prescriptions. Among the three flavors,the bitter flavor was the most abundant. The cool effect,dull effect and heavy effect were prominent among the seventeen effects. Conclusion: The prescription database of Tibetan medicine for "Gnyan-rims" can promote the high-quality development of research on prevention and treatment of plague with ethnic medicine. Tibetan medicine treatment of "Gnyan-rims" focuses on the composition of Wuwei Shexiang pills,with the property combination of "cool-bitter and sweet-bitter flavor-cool,dull and heavy", which mainly treats diseases such as "heat sharp light-mkhris pa-heat". These studies can provide data basis and theoretical reference for the selection of Tibetan medicine prescription and its composition for treating plague.Copyright © 2021, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Institute of Chinese Materia Medica. All rights reserved.
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The main premise of this paper is based on the idea that Banksy adopts a historical iconography in the representation of the disease, adapted in language and format to the contemporary context of artistic production. Our aim is the observation and description of the evolution of an artistic theme with a certain iconography. This iconography is changing and adaptable to its historical context. We apply a critical analysis based on the consult of bibliographic references. The results conclude that the pandemic by Covid-19 finds in Banksy a paradigmatic creator of media art, or mediatized, connected to digitization of cultural production. © GKA Ediciones, authors.
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Both historical and contemporary records of mass contagion provide occasions for visibility to persons who otherwise remain little recognised and even less studied: those who bury the dead. While global reports attest to self-advocacy among cemetery workers in the current COVID-19 pandemic, the psychological complexities of their labour go virtually unseen. Findings on the experiences of those doing such work reveal a striking contrast. While societal disavowal often renders their task as abject and forgettable, those who inter the remains frequently report affective connections to the dead that powerfully, and poignantly, undermine this erasure. Acknowledging such empathic relationality allows us to look at this profession in areas where it has never been considered, such as psychoanalytic work on ‘mentalisation' or in contemporary ethics. The article concludes with an example from the accounts of those who have buried the dead in the massed graves on New York's Hart Island.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a social drama in which churches, government, and individual actors have played prominent roles. While neo-conservative evangelicals have resisted governmental and scientific overreach in the name of "faith over fear”, liberal religious groups have joined in government and medical efforts for the good of the commons, offered comfort and assurance to those suffering, and called for support of the poor at home and abroad. Religions have turned right and left, from apocalyptic "resets” of global order to new calls for social justice. In this context, the root metaphor of the epidemic has been called up as a historical construct that helps to conceptualize, analyze, and act upon the COVID-19 crisis. Searching the past helps us see that not everything about COVID-19 as a social drama is a new or unheard-of challenge. For example, there are new evocations of the black death of 14th-century Europe that became a crisis in the church, as well as the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755, which upended the confidence of the European Enlightenment. Another way to appraise the dimensions of the COVID-19 outbreak is to call on the varied approaches characteristic of the sociology of religion, that is, to consider how ideology and belief are socially constructed in order to account for new intellectual responses to societal challenges. Does religion always produce the "collective effervescence” Durkheim posited? Does religious change always arrive downstream of cultural change, or can it also become an independent variable? This article attends primarily to the sharp responses of conservative religious expression in the face of attention-getting upheaval, which has readily translated into right-wing political action and electioneering. But the social uplift and altruism of liberal religion is not neglected either. Thus, this article provides an account of how science and governmental action have both been challenged and embraced in response to COVID-19. As such, it is not an empirical study stemming from new Pew-like social polling. Rather, it is a wide overview rooted in sociological methods and theory for tracking religion historically and presently in America in a manner that aims to inform a discussion of how COVID-19 has impacted religion and religious expression, and vice versa.
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The crisis uncovered profound changes in human and social interactions, among them, the processes of oppression and segregation towards immigrants and ethnic minorities were accentuated. Based on the relationship between otherness/pandemic, this paper proposes the analysis of two texts: "You Clap for Me Now", a poem by Darren Smith, and "The Wuhan I know", a graphic memoir by Laura Gao. Sin embargo, encontramos antecedentes que analizan este género desde su estatuto como representación social y simbólica de las epidemias. En el mismo sentido, Cynthia Davis (2002), en "Contagion as Metaphor", señala la textura simbólica de la literatura de epidemias: plagas, virus y pestes se enriquecen de significados y se convierten en construcciones textuales metafóricas de un estado de crisis social.
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What literary and philosophical resources can help us situate ourselves ethically during and after plague time? Returning to Camus' The Plague provides a thoughtful entry to the timeless time of COVID-19. Isabel Wilkerson describes and challenges white supremacy as plague and caste system, both blatant and in its less obvious (to whites) forms. Emmanuel Levinas and Knud Ejler Logstrup bring us the priority of the other and an ethic of responsibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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Against a pandemic of emerged infectious disease, COVID-19, new generation vaccines based on nucleic acids or recombinant viruses, which had not been used as vaccines in humans, have been inoculated and shown to be successful. They are, however, heat-labile and need a cold-chain including deep-freezers for storage and transportation. Vaccinia virus (VAC) vector vaccine (VACV) is a pioneer of new generation of vaccines constructed by using molecular biological technology. VACV, which has contributed to eradication of smallpox, has excellent characteristics of vaccinia virus such as a high heat-stability and long-lasting immunological effects. It is possible to distinguish the immunological responses of vaccination from those of natural infections. We started our developmental researches 35 years ago, using attenuated VAC strains established in Japan. In this article, we first describe the early researches of VACVs;development of two VACVs for Bovine leukemia virus and Rinderpest morbillivirus antigens and their protective immunity in large mammals, sheep and cows. Second, application of VACV is described;Rabies-VACV, which has already been licensed, used in the field in Europe and USA, and resulted in a prominent decrease of rabies. Then, current status of VACV research is described;non-replicating VACVs in mammalian cells have been developed as new-generation and ultimately-safe vaccines. We discuss the possibility of future application of VACV for wildlife.
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This text is a critical essay that addresses the situation experienced in Brazil during the Covid-19 epidemic. The author presents three letters written during the epidemic and considers the act of writing as an activity of resistance in the face of anguish and fear of death. The letters refer to literature, alluding to the work of an author, in each of them. The authors and works cited and commented were: The Plague of Albert Camus, The dispossessed of Ursula Le Guin and War and Peace by Leon Tolstoy. An overview of the Brazilian health situation is outlined in three moments of the epidemic, which correspond temporarily to the elaboration of the letters. At the end, some issues are addressed in relation to face the epidemic in the country. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Este texto é um ensaio crítico que aborda a situação vivida no Brasil durante a epidemia de Covid 19. São apresentadas três cartas escritas durante a epidemia, a partir do entendimento do ato de escrever como uma atividade de resistência frente ao sofrimento, à angústia e ao medo da morte. As cartas fazem referência à literatura, aludindo em cada uma delas, a obra de um autor. Os autores e obras citados e comentados em relação a cada uma das cartas foram: A Peste de Albert Camus, Os despossuídos de Úrsula Le Guin e Guerra e Paz de Leon Tolstói. É traçado um panorama sobre a situação sanitária brasileira em três momentos da epidemia, que correspondem temporalmente à elaboração das cartas. Ao final, abordam-se algumas questões em relação ao enfrentamento à epidemia no país. (Portuguese) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Athenea Digital (Revista de Pensamiento e Investigación Social) is the property of Athenea Digital (Revista de Pensamiento e Investigacion Social) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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We present a literature review of dermatology features in historical pandemics. A pandemic is an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and affecting a large number of people. Smallpox was the first documented pandemic, around 10 000 BC, spread by the inhalation of airborne droplets. A few days after an initial high fever, headache and fatigue, a mucocutaneous maculopapular eruption appeared, which then developed pustules and erosions. The last outbreak occurred in the USA in 1949. Smallpox was eradicated in 1980, following a vaccination programme. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), an ongoing global pandemic. The earliest documentations were 3300 years ago. In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) provisionally estimated 1.5 million deaths globally. Most commonly affecting the lungs, cutaneous TB may present with inflammatory papules, plaques, suppurative nodules and chronic ulcers. Requiring long, complex antibiotic regimens, multidrug resistant TB is an increasing problem. Now extremely rare, yet still with recent outbreaks in 2021 in Madagascar, bubonic plague arrived in Europe in 1346 causing 75-200 million deaths. It is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through fleas that have fed on infected rodents. Clinical features include papules, pustules, ulcers and eschars, tender lymphadenopathy and systemic symptoms, and it responds to antibiotics. Syphilis, caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum, is sexually transmitted. The first known outbreak was during warfare in 1494-5 in Naples, Italy. In 2020, the WHO estimated that, globally, seven million people had new infections. Primary syphilis typically produces a painless, genital ulcer (or chancre). Secondary syphilis presents with a nonitchy, maculopapular erythema over the trunk, palms and soles. Early recognition and antibiotic treatment usually lead to good outcomes. Estimated by the WHO to affect 37.7 million people in 2020, HIV is thought to have mutated from simian immunodeficiency virus by the 1960s in sub-Saharan Africa, spreading to the Caribbean and USA by the late 1960s. Initial symptoms include a fever, headache and lymphadenopathy. Dermatological features are common, including opportunistic cutaneous infections, nonspecific exanthemas, seborrhoeic dermatitis and Kaposi sarcoma. Advances in antiretroviral therapies mean people with HIV can have an excellent prognosis, although the WHO estimated in 2020 that more than 200 000 people with HIV died from concomitant TB. Since 2019, COVID-19 has had a considerable global impact on healthcare. With more than 300 million cases and 5.5 million deaths to date, some services have been overwhelmed owing to large case numbers, variable vaccine uptake, workplace changes to reduce transmission and staff shortages. Cutaneous features include perniosis, urticarial, purpuric, vesicular or maculopapular eruptions. Pandemics throughout history have been repeatedly shown to present with an element of skin involvement. We can utilize this to promote education and early recognition of these features, to facilitate diagnosis and raise awareness of the potential complications of serious diseases.