Pandemic Social Problems, with video and partial reading list

PN Cohen photo / CC-BY / https://flic.kr/p/2jw5juv

With a lecture and reading list, almost ready to start class.

Almost 6 months ago, on March 2, I had an informal COVID-19 debriefing with 50 students in my Social Problems class. Some of what I said came true, and I’m glad (sort of?) none of it was completely wrong (though we didn’t actually hit 100 million worldwide confirmed cases in May). For a reality check I go back to this Twitter thread, where I jotted down what I told them:

Today in my Social Problems class, with about 50 students, I opened the floor to questions about Coronavirus. As a scientifically-literate person who reads the news, I felt responsible answering some of their many questions. (If I'm wrong feel free to tell me and I'll tell them)

— Philip N Cohen (@familyunequal) March 3, 2020

Now, as I prepare to teach the course online next week, I have updated my overview lecture, which has grown to 40 minutes.

Beyond some fundamentals, I’m tossing out the traditional Social Problems course outline and just doing the pandemic and related issues this semester, so this is the introductory lecture. I expect to record some more lectures. If I decide they’re not too embarrassing to share I’ll put them on my YouTube channel (which you can apparently subscribe to if you want to be notified of the videos). Feel free to use them for whatever you like, and pass along your feedback.

The course doesn’t start till next week, so I don’t have everything together yet, but I have a lot of readings, some for me and some for the students, which I’m sharing below.

Happy to have more suggestions, too.

Illness

• Yong, Ed. 2020. “Long-Haulers Are Redefining COVID-19.” The Atlantic, August 19, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/.

The 1918 Flu pandemic

• Barry, John M. 2017. “How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America.” Smithsonian Magazine. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/).
• Roberts, Jennifer D., and Shadi O. Tehrani. 2020. “Environments, Behaviors, and Inequalities: Reflecting on the Impacts of the Influenza and Coronavirus Pandemics in the United States.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17 (12): 4484. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17124484.
• Gamble, Vanessa Northington. 2010. “‘There Wasn’t a Lot of Comforts in Those Days:’ African Americans, Public Health, and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.” Public Health Reports 125 (3_suppl): 113–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/00333549101250S314.

Race and Ethnic Disparities 

• Hammonds, Evelynn M., and Susan M. Reverby. 2019. “Toward a Historically Informed Analysis of Racial Health Disparities Since 1619.” American Journal of Public Health 109 (10): 1348–49. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305262.
• Hogarth, Rana Asali. 2019. “The Myth of Innate Racial Differences Between White and Black People’s Bodies: Lessons From the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” American Journal of Public Health 109 (10): 1339–41. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305245.
• Egede, Leonard E., and Rebekah J. Walker. 2020. “Structural Racism, Social Risk Factors, and Covid-19 — A Dangerous Convergence for Black Americans.” New England Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2023616.
• Bobrow, Emily. 2020. “She Was Pregnant With Twins During Covid. Why Did Only One Survive?” New York Times, August 6, 2020, sec. New York. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/nyregion/childbirth-Covid-Black-mothers.html.
• COVD race/ethnicity data: https://covidtracking.com/race/dashboard
• Moore, Jazmyn T., Jessica N. Ricaldi, and Charles E. Rose. 2020. “Disparities in Incidence of COVID-19 Among Underrepresented Racial/Ethnic Groups in Counties Identified as Hotspots During June 5–18, 2020 — 22 States, February–June 2020.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 69. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6933e1.
• Kim, Lindsay, Michael Whitaker, and Alissa O’Halloran. 2020. “Hospitalization Rates and Characteristics of Children Aged 18 Years Hospitalized with Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 — COVID-NET, 14 States, March 1–July 25, 2020.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 69. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6932e3.

Families

• Lindberg, Laura D., VandeVusse, Alicia, Mueller, Jennifer, and Kirstein, Marielle. 2020. “Early Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from the 2020 Guttmacher Survey of Reproductive Health Experiences.” Guttmacher Institute. https://www.guttmacher.org/report/early-impacts-covid-19-pandemic-findings-2020-guttmacher-survey-reproductive-health.
• Herd, Toria, and et al. 2020. “Mitigating the Risk for Child Maltreatment in the COVID-19 Context.” Policy Brief. Research-to-Policy Collaboration. https://www.research2policy.org/covid19-policy-brief-child-maltreat.
• Usher, Kim, Navjot Bhullar, Joanne Durkin, Naomi Gyamfi, and Debra Jackson. 2020. “Family Violence and COVID-19: Increased Vulnerability and Reduced Options for Support.” International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 29 (4): 549–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12735.

Economic crisis and inequality

• Bokun, Anna, and et al. 2020. “The Unequal Impact of COVID-19 on Children’s Economic Vulnerability.” EconoFact (blog). July 14, 2020. https://econofact.org/the-unequal-impact-of-covid-19-on-childrens-economic-vulnerability.
• Denham, Hannah, and Taylor Telford. 2020. “Debt, Eviction and Hunger: Millions Fall Back into Crisis as Stimulus and Safety Nets Vanish.” Washington Post. August 23. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/23/economy-federal-benefits-low-wage-workers/.
• Kofman, Ava, and Hannah Fresques. 2020. “Black Workers Are More Likely to Be Unemployed but Less Likely to Get Unemployment Benefits.” ProPublica, August 24. https://www.propublica.org/article/black-workers-are-more-likely-to-be-unemployed-but-less-likely-to-get-unemployment-benefits.

Gender and the lockdown

• Collins, Caitlyn, Liana Christin Landivar, Leah Ruppanner, and William J. Scarborough. 2020. “COVID-19 and the Gender Gap in Work Hours.” Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12506.
• Landivar, Liana Christin, Leah Ruppanner, William J. Scarborough, and Caitlyn Collins. 2020. “Early Signs Indicate That COVID-19 Is Exacerbating Gender Inequality in the Labor Force.” Socius 6: 2378023120947997. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023120947997.
• Grose, Jessica. 2020. “‘They Go to Mommy First.’” New York Times, July 15, 2020, sec. Parenting. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/parenting/working-moms-coronavirus.html.
• Perelman, Deb. 2020. “In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both.” New York Times, July 2, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html.
• Tappe, Anneken. 2020. “Working Mothers Are Quitting to Take Care of Their Kids, and the US Job Market May Never Be the Same.” CNN, August 19, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/19/economy/women-quitting-work-child-care/index.html.
• Carrazana, Chabeli. 2020. “Coronavirus Pandemic Creates America’s First Female Recession amid Child Care, Unemployment Woes.” USA TODAY, August 3, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/03/coronavirus-pandemic-sets-women-back-amid-unemployment-child-care-crisis/5573123002/.
• Carlson, Daniel L., Richard Petts, and Joanna R. Pepin. 2020. “US Couples’ Divisions of Housework and Childcare during COVID-19 Pandemic.” Preprint. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/jy8fn.

Government response

• Fallows, James. 2020. “The 3 Weeks That Changed Everything.” The Atlantic, June 29, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/how-white-house-coronavirus-response-went-wrong/613591/.
• Shear, Michael D., Noah Weiland, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, and David E. Sanger. 2020. “Inside Trump’s Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus.” New York Times, July 18, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-failure-leadership.html.
• Jr, Cleve R. Wootson, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Lori Rozsa, and Josh Dawsey. 2020. “Coronavirus Ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis Sidelined Scientists and Followed Trump.” Washington Post, July 25, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/coronavirus-ravaged-florida-as-ron-desantis-sidelined-scientists-and-followed-trump/2020/07/25/0b8008da-c648-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html.
• Yong, Ed. 2020. “How the Pandemic Defeated America.” The Atlantic, August 4, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/.

Anti-Asian racism

• Donaghue, Erin. 2020. “2,120 Hate Incidents against Asian Americans Reported during Coronavirus Pandemic.” CBS News, July 2, 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-asian-american-hate-incidents-up-racism/.
• Little, Becky. 2020. “Trump’s ‘Chinese’ Virus Is Part of a Long History of Blaming Other Countries for Disease.” Time, March 20, 2020. https://time.com/5807376/virus-name-foreign-history/.
• Rogin, Ali, and Amna Nawaz. 2020. “‘We Have Been through This before.’ Why Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Are Rising amid Coronavirus.” PBS NewsHour, June 25, 2020, sec. Nation. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/we-have-been-through-this-before-why-anti-asian-hate-crimes-are-rising-amid-coronavirus.

Trusting experts and confirmation bias, videos

• Julia Galef TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_galef_why_you_think_you_re_right_even_if_you_re_wrong
• Why Don’t Americans Trust Experts Anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50HMNB4qX4
• COVID-19 Disinformation: How to Spot It: https://youtu.be/3Pt64454zPg