Covid
Covid Vaccine Heebie-Jeebies
Few patients seem to have specific reasons for declining the Covid vaccine. There’s just a vague hedge, or an abashed, “I don’t know, I just don’t.” It’s as though they have a communal case of the heebie-jeebies. More
Covid and the Creative Process
Covid has generated unusual creative pressures: Must writers write about the pandemic? Does bearing witness to inequities impact creative output? How do we make art in a time of suffering? BLR editors Danielle Ofri and Doris W. Cheng are joined in conversation by poet Phillip B. Williams and novelist Weike Wang. With special guests: playwright Sarah Ruhl and scientist/writer Joseph Osmundson. More
Serving Patients Through a Screen
Years ago, when telemedicine first edged into my clinical consciousness, I pooh-poohed it as a second-rate simulacrum, valuable perhaps for rural communities lacking access to specialists, but otherwise hardly worth the crinkly exam paper it was replacing. I’ve staked my entire career on the irreplaceable value of the connection between patient and clinician. But I’ve changed…. More
Memorializing Covid
COVID-19 does not seem amenable to grand memorials, at least right now. Perhaps because the millions of deaths from COVID-19 have been diffused so widely, often in isolation—and of course still ongoing—the memorials that are starting to crop up are very human in scale. More
I Feel Safest (re Covid) in My Own Hospital
When it comes to Covid, our patients seem to be moving on. We healthcare workers, however, don’t have that option, as Covid is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Covid may not be the only thing on our mind as it was at the outset, but it’s still part of every staff meeting, every communication, every clinical day. More
Covid: Primary Sources
The Covid Pandemic at Two Years: A conversation about creativity in the face of a global pandemic, from both artists and healthcare workers who experienced it firsthand. More
Covid Vaccination: the Last Mile
The COVID vaccine engenders a unique obstinacy that seems to blot out conversation. We doctors and nurses are exhorted to listen to our hesitant patients and hear their concerns, but this is difficult to do when patients don’t even want to talk. More
Florence Nightingale in the Age of Covid-19
May of 2020 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. That her bicentennial fell during a worldwide pandemic is both illuminating and ironic. Nightingale’s experience as a nurse during the Crimean War led her to three insights that came to define her professional life, insights as revolutionary as they were unpopular. More
The Vaccine Anthropologist
The world’s richest countries are now its most vaccine-hesitant. Can we learn to trust our shots before the next pandemic? Danielle Ofri profiles Heidi Larson, a “vaccine anthropologist,” for The New Yorker. More
Taking Stock of the Second Covid Surge
As the pandemic raged from the winter surge through to the spring slog, my Postmortem folder lit up with a dispiriting regularity. I opened it with dread as it revealed which of my patients had perished that week. More
Covid Writing Goes Viral
Covid Writing Goes Viral: How Literary & Social Media Writing Became a Lifeline during the Pandemic More
Covid Duets
Given the death and destruction all around us during the Covid pandemic, it felt unseemly to complain about coming home to a strange cello every night. But playing someone else’s cello is like sleeping on someone else’s mattress: everything feels wrong. More
“Frontline Workers”
Even after Covid-19 is tamed by the forthcoming vaccines, health care workers will still be frontline workers. Because you never know what will show up tomorrow. More
Covid Diary (The New Yorker)
During March and April of 2020, New York City experienced the Covid surge that many other localities faced later. I kept a journal during these frightening weeks, talking with my colleagues and patients at Bellevue, as we grappled with how we could manage primary-care medicine during a pandemic. More
Mental Health Needs of Covid19 Healthcare Workers
Danielle Ofri was asked by NICABM what mental health workers need to know for treating healthcare workers involved in the Covid19 pandemic. More
