On Immunity (Eula Biss)

...Biological and social, our interdependence is a defining feature not only of our civilization, not only of our species and all living species, but of life itself — life the physiological process and life the psychosocial phenomenon. "Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you," Walt Whitman exulted in the golden age of chemistry — the new science he saw as "the elevating, beautiful, study… which involves the essences of creation." Meanwhile, the development of cell theory was revolutionizing biology, making of this philosophical field as old as Aristotle an even newer science that illuminated the essence of life. Cells became to biology what atoms were to chemistry. Biology ushered in the revelation that every cell belonging to me as good — as healthy, as vital, as fit for replication — belongs to you.

That delicate interdependence of life and lives, with its tangled roots in biology and cultural history, is what Eula Biss explores in On Immunity: An Inoculation (public library) — a book of penetrating and poetic insight, drawn with that rare scholarship capable of correcting the warped cultural hindsight we call history; a book of staggering foresight, conceived in the wake of the H1N1 flu pandemic, yet speaking with astonishing prescience to the complex epidemiological realities and social dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic unfolding more than five years after its publication...

https://www.brainpickings.org/2021/03/19/eula-biss-on-immunity/?s=02

"The Lessons of the Pandemic" (1919)

In 1919, the journal Science published "The Lessons of the Pandemic," assessing what was learned from the Spanish flu. A hundred-plus years of medical progress later, the same challenges remain.  https://t.co/fzmSIoXL5Z
(https://twitter.com/NYTScience/status/1371815489224212483?s=02)

CDC identifies public-health guidance from the Trump administration that downplayed pandemic severity

Federal health officials have identified several controversial pandemic recommendations released during the Donald Trump administration that they say were "not primarily authored" by staff and don't reflect the best scientific evidence, based on a review ordered by its new director.

The review identified three documents that had already been removed from the agency's website: One, released in July, delivered a strong argument for school reopenings and downplayed health risks. A second set of guidelines about the country's reopening was released in April by the White House and was far less detailed than what had been drafted by the CDC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A third guidance issued in August discouraged the testing of people without covid-19 symptoms even when they had contact with infected individuals. That was replaced in September after experts inside and outside the agency raised alarms...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/15/cdc-removes-some-trump-era-guidance/

14 Lessons for the Next Pandemic

We asked doctors, scientists, public health experts and health advocates to take a look back — what would they redo, if they could?

One year. More than 500,000 dead. What did the United States do wrong in handling Covid-19? What needs to be rethought? We asked scientists, public health experts and health advocates to tell us about mistakes, missed chances and oversights — and how to prepare for the next pandemic.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/15/science/lessons-for-the-next-pandemic.html?smid=em-share