Make It Plain
Covid-19 And How Fundamental Cultural Misunderstandings About How Viruses Work Can Spread Infection And Hesitancy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14834708 |
|---|---|
| Authors | T S Harvey (0000-0002-0184-0998), Tyler Harvey (0000-0003-2972-8911, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 19-22 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Practicing Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0888-4552 • E-ISSN: 2994-1628 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.17730/0888-4552.43.4.19 |
| OpenAlex | W3202646894 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 11 |
It is confusing: many common colds are caused by coronaviruses, but not all coronaviruses cause colds. Some, like SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, can cause serious health complications and death. To reduce the risk of the public innocently (and understandably) conflating COVID-19 with the mild sicknesses associated with a common cold, one job of public health would need to be to "make the familiar strange and the strange familiar." But wait, that is the work of anthropology. I argue that what is missing from many public discussions of COVID-19 is a straight answer to a simple question central to the public's uptake of science, health guidelines, mandates, and even vaccines: "How do viruses work, that is, infect our cells and make us sick?" The essay that follows attempts to answer this question, contributing to public health by making a critical anthropological distinction between "sickness" and "infection."
2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Biology · Outbreak · Pathology · Sociology · Engineering · Medicine · Risk Perception and Management · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy · Zoonotic diseases and public health · Virology
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2024 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |