As the Omicron wave crested in January, many institutions tried to do more and seemed to assume that the more intrusive or inconvenient a restriction, the more powerful it was. I talk about why this is the wrong way to think about medicine at The New Atlantis. They assume that our safety is proportional to… Read More
Tag: medicine
Covid, Vulnerability, and a Miasma Mindset
The New Atlantis convened a slate of writers for a symposium on lessons to learn from covid. My contribution to the "Beyond the State of Exception" symposium is "Bad Air," a mediation on aerosols, ventilation, and vulnerability. We’re used to starting with a premise of safety and sterility. The goal of our policy and our… Read More
Lyme and Literacy in Suffering
I got to read and review Ross Douthat's memoir of Lyme disease, The Deep Places for National Review. The book is thought-provoking and unsettling. It is as much about how to endure suffering as how to address medical mysteries. In some ways, Douthat’s striving for a cure is a transposition of the same meritocratic story… Read More
Making Mothers Count in Medicine
At Capita, I've written an appreciation of doulas. My daughter was born with the help and support of a close friend who was training as a doula. That experience left me grateful for Bria... and furious her work was considered "extra" to medicine. A medical system that ignores the value of doulas leaves a lot… Read More