Monthly Archives: April 2020

For this week’s assignment, please select one of the podcasts listed below, listen to it carefully, and then post a review of the podcast.  Your review should be 400-600 words and should include the following. Your post should appear by midnight on Sunday, April 19th:

What is this podcast about?

Who are the people whose views are being expressed? What are their backgrounds and potential biases?

What interests you about this podcast?

Describe something you learned from this podcast.

Did this podcast influence your views on its subject? If so, how?

Would you recommend this podcast to your classmates? Why or why not?

Any reactions to the podcast format?  How does it compare for you to reading the newspaper or watching television news?

Please include the link to the podcast in your post!!!

Podcasts and Radio

*An Unfinished Lesson: Nancy Bristow on the 1918 Flu, NPR Hidden Brain

*Anatomy of a Pandemic, This Podcast Will Kill You
*Boogie-Woogie Flu Sufferers Unite, NPR All Things Considered

*Coronacast, Australian Broadcasting Corporation 

*Coronavirus, Animal Infections & the Next Pandemic, NPR Fresh Air

*Coronavirus, Climate Change and Living in States of Emergency, KCRW To The Point

*Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction, CNN 

*Coronavirus: Fears and Facts, Science VS

*Coronavirus Global Update, BBC World Service

*Coronavirus Series, The History of Now

*Containing the Coronavirus, Reveal: From the Center for Investigative Reporting 

*COVID-19, This Podcast will Kill You

*COVID-19 is Exposing US Racism in a Stark New Way with Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, Democracy Now 

*Floodlines: The Story of an Unnatural Disaster, The Atlantic 

*From Cholera to Coronavirus with Richard Evans, Talking Politics/London Review of Books

*How Music Has Reflected Difficult Times, WABE City Lights 

*Imagining and Narrating Plague in the Ottoman World: Orhan Pamuk and Nükhet Varlık, Ottoman History Podcast

*NDR Info Coronavirus Update, Daily interview with Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten (In German)
*Our Plague Year, Night Vale Presents 

*Pandemic: The Story of the 1918 Flu, BBC

*Racism in the Time of Coronavirus, Long Distance 

*Repurposing the Webs of Infections as Webs of Connection, with Mindy Thompson Fullilove Ear to the Pavement podcast/Progressive City

*’Rona and Racism: A Survival Guide, KQED Truth Be Told

*Social Distance, The Atlantic

*States of Emergency with Lea Ypi, Talking Politics/London Review of Books

* The Black Death, In Our Time

*The Origins of a Disaster, Why is this Happening? With Chris Hayes
*The Urbanization of Covid-19, Urban Political. 

*The World Health Organization and Pandemic Preparedness in the US, with Andrew Lakoff, Slow Disaster
*Viral: Coronavirus, ThreeUncannyFour

*When Xenophobia Spreads Like A Virus, NPR Code Switch 

*Why We Underestimated COVID-19 (with Daniel Kahneman), New Yorker Radio Hour

• How has pandemic affected how Chinese and other Asian people are treated by society?

• • How was their experience like?
  • Why do they think it started?
  • Was there a way to prevent it?
  • How many people have been abused?
  • Do they believe they are safe for them and their loved ones?
  • Will this continue even after the pandemic?
  • What are Asian communities doing in order to protect themselves?

Problem Statement:

How is COVID-19 going to be cleared and will vaccination be needed to end this problem?

Main points:
– will quarantine and social distancing be enough to prevent the virus 

– will vaccination be required if it takes up to a year to create
– the outcome/results that are expected to happen once the pandemic is over

Purpose of study:

I am curious and willing to do research based on vaccine research and the coronavirus. Although we are currently trying to prevent the spread of the virus, there are still concerns arising if it will be enough to maintain good health.   

Significance of Research:
I will collect data and use reliable information to help claim different theories.   

Prompt #1: Coronavirus impact on low income families

Questions about this prompt that I am thinking about are:

How has COVID-19 affected low income families financially?

Did COVID-19 show how wealthy people will always have more power than the poor?

Are low income people more at risk of getting COVID-19 because of the desperate need of getting important supply?

The reason why I want to research the impact the coronavirus has on low income people is because I believe they can be affected the most. Since the coronavirus hit New York hard low incomes families have been struggling to get food and other supplies that are needed like gloves, masks, soap, and ect. Especially the impact on supermarkets have been mind blowing and that’s when this topic came to my mind. How are people going to get food if wealthy people are over-supplying on food? First time I went to the supermarket you can just see how people are panicking and are only worried about themselves. I also consider myself to be in the low/working class myself, so I believe I can show my perspective on the impact of COVID-19.

How has our government and political leader handled COVID 19 and what does it say about society in the future? 

• What were the first actions taken when it all started 
• What did the state government did version federal government 
• laws  or policy that were passed to combat the situation 
• Government decisions impacts on the people in certain class/ community 
• USA actions compare to other nations 
• Issues that showed the true color of our problems 
• What does this mean for future of our country( issues needed to fixed and solved)                                                                                                                                                        Conclusion
• Impacts of COVID 19 and where does it leave us as a nation.

I chose “Political Cartoons on the Coronavirus” because it shares real-life scenarios that are going on in the world today. An image that caught my attention shows that troops and firefighters wouldn’t be sent to do their tasks without the right equipment but yet people in the medical field have to work for PPE. PPE is personal protective equipment and nurses/doctors are risking their lives without the right equipment. I will also like to put out there that some doctors and nurses are getting the virus due to patients or traveling from their workplace from home. This is why I would like to thank them because they are doing all they can to help patients and we gave to thankful. Another picture I like was telling people to stay calm and stay home. There was various reason why that statement is important, first of this would stop the spreading of coronavirus. We are saving people’s life by remaining home. Also, I want to be outside as soon as possible so the more people remain in their homes they quicker we might get over this pandemic. I agree that it is hard to stay home but we should be considerate of others and think about our health. Another picture that got my attention is the one with the boat sinking. It shows that America got a lot of warnings and I assume that the picture means America should have paid more attention. Trump first said that this virus isn’t something serious. I also believed that I felt that people were overreacting to the virus. However, we were wrong and now facing the consequences of not taking early action to be prepared for this. All of the pictures shown are important but we should take in consideration that we will overcome this. 

Political cartoons: Corona News. https://www.usnews.com/news/cartoons/2020/02/28/political-cartoons-on-the-coronavirus

Covid 19 expands so fast around the world? How could people have avoided it?

*COVID-19 is a respiratory virus that can be spread with any daily activities  

    -Spreads with people sneezing, coughing, or just touching any surface. 

*COVID-19 reveals how people are connected and how one person without knowing who is infected can get infected. 

    -How a person in China infected others that did not even know about it?

*Government policies implemented as the COVID-19 started to expand?

    -Closing of borders 

    -mandatory quarantine 

     -Statistics in how much people have been dying on a daily basis

*People think that the situation is a joke and are not taking the necessary steps to reduce the expansion. 

   -Keep going out without having reasons. 

*However, people should have more consideration for the government and try to adapt to what is happening now.

If the current set-up, in which you are free to journal about whatever is on your mind on any given day, is working for you, great! Feel free to continue journaling as you have been over the past month. If, however, you would like more structure or would like to experiment more in your journal writing, choose a prompt from the list below, and respond to it in your journal. You can try different prompts each time, return to the same prompt more than one, or mix-and-match between free-form journaling and these more structured prompts.

1. Write a letter to someone who is on your mind today.   This could be someone you know, or it could be a stranger. What do you want to tell him/her?
2. Count your blessings. What do you have to appreciate today? What keeps you going in these uncertain times?
3. Make a playlist for your life. What songs would you pick to represent the various stages of your life? Why?
4. Describe the landscape of your “quarantine” space. Imagine you are writing a travel guide to your room or to your home.
5. Go to the window. What do you see? What is happening out there?
6. What keeps you up at night? Use this journal entry as “brain dump” to get all your worst worries and fears out onto the page.
7. Write a thank-you letter to yourself. What do you want to acknowledge and appreciate about yourself today?
8. Instead of a “To Do” list, write a “Not To Do” list. What are all the things you are NOT going to do today? What would it mean to let go of the idea of accomplishment as a yardstick for our days?
9. Write a letter to your future self. Tell him/her all about what you’ve done to get where he/she is in the future.
10. Reflect on a time you really struggled. What was the struggle? How did you get through it?
11. What do people NOT see about you? How have you been misunderstood – even by those closest to you?
12. Write about a time when you misjudged or misunderstood someone else. What happened?
13. What muscles are you developing or stretching during this crazy time? What invisible changes are taking place inside you right now?
14. What do you know about the world today that you didn’t know five years ago?
15. What do you know about yourself today that you didn’t know five years ago?
16. If you had to come up with a motto – a saying or slogan – to live by right now, what would it be? Why?
17. What are some of the tiny things that are bringing your pleasure these days? Describe ten tiny pleasures.
18. Write a thank-you letter to someone who helped you in some way. This could be someone you know, or it could be a stranger. It could be someone who helped you deliberately, or it could be someone who doesn’t even know how he/she helped you.
19. Imagine you had a meeting with the mayor or the governor or the president. What would you want them to know about you and your community?
20. Describe an experience or encounter that transformed you in some way. (It could even be what you are going through right now!) How did it change you?

I may have similar ideas to other people but here is mine:

1. President Trump and the Coronavirus
   1. what could have been prevented and what we have to deal with now
2. After Coronavirus (after quarantine, psychical and psychological effects of staying home and minimal outside contact)
   1. schools and jobs
3. Un-official quarantine in America compared to other countries
   1. how its a problem and a burden to the health department

While it’s going to take a while for the coronavirus to be under control in this country, there are people around that are unemployed and require financial support to help them with their daily lives. At the moment we have our economy in a bit a harsh environment, with stock markets plummeting, businesses closing down and people increasingly losing their jobs some people are taking advantage of this pandemic to make a nice amount of profit. For example, this Jewish male that I read about recently when I was scrolling through my social media page. Baruch Feldheim, 43, from Brooklyn was charged with assault charges, with combined 6 years in prison charge, and a $350,000 fine. Before I get into why he is in a place he is now, you have to understand that the majority of Jewish people and their community not just in Brooklyn but around the world don’t believe that the Coronavirus is a real thing. On top of that, Coronavirus is spreading violently in the Jewish community (Borough Park, a center of Religious Group of Jewish People which makes up a hefty percentage of all Jewish people in New York, and maybe the whole USA) as Passover (Religious Holiday) is in the midst of it all resulting people to gather in large groups rather than staying home. Back to Baruch Feldheim, he was arrested after an FBI raid for “allegedly sold N95 respirators “and other assorted materials” for $12,000, a 700% markup from their normal prices.” Officials say he had made an unofficial deal over a WhatsApp with a doctor in New Jersey to sell individuals masks and other medical materials for more than 700% the amount of the original price. He was arrested for coughing on an FBI agent while claimed to be infected with the virus. His sentence and the financial charges were also an indirect result of hoarding large amounts of medical-grade materials that violated an executive order made by the Health Department.

An in-depth article about the rest of the story is available here:

https://www.jpost.com/international/brooklyn-man-arrested-after-coughing-on-fbi-agents-623286