I heard it through the grapevine: On herd immunity and why it is important

Napier, A. David

doi:10.1111/1467-8322.12572

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…What made it a (problematic) novelty in the context of COVID-19 was that herd immunity approaches were advocated at a time when vaccines against this virus were not yet available. This particular interpretation of 'herd immunity' suggested that it might be necessary to allow for some sacrifice of the vulnerable now, in order to gain resilience to the virus at the population level in the future, and it was strongly opposed on both epidemiological and moral grounds (Napier, 2020). Scott Atlas was heavily criticized, for example, for suggesting in his role as advisor of the Trump administration that letting "a lot of people get infected" was an effective strategy for building immunity in the population overall.…”

Section: Resilience Tropes In the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhetorics of Resilience and Extended Crises: Reasoning in the Moral Situation of Our Post-Pandemic World

Copeland

Cañizares-Gaztelu

2022

Philosophy of Engineering and Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This chapter looks closely at the use of resilience as a value in pandemic discourses, and particularly at how it reflects the moral complexity of the situation the pandemic presents: an extended crisis where shocks and stressors interact and have an uncertain end. We review key aspects of how resilience has been conceptualised, generally speaking, focusing on its normative implications. Insofar as resilience is suggested as a goal, or used to evaluate individuals, groups and systems, the rhetorical use of resilience in the pandemic has moral implications that we unpack. Asking questions such as resilience to what, of what, and for whom, drives our analysis of the multiple scales at which morally relevant factors must be considered, in terms of distance and certainty, and across space and over time. Further, we highlight the importance of particularly challenging, intersecting scales both within and beyond the pandemic, such as the interaction between other- and self-regarding concerns and the tension between transformation and conservation, as we consider when to take up opportunities for improving ourselves, our society and our systems, in times of extended crises and radical change. Given that a ‘return to normal’ is neither universally desirable nor likely, we recommend in this chapter ways to address resilience as a value that can shape approaches to policy and behaviour while also being explicit about the normative—evaluative and also prescriptive—implications of its use.

show abstract

Section: Resilience Tropes In the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhetorics of Resilience and Extended Crises: Reasoning in the Moral Situation of Our Post-Pandemic World

Copeland

Cañizares-Gaztelu

2022

Philosophy of Engineering and Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Most importantly, viruses do not invade. They are not living entities; they are just bits of information that our cells bring to life (Napier 2020). And viruses are already an integral part of our body-worlds.…”

Section: How Might the Vocabulary Of Borders And Sexuality Help Us To...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexuality and borders in right wing times: a conversation

Tudor¹,

Ticktin²

2021

The Sexual Politics of Border Control

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In their prescient 2019 symposium on sexuality and borders, Billy Holzberg, Anouk Madörin and Michelle Pfeifer identified a deepening relationship between sexuality and mobility; they pointed to the increasingly important role of sexuality in the production and maintenance of border regimes, and how racialized border regimes in turn mediate expressions of sexuality. That is, they acknowledge sexuality as a dominant frame by which mobility is captured and regulated.The symposium made an important intervention, but then we were hit by the Covid19 pandemic and the effects of the many virulent, anti-immigrant, authoritarian and racialized regimes were made even more manifest. Instead of haunting us, right wing sentiment has materialized into a form of mass death of black and brown people and migrants -not just through the biopolitical logic of "letting die," but by actively exposing and cultivating infection in meat packing plants, prisons, detention centers as well as in front line workers. Holzberg, Madörin and Pfeifer anticipated that this would be furthered by its intersections with sexuality; and in our conversation, we explore how, specifically, with the idea that right-wing times have rendered these intersecting relationships both slightly different, but nevertheless all more urgent to understand.Those most vulnerable have borne the brunt of inadequate healthcare and housing, combined with newly invigorated forms of police and other forms of violence: perhaps top amongst these are trans people of color. The massive rally for Black Trans lives in Brooklyn, New York in June 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, acknowledged this vulnerability; with 15,000 people dressed in white, packed into the plaza in front of the Brooklyn Museum and spilling out into the transecting streets, people reacted to the many recent deaths of Black trans women, several of which came in the wake of rollbacks to transgender healthcare protections. Other murders occurred in prison or on the street. As Angela Davis (2020) stated in an interview, if we want to develop an intersectional perspective, the trans community is showing us the way; the trans community has taught us how to challenge our foundational sense of normalcy, and as Davis underscored, if we can challenge the gender binary, then we can resist prisons, and jails, and police. And, we would add, we can challenge the very idea of borders and nation-states.In what follows, we respond to prompts about the relationships between race, immigration, and sexuality, as these intersecting differences have been forced into the same frame by the violent practices of right-wing regimes, and brought into relief by Covid19. Even as we have long known that sexual politics are a way to govern bodies, and to distribute uneven states of vulnerability (Stoler 2010), we are seeing new incarnations of government. With the concepts of tolerance, multi-culturalism or integration, liberalism works to manage, govern and control difference. That is, it abandons and excludes those who exceed the bounds o...

show abstract

“…Like Gorbalenya, he rejects the notion that viruses "attack" us. Yet departing from Gorbalenya, he believes military metaphors stem from considering viruses as living entities with their own agency (Napier 2020). Rejecting this notion and specifically commenting on the COVID-19 pandemic, Napier notes, "Science … has led us to believe that viruses invade us, which they don't.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…… Proliferation is a social matter…. Our inability to involve social science seriously in responding to COVID-19 and how it makes specific populations vulnerable…has altered the epidemic landscape profoundly" (Napier 2020). Historian Andy Horowitz concurs when he writes, "The history that scholars will name 'the COVID-19 pandemic' ultimately will have as much to do with the social world the virus encounters as it does with the virus itself" (Horowitz 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, COVID-19 is not a big event from an evolutionary point of view, but it is a huge problem for humans because it dramatically interacts with and disturbs human social practices. This is because SARS-CoV-2 is us, too (Napier 2020). Karen Barad proposes the term "intra-action" instead of "interaction" exactly to highlight the fact that agencies (in this case the virus and humans) are not distinguished before their encounter but arise from it (Barad 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation