Download or read book Memoir of a Pandemic written by Brett Giroir and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Every American should read this insightful and gripping account to understand all our Nation accomplished in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years and the difference one dedicated leader at United States Public Health Service made for millions of Americans." —Former Vice President Mike Pence In January 2020, Admiral Brett P. Giroir, MD, was among the first federal leaders tapped to handle the reintegration of US citizens from Wuhan, China, in the earliest days of what became the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, he was one of the few to see what everyone believed were the only Americans exposed to the novel virus at the time. Ultimately, Giroir would be called to serve on the White House Coronavirus Task Force under President Donald Trump. Rather than an exhaustive and comprehensive history of the pandemic response, this memoir adds to the historical record through personal narrative and by contextualizing several key inflection points. Giroir reflects upon his time on the front lines of the early cruise ship outbreaks and makeshift hospitals to the Situation Room in the White House. He explains the complex backdrop of personalities, policies, and politics that influenced critical decisions as the pandemic developed. In doing so, he also shines a light on the unknown characters who played critical roles in the national COVID response, the personalities and conflicts involved, the intense debates about policies and perceptions, and the decision-making processes that led to our national plan—for better or worse. Giroir concludes that overcoming a pandemic is not as easy as merely replacing a president or “following the science.” The inescapable fact is that the human species will remain vulnerable to pandemics, even more so in the future because of factors both natural and human influenced. Our ability to respond to future pandemics will depend on the adequacy of our preparation, the capabilities and relationships of individual leaders, and the inevitable politics of the day. For now, an important retrospective of what we did, both right and wrong, is imperative.

Download or read book My Life in a Pandemic written by Giridhar Pai and published by Notion Press. This book was released on 2021-02-28 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 2020, few Indians watching the COVID-19 pandemic unfold globally may have thought about it spreading across India. As the COVID-19 cases started rising, the Indian government declared a 3-week lockdown in March 2020 and followed it up with four more over the next six months. India had the most stringent lockdown globally for most of 2020 and this book looks closely at the lives of Indians during that year. In 2020, video calling apps enabled people to interact professionally and personally and became the biggest saviors. Shopping became an expedition and exercising an adventure as the Indian lockdown did not allow most outdoor activities. The author heard the world’s loudest insect in his community when the lockdown stopped all activity. This book documents many such wondrous natural phenomena that the author observed when nature was in free flow in absence of human interference. The author’s kaleidoscopic coverage paints a fascinating picture of his life in a pandemic year. In a year that saw postponement of the Olympics by a year, a race was on to develop a COVID-19 vaccine with more than 100 vaccine candidates in line for use in 2021. My Life in a Pandemic is a great chronicle of the 21st century’s first pandemic that dramatically reshaped human history.

Download or read book Year of the Nurse A Covid 19 Pandemic Memoir written by Cassandra Alexander and published by Cassie Alexander. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is for anyone, nurse or otherwise, who is furious about how 2020 went down and—how 2021 is going. On April 25th, 2021 at 10:55 in the morning I messaged my chat group of girlfriends from where I work as a nurse on an ICU floor: “Nothing like feeling strongly suicidal at a job where you’re supposed to be keeping people alive,” and then tweeted that my “mental health wasn’t great” and deleted the Twitter app off of my phone because I didn’t want to “overshare.” That I felt like dying. That I would’ve rather died than still be at work. I am not alone. In 2020 there were roughly four million nurses in America. Only 2.7 million U.S. soldiers fought in the Vietnam War. Those who came back from Vietnam, having witnessed atrocities—and in some cases, participated in them—were changed forever. You can’t send four million people into a wartime-equivalent situation without psychological consequences. And yet that’s what America has done. Nurses spent a year battling a largely unknown assailant. Running low on gear. Fearing we might bring something deadly home. Getting coughed on by people who pretended that our fights were imaginary, that our struggles—watching people die, day after day, no matter what we did—were literally fake. Nurses are scarred. And unless people understand what we went through and commit to never let anyone lie in the future about public health, we will never become whole. Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir is Cassandra Alexander's poignant effort to come to grips with suicidal ideation and PTSD after being a covid nurse in an ICU in 2020. Comprised of original essays and her chronological journals, tweets, and emails as she attempted to save lives, including her own—this book will let you experience last year from the bedside. Come and understand what it was like.

Download or read book Mindful Moments A Pandemic Memoir of Positivity and Gratitude written by Lisa Mate and published by BookLocker.com, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2020 we had no idea the challenges that we were to face that year. News of a worldwide Pandemic and ordered shelter in place with only essential services operational spread like wildfire creating uncertainly and fear of the unknown. I am an empath, a seeker of positivity and each day those emotions depleted with every news report and indefinite isolation. I felt the need to hold myself accountable to hang onto that gratitude by sharing our personal journey on social media everyday, and everyday finding the gratitude within those challenges. As with all children, on March 17th, my Autistic son was sent home for remote learning. Their routines disrupted and desperately needed services came to a screeching halt. He requires 1:1 instruction and that became my priority. A few days later, all non essential businesses were closed, indefinitely. The self employed were left with no income until months later when unemployment was approved for us. I am self employed. My husbands office closed and he was working remotely, as were most people, for over a year. My sons Autism requires structure, routine and services to thrive. All of those necessities were gone leaving a confused, scared and anxious child resulting in uncontrollable behaviors that required love, patience and priority. He feared this virus taking me away from him. So much so that his worries effected his entire being. I am his person. I found myself as mom, wife, teacher, therapist, confidant and business owner while my 93 year old mom recuperated from a life threatening surgery in a nursing home. Nursing homes were being hit hard by this virus and taking many loved ones with it. The responsibilities and concerns became overwhelming. Each day I sought out something, anything, to be grateful for. With no where to go we spent a lot of our time outdoors after remote learning. We soaked up the sun, blue skies, hearing the birds chirping, looking for someone, anyone to be out walking, loving sidewalk chalk messages of hope, seeing hearts in window, smiling at fellow walkers while keeping our distance and looking for the helpers. Some days I had to dig deep, very deep, for gratefulness. It was in those moments, days, and months that we worked through the seemingly impossible and missed seeing our loved ones as we watched the world crumble to illness and countless deaths. As my prose merely began as a way to hold MYSELF accountable from falling through the cracks, I found that many not only began following my stories but looking forward to them. So much so that I was encouraged to put them into a book to help others see the positivity in the most challenging of times while navigating isolation and Autism. My goal is help bring the sun into your cloudiest of days through commonality, gratitude, positivity and mindfulness.

Download or read book The Other Pandemic written by Lynn Curlee and published by Charlesbridge Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing photo-illustrated historical memoir from the LGBTQIA+ frontlines of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. Before COVID-19 made "pandemic" a household word in 2020, there was the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s and 1990s. Author Lynn Curlee explores the parallels and the difference as he recounts living in New York and Los Angeles when the disease silently took hold of the gay community. As the disease became a full-blown public health crisis, Curlee watched in horror at the devastating progression of HIV/AIDS, the staggering losses endured, and divisive politics and discrimination that cost many people their lives. With honesty and heart, Curlee tells the stories of the many friends and loved ones that he lost to the disease, including his own life partner. LGBTQ+ rights and access to health care continues to be threatened today. The Other Pandemic is a stark and strong reminder of how history speaks to the present, and this window to the past is a valuable tool for understanding our current cultural landscape. “HEARTBREAKING! This memoir of the AIDS plague is a powerful reminder to those of us who miraculously lived through it — and a valuable eye-opener for younger generations who can never allow this to happen again. With the COVID pandemic on everyone’s radar, there couldn’t be a more teachable moment. Author Lynn Curlee grabs this pulpit by the throat and fearlessly makes the case that we must never forget.” — Sam Irvin, filmmaker and author "Reading The Other Pandemic was a very personal journey for me. I lost my stepfather to AIDS in 1993 when he was just 44 years old. The way Lynn shares his own life experiences a gay man living during this historic time of loss and perseverance is so insightful, and incredibly important to share with those who were not there firsthand to experience it." — Carol Bennett, daughter of Tim Bennett, a major character in THE OTHER PANDEMIC "Reading The Other Pandemic: An AIDS Memoir is akin to settling in with a dear, dear friend for a long-overdue catchup. Lynn Curlee’s effortless and evocative prose is much more than a poignant account of a not-distant-past epidemic that galvanized the LGBTQ+ community. It is a deeply personal and brave story of chosen families, political deafness, and hard-fought resolve. Curlee both broke my heart and mended it." —Jeffrey Dale Lofton, author of Red Clay Suzie "The Other Pandemic is a poignant and raw examination of the AIDS crisis that highlights how much the past shapes our present. Lynn Curlee has accomplished something beautiful here—I could not put it down. I am grateful he chose to share his loved ones with the world." — Leo Rocha, Journalist and GLAAD "20 under 20" honoree

Download or read book The Premonition A Pandemic Story written by Michael Lewis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work. Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

Download or read book A Terrible Horrible No Good Year written by Six-Word Memoirs and published by Six-Word Memoir. This book was released on 2021 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth book in the Six-Word Memoir series tells the story of a world we never expected to be in and can't stop talking about. Told through the lens of students, teachers, and parents around the world, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year offers hundreds of inspirational, playful, and profound takes on life during the pandemic. For some, this book will be a window. For others, a mirror of their own experience. For all of us, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year is a time capsule to be read, shared, and discussed and is certain to prompt friends, family, and neighbors to ask each other: "What's your six-word pandemic story?"

Download or read book How We Live Now written by Bill Hayes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the New York City Book Award From the beloved author of Insomniac City, a poignant and profound tribute in stories and images to a city amidst a pandemic. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States in March 2020 and New York went into total lockdown, writer and photographer Bill Hayes hit the largely deserted streets of Manhattan to try to document-through words and photographs-how the city was changing virtually overnight. How We Live Now records those first 100 days of the pandemic in real time-a time of both hopefulness and great fear, long before we had effective Covid testing and vaccines-up to and including the historic Blacks Lives Matter demonstrations following the tragic murder of George Floyd. Featuring Hayes's inimitable street photographs, How We Live Now chronicles an unimaginable moment in time with his signature insight and grace, offering a glimpse at our shared humanity.

Download or read book The Essays of Ann written by Ann Grant and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-05 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ◆◆◆Anyone who has experienced the first year of COVID-19 will enjoy these stories, written to leaven the anxiety and fear which came to permeate all our lives in 2020. ◆◆◆ Ann Boyle Grant RN PhD is a nurse and educator who mines the eight decades of her life from 1940-2021 for stories alternatively humorous and inspiring, realistic but invariably hopeful. Beginning with the heartwarming story of Sunday dinners in 1950's Cache Valley Utah, and progressing through the first horse, the first kiss, an unconventional marriage and years spent abroad in London and Heidelberg, Dr. Grant weaves tales of family projects gone awry, disasters averted at the last moment, the sadness of inevitable partings and loss, and the enduring love of family. ✓Journey to the top of the Jungfraujoch with a trainload of inebriated hikers taking the easy way up ✓Revel in the hysterical saga of teaching young daughters to drive ✓Follow along with painting projects gone disastrously awry ✓Descriptions of life in London and Heidelberg ✓1970's Berkeley riots ✓Current social unrest in Los Angeles and other cities This series of stories will make you laugh, cringe, cry, and rejoice in the resilience of the human spirit. Dr. Grant draws on her background as a nurse and teacher to find meaning and satisfaction in the everyday experiences of family life, told with humor, hope and insight. ★Scroll up and Buy Now, don't wait!★

Download or read book A Terrible Horrible No Good Year written by Six-Word Memoirs and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth book in the Six-Word Memoir series tells the story of a world we never expected to be in and can't stop talking about. Told through the lens of students, teachers, and parents around the world, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year offers hundreds of inspirational, playful, and profound takes on life during the pandemic. For some, this book will be a window. For others, a mirror of their own experience. For all of us, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year is a time capsule to be read, shared, and discussed and is certain to prompt friends, family, and neighbors to ask each other: "What's your six-word pandemic story?"

Download or read book Apocalyptic Polly written by Polly Basore Wenzl and published by Angelbooks. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Apocalyptic Polly chronicles both the intimate experience of one woman trying to protect her family during a global pandemic and the broader story of a nation upended by public health measures designed to prevent its spread during a period of growing political division, social unrest, economic crisis, and extreme weather. A child of the Cold War, the author reflects on how a "prepare, prevent, and respond" mindset led to a lifetime of anxiety and extreme caution in the face of Covid-19 - but proved no defense against heart-breaking loss. This bracingly honest memoir is a contemporary history, enriched with excerpts from personal text messages and social media posts that kept her connected to the outside world during her household's year of self-imposed isolation.

Download or read book A Terrible Horrible No Good Year written by Six Word Memoirs and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Burning Out on the COVID Front Lines written by Dhaval R. Desai, M.D. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-11-21 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This memoir tells the story of Georgia physician Dhaval Desai's life during the Covid-19 pandemic. As a new father, frontline physician and healthcare leader on the brink of burnout, and a member of an ethnic minority in the South, his tale is marked by chaotic intersections. Throughout, his commitment to fostering and advocating for caring and compassion in the practice of medicine shines as Desai shares his unique perspective.

Download or read book Preventable written by Devi Sridhar and published by Viking. This book was released on 2022-04-21 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Devi Sridhar has risen to prominence for her vital roles in communicating science to the public and speaking truth to power. In Preventable she highlights lessons learned from outbreaks past and present in a narrative that traces the COVID-19 pandemic - including her personal experience as a scientist - and sets out a vision for how we can better protect ourselves from the inevitable health crises to come. In gripping and heartfelt prose, Sridhar exposes the varied realities of those affected and puts you in the room with key decision makers at crucial moments. She vibrantly conveys the twists and turns of a plot that saw- deadlier variants emerge (contrary to the predictions of social media pundits who argued it would mutate to a milder form); countries with weak health systems like Senegal and Vietnam fare better than countries like the US and UK (which were consistently ranked as the most prepared); and the quickest development of game-changing vaccines in history (and their unfair distribution). Combining science, politics, ethics and economics, this definitive book dissects the global structures that determine our fate, and reveals the deep-seated economic and social inequalities at their heart - it will challenge, outrage and inspire.

Download or read book States of Plague written by Alice Kaplan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States of Plague examines Albert Camus’s novel as a palimpsest of pandemic life, an uncannily relevant account of the psychology and politics of a public health crisis. As one of the most discussed books of the COVID-19 crisis, Albert Camus’s classic novel The Plague has become a new kind of literary touchstone. Surrounded by terror and uncertainty, often separated from loved ones or unable to travel, readers sought answers within the pages of Camus’s 1947 tale about an Algerian city gripped by an epidemic. Many found in it a story about their own lives—a book to shed light on a global health crisis. In thirteen linked chapters told in alternating voices, Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris hold the past and present of The Plague in conversation, discovering how the novel has reached people in their current moment. Kaplan’s chapters explore the book’s tangled and vivid history, while Marris’s are drawn to the ecology of landscape and language. Through these pages, they find that their sense of Camus evolves under the force of a new reality, alongside the pressures of illness, recovery, concern, and care in their own lives. Along the way, Kaplan and Marris examine how the novel’s original allegory might resonate with a new generation of readers who have experienced a global pandemic. They describe how they learned to contemplate the skies of a plague spring, to examine the body politic and the politics of immunity. Both personal and eloquently written, States of Plague uncovers for us the mysterious way a novel can imagine the world during a crisis and draw back the veil on other possible futures.

Download or read book The Plague Year written by Lawrence Wright and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Download or read book Navigating the Pandemic written by Teresa Schreiber Werth and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ABOUT THE BOOK After reading the draft manuscript of this book, Rev. Mary Ramerman astutely observed, "When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, we were asked to observe social distance and stay home. Vacations, weddings, trips to the mall, dinners out, and baseball games all ended. We were literally sent to our rooms to reflect on how we lived our lives and what mattered most to us." The collective wisdom presented in this anthology provides answers to those two important questions. Writers offer a wealth of ideas, shared wisdom, action steps, inspiring stories, and candid looks at real-life situations. The reader will find insights that come from the other side of pain, in people and events affirming hope, perseverance and resilience, as well as a candid record of life in the early days of this pandemic and the challenges before us.