essay about covid 19 200 words

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

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Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi .

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive.

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues.

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems.

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description: A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials.

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story.

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans.

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

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Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words

Updated on
Sep 20, 2023

COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus, is a global pandemic that has affected people all around the world. It first emerged in a lab in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and quickly spread to countries around the world. This virus was reportedly caused by SARS-CoV-2. Since then, it has spread rapidly to many countries, causing widespread illness and impacting our lives in numerous ways. This blog talks about the details of this virus and also drafts an essay on COVID-19 in 100, 200 and 300 words for students and professionals.

Table of Contents

1 Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words
2 Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words
3 Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words

Essay On COVID-19 in English 100 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a global pandemic. It started in late 2019 and has affected people all around the world. The virus spreads very quickly through someone’s sneeze and respiratory issues.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our lives, with lockdowns, travel restrictions, and changes in daily routines. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we should wear masks, practice social distancing, and wash our hands frequently.

People should follow social distancing and other safety guidelines and also learn the tricks to be safe stay healthy and work the whole challenging time.

Essay On COVID-19 in 200 Words

COVID-19 also known as coronavirus, became a global health crisis in early 2020 and impacted mankind around the world. This virus is said to have originated in Wuhan, China in late 2019. It belongs to the coronavirus family and causes flu-like symptoms. It impacted the healthcare systems, economies and the daily lives of people all over the world.

The most crucial aspect of COVID-19 is its highly spreadable nature. It is a communicable disease that spreads through various means such as coughs from infected persons, sneezes and communication. Due to its easy transmission leading to its outbreaks, there were many measures taken by the government from all over the world such as Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and wearing masks.

There are many changes throughout the economic systems, and also in daily routines. Other measures such as schools opting for Online schooling, Remote work options available and restrictions on travel throughout the country and internationally. Subsequently, to cure and top its outbreak, the government started its vaccine campaigns, and other preventive measures.

In conclusion, COVID-19 tested the patience and resilience of the mankind. This pandemic has taught people the importance of patience, effort and humbleness.

Essay On COVID-19 in 300 Words

COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, is a serious and contagious disease that has affected people worldwide. It was first discovered in late 2019 in Cina and then got spread in the whole world. It had a major impact on people’s life, their school, work and daily lives.

COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets produced and through sneezes, and coughs of an infected person. It can spread to thousands of people because of its highly contagious nature. To cure the widespread of this virus, there are thousands of steps taken by the people and the government.

Wearing masks is one of the essential precautions to prevent the virus from spreading. Social distancing is another vital practice, which involves maintaining a safe distance from others to minimize close contact.

Very frequent handwashing is also very important to stop the spread of this virus. Proper hand hygiene can help remove any potential virus particles from our hands, reducing the risk of infection.

In conclusion, the Coronavirus has changed people’s perspective on living. It has also changed people’s way of interacting and how to live. To deal with this virus, it is very important to follow the important guidelines such as masks, social distancing and techniques to wash your hands. Getting vaccinated is also very important to go back to normal life and cure this virus completely. As we continue to battle this pandemic, it is crucial for everyone to do their part to protect themselves and their communities.

to write an essay on COVID-19, understand your word limit and make sure to cover all the stages and symptoms of this disease. You need to highlight all the challenges and impacts of COVID-19. Do not forget to conclude your essay with positive precautionary measures.

Writing an essay on COVID-19 in 200 words requires you to cover all the challenges, impacts and precautions of this disease. You don’t need to describe all of these factors in brief, but make sure to add as many options as your word limit allows.

The full form for COVID-19 is Corona Virus Disease of 2019.

Hence, we hope that this blog has assisted you in comprehending what an essay on COVID-19 in English 200 words must include. For more such essays, check our category essay writing .

Simran Popli

An avid writer and a creative person. With an experience of 1.5 years content writing, Simran has worked with different areas. From medical to working in a marketing agency with different clients to Ed-tech company, the journey has been diverse. Creative, vivacious and patient are the words that describe her personality.

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Paragraph Writing
Paragraph Writing On Covid 19

Paragraph Writing on Covid 19 - Check Samples for Various Word Limits

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a deadly pandemic that has affected the whole world. It was a viral infection that affected almost everyone in some way or the other. However, the effects have been felt differently depending on various factors. As it is a virus, it will change with time, and different variants might keep coming. The virus has affected the lifestyle of human beings. The pandemic has affected the education system and the economy of the world as well. Many people have lost their lives, jobs, near and dear, etc.

Paragraph writing on covid-19 in 100 words, paragraph writing on covid-19 in 150 words, paragraph writing on covid-19 in 200 words, paragraph writing on covid-19 in 250 words, frequently asked questions on covid-19.

Check the samples provided below before you write a paragraph on Covid-19.

Coronavirus is an infectious disease and is commonly called Covid-19. It affects the human respiratory system causing difficulty in breathing. It is a contagious disease and has been spreading across the world like wildfire. The virus was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China. In March, WHO declared Covid-19 as a pandemic that has been affecting the world. The virus was spreading from an infected person through coughing, sneezing, etc. Therefore, the affected people were isolated from everyone. The affected people were even isolated from their own family members and their dear ones. Other symptoms noticed in Covid – 19 patients include weariness, sore throat, muscle soreness, and loss of taste and smell.

Coronavirus, often known as Covid-19, is an infectious disease. It affects the human respiratory system, making breathing difficult. It’s a contagious disease that has been spreading like wildfire over the world. The virus was initially discovered in Wuhan, China, in 2019. Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization in March. The virus was transferred by coughing, sneezing, and other means from an infected person. As a result, the people who were affected were isolated from the rest of society. The folks who were afflicted were even separated from their own family members and loved ones. Weariness, sore throat, muscle stiffness, and loss of taste and smell are among the other complaints reported by Covid-19 individuals. Almost every individual has been affected by the virus. A lot of people have lost their lives due to the severity of the infections. The dropping of oxygen levels and the unavailability of oxygen cylinders were the primary concerns during the pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic was caused due to a man-made virus called coronavirus. It is an infectious disease that has affected millions of people’s lives. The pandemic has affected the entire world differently. It was initially diagnosed in 2019 in Wuhan, China but later, in March 2020, WHO declared that it was a pandemic that was affecting the whole world like wildfire. Covid-19 is a contagious disease. Since it is a viral disease, the virus spreads rapidly in various forms. The main symptoms of this disease were loss of smell and taste, loss of energy, pale skin, sneezing, coughing, reduction of oxygen level, etc. Therefore, all the affected people were asked to isolate themselves from the unaffected ones. The affected people were isolated from their family members in a separate room. The government has taken significant steps to ensure the safety of the people. The frontline workers were like superheroes who worked selflessly for the safety of the people. A lot of doctors had to stay away from their families and their babies for the safety of their patients and their close ones. The government has taken significant steps, and various protocols were imposed for the safety of the people. The government imposed a lockdown and shut down throughout the country.

The coronavirus was responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. It is an infectious disease that has affected millions of people’s lives. The pandemic has impacted people all across the world in diverse ways. It was first discovered in Wuhan, China, in 2019. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed it a pandemic in March 2020, claiming that it has spread throughout the globe like wildfire. The pandemic has claimed the lives of millions of people. The virus had negative consequences for those who were infected, including the development of a variety of chronic disorders. The main symptoms of this disease were loss of smell and taste, fatigue, pale skin, sneezing, coughing, oxygen deficiency, etc. Because Covid-19 was an infectious disease, all those who were infected were instructed to segregate themselves from those who were not. The folks who were affected were separated from their families and locked in a room. The government has prioritised people’s safety. The frontline personnel were like superheroes, working tirelessly to ensure the public’s safety. For the sake of their patients’ and close relatives’ safety, many doctors had to stay away from their families and babies. The government had also taken significant steps and implemented different protocols for the protection of people.

What is meant by the Covid-19 pandemic?

The Covid-19 pandemic was a deadly pandemic that affected the lives of millions of people. A lot of people lost their lives, and some people lost their jobs and lost their entire families due to the pandemic. Many covid warriors, like doctors, nurses, frontline workers, etc., lost their lives due to the pandemic.

From where did the Covid-19 pandemic start?

The Covid-19 pandemic was initially found in Wuhan, China and later in the whole world.

What are the symptoms of Covid-19?

The symptoms of Covid-19 have been identified as sore throat, loss of smell and taste, cough, sneezing, reduction of oxygen level, etc.

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An Introduction to COVID-19

Simon james fong.

4 Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China

Nilanjan Dey

5 Department of Information Technology, Techno International New Town, Kolkata, West Bengal India

Jyotismita Chaki

6 School of Information Technology and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu India

A Brief History of the Coronavirus Outbreak

A novel coronavirus (CoV) named ‘2019-nCoV’ or ‘2019 novel coronavirus’ or ‘COVID-19’ by the World Health Organization (WHO) is in charge of the current outbreak of pneumonia that began at the beginning of December 2019 near in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China [ 1 – 4 ]. COVID-19 is a pathogenic virus. From the phylogenetic analysis carried out with obtainable full genome sequences, bats occur to be the COVID-19 virus reservoir, but the intermediate host(s) has not been detected till now. Though three major areas of work already are ongoing in China to advise our awareness of the pathogenic origin of the outbreak. These include early inquiries of cases with symptoms occurring near in Wuhan during December 2019, ecological sampling from the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market as well as other area markets, and the collection of detailed reports of the point of origin and type of wildlife species marketed on the Huanan market and the destination of those animals after the market has been closed [ 5 – 8 ].

Coronaviruses mostly cause gastrointestinal and respiratory tract infections and are inherently categorized into four major types: Gammacoronavirus, Deltacoronavirus, Betacoronavirus and Alphacoronavirus [ 9 – 11 ]. The first two types mainly infect birds, while the last two mostly infect mammals. Six types of human CoVs have been formally recognized. These comprise HCoVHKU1, HCoV-OC43, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) which is the type of the Betacoronavirus, HCoV229E and HCoV-NL63, which are the member of the Alphacoronavirus. Coronaviruses did not draw global concern until the 2003 SARS pandemic [ 12 – 14 ], preceded by the 2012 MERS [ 15 – 17 ] and most recently by the COVID-19 outbreaks. SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are known to be extremely pathogenic and spread from bats to palm civets or dromedary camels and eventually to humans.

COVID-19 is spread by dust particles and fomites while close unsafe touch between the infector and the infected individual. Airborne distribution has not been recorded for COVID-19 and is not known to be a significant transmission engine based on empirical evidence; although it can be imagined if such aerosol-generating practices are carried out in medical facilities. Faecal spreading has been seen in certain patients, and the active virus has been reported in a small number of clinical studies [ 18 – 20 ]. Furthermore, the faecal-oral route does not seem to be a COVID-19 transmission engine; its function and relevance for COVID-19 need to be identified.

For about 18,738,58 laboratory-confirmed cases recorded as of 2nd week of April 2020, the maximum number of cases (77.8%) was between 30 and 69 years of age. Among the recorded cases, 21.6% are farmers or employees by profession, 51.1% are male and 77.0% are Hubei.

However, there are already many concerns regarding the latest coronavirus. Although it seems to be transferred to humans by animals, it is important to recognize individual animals and other sources, the path of transmission, the incubation cycle, and the features of the susceptible community and the survival rate. Nonetheless, very little clinical knowledge on COVID-19 disease is currently accessible and details on age span, the animal origin of the virus, incubation time, outbreak curve, viral spectroscopy, dissemination pathogenesis, autopsy observations, and any clinical responses to antivirals are lacking among the serious cases.

How Different and Deadly COVID-19 is Compared to Plagues in History

COVID-19 has reached to more than 150 nations, including China, and has caused WHO to call the disease a worldwide pandemic. By the time of 2nd week of April 2020, this COVID-19 cases exceeded 18,738,58, although more than 1,160,45 deaths were recorded worldwide and United States of America became the global epicentre of coronavirus. More than one-third of the COVID-19 instances are outside of China. Past pandemics that have existed in the past decade or so, like bird flu, swine flu, and SARS, it is hard to find out the comparison between those pandemics and this coronavirus. Following is a guide to compare coronavirus with such diseases and recent pandemics that have reformed the world community.

Coronavirus Versus Seasonal Influenza

Influenza, or seasonal flu, occurs globally every year–usually between December and February. It is impossible to determine the number of reports per year because it is not a reportable infection (so no need to be recorded to municipality), so often patients with minor symptoms do not go to a physician. Recent figures placed the Rate of Case Fatality at 0.1% [ 21 – 23 ].

There are approximately 3–5 million reports of serious influenza a year, and about 250,000–500,000 deaths globally. In most developed nations, the majority of deaths arise in persons over 65 years of age. Moreover, it is unsafe for pregnant mothers, children under 59 months of age and individuals with serious illnesses.

The annual vaccination eliminates infection and severe risks in most developing countries but is nevertheless a recognized yet uncomfortable aspect of the season.

In contrast to the seasonal influenza, coronavirus is not so common, has led to fewer cases till now, has a higher rate of case fatality and has no antidote.

Coronavirus Versus Bird Flu (H5N1 and H7N9)

Several cases of bird flu have existed over the years, with the most severe in 2013 and 2016. This is usually from two separate strains—H5N1 and H7N9 [ 24 – 26 ].

The H7N9 outbreak in 2016 accounted for one-third of all confirmed human cases but remained confined relative to both coronavirus and other pandemics/outbreak cases. After the first outbreak, about 1,233 laboratory-confirmed reports of bird flu have occurred. The disease has a Rate of Case Fatality of 20–40%.

Although the percentage is very high, the blowout from individual to individual is restricted, which, in effect, has minimized the number of related deaths. It is also impossible to monitor as birds do not necessarily expire from sickness.

In contrast to the bird flu, coronavirus becomes more common, travels more quickly through human to human interaction, has an inferior cardiothoracic ratio, resulting in further total fatalities and spread from the initial source.

Coronavirus Versus Ebola Epidemic

The Ebola epidemic of 2013 was primarily centred in 10 nations, including Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia have the greatest effects, but the extremely high Case Fatality Rate of 40% has created this as a significant problem for health professionals nationwide [ 27 – 29 ].

Around 2013 and 2016, there were about 28,646 suspicious incidents and about 11,323 fatalities, although these are expected to be overlooked. Those who survived from the original epidemic may still become sick months or even years later, because the infection may stay inactive for prolonged periods. Thankfully, a vaccination was launched in December 2016 and is perceived to be effective.

In contrast to the Ebola, coronavirus is more common globally, has caused in fewer fatalities, has a lesser case fatality rate, has no reported problems during treatment and after recovery, does not have an appropriate vaccination.

Coronavirus Versus Camel Flu (MERS)

Camel flu is a misnomer–though camels have MERS antibodies and may have been included in the transmission of the disease; it was originally transmitted to humans through bats [ 30 – 32 ]. Like Ebola, it infected only a limited number of nations, i.e. about 27, but about 858 fatalities from about 2,494 laboratory-confirmed reports suggested that it was a significant threat if no steps were taken in place to control it.

In contrast to the camel flu, coronavirus is more common globally, has occurred more fatalities, has a lesser case fatality rate, and spreads more easily among humans.

Coronavirus Versus Swine Flu (H1N1)

Swine flu is the same form of influenza that wiped 1.7% of the world population in 1918. This was deemed a pandemic again in June 2009 an approximately-21% of the global population infected by this [ 33 – 35 ].

Thankfully, the case fatality rate is substantially lower than in the last pandemic, with 0.1%–0.5% of events ending in death. About 18,500 of these fatalities have been laboratory-confirmed, but statistics range as high as 151,700–575,400 worldwide. 50–80% of severe occurrences have been reported in individuals with chronic illnesses like asthma, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

In contrast to the swine flu, coronavirus is not so common, has caused fewer fatalities, has more case fatality rate, has a longer growth time and less impact on young people.

Coronavirus Versus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)

SARS was discovered in 2003 as it spread from bats to humans resulted in about 774 fatalities. By May there were eventually about 8,100 reports across 17 countries, with a 15% case fatality rate. The number is estimated to be closer to 9.6% as confirmed cases are counted, with 0.9% cardiothoracic ratio for people aged 20–29, rising to 28% for people aged 70–79. Similar to coronavirus, SARS had bad results for males than females in all age categories [ 36 – 38 ].

Coronavirus is more common relative to SARS, which ended in more overall fatalities, lower case fatality rate, the even higher case fatality rate in older ages, and poorer results for males.

Coronavirus Versus Hong Kong Flu (H3N2)

The Hong Kong flu pandemic erupted on 13 July 1968, with 1–4 million deaths globally by 1969. It was one of the greatest flu pandemics of the twentieth century, but thankfully the case fatality rate was smaller than the epidemic of 1918, resulting in fewer fatalities overall. That may have been attributed to the fact that citizens had generated immunity owing to a previous epidemic in 1957 and to better medical treatment [ 39 ].

In contrast to the Hong Kong flu, coronavirus is not so common, has caused in fewer fatalities and has a higher case fatality rate.

Coronavirus Versus Spanish Flu (H1N1)

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was one of the greatest occurrences of recorded history. During the first year of the pandemic, lifespan in the US dropped by 12 years, with more civilians killed than HIV/AIDS in 24 h [ 40 – 42 ].

Regardless of the name, the epidemic did not necessarily arise in Spain; wartime censors in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and France blocked news of the disease, but Spain did not, creating the misleading perception that more cases and fatalities had occurred relative to its neighbours

This strain of H1N1 eventually affected more than 500 million men, or 27% of the world’s population at the moment, and had deaths of between 40 and 50 million. At the end of 1920, 1.7% of the world’s people had expired of this illness, including an exceptionally high death rate for young adults aged between 20 and 40 years.

In contrast to the Spanish flu, coronavirus is not so common, has caused in fewer fatalities, has a higher case fatality rate, is more harmful to older ages and is less risky for individuals aged 20–40 years.

Coronavirus Versus Common Cold (Typically Rhinovirus)

Common cold is the most common illness impacting people—Typically, a person suffers from 2–3 colds each year and the average kid will catch 6–8 during the similar time span. Although there are more than 200 cold-associated virus types, infections are uncommon and fatalities are very rare and typically arise mainly in extremely old, extremely young or immunosuppressed cases [ 43 , 44 ].

In contrast to the common cold, coronavirus is not so prevalent, causes more fatalities, has more case fatality rate, is less infectious and is less likely to impact small children.

Reviews of Online Portals and Social Media for Epidemic Information Dissemination

As COVID-19 started to propagate across the globe, the outbreak contributed to a significant change in the broad technology platforms. Where they once declined to engage in the affairs of their systems, except though the possible danger to public safety became obvious, the advent of a novel coronavirus placed them in a different interventionist way of thought. Big tech firms and social media are taking concrete steps to guide users to relevant, credible details on the virus [ 45 – 48 ]. And some of the measures they’re doing proactively. Below are a few of them.

Facebook started adding a box in the news feed that led users to the Centers for Disease Control website regarding COVID-19. It reflects a significant departure from the company’s normal strategy of placing items in the News Feed. The purpose of the update, after all, is personalization—Facebook tries to give the posts you’re going to care about, whether it is because you’re connected with a person or like a post. In the virus package, Facebook has placed a remarkable algorithmic thumb on the scale, potentially pushing millions of people to accurate, authenticated knowledge from a reputable source.

Similar initiatives have been adopted by Twitter. Searching for COVID-19 will carry you to a page highlighting the latest reports from public health groups and credible national news outlets. The search also allows for common misspellings. Twitter has stated that although Russian-style initiatives to cause discontent by large-scale intelligence operations have not yet been observed, a zero-tolerance approach to network exploitation and all other attempts to exploit their service at this crucial juncture will be expected. The problem has the attention of the organization. It also offers promotional support to public service agencies and other non-profit groups.

Google has made a step in making it better for those who choose to operate or research from home, offering specialized streaming services to all paying G Suite customers. Google also confirmed that free access to ‘advanced’ Hangouts Meet apps will be rolled out to both G Suite and G Suite for Education clients worldwide through 1st July. It ensures that companies can hold meetings of up to 250 people, broadcast live to up to about 100,000 users within a single network, and archive and export meetings to Google Drive. Usually, Google pays an additional $13 per person per month for these services in comparison to G Suite’s ‘enterprise’ membership, which adds up to a total of about $25 per client each month.

Microsoft took a similar move, introducing the software ‘Chat Device’ to help public health and protection in the coronavirus epidemic, which enables collaborative collaboration via video and text messaging. There’s an aspect of self-interest in this. Tech firms are offering out their goods free of charge during periods of emergency for the same purpose as newspapers are reducing their paywalls: it’s nice to draw more paying consumers.

Pinterest, which has introduced much of the anti-misinformation strategies that Facebook and Twitter are already embracing, is now restricting the search results for ‘coronavirus’, ‘COVID-19’ and similar words for ‘internationally recognized health organizations’.

Google-owned YouTube, traditionally the most conspiratorial website, has recently introduced a connection to the World Health Organization virus epidemic page to the top of the search results. In the early days of the epidemic, BuzzFeed found famous coronavirus conspiratorial videos on YouTube—especially in India, where one ‘explain’ with a false interpretation of the sources of the disease racketeered 13 million views before YouTube deleted it. Yet in the United States, conspiratorial posts regarding the illness have failed to gain only 1 million views.

That’s not to suggest that misinformation doesn’t propagate on digital platforms—just as it travels through the broader Internet, even though interaction with friends and relatives. When there’s a site that appears to be under-performing in the global epidemic, it’s Facebook-owned WhatsApp, where the Washington Post reported ‘a torrent of disinformation’ in places like Nigeria, Indonesia, Peru, Pakistan and Ireland. Given the encrypted existence of the app, it is difficult to measure the severity of the problem. Misinformation is also spread in WhatsApp communities, where participation is restricted to about 250 individuals. Knowledge of one category may be readily exchanged with another; however, there is a considerable amount of complexity of rotating several groups to peddle affected healing remedies or propagate false rumours.

Preventative Measures and Policies Enforced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Different Countries

Coronavirus is already an ongoing epidemic, so it is necessary to take precautions to minimize both the risk of being sick and the transmission of the disease.

WHO Advice [ 49 ]

Wash hands regularly with alcohol-based hand wash or soap and water.
Preserve contact space (at least 1 m/3 feet between you and someone who sneezes or coughs).
Don’t touch your nose, head and ears.
Cover your nose and mouth as you sneeze or cough, preferably with your bent elbow or tissue.
Try to find early medical attention if you have fatigue, cough and trouble breathing.
Take preventive precautions if you are in or have recently go to places where coronavirus spreads.

The first person believed to have become sick because of the latest virus was near in Wuhan on 1 December 2019. A formal warning of the epidemic was released on 31 December. The World Health Organization was informed of the epidemic on the same day. Through 7 January, the Chinese Government addressed the avoidance and regulation of COVID-19. A curfew was declared on 23 January to prohibit flying in and out of Wuhan. Private usage of cars has been banned in the region. Chinese New Year (25 January) festivities have been cancelled in many locations [ 50 ].

On 26 January, the Communist Party and the Government adopted more steps to contain the COVID-19 epidemic, including safety warnings for travellers and improvements to national holidays. The leading party has agreed to prolong the Spring Festival holiday to control the outbreak. Universities and schools across the world have already been locked down. Many steps have been taken by the Hong Kong and Macau governments, in particular concerning schools and colleges. Remote job initiatives have been placed in effect in many regions of China. Several immigration limits have been enforced.

Certain counties and cities outside Hubei also implemented travel limits. Public transit has been changed and museums in China have been partially removed. Some experts challenged the quality of the number of cases announced by the Chinese Government, which constantly modified the way coronavirus cases were recorded.

Italy, a member state of the European Union and a popular tourist attraction, entered the list of coronavirus-affected nations on 30 January, when two positive cases in COVID-19 were identified among Chinese tourists. Italy has the largest number of coronavirus infections both in Europe and outside of China [ 51 ].

Infections, originally limited to northern Italy, gradually spread to all other areas. Many other nations in Asia, Europe and the Americas have tracked their local cases to Italy. Several Italian travellers were even infected with coronavirus-positive in foreign nations.

Late in Italy, the most impacted coronavirus cities and counties are Lombardia, accompanied by Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Marche and Piedmonte. Milan, the second most populated city in Italy, is situated in Lombardy. Other regions in Italy with coronavirus comprised Campania, Toscana, Liguria, Lazio, Sicilia, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Umbria, Puglia, Trento, Abruzzo, Calabria, Molise, Valle d’Aosta, Sardegna, Bolzano and Basilicata.

Italy ranks 19th of the top 30 nations getting high-risk coronavirus airline passengers in China, as per WorldPop’s provisional study of the spread of COVID-19.

The Italian State has taken steps like the inspection and termination of large cultural activities during the early days of the coronavirus epidemic and has gradually declared the closing of educational establishments and airport hygiene/disinfection initiatives.

The Italian National Institute of Health suggested social distancing and agreed that the broader community of the country’s elderly is a problem. In the meantime, several other nations, including the US, have recommended that travel to Italy should be avoided temporarily, unless necessary.

The Italian government has declared the closing (quarantine) of the impacted areas in the northern region of the nation so as not to spread to the rest of the world. Italy has declared the immediate suspension of all to-and-fro air travel with China following coronavirus discovery by a Chinese tourist to Italy. Italian airlines, like Ryan Air, have begun introducing protective steps and have begun calling for the declaration forms to be submitted by passengers flying to Poland, Slovakia and Lithuania.

The Italian government first declined to permit fans to compete in sporting activities until early April to prevent the potential transmission of coronavirus. The step ensured players of health and stopped event cancellations because of coronavirus fears. Two days of the declaration, the government cancelled all athletic activities owing to the emergence of the outbreak asking for an emergency. Sports activities in Veneto, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, which recorded coronavirus-positive infections, were confirmed to be temporarily suspended. Schools and colleges in Italy have also been forced to shut down.

Iran announced the first recorded cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection on 19 February when, as per the Medical Education and Ministry of Health, two persons died later that day. The Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance has declared the cancellation of all concerts and other cultural activities for one week. The Medical Education and Ministry of Health has also declared the closing of universities, higher education colleges and schools in many cities and regions. The Department of Sports and Culture has taken action to suspend athletic activities, including football matches [ 52 ].

On 2 March 2020, the government revealed plans to train about 300,000 troops and volunteers to fight the outbreak of the epidemic, and also send robots and water cannons to clean the cities. The State also developed an initiative and a webpage to counter the epidemic. On 9 March 2020, nearly 70,000 inmates were immediately released from jail owing to the epidemic, presumably to prevent the further dissemination of the disease inside jails. The Revolutionary Guards declared a campaign on 13 March 2020 to clear highways, stores and public areas in Iran. President Hassan Rouhani stated on 26 February 2020 that there were no arrangements to quarantine areas impacted by the epidemic and only persons should be quarantined. The temples of Shia in Qom stayed open to pilgrims.

South Korea

On 20 January, South Korea announced its first occurrence. There was a large rise in cases on 20 February, possibly due to the meeting in Daegu of a progressive faith community recognized as the Shincheonji Church of Christ. Any citizens believed that the hospital was propagating the disease. As of 22 February, 1,261 of the 9,336 members of the church registered symptoms. A petition was distributed calling for the abolition of the church. More than 2,000 verified cases were registered on 28 February, increasing to 3,150 on 29 February [ 53 ].

Several educational establishments have been partially closing down, including hundreds of kindergartens in Daegu and many primary schools in Seoul. As of 18 February, several South Korean colleges had confirmed intentions to delay the launch of the spring semester. That included 155 institutions deciding to postpone the start of the semester by two weeks until 16 March, and 22 institutions deciding to delay the start of the semester by one week until 9 March. Also, on 23 February 2020, all primary schools, kindergartens, middle schools and secondary schools were declared to postpone the start of the semester from 2 March to 9 March.

South Korea’s economy is expected to expand by 1.9%, down from 2.1%. The State has given 136.7 billion won funding to local councils. The State has also coordinated the purchase of masks and other sanitary supplies. Entertainment Company SM Entertainment is confirmed to have contributed five hundred million won in attempts to fight the disease.

In the kpop industry, the widespread dissemination of coronavirus within South Korea has contributed to the cancellation or postponement of concerts and other programmes for kpop activities inside and outside South Korea. For instance, circumstances such as the cancellation of the remaining Asian dates and the European leg for the Seventeen’s Ode To You Tour on 9 February 2020 and the cancellation of all Seoul dates for the BTS Soul Tour Map. As of 15 March, a maximum of 136 countries and regions provided entry restrictions and/or expired visas for passengers from South Korea.

The overall reported cases of coronavirus rose significantly in France on 12 March. The areas with reported cases include Paris, Amiens, Bordeaux and Eastern Haute-Savoie. The first coronaviral death happened in France on 15 February, marking it the first death in Europe. The second death of a 60-year-old French national in Paris was announced on 26 February [ 54 ].

On February 28, fashion designer Agnès B. (not to be mistaken with Agnès Buzyn) cancelled fashion shows at the Paris Fashion Week, expected to continue until 3 March. On a subsequent day, the Paris half-marathon, planned for Sunday 1 March with 44,000 entrants, was postponed as one of a series of steps declared by Health Minister Olivier Véran.

On 13 March, the Ligue de Football Professional disbanded Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 (France’s tier two professional divisions) permanently due to safety threats.

Germany has a popular Regional Pandemic Strategy detailing the roles and activities of the health care system participants in the case of a significant outbreak. Epidemic surveillance is carried out by the federal government, like the Robert Koch Center, and by the German governments. The German States have their preparations for an outbreak. The regional strategy for the treatment of the current coronavirus epidemic was expanded by March 2020. Four primary goals are contained in this plan: (1) to minimize mortality and morbidity; (2) to guarantee the safety of sick persons; (3) to protect vital health services and (4) to offer concise and reliable reports to decision-makers, the media and the public [ 55 ].

The programme has three phases that may potentially overlap: (1) isolation (situation of individual cases and clusters), (2) safety (situation of further dissemination of pathogens and suspected causes of infection), (3) prevention (situation of widespread infection). So far, Germany has not set up border controls or common health condition tests at airports. Instead, while at the isolation stage-health officials are concentrating on recognizing contact individuals that are subject to specific quarantine and are tracked and checked. Specific quarantine is regulated by municipal health authorities. By doing so, the officials are seeking to hold the chains of infection small, contributing to decreased clusters. At the safety stage, the policy should shift to prevent susceptible individuals from being harmed by direct action. By the end of the day, the prevention process should aim to prevent cycles of acute treatment to retain emergency facilities.

United States

The very first case of coronavirus in the United States was identified in Washington on 21 January 2020 by an individual who flew to Wuhan and returned to the United States. The second case was recorded in Illinois by another individual who had travelled to Wuhan. Some of the regions with reported novel coronavirus infections in the US are California, Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin and Washington [ 56 ].

As the epidemic increased, requests for domestic air travel decreased dramatically. By 4 March, U.S. carriers, like United Airlines and JetBlue Airways, started growing their domestic flight schedules, providing generous unpaid leave to workers and suspending recruits.

A significant number of universities and colleges cancelled classes and reopened dormitories in response to the epidemic, like Cornell University, Harvard University and the University of South Carolina.

On 3 March 2020, the Federal Reserve reduced its goal interest rate from 1.75% to 1.25%, the biggest emergency rate cut following the 2008 global financial crash, in combat the effect of the recession on the American economy. In February 2020, US businesses, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft, started to reduce sales projections due to supply chain delays in China caused by the COVID-19.

The pandemic, together with the subsequent financial market collapse, also contributed to greater criticism of the crisis in the United States. Researchers disagree about when a recession is likely to take effect, with others suggesting that it is not unavoidable, while some claim that the world might already be in recession. On 3 March, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reported a 0.5% (50 basis point) interest rate cut from the coronavirus in the context of the evolving threats to economic growth.

When ‘social distance’ penetrated the national lexicon, disaster response officials promoted the cancellation of broad events to slow down the risk of infection. Technical conferences like E3 2020, Apple Inc.’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Google I/O, Facebook F8, and Cloud Next and Microsoft’s MVP Conference have been either having replaced or cancelled in-person events with internet streaming events.

On February 29, the American Physical Society postponed its annual March gathering, planned for March 2–6 in Denver, Colorado, even though most of the more than 11,000 physicist attendees already had arrived and engaged in the pre-conference day activities. On March 6, the annual South to Southwest (SXSW) seminar and festival planned to take place from March 13–22 in Austin, Texas, was postponed after the city council announced a local disaster and forced conferences to be shut down for the first time in 34 years.

Four of North America’s major professional sports leagues—the National Hockey League (NHL), National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Soccer (MLS) and Major League Baseball (MLB) —jointly declared on March 9 that they would all limit the media access to player accommodations (such as locker rooms) to control probable exposure.

Emergency Funding to Fight the COVID-19

COVID-19 pandemic has become a common international concern. Different countries are donating funds to fight against it [ 57 – 60 ]. Some of them are mentioned here.

China has allocated about 110.48 billion yuan ($15.93 billion) in coronavirus-related funding.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Iran has requested the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of about $5 billion in emergency funding to help to tackle the coronavirus epidemic that has struck the Islamic Republic hard.

President Donald Trump approved the Emergency Supplementary Budget Bill to support the US response to a novel coronavirus epidemic. The budget plan would include about $8.3 billion in discretionary funding to local health authorities to promote vaccine research for production. Trump originally requested just about $2 billion to combat the epidemic, but Congress quadrupled the number in its version of the bill. Mr. Trump formally announced a national emergency that he claimed it will give states and territories access to up to about $50 billion in federal funding to tackle the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.

California politicians approved a plan to donate about $1 billion on the state’s emergency medical responses as it readies hospitals to fight an expected attack of patients because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plans, drawn up rapidly in reaction to the dramatic rise in reported cases of the virus, would include the requisite funds to establish two new hospitals in California, with the assumption that the state may not have the resources to take care of the rise in patients. The bill calls for an immediate response of about $500 million from the State General Fund, with an additional about $500 million possible if requested.

India committed about $10 million to the COVID-19 Emergency Fund and said it was setting up a rapid response team of physicians for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries.

South Korea unveiled an economic stimulus package of about 11.7 trillion won ($9.8 billion) to soften the effects of the biggest coronavirus epidemic outside China as attempts to curb the disease exacerbate supply shortages and drain demand. Of the 11,7 trillion won expected, about 3.2 trillion won would cover up the budget shortfall, while an additional fiscal infusion of about 8.5 trillion won. An estimated 10.3 trillion won in government bonds will be sold this year to fund the extra expenditure. About 2.3 trillion won will be distributed to medical establishments and would support quarantine operations, with another 3.0 trillion won heading to small and medium-sized companies unable to pay salaries to their employees and child care supports.

The Swedish Parliament announced a set of initiatives costing more than 300 billion Swedish crowns ($30.94 billion) to help the economy in the view of the coronavirus pandemic. The plan contained steps like the central government paying the entire expense of the company’s sick leave during April and May, and also the high cost of compulsory redundancies owing to the crisis.

In consideration of the developing scenario, an updating of this strategy is planned to take place before the end of March and will recognize considerably greater funding demands for the country response, R&D and WHO itself.

Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Technological Solutions Against COVID-19

These days, Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes a major role in health care. Throughout a worldwide pandemic such as the COVID-19, technology, artificial intelligence and data analytics have been crucial in helping communities cope successfully with the epidemic [ 61 – 65 ]. Through the aid of data mining and analytical modelling, medical practitioners are willing to learn more about several diseases.

Public Health Surveillance

The biggest risk of coronavirus is the level of spreading. That’s why policymakers are introducing steps like quarantines around the world because they can’t adequately monitor local outbreaks. One of the simplest measures to identify ill patients through the study of CCTV images that are still around us and to locate and separate individuals that have serious signs of the disease and who have touched and disinfected the related surfaces. Smartphone applications are often used to keep a watch on people’s activities and to assess whether or not they have come in touch with an infected human.

Remote Biosignal Measurement

Many of the signs such as temperature or heartbeat are very essential to overlook and rely entirely on the visual image that may be misleading. However, of course, we can’t prevent someone from checking their blood pressure, heart or temperature. Also, several advances in computer vision can predict pulse and blood pressure based on facial skin examination. Besides, there are several advances in computer vision that can predict pulse and blood pressure based on facial skin examination.

Access to public records has contributed to the development of dashboards that constantly track the virus. Several companies are designing large data dashboards. Face recognition and infrared temperature monitoring technologies have been mounted in all major cities. Chinese AI companies including Hanwang Technology and SenseTime have reported having established a special facial recognition system that can correctly identify people even though they are covered.

IoT and Wearables

Measurements like pulse are much more natural and easier to obtain from tracking gadgets like activity trackers and smartwatches that nearly everybody has already. Some work suggests that the study of cardiac activity and its variations from the standard will reveal early signs of influenza and, in this case, coronavirus.

Chatbots and Communication

Apart from public screening, people’s knowledge and self-assessment may also be used to track their health. If you can check your temperature and pulse every day and monitor your coughs time-to-time, you can even submit that to your record. If the symptoms are too serious, either an algorithm or a doctor remotely may prescribe a person to stay home, take several other preventive measures, or recommend a visit from the doctor.

Al Jazeera announced that China Mobile had sent text messages to state media departments, telling them about the citizens who had been affected. The communications contained all the specifics of the person’s travel history.

Tencent runs WeChat, and via it, citizens can use free online health consultation services. Chatbots have already become important connectivity platforms for transport and tourism service providers to keep passengers up-to-date with the current transport protocols and disturbances.

Social Media and Open Data

There are several people who post their health diary with total strangers via Facebook or Twitter. Such data becomes helpful for more general research about how far the epidemic has progressed. For consumer knowledge, we may even evaluate the social network group to attempt to predict what specific networks are at risk of being viral.

Canadian company BlueDot analyses far more than just social network data: for instance, global activities of more than four billion passengers on international flights per year; animal, human and insect population data; satellite environment data and relevant knowledge from health professionals and journalists, across 100,000 news posts per day covering 65 languages. This strategy was so successful that the corporation was able to alert clients about coronavirus until the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified the public.

Automated Diagnostics

COVID-19 has brought up another healthcare issue today: it will not scale when the number of patients increases exponentially (actually stressed doctors are always doing worse) and the rate of false-negative diagnosis remains very high. Machine learning therapies don’t get bored and scale simply by growing computing forces.

Baidu, the Chinese Internet company, has made the Lineatrfold algorithm accessible to the outbreak-fighting teams, according to the MIT Technology Review. Unlike HIV, Ebola and Influenza, COVID-19 has just one strand of RNA and it can mutate easily. The algorithm is also simpler than other algorithms that help to determine the nature of the virus. Baidu has also developed software to efficiently track large populations. It has also developed an Ai-powered infrared device that can detect a difference in the body temperature of a human. This is currently being used in Beijing’s Qinghe Railway Station to classify possibly contaminated travellers where up to 200 individuals may be checked in one minute without affecting traffic movement, reports the MIT Review.

Singapore-based Veredus Laboratories, a supplier of revolutionary molecular diagnostic tools, has currently announced the launch of the VereCoV detector package, a compact Lab-on-Chip device able to detect MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV and COVID-19, i.e. Wuhan Coronavirus, in a single study.

The VereCoV identification package is focused on VereChip technology, a Lab-on-Chip device that incorporates two important molecular biological systems, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and a microarray, which will be able to classify and distinguish within 2 h MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV and COVID-19 with high precision and responsiveness.

This is not just the medical activities of healthcare facilities that are being charged, but also the corporate and financial departments when they cope with the increase in patients. Ant Financials’ blockchain technology helps speed-up the collection of reports and decreases the number of face-to-face encounters with patients and medical personnel.

Companies like the Israeli company Sonovia are aiming to provide healthcare systems and others with face masks manufactured from their anti-pathogenic, anti-bacterial cloth that depends on metal-oxide nanoparticles.

Drug Development Research

Aside from identifying and stopping the transmission of pathogens, the need to develop vaccinations on a scale is also needed. One of the crucial things to make that possible is to consider the origin and essence of the virus. Google’s DeepMind, with their expertise in protein folding research, has rendered a jump in identifying the protein structure of the virus and making it open-source.

BenevolentAI uses AI technologies to develop medicines that will combat the most dangerous diseases in the world and is also working to promote attempts to cure coronavirus, the first time the organization has based its product on infectious diseases. Within weeks of the epidemic, it used its analytical capability to recommend new medicines that might be beneficial.

Robots are not vulnerable to the infection, and they are used to conduct other activities, like cooking meals in hospitals, doubling up as waiters in hotels, spraying disinfectants and washing, selling rice and hand sanitizers, robots are on the front lines all over to deter coronavirus spread. Robots also conduct diagnostics and thermal imaging in several hospitals. Shenzhen-based firm Multicopter uses robotics to move surgical samples. UVD robots from Blue Ocean Robotics use ultraviolet light to destroy viruses and bacteria separately. In China, Pudu Technology has introduced its robots, which are usually used in the cooking industry, to more than 40 hospitals throughout the region. According to the Reuters article, a tiny robot named Little Peanut is distributing food to passengers who have been on a flight from Singapore to Hangzhou, China, and are presently being quarantined in a hotel.

Colour Coding

Using its advanced and vast public service monitoring network, the Chinese government has collaborated with software companies Alibaba and Tencent to establish a colour-coded health ranking scheme that monitors millions of citizens every day. The mobile device was first introduced in Hangzhou with the cooperation of Alibaba. This applies three colours to people—red, green or yellow—based on their transportation and medical records. Tencent also developed related applications in the manufacturing centre of Shenzhen.

The decision of whether an individual will be quarantined or permitted in public spaces is dependent on the colour code. Citizens will sign into the system using pay wallet systems such as Alibaba’s Alipay and Ant’s wallet. Just those citizens who have been issued a green colour code will be permitted to use the QR code in public spaces at metro stations, workplaces, and other public areas. Checkpoints are in most public areas where the body temperature and the code of individual are tested. This programme is being used by more than 200 Chinese communities and will eventually be expanded nationwide.

In some of the seriously infected regions where people remain at risk of contracting the infection, drones are used to rescue. One of the easiest and quickest ways to bring emergency supplies where they need to go while on an epidemic of disease is by drone transportation. Drones carry all surgical instruments and patient samples. This saves time, improves the pace of distribution and reduces the chance of contamination of medical samples. Drones often operate QR code placards that can be checked to record health records. There are also agricultural drones distributing disinfectants in the farmland. Drones, operated by facial recognition, are often used to warn people not to leave their homes and to chide them for not using face masks. Terra Drone uses its unmanned drones to move patient samples and vaccination content at reduced risk between the Xinchang County Disease Control Center and the People’s Hospital. Drones are often used to monitor public areas, document non-compliance with quarantine laws and thermal imaging.

Autonomous Vehicles

At a period of considerable uncertainty to medical professionals and the danger to people-to-people communication, automated vehicles are proving to be of tremendous benefit in the transport of vital products, such as medications and foodstuffs. Apollo, the Baidu Autonomous Vehicle Project, has joined hands with the Neolix self-driving company to distribute food and supplies to a big hospital in Beijing. Baidu Apollo has also provided its micro-car packages and automated cloud driving systems accessible free of charge to virus-fighting organizations.

Idriverplus, a Chinese self-driving organization that runs electrical street cleaning vehicles, is also part of the project. The company’s signature trucks are used to clean hospitals.

This chapter provides an introduction to the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19). A brief history of this virus along with the symptoms are reported in this chapter. Then the comparison between COVID-19 and other plagues like seasonal influenza, bird flu (H5N1 and H7N9), Ebola epidemic, camel flu (MERS), swine flu (H1N1), severe acute respiratory syndrome, Hong Kong flu (H3N2), Spanish flu and the common cold are included in this chapter. Reviews of online portal and social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, YouTube and WhatsApp concerning COVID-19 are reported in this chapter. Also, the preventive measures and policies enforced by WHO and different countries such as China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, France, Germany and the United States for COVID-19 are included in this chapter. Emergency funding provided by different countries to fight the COVID-19 is mentioned in this chapter. Lastly, artificial intelligence, data science and technological solutions like public health surveillance, remote biosignal measurement, IoT and wearables, chatbots and communication, social media and open data, automated diagnostics, drug development research, robotics, colour coding, drones and autonomous vehicles are included in this chapter.

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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How to Write About the Impact of the Coronavirus in a College Essay

U.S. News & World Report

October 21, 2020, 12:00 AM

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Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many — a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

“I can’t help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more,” says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

[ Read: How to Write a College Essay. ]

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it’s the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

“For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year,” says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. “Maybe that’s a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it’s OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?”

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

“In general, I don’t think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application,” Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

“Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student’s individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19,” Miller says.

[ Read: What Colleges Look for: 6 Ways to Stand Out. ]

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

“If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it,” Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn’t be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it’s common, noting that “topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it.”

Above all, she urges honesty.

“If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself,” Pippen says. “If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have.”

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. “There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic.”

That doesn’t mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

[ Read: The Common App: Everything You Need to Know. ]

“That’s not a trick question, and there’s no right or wrong answer,” Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there’s likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

“This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student’s family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties,” Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, “could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant.”

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it’s the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

“My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic — and that is, don’t write what you think we want to read or hear,” Alexander says. “Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell.”

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, “What’s the sentence that only I can write?” He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that’s the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

“Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability,” Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

“It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all,” Pippen says. “They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle.”

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

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Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

Writing about COVID-19 in your college admission essay

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

Are my experiences different from others’?
Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
Am I aware of my privilege?
Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

Grading scales and policies
Graduation requirements
Instructional methods
Schedules and course offerings
Testing requirements
Your academic calendar
Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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How to Write About the Impact of the Coronavirus in a College Essay

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many -- a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

[ Read: How to Write a College Essay. ]

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

[ Read: What Colleges Look for: 6 Ways to Stand Out. ]

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

Above all, she urges honesty.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

[ Read: The Common App: Everything You Need to Know. ]

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic -- and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

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Seven short essays about life during the pandemic

The boston book festival's at home community writing project invites area residents to describe their experiences during this unprecedented time..

My alarm sounds at 8:15 a.m. I open my eyes and take a deep breath. I wiggle my toes and move my legs. I do this religiously every morning. Today, marks day 74 of staying at home.

My mornings are filled with reading biblical scripture, meditation, breathing in the scents of a hanging eucalyptus branch in the shower, and making tea before I log into my computer to work. After an hour-and-a-half Zoom meeting, I decided to take a long walk to the post office and grab a fresh bouquet of burnt orange ranunculus flowers. I embrace the warm sun beaming on my face. I feel joy. I feel at peace.

I enter my apartment and excessively wash my hands and face. I pour a glass of iced kombucha. I sit at my table and look at the text message on my phone. My coworker writes that she is thinking of me during this difficult time. She must be referring to the Amy Cooper incident. I learn shortly that she is not.

I Google Minneapolis and see his name: George Floyd. And just like that a simple and beautiful day transitions into a day of sorrow.

Nakia Hill, Boston

It was a wobbly, yet solemn little procession: three masked mourners and a canine. Beginning in Kenmore Square, at David and Sue Horner’s condo, it proceeded up Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

S. Sue Horner died on Good Friday, April 10, in the Year of the Virus. Sue did not die of the virus but her parting was hemmed by it: no gatherings to mark the passing of this splendid human being.

David devised a send-off nevertheless. On April 23rd, accompanied by his daughter and son-in-law, he set out for Old South Church. David led, bearing the urn. His daughter came next, holding her phone aloft, speaker on, through which her brother in Illinois played the bagpipes for the length of the procession, its soaring thrum infusing the Mall. Her husband came last with Melon, their golden retriever.

I unlocked the empty church and led the procession into the columbarium. David drew the urn from its velvet cover, revealing a golden vessel inset with incandescent tiles. We lifted the urn into the niche, prayed, recited Psalm 23, and shared some words.

It was far too small for the luminous “Dr. Sue”, but what we could manage in the Year of the Virus.

Nancy S. Taylor, Boston

On April 26, 2020, our household was a bustling home for four people. Our two sons, ages 18 and 22, have a lot of energy. We are among the lucky ones. I can work remotely. Our food and shelter are not at risk.

As I write this a week later, it is much quieter here.

On April 27, our older son, an EMT, transported a COVID-19 patient to the ER. He left home to protect my delicate health and became ill with the virus a week later.

On April 29, my husband’s 95-year-old father had a stroke. My husband left immediately to be with his 90-year-old mother near New York City and is now preparing for his father’s discharge from the hospital. Rehab people will come to the house; going to a facility would be too dangerous.

My husband just called me to describe today’s hospital visit. The doctors had warned that although his father had regained the ability to speak, he could only repeat what was said to him.

“It’s me,” said my husband.

“It’s me,” said my father-in-law.

“I love you,” said my husband.

“I love you,” said my father-in-law.

“Sooooooooo much,” said my father-in-law.

Lucia Thompson, Wayland

Would racism exist if we were blind?

I felt his eyes bore into me as I walked through the grocery store. At first, I thought nothing of it. With the angst in the air attributable to COVID, I understood the anxiety-provoking nature of feeling as though your 6-foot bubble had burst. So, I ignored him and maintained my distance. But he persisted, glaring at my face, squinting to see who I was underneath the mask. This time I looked back, when he yelled, in my mother tongue, for me to go back to my country.

In shock, I just laughed. How could he tell what I was under my mask? Or see anything through the sunglasses he was wearing inside? It baffled me. I laughed at the irony that he would use my own language against me, that he knew enough to guess where I was from in some version of culturally competent racism. I laughed because dealing with the truth behind that comment generated a sadness in me that was too much to handle. If not now, then when will we be together?

So I ask again, would racism exist if we were blind?

Faizah Shareef, Boston

My Family is “Out” There

But I am “in” here. Life is different now “in” Assisted Living since the deadly COVID-19 arrived. Now the staff, employees, and all 100 residents have our temperatures taken daily. Everyone else, including my family, is “out” there. People like the hairdresser are really missed — with long straight hair and masks, we don’t even recognize ourselves.

Since mid-March we are in quarantine “in” our rooms with meals served. Activities are practically non-existent. We can sit on the back patio 6 feet apart, wearing masks, do exercises there, chat, and walk nearby. Nothing inside. Hopefully June will improve.

My family is “out” there — somewhere! Most are working from home (or Montana). Hopefully an August wedding will happen, but unfortunately, I may still be “in” here.

From my window I wave to my son “out” there. Recently, when my daughter visited, I opened the window “in” my second-floor room and could see and hear her perfectly “out” there. Next time she will bring a chair so we can have an “in” and “out” conversation all day, or until we run out of words.

Barbara Anderson, Raynham

My boyfriend Marcial lives in Boston, and I live in New York City. We had been doing the long-distance thing pretty successfully until coronavirus hit. In mid-March, I was furloughed from my temp job, Marcial began working remotely, and New York started shutting down. I went to Boston to stay with Marcial.

We are opposites in many ways, but we share a love of food. The kitchen has been the center of quarantine life —and also quarantine problems.

Marcial and I have gone from eating out and cooking/grocery shopping for each other during our periodic visits to cooking/grocery shopping with each other all the time. We’ve argued over things like the proper way to make rice and what greens to buy for salad. Our habits are deeply rooted in our upbringing and individual cultures (Filipino immigrant and American-born Chinese, hence the strong rice opinions).

On top of the mundane issues, we’ve also dealt with a flooded kitchen (resulting in cockroaches) and a mandoline accident leading to an ER visit. Marcial and I have spent quarantine navigating how to handle the unexpected and how to integrate our lifestyles. We’ve been eating well along the way.

Melissa Lee, Waltham

It’s 3 a.m. and my dog Rikki just gave me a worried look. Up again?

“I can’t sleep,” I say. I flick the light, pick up “Non-Zero Probabilities.” But the words lay pinned to the page like swatted flies. I watch new “Killing Eve” episodes, play old Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats songs. Still night.

We are — what? — 12 agitated weeks into lockdown, and now this. The thing that got me was Chauvin’s sunglasses. Perched nonchalantly on his head, undisturbed, as if he were at a backyard BBQ. Or anywhere other than kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, on his life. And Floyd was a father, as we all now know, having seen his daughter Gianna on Stephen Jackson’s shoulders saying “Daddy changed the world.”

Precious child. I pray, safeguard her.

Rikki has her own bed. But she won’t leave me. A Goddess of Protection. She does that thing dogs do, hovers increasingly closely the more agitated I get. “I’m losing it,” I say. I know. And like those weighted gravity blankets meant to encourage sleep, she drapes her 70 pounds over me, covering my restless heart with safety.

As if daybreak, or a prayer, could bring peace today.

Kirstan Barnett, Watertown

Until June 30, send your essay (200 words or less) about life during COVID-19 via bostonbookfest.org . Some essays will be published on the festival’s blog and some will appear in The Boston Globe.

Life after Covid: will our world ever be the same?

From cities, to science, to politics, six Observer writers assess how a post-pandemic world will emerge into a new normal

Coronavirus – latest updates
See all our coronavirus coverage

Here are some things that the pandemic changed. It accustomed some people – those whose jobs allowed it – to remote working . It highlighted the importance of adequate living space and access to the outdoors. It renewed, through their absence, an appreciation of social contact and large gatherings. It showed up mass daily commuting for the dehumanising drain on energy and resources that it is.

These changes do not add up to the abandonment of big cities and offices predicted by more excitable commentaries, not a future of rural bubbles and of tumbleweed blowing through the City of London, but a welcome shift in priorities. There will always be millions who want to live in cities and millions who want to live in towns and villages, but there are also those for whom these are borderline decisions, with pros and cons on each side.

These decisions might be based on life changes, such as having children. If you no longer have to go to an office daily, you can live further from the city in which it is placed. If the magic spell of the big city, which kept people in the tiny and expensive flats that now look so inadequate, is broken, then you might consider living in cheaper, more relaxed locations that hadn’t occurred to you before. Those ex-urbanites, still valuing social contact and public life, might seek towns and small cities rather than a lonely cottage in a field.

Such changes could help to address, without the pouring of any concrete or the laying of a brick, the imbalance in the nation’s housing that was at breaking point before Covid. On the one hand there are overheated residential markets in London, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh and elsewhere. On the other there are towns and small cities with good housing stock, an inherited infrastructure of parks and civic buildings and easy access to beautiful countryside, which through their location suffer from underinvestment and depopulation.

This is not to say that no new homes should be built, nor that there won’t be problems with such a shift. It could simply be gentrification, if done wrong, at a national scale. And this vision assumes that Covid passes, and that it is not one of a future series of equally vicious viruses. But there is at least a chance that the travails of 2020 could lead to a saner approach to the places where we live and work. Rowan Moore, Observer architecture critic

Interaction

The first kiss my baby niece blew me was bittersweet, because like so many pandemic interactions it happened not in person but on camera. Covid means that big chunks of her life have only been seen on a phone screen as she grows into a toddler. And I’m one of the lucky ones: I haven’t had to say goodbye to someone on FaceTime or break the worst news to someone over the phone.

If you live by yourself, you’ve made do without human touch for months on end; if you’re crammed into a small space with your partner, kids and your parents, you may have spent weeks craving time and space not encroached upon by other human beings. Totally different experiences of the same social earthquake: surely they cannot but profoundly change us for the long term?

I’m not so sure. Lockdown, then not-lockdown, then lockdown again have served as a reminder of just how adaptable we are as human beings. I was amazed at how quickly the idea of socialising with friends indoors became a fuzzy memory, then the norm, then distant again. The emotions I felt so acutely back in March – the sharp fear Covid could steal my parents, the communal endeavour of clapping for our carers every Thursday night – soon faded into a new normal, impossible to sustain even though many of the realities have barely changed.

The pandemic has underlined the extent to which digital interaction is no substitute for the real thing. In some ways, I’m more in touch with people than ever thanks to the numerous WhatsApp groups that revived themselves into a constant source of company. But tapping away in a couple of group chats while absent-mindedly watching the latest Netflix offering doesn’t come close to the wonderful feeling of hugging a friend, or spending three hours giving someone you haven’t seen for ages your undivided attention over a meal, or of having a conversation based not just on words but physical cues. I doubt the pandemic will seed a long-term distaste for crowds; if anything, I suspect that, if all goes well with the vaccine rollout, summer 2021 will see a crop of riotous street parties and carnivals.

But a return to life as usual will not mask the emotional toll Covid will have had on so many people. People who suffer from anxiety and depression; women in abusive relationships ; children experiencing abuse or neglect at the hands of their parents: they have had it the worst, and their experiences of isolation and loneliness during lockdown could have consequences for their personal relationships that will not magically disappear with a vaccine.

And that is before you factor in the added strain of the intense financial hardship so many are being forced to endure. As a society, recovering from Covid is about much more than antibodies: it cannot happen without support for those who have experienced its worst financial and mental health impacts. Sonia Sodha, the Observer’s chief leader writer

Britain has had an uncomfortable year in its battle to contain Covid. Failures to test, trace and isolate infected individuals allowed grim numbers of deaths to accumulate while deficiencies in the acquisition of stocks of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) left countless health workers exposed to danger and illness. However, these deficiencies have been balanced by the manner and striking speed with which our scientists have turned away from existing projects in order to focus their attentions on ridding us of Covid. Their work has earned global praise for its swiftness and precision.

“The Brits are on course to save the world,” wrote leading US economist Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg Opinion about our scientists efforts last summer while the journal Science quoted leading international researchers who have heaped praise on British anti-Covid work. Science in the UK is perceived, correctly, to have done well in facing up to the pandemic.

A perfect example is provided by the UK’s Recovery trial, a drug-testing programme involving more than 3,000 doctors and nurses who worked with more than 12,000 Covid patients in hundreds of hospitals across the nation – from the Western Isles to Truro and from Derry to King’s Lynn. Set up within a few days of the pandemic reaching the UK, and carried out in intensive care units crammed with seriously ill people, Recovery revealed that one cheap inflammation treatment could save the lives of seriously ill Covid patients while two much-touted therapies were shown to be useless at tackling the disease.

No other country has come close to matching these achievements. “We had the people with the right skills and a willingness to drop everything else and contribute to the effort,” says one of Recovery’s founders, Martin Landray of Oxford University. “That made all the difference.” In a nation which had only recently reviled, openly, the concept of expertise, scientists like Landray have restored the reputation of the wise and the informed.

Fiona Fox, director of the Science Media Centre, also points to the willingness of our scientists to communicate. “Time after time, we have asked for comments from leading researchers, epidemiologists and vaccine experts on breaking Covid stories, and despite being inundated with work, they have taken the time to provide clear analyses that have helped to make sense of rapidly changing developments,” she says. “It has been extraordinary.”

And of course, the arrival of three effective vaccines against a disease that was unknown less than a year ago has only further enhanced the image of the scientist. Yes, they may be a bit geeky sometimes, but they have done a lot to help us win the battle against Covid. Robin McKie, Observer Science Editor

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It may not feel like it at the moment, admittedly. But if this pandemic echoes other defining events in our recent history, from the 9/11 terror attacks to the 2008-09 banking crash, it will leave the political landscape utterly transformed in some respects yet wearily familiar in others.

Last week’s spending review , spelling out how the cost of battling Covid will shape national life for years to come, was a classic example. A public sector pay freeze, plus benefit cuts next April? Well, we’ve been there before; to many families it will feel like austerity all over again.

What’s different this time, however, is that Boris Johnson insists there’ll be no return to austerity-style spending cuts. Instead, taxes will rise. If he actually goes through with threats to target second-home owners or higher earners’ pensions, expect some mutiny in Tory ranks. (The bitter joke among Tory MPs is that they’re implementing more of Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto than Corbyn ever will.) But the door to a long overdue debate about taxing wealth, as well as income, is at least now open.

New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

The pandemic also seems to be changing what people look for in a leader. The last recession pushed angry, despairing voters towards populists with easy answers; make America great again, take back control. But Covid has been a brutal reminder that in life-and-death situations, competence is everything. Joe Biden isn’t wildly exciting but at least he doesn’t speculate aloud about the merits of drinking bleach. From New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern to Germany’s Angela Merkel and Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon, the leaders whose reputations have been enhanced by this crisis tend to be pragmatists and consensus-seekers, not excitable culture warriors. Keir Starmer’s rising poll ratings suggest a hunger for steady-as-she-goes leadership in Britain too.

Optimists will hope that this collective near-death experience brings a renewed political focus on what actually makes life worth living, from supportive communities to the beauty of a natural world that sustained many through lockdown. Pessimists, however, will worry that calls to “build back better”, or reset society along fairer and greener lines, could be an early casualty of a hard recession that leaves people focussed purely on economic survival.

For it would be naive not to expect a backlash against all of this. Nigel Farage is already trying to whip one up via his new anti-lockdown party , targeting voters angry at having freedoms curtailed. But if the last crash unleashed an era of radicalism and revolt, it’s not impossible this one will leave people craving a quiet life. After such turmoil, don’t underestimate the longing to get back to normal, even if the normal we once knew is gone. Gaby Hinsliff, Guardian columnist

We know that the spaces from which “culture” emerges won’t look the same after 2020 as they did before. Many theatres, bookshops, music venues and galleries won’t survive the catastrophe of shutdown, and if they do emerge it will be with diminished resources. But what about the attitude and the focus of creativity. Will it be shadowed by the pandemic post-vaccine or will it celebrate liberation?

History suggests both. The terrible mortality, social distancing and economic hardship resulting from the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic that followed the war were shaping forces in both the doom-laden experiments of modernism and the high hedonism of the jazz age. The Waste Land and the Charleston emerged within months of each other. TS Eliot wrote much of the former while suffering from the after-effects of the influenza, haunted, as his wife Vivienne noted, by the fear that as a result of the virus, “his mind is not acting as it used to do”. Certainly, that poem’s most memorable lines, with their stress on the mass gathering, read more pointedly from our current vantage point: “Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,/ A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/ I had not thought death had undone so many./ Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,/ And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.”

But, contrarily, the spirit of the post-pandemic age was equally alive in the bathtub-gin excitement of the Cotton Club, and the rarefied decadence of the Bright Young Things: raucous celebrations of seize-the-day freedoms after the misery of war and virus.

Not much literature or music that directly responds to the current pandemic has yet emerged. Zadie Smith’s brief book of essays , Intimations , hazarded something of what that response might look and sound like. In a memorable phrase, she described the events of this year as “the global humbling”. That moment when we collectively realised that the confident certainties of what we used to call “normal life” were only ever a heartbeat away from unknown threats – and that the US, Smith’s adopted home, having led the world in many things, was now leading the world in death.

Will such experience engender a new and deepening age of anxiety in the books we read and the films we watch? No doubt that apprehension of apocalypse, of environmental emergency, that draws us to The Road or to Chernobyl will become more insistent. But as Eliot also noted, humankind “cannot bear very much reality”. After this year in which the young have been denied so many of their rites of passage – chances to sing, dance, drink or love – we can surely hope for a post-viral creative outpouring of all those things that make us most happy to be alive. Tim Adams, Observer writer

”Imagine there’s no commuting, it’s easy if you try”, is a popular refrain in discussions of the post-Covid world of work predicting the imminent demise of the office. Sometimes it’s combined with the claim that low-earning hospitality and leisure jobs that have dried up mid-pandemic won’t be coming back and so shouldn’t get support now.

These different predictions are likely to be wrong for the same reason: they pay too much attention to crystal balls, and not enough to rear-view mirrors. Yes, the pandemic itself has meant big changes to the world of work. It has changed where some people (generally higher earners) work while hitting the ability of many lower earners to work at all. But imagining a world without lockdowns is best done by focusing on those pandemic-driven trends that reinforce, rather than run against, patterns visible pre-crisis .

A man sitting on his bed working on a laptop.

So, expect the pandemic’s turbo-charging of retail’s online shift (with Arcadia’s likely administration the latest example) to continue – there will be fewer cashiers and more delivery drivers. But don’t believe the hype on the decline of hospitality and leisure. Workers in those sectors are twice as likely to have lost their jobs or been furloughed as the pandemic has left us spending more on buying things than going out, but the long-term trend is the opposite: hotels and restaurants accounted for a fifth of the pre-pandemic employment surge.

Working from home (or living in the office, as it can feel like) has been the big change for professional Britain. But history warns against the idea that the office is finished. Only one in 20 of us worked entirely remotely pre-crisis. But three times that number worked at home at least one day a week, a trend that was rapidly growing. Hybrid home/office working is the future. But be careful about assuming this transforms Britain’s disgracefully big economic gaps: some will benefit from more choice about where to live but offices in poorer areas, rather than those in central London, may be the ones that end up empty. And remember, we’re only talking about a fraction of the workforce here. Post-Covid, waiters and cleaners won’t be doing their jobs from their spare room or kitchen table.

As well as predicting the future, we should be trying to shape it. Higher pay and more security for the low paid workers who faced the biggest health and economic risks from this crisis would be a good place to start. Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

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Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

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Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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A Year After Coronavirus: An Inclusive ‘New Normal’

Six months into a new decade, 2020 has already been earmarked as ‘the worst’ year in the 21st century. The novel coronavirus has given rise to a global pandemic that has destabilized most institutional settings. While we live in times when humankind possesses the most advanced science and technology, a virus invisible to the naked eye has massively disrupted economies, healthcare, and education systems worldwide. This should serve as a reminder that as we keep making progress in science and research, humanity will continue to face challenges in the future, and it is upon us to prioritize those issues that are most relevant in the 21st century.

Even amidst the pandemic, Space X, an American aerospace manufacturer, managed to become the first private company to send humans to space. While this is a tremendous achievement and prepares humanity for a sustainable future, I feel there is a need to introspect the challenges that we are already facing. On the one hand, we seem to be preparing beyond the 21st century. On the other hand, heightened nationalism, increasing violence against marginalized communities and multidimensional inequalities across all sectors continue to act as barriers to growth for most individuals across the globe. COVID-19 has reinforced these multifaceted economic, social and cultural inequalities wherein those in situations of vulnerability have found it increasingly difficult to get quality medical attention, access to quality education, and have witnessed increased domestic violence while being confined to their homes.

Given the coronavirus’s current situation, some households have also had time to introspect on gender roles and stereotypes. For instance, women are expected to carry out unpaid care work like cooking, cleaning, and looking after the family. There is no valid reason to believe that women ought to carry out these activities, and men have no role in contributing to household chores. With men having shared household chores during the lockdown period, it gives hope that they will realize the burden that women have been bearing for past decades and will continue sharing responsibilities. However, it would be naïve to believe that gender discrimination could be tackled so easily, and men would give up on their decades' old habits within a couple of months. Thus, during and after the pandemic, there is an urgent need to sensitize households on the importance of gender equality and social cohesion.

Moving forward, developing quality healthcare systems that are affordable and accessible to all should be the primary objective for all governments. This can be done by increasing expenditure towards health and education and simultaneously reducing expenditure on defence equipment where the latter mainly gives rise to an idea that countries need to be prepared for violence. There is substantial evidence that increased investment in health and education is beneficial in the long-term and can potentially build the basic foundation of a country.

If it can be established that usage of nuclear weapons, violence and war are not solutions to any problem, governments (like, for example, Costa Rica) could move towards disarmament of weapons and do their part in building a more peaceful planet that is sustainable for the future. This would further promote global citizenship wherein nationality, race, gender, caste, and other categories, are just mere variables and they do not become identities of individuals that restrict their thought process. The aim should be to build responsible citizens who play an active role in their society and work collectively in helping develop a planet that is well-governed, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.

‘A year after Coronavirus’ is still an unknown, so I think that our immediate focus should be to tackle the complex problems that have emerged from the pandemic so that we make the year after coronavirus one which highlights recovery and acts as a pathway to fresh beginnings. While there is little to gain from such a fatal cause, it is vital that we also use it to make the ‘new normal’ in favour of the environment and ensure that no one is left behind.

More on this subject

Award ceremony of the UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences

MINI REVIEW article

Covid-19: emergence, spread, possible treatments, and global burden.

$\nRaghuvir Keni$

1 Department of Pharmacology, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India
2 Department of Health Sciences, School of Education and Health, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS, Canada

The Coronavirus (CoV) is a large family of viruses known to cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute respiratory tract infection. The severity of the infection may be visible as pneumonia, acute respiratory syndrome, and even death. Until the outbreak of SARS, this group of viruses was greatly overlooked. However, since the SARS and MERS outbreaks, these viruses have been studied in greater detail, propelling the vaccine research. On December 31, 2019, mysterious cases of pneumonia were detected in the city of Wuhan in China's Hubei Province. On January 7, 2020, the causative agent was identified as a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV), and the disease was later named as COVID-19 by the WHO. The virus spread extensively in the Wuhan region of China and has gained entry to over 210 countries and territories. Though experts suspected that the virus is transmitted from animals to humans, there are mixed reports on the origin of the virus. There are no treatment options available for the virus as such, limited to the use of anti-HIV drugs and/or other antivirals such as Remdesivir and Galidesivir. For the containment of the virus, it is recommended to quarantine the infected and to follow good hygiene practices. The virus has had a significant socio-economic impact globally. Economically, China is likely to experience a greater setback than other countries from the pandemic due to added trade war pressure, which have been discussed in this paper.

Introduction

Coronaviridae is a family of viruses with a positive-sense RNA that possess an outer viral coat. When looked at with the help of an electron microscope, there appears to be a unique corona around it. This family of viruses mainly cause respiratory diseases in humans, in the forms of common cold or pneumonia as well as respiratory infections. These viruses can infect animals as well ( 1 , 2 ). Up until the year 2003, coronavirus (CoV) had attracted limited interest from researchers. However, after the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak caused by the SARS-CoV, the coronavirus was looked at with renewed interest ( 3 , 4 ). This also happened to be the first epidemic of the 21st century originating in the Guangdong province of China. Almost 10 years later, there was a MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) outbreak in 2012, which was caused by the MERS-CoV ( 5 , 6 ). Both SARS and MERS have a zoonotic origin and originated from bats. A unique feature of these viruses is the ability to mutate rapidly and adapt to a new host. The zoonotic origin of these viruses allows them to jump from host to host. Coronaviruses are known to use the angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE-2) receptor or the dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-4) protein to gain entry into cells for replication ( 7 – 10 ).

In December 2019, almost seven years after the MERS 2012 outbreak, a novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) surfaced in Wuhan in the Hubei region of China. The outbreak rapidly grew and spread to neighboring countries. However, rapid communication of information and the increasing scale of events led to quick quarantine and screening of travelers, thus containing the spread of the infection. The major part of the infection was restricted to China, and a second cluster was found on a cruise ship called the Diamond Princess docked in Japan ( 11 , 12 ).

The new virus was identified to be a novel Coronavirus and was thus initially named 2019-nCoV; later, it was renamed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ( 13 ), and the disease it causes is now referred to as Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) by the WHO. The virus was suspected to have begun its spread in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the Wuhan region. It is possible that an animal that was carrying the virus was brought into or sold in the market, causing the spread of the virus in the crowded marketplace. One of the first claims made was in an article published in the Journal of Medical Virology ( 14 ), which identified snakes as the possible host. A second possibility was that pangolins could be the wild host of SARS-CoV-2 ( 15 ), though the most likely possibility is that the virus originated from bats ( 13 , 16 – 19 ). Increasing evidence and experts are now collectively concluding the virus had a natural origin in bats, as with previous such respiratory viruses ( 2 , 20 – 24 ).

Similarly, SARS and MERS were also suspected to originate from bats. In the case of MERS, the dromedary camel is an intermediate host ( 5 , 10 ). Bats have been known to harbor coronaviruses for quite some time now. Just as in the case of avian flu, SARS, MERS, and possibly even HIV, with increasing selection and ecological pressure due to human activities, the virus made the jump from animal to man. Humans have been encroaching increasingly into forests, and this is true over much of China, as in Africa. Combined with additional ecological pressure due to climate change, such zoonotic spillovers are now more common than ever. It is likely that the next disease X will also have such an origin ( 25 ). We have learned the importance of identification of the source organism due to the Ebola virus pandemic. Viruses are unstable organisms genetically, constantly mutating by genetic shift or drift. It is not possible to predict when a cross-species jump may occur and when a seemingly harmless variant form of the virus may turn into a deadly strain. Such an incident occurred in Reston, USA, with the Reston virus ( 26 ), an alarming reminder of this possibility. The identification of the original host helps us to contain future spreads as well as to learn about the mechanism of transmission of viruses. Until the virus is isolated from a wild animal host, in this case, mostly bats, the zoonotic origin will remain hypothetical, though likely. It should further be noted that the virus has acquired several mutations, as noted by a group in China, indicating that there are more than two strains of the virus, which may have had an impact on its pathogenicity. However, this claim remains unproven, and many experts have argued otherwise; data proving this are not yet available ( 27 ). A similar finding was reported from Italy and India independently, where they found two strains ( 28 , 29 ). These findings need to be further cross-verified by similar analyses globally. If true, this finding could effectively explain why some nations are more affected than others.

Transmission

When the spread of COVID-19 began ( Figure 1 ), the virus appeared to be contained within China and the cruise ship “Diamond Princess,” which formed the major clusters of the virus. However, as of April 2020, over 210 countries and territories are affected by the virus, with Europe, the USA, and Iran forming the new cluster of the virus. The USA ( Figure 2 ) has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, whereas India and China, despite being among the most population-dense countries in the world, have managed to constrain the infection rate by the implementation of a complete lockdown with arrangements in place to manage the confirmed cases. Similarly, the UK has also managed to maintain a low curve of the graph by implementing similar measures, though it was not strictly enforced. Reports have indicated that the presence of different strains or strands of the virus may have had an effect on the management of the infection rate of the virus ( 27 – 29 ). The disease is spread by droplet transmission. As of April 2020, the total number of infected individuals stands at around 3 million, with ~200,000 deaths and more than 1 million recoveries globally ( 30 , 34 ). The virus thus has a fatality rate of around 2% and an R 0 of 3 based on current data. However, a more recent report from the CDC, Atlanta, USA, claims that the R 0 could be as high as 5.7 ( 35 ). It has also been observed from data available from China and India that individuals likely to be infected by the virus from both these countries belong to the age groups of 20–50 years ( 36 , 37 ). In both of these countries, the working class mostly belongs to this age group, making exposure more likely. Germany and Singapore are great examples of countries with a high number of cases but low fatalities as compared to their immediate neighbors. Singapore is one of the few countries that had developed a detailed plan of action after the previous SARS outbreak to deal with a similar situation in the future, and this worked in their favor during this outbreak. Both countries took swift action after the outbreak began, with Singapore banning Chinese travelers and implementing screening and quarantine measures at a time when the WHO recommended none. They ordered the elderly and the vulnerable to strictly stay at home, and they ensured that lifesaving equipment and large-scale testing facilities were available immediately ( 38 , 39 ). Germany took similar measures by ramping up testing capacity quite early and by ensuring that all individuals had equal opportunity to get tested. This meant that young, old, and at-risk people all got tested, thus ensuring positive results early during disease progression and that most cases were mild like in Singapore, thus maintaining a lower death percentage ( 40 ). It allowed infected individuals to be identified and quarantined before they even had symptoms. Testing was carried out at multiple labs, reducing the load and providing massive scale, something which countries such as the USA did quite late and India restricted to select government and private labs. The German government also banned large gatherings and advocated social distancing to further reduce the spread, though unlike India and the USA, this was done quite late. South Korea is another example of how a nation has managed to contain the spread and transmission of the infection. South Korea and the USA both reported their first COVID-19 cases on the same day; however, the US administration downplayed the risks of the disease, unlike South Korean officials, who constantly informed their citizens about the developments of the disease using the media and a centralized messaging system. They also employed the Trace, Test, and Treat protocol to identify and isolate patients fast, whereas the USA restricted this to patients with severe infection and only later broadened this criterion, like many European countries as well as India. Unlike the USA, South Korea also has universal healthcare, ensuring free diagnostic testing.

Figure 1 . Timeline of COVID-19 progression ( 30 – 32 ).

Figure 2 . Total confirmed COVID 19 cases as of May 2020 ( 33 ).

The main mode of transmission of 2019-nCoV is human to human. As of now, animal-to-human transfer has not yet been confirmed. Asymptomatic carriers of the virus are at major risk of being superinfectors with this disease, as all those infected may not develop the disease ( 41 ). This is a concern that has been raised by nations globally, with the Indian government raising concerns on how to identify and contain asymptomatic carriers, who could account for 80% of those infected ( 42 ). Since current resources are directed towards understanding the hospitalized individuals showing symptoms, there is still a vast amount of information about asymptomatic individuals that has yet to be studied. For example, some questions that need to be answered include: Do asymptomatic individuals develop the disease at any point in time at all? Do they eventually develop antibodies? How long do they shed the virus for? Can any tissue of these individuals store the virus in a dormant state? Asymptomatic transmission is a gray area that encompasses major unknowns in COVID-19.

The main route of human-to-human transmission is by droplets, which are generated during coughing, talking, or sneezing and are then inhaled by a healthy individual. They can also be indirectly transmitted to a person when they land on surfaces that are touched by a healthy individual who may then touch their nose, mouth, or eyes, allowing the virus entry into the body. Fomites are also a common issue in such diseases ( 43 ).

Aerosol-based transmission of the virus has not yet been confirmed ( 43 ). Stool-based transmission via the fecal-oral route may also be possible since the SARS-CoV-2 has been found in patient feces ( 44 , 45 ). Some patients with COVID-19 tend to develop diarrhea, which can become a major route of transmission if proper sanitation and personal hygiene needs are not met. There is no evidence currently available to suggest intrauterine vertical transmission of the disease in pregnant women ( 46 ).

More investigation is necessary of whether climate has played any role in the containment of the infection in countries such as India, Singapore, China, and Israel, as these are significantly warmer countries as compared with the UK, the USA, and Canada ( Figure 2 ). Ideally, a warm climate should prevent the virus from surviving for longer periods of time on surfaces, reducing transmissibility.

Pathophysiology

On gaining entry via any of the mucus membranes, the single-stranded RNA-based virus enters the host cell using type 2 transmembrane serine protease (TMPRSS2) and ACE2 receptor protein, leading to fusion and endocytosis with the host cell ( 47 – 49 ). The uncoated RNA is then translated, and viral proteins are synthesized. With the help of RNA-dependant RNA polymerase, new RNA is produced for the new virions. The cell then undergoes lysis, releasing a load of new virions into the patients' body. The resultant infection causes a massive release of pro-inflammatory cytokines that causes a cytokine storm.

Clinical Presentation

The clinical presentation of the disease resembles beta coronavirus infections. The virus has an incubation time of 2–14 days, which is the reason why most patients suspected to have the illness or contact with an individual having the illness remain in quarantine for the said amount of time. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 causes severe pneumonia, intermittent fever, and cough ( 50 , 51 ). Symptoms of rhinorrhoea, pharyngitis, and sneezing have been less commonly seen. Patients often develop acute respiratory distress syndrome within 2 days of hospital admission, requiring ventilatory support. It has been observed that during this phase, the mortality tends to be high. Chest CT will show indicators of pneumonia and ground-glass opacity, a feature that has helped to improve the preliminary diagnosis ( 51 ). The primary method of diagnosis for SARS-CoV-2 is with the help of PCR. For the PCR testing, the US CDC recommends testing for the N gene, whereas the Chinese CDC recommends the use of ORF lab and N gene of the viral genome for testing. Some also rely on the radiological findings for preliminary screening ( 52 ). Additionally, immunodiagnostic tests based on the presence of antibodies can also play a role in testing. While the WHO recommends the use of these tests for research use, many countries have pre-emptively deployed the use of these tests in the hope of ramping up the rate and speed of testing ( 52 – 54 ). Later, they noticed variations among the results, causing them to stop the use of such kits; there was also debate among the experts about the sensitivity and specificity of the tests. For immunological tests, it is beneficial to test for antibodies against the virus produced by the body rather than to test for the presence of the viral proteins, since the antibodies can be present in larger titers for a longer span of time. However, the cross-reactivity of these tests with other coronavirus antibodies is something that needs verification. Biochemical parameters such as D-dimer, C-reactive protein, and variations in neutrophil and lymphocyte counts are some other parameters that can be used to make a preliminary diagnosis; however, these parameters vary in a number of diseases and thus cannot be relied upon conclusively ( 51 ). Patients with pre-existing diseases such as asthma or similar lung disorder are at higher risk, requiring life support, as are those with other diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or obesity. Those above the age of 60 have displayed the highest mortality rate in China, a finding that is mirrored in other nations as well ( Figure 3 ) ( 55 ). If we cross-verify these findings with the population share that is above the age of 70, we find that Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the USA have one of the highest elderly populations as compared to countries such as India and China ( Figure 4 ), and this also reflects the case fatality rates accordingly ( Figure 5 ) ( 33 ). This is a clear indicator that aside from comorbidities, age is also an independent risk factor for death in those infected by COVID-19. Also, in the US, it was seen that the rates of African American deaths were higher. This is probably due to the fact that the prevalence of hypertension and obesity in this community is higher than in Caucasians ( 56 , 57 ). In late April 2020, there are also claims in the US media that young patients in the US with COVID-19 may be at increased risk of stroke; however, this is yet to be proven. We know that coagulopathy is a feature of COVID-19, and thus stroke is likely in this condition ( 58 , 59 ). The main cause of death in COVID-19 patients was acute respiratory distress due to the inflammation in the linings of the lungs caused by the cytokine storm, which is seen in all non-survival cases and in respiratory failure. The resultant inflammation in the lungs, served as an entry point of further infection, associated with coagulopathy end-organ failure, septic shock, and secondary infections leading to death ( 60 – 63 ).

Figure 3 . Case fatality rate by age in selected countries as of April 2020 ( 33 ).

Figure 4 . Case fatality rate in selected countries ( 33 ).

Figure 5 . Population share above 70 years of age ( 33 ).

For COVID-19, there is no specific treatment available. The WHO announced the organization of a trial dubbed the “Solidarity” clinical trial for COVID-19 treatments ( 64 ). This is an international collaborative study that investigates the use of a few prime candidate drugs for use against COVID-19, which are discussed below. The study is designed to reduce the time taken for an RCT by over 80%. There are over 1087 studies ( Supplementary Data 1 ) for COVID-19 registered at clinicaltrials.gov , of which 657 are interventional studies ( Supplementary Data 2 ) ( 65 ). The primary focus of the interventional studies for COVID-19 has been on antimalarial drugs and antiviral agents ( Table 1 ), while over 200 studies deal with the use of different forms of oxygen therapy. Most trials focus on improvement of clinical status, reduction of viral load, time to improvement, and reduction of mortality rates. These studies cover both severe and mild cases.

Table 1 . List of therapeutic drugs under study for COVID-19 as per clinical trials registered under clinicaltrials.gov .

Use of Antimalarial Drugs Against SARS-CoV-2

The use of chloroquine for the treatment of corona virus-based infection has shown some benefit in the prevention of viral replication in the cases of SARS and MERS. However, it was not validated on a large scale in the form of a randomized control trial ( 50 , 66 – 68 ). The drugs of choice among antimalarials are Chloroquine (CQ) and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). The use of CQ for COVID-19 was brought to light by the Chinese, especially by the publication of a letter to the editor of Bioscience Trends by Gao et al. ( 69 ). The letter claimed that several studies found CQ to be effective against COVID-19; however, the letter did not provide many details. Immediately, over a short span of time, interest in these two agents grew globally. Early in vitro data have revealed that chloroquine can inhibit the viral replication ( 70 , 71 ).

HCQ and CQ work by raising the pH of the lysosome, the cellular organelle that is responsible for phagocytic degradation. Its function is to combine with cell contents that have been phagocytosed and break them down eventually, in some immune cells, as a downstream process to display some of the broken proteins as antigens, thus further enhancing the immune recruitment against an antigen/pathogen. The drug was to be administered alone or with azithromycin. The use of azithromycin may be advocated by the fact that it has been seen previously to have some immunomodulatory role in airway-related disease. It appears to reduce the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines in respiratory illnesses ( 72 ). However, HCQ and azithromycin are known to have a major drug interaction when co-administered, which increases the risk of QT interval prolongation ( 73 ). Quinine-based drugs are known to have adverse effects such as QT prolongation, retinal damage, hypoglycemia, and hemolysis of blood in patients with G-6-PD deficiency ( 66 ). Several preprints, including, a metanalysis now indicate that HCQ may have no benefit for severe or critically ill patients who have COVID-19 where the outcome is need for ventilation or death ( 74 , 75 ). As of April 21, 2020, after having pre-emptively recommended their use for SARS-CoV-2 infection, the US now advocates against the use of these two drugs based on the new data that has become available.

Use of Antiviral Drugs Against SARS-CoV-2

The antiviral agents are mainly those used in the case of HIV/AIDS, these being Lopinavir and Ritonavir. Other agents such as nucleoside analogs like Favipiravir, Ribavirin, Remdesivir, and Galidesivir have been tested for possible activity in the prevention of viral RNA synthesis ( 76 ). Among these drugs, Lopinavir, Ritonavir, and Remdesivir are listed in the Solidarity trial by the WHO.

Remdesivir is a nucleotide analog for adenosine that gets incorporated into the viral RNA, hindering its replication and causing chain termination. This agent was originally developed for Ebola Virus Disease ( 77 ). A study was conducted with rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2 ( 78 ). In that study, after 12 h of infection, the monkeys were treated with either Remdesivir or vehicle. The drug showed good distribution in the lungs, and the animals treated with the drug showed a better clinical score than the vehicle group. The radiological findings of the study also indicated that the animals treated with Remdesivir have less lung damage. There was a reduction in viral replication but not in virus shedding. Furthermore, there were no mutations found in the RNA polymerase sequences. A randomized clinical control study that became available in late April 2020 ( 79 ), having 158 on the Remdesivir arm and 79 on the placebo arm, found that Remdesivir reduced the time to recovery in the Remdesivir-treated arm to 11 days, while the placebo-arm recovery time was 15 days. Though this was not found to be statistically significant, the agent provided a basis for further studies. The 28-days mortality was found to be similar for both groups. This has now provided us with a basis on which to develop future molecules. The study has been supported by the National Institute of Health, USA. The authors of the study advocated for more clinical trials with Remdesivir with a larger population. Such larger studies are already in progress, and their results are awaited. Remdesivir is currently one of the drugs that hold most promise against COVID-19.

An early trial in China with Lopinavir and Ritonavir showed no benefit compared with standard clinical care ( 80 ). More studies with this drug are currently underway, including one in India ( 81 , 82 ).

Use of Convalescent Patient Plasma

Another possible option would be the use of serum from convalescent individuals, as this is known to contain antibodies that can neutralize the virus and aid in its elimination. This has been tried previously for other coronavirus infections ( 83 ). Early emerging case reports in this aspect look promising compared to other therapies that have been tried ( 84 – 87 ). A report from China indicates that five patients treated with plasma recovered and were eventually weaned off ventilators ( 84 ). They exhibited reductions in fever and viral load and improved oxygenation. The virus was not detected in the patients after 12 days of plasma transfusion. The US FDA has provided detailed recommendations for investigational COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma use ( 88 ). One of the benefits of this approach is that it can also be used for post-exposure prophylaxis. This approach is now beginning to be increasingly adopted in other countries, with over 95 trials registered on clinicaltrials.gov alone, of which at least 75 are interventional ( 89 ). The use of convalescent patient plasma, though mostly for research purposes, appears to be the best and, so far, the only successful option for treatment available.

From a future perspective, the use of monoclonal antibodies for the inhibition of the attachment of the virus to the ACE-2 receptor may be the best bet. Aside from this, ACE-2-like molecules could also be utilized to attach and inactivate the viral proteins, since inhibition of the ACE-2 receptor would not be advisable due to its negative repercussions physiologically. In the absence of drug regimens and a vaccine, the treatment is symptomatic and involves the use of non-invasive ventilation or intubation where necessary for respiratory failure patients. Patients that may go into septic shock should be managed as per existing guidelines with hemodynamic support as well as antibiotics where necessary.

The WHO has recommended that simple personal hygiene practices can be sufficient for the prevention of spread and containment of the disease ( 90 ). Practices such as frequent washing of soiled hands or the use of sanitizer for unsoiled hands help reduce transmission. Covering of mouth while sneezing and coughing, and disinfection of surfaces that are frequently touched, such as tabletops, doorknobs, and switches with 70% isopropyl alcohol or other disinfectants are broadly recommended. It is recommended that all individuals afflicted by the disease, as well as those caring for the infected, wear a mask to avoid transmission. Healthcare works are advised to wear a complete set of personal protective equipment as per WHO-provided guidelines. Fumigation of dormitories, quarantine rooms, and washing of clothes and other fomites with detergent and warm water can help get rid of the virus. Parcels and goods are not known to transmit the virus, as per information provided by the WHO, since the virus is not able to survive sufficiently in an open, exposed environment. Quarantine of infected individuals and those who have come into contact with an infected individual is necessary to further prevent transmission of the virus ( 91 ). Quarantine is an age-old archaic practice that continues to hold relevance even today for disease containment. With the quarantine being implemented on such a large scale in some countries, taking the form of a national lockdown, the question arises of its impact on the mental health of all individuals. This topic needs to be addressed, especially in countries such as India and China, where it is still a matter of partial taboo to talk about it openly within the society.

In India, the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga, and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH), which deals with the alternative forms of medicine, issued a press release that the homeopathic, drug Arsenicum album 30, can be taken on an empty stomach for 3 days to provide protection against the infection ( 92 ). It also provided a list of herbal drugs in the same press release as per Ayurvedic and Unani systems of medicine that can boost the immune system to deal with the virus. However, there is currently no evidence to support the use of these systems of medicine against COVID-19, and they need to be tested.

The prevention of the disease with the use of a vaccine would provide a more viable solution. There are no vaccines available for any of the coronaviruses, which includes SARS and MERS. The development of a vaccine, however, is in progress at a rapid pace, though it could take about a year or two. As of April 2020, no vaccine has completed the development and testing process. A popular approach has been with the use of mRNA-based vaccine ( 93 – 96 ). mRNA vaccines have the advantage over conventional vaccines in terms of production, since they can be manufactured easily and do not have to be cultured, as a virus would need to be. Alternative conventional approaches to making a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 would include the use of live attenuated virus as well as using the isolated spike proteins of the virus. Both of these approaches are in progress for vaccine development ( 97 ). Governments across the world have poured in resources and made changes in their legislation to ensure rapid development, testing, and deployment of a vaccine.

Barriers to Treatment

Lack of transparency and poor media relations.

The lack of government transparency and poor reporting by the media have hampered the measures that could have been taken by healthcare systems globally to deal with the COVID-19 threat. The CDC, as well as the US administration, downplayed the threat and thus failed to stock up on essential supplies, ventilators, and test kits. An early warning system, if implemented, would have caused borders to be shut and early lockdowns. The WHO also delayed its response in sounding the alarm regarding the severity of the outbreak to allow nations globally to prepare for a pandemic. Singapore is a prime example where, despite the WHO not raising concerns and banning travel to and from China, a country banned travelers and took early measures, thus managing the outbreak quite well. South Korea is another example of how things may have played out had those measures by agencies been taken with transparency. Increased transparency would have allowed the healthcare sector to better prepare and reduced the load of patients they had to deal with, helping flatten the curve. The increased patient load and confusion among citizens arising from not following these practices has proved to be a barrier to providing effective treatments to patients with the disease elsewhere in the world.

Lack of Preparedness and Protocols

Despite the previous SARS outbreak teaching us important lessons and providing us with data on a potential outbreak, many nations did not take the important measures needed for a future outbreak. There was no allocation of sufficient funds for such an event. Many countries experienced severe lack of PPE, and the lockdown precautions hampered the logistics of supply and manufacturing of such essential equipment. Singapore and South Korea had protocols in place and were able to implement them at a moment's notice. The spurt of cases that Korea experienced was managed well, providing evidence to this effect. The lack of preparedness and lack of protocol in other nations has resulted in confusion as to how the treatment may be administered safely to the large volume of patients while dealing with diagnostics. Both of these factors have limited the accessibility to healthcare services due to sheer volume.

Socio-Economic Impact

During the SARS epidemic, China faced an economic setback, and experts were unsure if any recovery would be made. However, the global and domestic situation was then in China's favor, as it had a lower debt, allowing it to make a speedy recovery. This is not the case now. Global experts have a pessimistic outlook on the outcome of this outbreak ( 98 ). The fear of COVID-19 disease, lack of proper understanding of the dangers of the virus, and the misinformation spread on the social media ( 99 ) have caused a breakdown of the economic flow globally ( 100 ). An example of this is Indonesia, where a great amount of fear was expressed in responses to a survey when the nation was still free of COVID-19 ( 101 ). The pandemic has resulted in over 2.6 billion people being put under lockdown. This lockdown and the cancellation of the lunar year celebration has affected business at the local level. Hundreds of flights have been canceled, and tourism globally has been affected. Japan and Indonesia are estimated to lose over 2.44 billion dollars due to this ( 102 , 103 ). Workers are not able to work in factories, transportation in all forms is restricted, and goods are not produced or moved. The transport of finished products and raw materials out of China is low. The Economist has published US stock market details indicating that companies in the US that have Chinese roots fell, on average, 5 points on the stock market as compared to the S&P 500 index ( 104 ). Companies such as Starbucks have had to close over 4,000 outlets due to the outbreak as a precaution. Tech and pharma companies are at higher risk since they rely on China for the supply of raw materials and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Paracetamol, for one, has reported a price increase of over 40% in India ( 104 – 106 ). Mass hysteria in the market has caused selling of shares of these companies, causing a tumble in the Indian stock market. Though long-term investors will not be significantly affected, short-term traders will find themselves in soup. Politically, however, this has further bolstered support for world leaders in countries such as India, Germany, and the UK, who are achieving good approval ratings, with citizens being satisfied with the government's approach. In contrast, the ratings of US President Donald Trump have dropped due to the manner in which the COVID-19 pandemic was handled. These minor impacts may be of temporary significance, and the worst and direct impact will be on China itself ( 107 – 109 ), as the looming trade war with the USA had a negative impact on the Chinese and Asian markets. The longer production of goods continues to remain suspended, the more adversely it will affect the Chinese economy and the global markets dependent on it ( 110 ). If this disease is not contained, more and more lockdowns by multiple nations will severely affect the economy and lead to many social complications.

The appearance of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus has added and will continue to add to our understanding of viruses. The pandemic has once again tested the world's preparedness for dealing with such outbreaks. It has provided an outlook on how a massive-scale biological event can cause a socio-economic disturbance through misinformation and social media. In the coming months and years, we can expect to gain further insights into SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

Author Contributions

KN: conceptualization. RK, AA, JM, and KN: investigation. RK and AA: writing—original draft preparation. KN, PN, and JM: writing—review and editing. KN: supervision.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions made by Dr. Piya Paul Mudgal, Assistant Professor, Manipal Institute of Virology, Manipal Academy of Higher Education towards inputs provided by her during the drafting of the manuscript.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00216/full#supplementary-material

Supplementary Data 1, 2. List of all studies registered for COVID-19 on clinicaltrials.gov .

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Keywords: 2019-nCoV, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus, pandemic, SARS

Citation: Keni R, Alexander A, Nayak PG, Mudgal J and Nandakumar K (2020) COVID-19: Emergence, Spread, Possible Treatments, and Global Burden. Front. Public Health 8:216. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.00216

Received: 21 February 2020; Accepted: 11 May 2020; Published: 28 May 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Keni, Alexander, Nayak, Mudgal and Nandakumar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Krishnadas Nandakumar, mailnandakumar77@gmail.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

A dozen writing projects — including journals, poems, comics and more — for students to try at home.

By Natalie Proulx

The coronavirus has transformed life as we know it. Schools are closed, we’re confined to our homes and the future feels very uncertain. Why write at a time like this?

For one, we are living through history. Future historians may look back on the journals, essays and art that ordinary people are creating now to tell the story of life during the coronavirus.

But writing can also be deeply therapeutic. It can be a way to express our fears, hopes and joys. It can help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

Plus, even though school buildings are shuttered, that doesn’t mean learning has stopped. Writing can help us reflect on what’s happening in our lives and form new ideas.

We want to help inspire your writing about the coronavirus while you learn from home. Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts. Each project features a Times text and prompts to inspire your writing, as well as related resources from The Learning Network to help you develop your craft. Some also offer opportunities to get your work published in The Times, on The Learning Network or elsewhere.

We know this list isn’t nearly complete. If you have ideas for other pandemic-related writing projects, please suggest them in the comments.

In the meantime, happy writing!

Journaling is well-known as a therapeutic practice , a tool for helping you organize your thoughts and vent your emotions, especially in anxiety-ridden times. But keeping a diary has an added benefit during a pandemic: It may help educate future generations.

In “ The Quarantine Diaries ,” Amelia Nierenberg spoke to Ady, an 8-year-old in the Bay Area who is keeping a diary. Ms. Nierenberg writes:

As the coronavirus continues to spread and confine people largely to their homes, many are filling pages with their experiences of living through a pandemic. Their diaries are told in words and pictures: pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present. Taken together, the pages tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause. “You can say anything you want, no matter what, and nobody can judge you,” Ady said in a phone interview earlier this month, speaking about her diary. “No one says, ‘scaredy-cat.’” When future historians look to write the story of life during coronavirus, these first-person accounts may prove useful. “Diaries and correspondences are a gold standard,” said Jane Kamensky, a professor of American History at Harvard University and the faculty director of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. “They’re among the best evidence we have of people’s inner worlds.”

You can keep your own journal, recording your thoughts, questions, concerns and experiences of living through the coronavirus pandemic.

Not sure what to write about? Read the rest of Ms. Nierenberg’s article to find out what others around the world are recording. If you need more inspiration, here are a few writing prompts to get you started:

How has the virus disrupted your daily life? What are you missing? School, sports, competitions, extracurricular activities, social plans, vacations or anything else?

What effect has this crisis had on your own mental and emotional health?

What changes, big or small, are you noticing in the world around you?

For more ideas, see our writing prompts . We post a new one every school day, many of them now related to life during the coronavirus.

You can write in your journal every day or as often as you like. And if writing isn’t working for you right now, try a visual, audio or video diary instead.

2. Personal Narrative

As you write in your journal, you’ll probably find that your life during the pandemic is full of stories, whether serious or funny, angry or sad. If you’re so inspired, try writing about one of your experiences in a personal narrative essay.

Here’s how Mary Laura Philpott begins her essay, “ This Togetherness Is Temporary, ” about being quarantined with her teenage children:

Get this: A couple of months ago, I quit my job in order to be home more. Go ahead and laugh at the timing. I know. At the time, it was hitting me that my daughter starts high school in the fall, and my son will be a senior. Increasingly they were spending their time away from me at school, with friends, and in the many time-intensive activities that make up teenage lives. I could feel the clock ticking, and I wanted to spend the minutes I could — the minutes they were willing to give me, anyway — with them, instead of sitting in front of a computer at night and on weekends in order to juggle a job as a bookseller, a part-time gig as a television host, and a book deadline. I wanted more of them while they were still living in my house. Now here we are, all together, every day. You’re supposed to be careful what you wish for, but come on. None of us saw this coming.

Personal narratives are short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences, big or small. Read the rest of Ms. Philpott’s essay to see how she balances telling the story of a specific moment in time and reflecting on what it all means in the larger context of her life.

To help you identify the moments that have been particularly meaningful, difficult, comical or strange during this pandemic, try responding to one of our writing prompts related to the coronavirus:

Holidays and Birthdays Are Moments to Come Together. How Are You Adapting During the Pandemic?

Has Your School Switched to Remote Learning? How Is It Going So Far?

Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Bringing Your Extended Family Closer Together?

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

Another option? Use any of the images in our Picture Prompt series to inspire you to write about a memory from your life.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 1: Teach Narrative Writing With The New York Times

People have long turned to creative expression in times of crisis. During the coronavirus pandemic, artists are continuing to illustrate , play music , dance , perform — and write poetry .

That’s what Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, an emergency room doctor in Boston, did after a long shift treating coronavirus patients. Called “ The Apocalypse ,” her poem begins like this:

This is the apocalypse A daffodil has poked its head up from the dirt and opened sunny arms to bluer skies yet I am filled with dark and anxious dread as theaters close as travel ends and grocery stores display their empty rows where toilet paper liquid bleach and bags of flour stood in upright ranks.

Read the rest of Dr. Mitchell’s poem and note the lines, images and metaphors that speak to you. Then, tap into your creative side by writing a poem inspired by your own experience of the pandemic.

Need inspiration? Try writing a poem in response to one of our Picture Prompts . Or, you can create a found poem using an article from The Times’s coronavirus outbreak coverage . If you have access to the print paper, try making a blackout poem instead.

Related Resources: 24 Ways to Teach and Learn About Poetry With The New York Times Reader Idea | How the Found Poem Can Inspire Teachers and Students Alike

4. Letter to the Editor

Have you been keeping up with the news about the coronavirus? What is your reaction to it?

Make your voice heard by writing a letter to the editor about a recent Times article, editorial, column or Opinion essay related to the pandemic. You can find articles in The Times’s free coronavirus coverage or The Learning Network’s coronavirus resources for students . And, if you’re a high school student, your school can get you free digital access to The New York Times from now until July 6.

To see examples, read the letters written by young people in response to recent headlines in “ How the Young Deal With the Coronavirus .” Here’s what Addie Muller from San Jose, Calif., had to say about the Opinion essay “ I’m 26. Coronavirus Sent Me to the Hospital ”:

As a high school student and a part of Generation Z, I’ve been less concerned about getting Covid-19 and more concerned about spreading it to more vulnerable populations. While I’ve been staying at home and sheltering in place (as was ordered for the state of California), many of my friends haven’t been doing the same. I know people who continue going to restaurants and have been treating the change in education as an extended spring break and excuse to spend more time with friends. I fear for my grandparents and parents, but this article showed me that we should also fear for ourselves. I appreciated seeing this article because many younger people seem to feel invincible. The fact that a healthy 26-year-old can be hospitalized means that we are all capable of getting the virus ourselves and spreading it to others. I hope that Ms. Lowenstein continues spreading her story and that she makes a full recovery soon.

As you read, note some of the defining features of a letter to the editor and what made these good enough to publish. For more advice, see these tips from Thomas Feyer, the letters editor at The Times, about how to write a compelling letter. They include:

Write briefly and to the point.

Be prepared to back up your facts with evidence.

Write about something off the beaten path.

Publishing Opportunity: When you’re ready, submit your letter to The New York Times.

5. Editorial

Maybe you have more to say than you can fit in a 150-word letter to the editor. If that’s the case, try writing an editorial about something you have a strong opinion about related to the coronavirus. What have you seen that has made you upset? Proud? Appreciative? Scared?

In “ Surviving Coronavirus as a Broke College Student ,” Sydney Goins, a senior English major at the University of Georgia, writes about the limited options for students whose colleges are now closed. Her essay begins:

College was supposed to be my ticket to financial security. My parents were the first ones to go to college in their family. My grandpa said to my mom, “You need to go to college, so you don’t have to depend on a man for money.” This same mentality was passed on to me as well. I had enough money to last until May— $1,625 to be exact — until the coronavirus ruined my finances. My mom works in human resources. My dad is a project manager for a mattress company. I worked part time at the university’s most popular dining hall and lived in a cramped house with three other students. I don’t have a car. I either walked or biked a mile to attend class. I have student debt and started paying the accrued interest last month. I was making it work until the coronavirus shut down my college town. At first, spring break was extended by two weeks with the assumption that campus would open again in late March, but a few hours after that email, all 26 colleges in the University System of Georgia canceled in-person classes and closed integral parts of campus.

Read the rest of Ms. Goins’s essay. What is her argument? How does she support it? How is it relevant to her life and the world?

Then, choose a topic related to the pandemic that you care about and write an editorial that asserts an opinion and backs it up with solid reasoning and evidence.

Not sure where to start? Try responding to some of our recent argumentative writing prompts and see what comes up for you. Here are a few we’ve asked students so far:

Should Schools Change How They Grade Students During the Pandemic?

What Role Should Celebrities Have During the Coronavirus Crisis?

Is It Immoral to Increase the Price of Goods During a Crisis?

Or, consider essential questions about the pandemic and what they tell us about our world today: What weaknesses is the coronavirus exposing in our society? How can we best help our communities right now? What lessons can we learn from this crisis? See more here.

As an alternative to a written essay, you might try creating a video Op-Ed instead, like Katherine Oung’s “ Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School. ”

Publishing Opportunity: Submit your final essay to our Student Editorial Contest , open to middle school and high school students ages 10-19, until April 21. Please be sure to read all the rules and guidelines before submitting.

Related Resource: An Argumentative-Writing Unit for Students Doing Remote Learning

Are games, television, music, books, art or movies providing you with a much-needed distraction during the pandemic? What has been working for you that you would recommend to others? Or, what would you caution others to stay away from right now?

Share your opinions by writing a review of a piece of art or culture for other teenagers who are stuck at home. You might suggest TV shows, novels, podcasts, video games, recipes or anything else. Or, try something made especially for the coronavirus era, like a virtual architecture tour , concert or safari .

As a mentor text, read Laura Cappelle’s review of French theater companies that have rushed to put content online during the coronavirus outbreak, noting how she tailors her commentary to our current reality:

The 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote: “The sole cause of people’s unhappiness is that they do not know how to stay quietly in their rooms.” Yet at a time when much of the world has been forced to hunker down, French theater-makers are fighting to fill the void by making noise online.

She continues:

Under the circumstances, it would be churlish to complain about artists’ desire to connect with audiences in some fashion. Theater, which depends on crowds gathering to watch performers at close quarters, is experiencing significant loss and upheaval, with many stagings either delayed indefinitely or canceled outright. But a sampling of stopgap offerings often left me underwhelmed.

To get inspired you might start by responding to our related Student Opinion prompt with your recommendations. Then turn one of them into a formal review.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 2: Analyzing Arts, Criticizing Culture: Writing Reviews With The New York Times

7. How-to Guide

Being stuck at home with nowhere to go is the perfect time to learn a new skill. What are you an expert at that you can you teach someone?

The Times has created several guides that walk readers through how to do something step-by-step, for example, this eight-step tutorial on how to make a face mask . Read through the guide, noting how the author breaks down each step into an easily digestible action, as well as how the illustrations support comprehension.

Then, create your own how-to guide for something you could teach someone to do during the pandemic. Maybe it’s a recipe you’ve perfected, a solo sport you’ve been practicing, or a FaceTime tutorial for someone who’s never video chatted before.

Whatever you choose, make sure to write clearly so anyone anywhere could try out this new skill. As an added challenge, include an illustration, photo, or audio or video clip with each step to support the reader’s understanding.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 4: Informational Writing

8. 36 Hours Column

For nearly two decades, The Times has published a weekly 36 Hours column , giving readers suggestions for how to spend a weekend in cities all over the globe.

While traveling for fun is not an option now, the Travel section decided to create a special reader-generated column of how to spend a weekend in the midst of a global pandemic. The result? “ 36 Hours in … Wherever You Are .” Here’s how readers suggest spending a Sunday morning:

8 a.m. Changing routines Make small discoveries. To stretch my legs during the lockdown, I’ve been walking around the block every day, and I’ve started to notice details that I’d never seen before. Like the fake, painted window on the building across the road, or the old candle holders that were once used as part of the street lighting. When the quarantine ends, I hope we don’t forget to appreciate what’s been on a doorstep all along. — Camilla Capasso, Modena, Italy 10:30 a.m. Use your hands Undertake the easiest and most fulfilling origami project of your life by folding 12 pieces of paper and building this lovely star . Modular origami has been my absolute favorite occupational therapy since I was a restless child: the process is enthralling and soothing. — Laila Dib, Berlin, Germany 12 p.m. Be isolated, together Check on neighbors on your block or floor with an email, text or phone call, or leave a card with your name and contact information. Are they OK? Do they need something from the store? Help with an errand? Food? Can you bring them a hot dish or home-baked bread? This simple act — done carefully and from a safe distance — palpably reduces our sense of fear and isolation. I’ve seen the faces of some neighbors for the first time. Now they wave. — Jim Carrier, Burlington, Vt.

Read the entire article. As you read, consider: How would this be different if it were written by teenagers for teenagers?

Then, create your own 36 Hours itinerary for teenagers stuck at home during the pandemic with ideas for how to spend the weekend wherever they are.

The 36 Hours editors suggest thinking “within the spirit of travel, even if many of us are housebound.” For example: an album or a song playlist; a book or movie that transports you; a particular recipe you love; or a clever way to virtually connect with family and friends. See more suggestions here .

Related Resources: Reader Idea | 36 Hours in Your Hometown 36 Hours in Learning: Creating Travel Itineraries Across the Curriculum

9. Photo Essay

Daily life looks very different now. Unusual scenes are playing out in homes, parks, grocery stores and streets across the country.

In “ New York Was Not Designed for Emptiness ,” New York Times photographers document what life in New York City looks like amid the pandemic. It begins:

The lights are still on in Times Square. Billboards blink and storefronts shine in neon. If only there were an audience for this spectacle. But the thoroughfares have been abandoned. The energy that once crackled along the concrete has eased. The throngs of tourists, the briskly striding commuters, the honking drivers have mostly skittered away. In their place is a wistful awareness that plays across all five boroughs: Look how eerie our brilliant landscape has become. Look how it no longer bustles. This is not the New York City anyone signed up for.

Read the rest of the essay and view the photos. As you read, note the photos or lines in the text that grab your attention most. Why do they stand out to you?

What does the pandemic look like where you live? Create your own photo essay, accompanied by a written piece, that illustrates your life now. In your essay, consider how you can communicate a particular theme or message about life during the pandemic through both your photos and words, like in the article you read.

Publishing Opportunity: The International Center of Photography is collecting a virtual archive of images related to the coronavirus pandemic. Learn how to submit yours here.

10. Comic Strip

Sometimes, words alone just won’t do. Visual mediums, like comics, have the advantage of being able to express emotion, reveal inner monologues, and explain complex subjects in ways that words on their own seldom can.

If anything proves this point, it is the Opinion section’s ongoing visual diary, “ Art in Isolation .” Scroll through this collection to see clever and poignant illustrations about life in these uncertain times. Read the comic “ Finding Connection When Home Alone ” by Gracey Zhang from this collection. As you read, note what stands out to you about the writing and illustrations. What lessons could they have for your own piece?

Then, create your own comic strip, modeled after the one you read, that explores some aspect of life during the pandemic. You can sketch and color your comic with paper and pen, or use an online tool like MakeBeliefsComix.com .

Need inspiration? If you’re keeping a quarantine journal, as we suggested above, you might create a graphic story based on a week of your life, or just a small part of it — like the meals you ate, the video games you played, or the conversations you had with friends over text. For more ideas, check out our writing prompts related to the coronavirus.

Related Resource: From Superheroes to Syrian Refugees: Teaching Comics and Graphic Novels With Resources From The New York Times

11. Podcast

Modern Love Podcast: In the Midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic, People Share Their Love Stories

Are you listening to any podcasts to help you get through the pandemic? Are they keeping you up-to-date on the news? Offering advice? Or just helping you escape from it all?

Create your own five-minute podcast segment that responds to the coronavirus in some way.

To get an idea of the different genres and formats your podcast could take, listen to one or more of these five-minute clips from three New York Times podcast episodes related to the coronavirus:

“ The Daily | Voices of the Pandemic ” (1:15-6:50)

“ Still Processing | A Pod From Both Our Houses ” (0:00-4:50)

“ Modern Love | In the Midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic, People Share Their Love Stories ” (1:30-6:30)

Use these as models for your own podcast. Consider the different narrative techniques they use to relate an experience of the pandemic — interviews, nonfiction storytelling and conversation — as well as how they create an engaging listening experience.

Need ideas for what to talk about? You might try translating any of the writing projects above into podcast form. Or turn to our coronavirus-related writing prompts for inspiration.

Publishing Opportunity: Submit your finished five-minute podcast to our Student Podcast Contest , which is open through May 19. Please read all the rules and guidelines before submitting.

Related Resource: Project Audio: Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts

12. Revise and Edit

“It doesn’t matter how good you think you are as a writer — the first words you put on the page are a first draft,” Harry Guinness writes in “ How to Edit Your Own Writing .”

Editing your work may seem like something you do quickly — checking for spelling mistakes just before you turn in your essay — but Mr. Guinness argues it’s a project in its own right:

The time you put into editing, reworking and refining turns your first draft into a second — and then into a third and, if you keep at it, eventually something great. The biggest mistake you can make as a writer is to assume that what you wrote the first time through was good enough.

Read the rest of the article for a step-by-step guide to editing your own work. Then, revise one of the pieces you have written, following Mr. Guinness’s advice.

Publishing Opportunity: When you feel like your piece is “something great,” consider submitting it to one of the publishing opportunities we’ve suggested above. Or, see our list of 70-plus places that publish teenage writing and art to find more.

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

Essays explore altered social experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic

School of Social Transformation faculty members (from left): Mako Fitts Ward, assistant professor, African and African American studies; Michelle McGibbney Vlahoulis, senior lecturer, women and gender studies; Jennifer A. Sandlin, professor, justice and social inquiry; Christine L. Holman, senior lecturer, justice and social inquiry.

“ The Pandemic Reader ” is a new collection of essays edited by faculty in Arizona State University's School of Social Transformation, in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The collection explores the multitude of ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has changed life in every aspect. As people around the world try to navigate challenges and revelations that have unfolded in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the faculty involved in the project say it is still crucial to consider the societal impact at large, and what it will mean down the line.

“Our collection of essays, articles and activities are designed to assist in both understanding and deconstructing the ways in which the pandemic has impacted our lives — as individuals, families and communities," said editor Christine L. Holman , senior lecturer, justice and social inquiry.

“The Pandemic Reader” draws from research, writings and discussions by journalists, students, community activists and academics who have formed teachable viewpoints on the world’s current state of affairs. The contributors come from a wide range of specialties from economics to pediatrics to epidemiology and investigative reporting.

The editors of this collection are Mako Fitts Ward , Jennifer A. Sandlin , Michelle McGibbney Vlahoulis and Holman . They helped bolster the sociohistorical framework and evidence-based responses used to address issues such as: pandemic racism, coronavirus capitalism, communications surrounding exposure and protection, pandemic leadership, and social messaging.

In addition to offering thought-provoking narratives, “The Pandemic Reader” strives to serve as a blueprint for new teaching strategies as communities relearn how to connect and move forward.

Sandlin says the book is “an attempt to expose the cracks in systems that have become too wide to ignore."

"It’s important to provide context to understand how the multiple pandemics of 2020 — including COVID-19 and dismantling structural racism — exacerbated vast disparities that have existed and been cultivated for decades and even centuries,” she said.

This book aims to provide a resource for courses on social justice and introduce critical perspectives for enlightening classroom discussions. After engaging with this material, the intended outcome is that COVID-era inequities are magnified, to inspire new perspectives and necessary change.

The book is available in e-book and paperback at diopress.com/the-pandemic-reader .

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COVID-19 photo essay: We’re all in this together

About the author, department of global communications.

The United Nations Department of Global Communications (DGC) promotes global awareness and understanding of the work of the United Nations.

23 June 2020 – The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the interconnected nature of our world – and that no one is safe until everyone is safe. Only by acting in solidarity can communities save lives and overcome the devastating socio-economic impacts of the virus. In partnership with the United Nations, people around the world are showing acts of humanity, inspiring hope for a better future.

Everyone can do something

Rauf Salem, a volunteer, instructs children on the right way to wash their hands, in Sana'a, Yemen. Simple measures, such as maintaining physical distance, washing hands frequently and wearing a mask are imperative if the fight against COVID-19 is to be won. Photo: UNICEF/UNI341697

Creating hope

man with guitar in front of colorful poster

Venezuelan refugee Juan Batista Ramos, 69, plays guitar in front of a mural he painted at the Tancredo Neves temporary shelter in Boa Vista, Brazil to help lift COVID-19 quarantine blues. “Now, everywhere you look you will see a landscape to remind us that there is beauty in the world,” he says. Ramos is among the many artists around the world using the power of culture to inspire hope and solidarity during the pandemic. Photo: UNHCR/Allana Ferreira

Inclusive solutions

woman models a transparent face mask designed to help the hard of hearing

Wendy Schellemans, an education assistant at the Royal Woluwe Institute in Brussels, models a transparent face mask designed to help the hard of hearing. The United Nations and partners are working to ensure that responses to COVID-19 leave no one behind. Photo courtesy of Royal Woluwe Institute

Humanity at its best

woman in protective gear sews face masks

Maryna, a community worker at the Arts Centre for Children and Youth in Chasiv Yar village, Ukraine, makes face masks on a sewing machine donated by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and civil society partner, Proliska. She is among the many people around the world who are voluntarily addressing the shortage of masks on the market. Photo: UNHCR/Artem Hetman

Keep future leaders learning

A mother helps her daughter Ange, 8, take classes on television at home in Man, Côte d'Ivoire. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, caregivers and educators have responded in stride and have been instrumental in finding ways to keep children learning. In Côte d'Ivoire, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) partnered with the Ministry of Education on a ‘school at home’ initiative, which includes taping lessons to be aired on national TV and radio. Ange says: “I like to study at home. My mum is a teacher and helps me a lot. Of course, I miss my friends, but I can sleep a bit longer in the morning. Later I want to become a lawyer or judge." Photo: UNICEF/UNI320749

Global solidarity

People in Nigeria’s Lagos State simulate sneezing into their elbows during a coronavirus prevention campaign. Many African countries do not have strong health care systems. “Global solidarity with Africa is an imperative – now and for recovering better,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “Ending the pandemic in Africa is essential for ending it across the world.” Photo: UNICEF Nigeria/2020/Ojo

A new way of working

Henri Abued Manzano, a tour guide at the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Vienna, speaks from his apartment. COVID-19 upended the way people work, but they can be creative while in quarantine. “We quickly decided that if visitors can’t come to us, we will have to come to them,” says Johanna Kleinert, Chief of the UNIS Visitors Service in Vienna. Photo courtesy of Kevin Kühn

Life goes on

Hundreds of millions of babies are expected to be born during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fionn, son of Chloe O'Doherty and her husband Patrick, is among them. The couple says: “It's all over. We did it. Brought life into the world at a time when everything is so uncertain. The relief and love are palpable. Nothing else matters.” Photo: UNICEF/UNI321984/Bopape

Putting meals on the table

Sudanese refugee Halima, in Tripoli, Libya, says food assistance is making her life better. COVID-19 is exacerbating the existing hunger crisis. Globally, 6 million more people could be pushed into extreme poverty unless the international community acts now. United Nations aid agencies are appealing for more funding to reach vulnerable populations. Photo: UNHCR

Supporting the frontlines

woman handing down box from airplane to WFP employee

The United Nations Air Service, run by the World Food Programme (WFP), distributes protective gear donated by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Group, in Somalia. The United Nations is using its supply chain capacity to rapidly move badly needed personal protective equipment, such as medical masks, gloves, gowns and face-shields to the frontline of the battle against COVID-19. Photo: WFP/Jama Hassan

S7-Episode 2: Bringing Health to the World

“You see, we're not doing this work to make ourselves feel better. That sort of conventional notion of what a do-gooder is. We're doing this work because we are totally convinced that it's not necessary in today's wealthy world for so many people to be experiencing discomfort, for so many people to be experiencing hardship, for so many people to have their lives and their livelihoods imperiled.”

Dr. David Nabarro has dedicated his life to global health. After a long career that’s taken him from the horrors of war torn Iraq, to the devastating aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, he is still spurred to action by the tremendous inequalities in global access to medical care.

“The thing that keeps me awake most at night is the rampant inequities in our world…We see an awful lot of needless suffering.”

:: David Nabarro interviewed by Melissa Fleming

Ballet Manguinhos resumes performing after a COVID-19 hiatus with “Woman: Power and Resistance”. Photo courtesy Ana Silva/Ballet Manguinhos

Brazilian ballet pirouettes during pandemic

Ballet Manguinhos, named for its favela in Rio de Janeiro, returns to the stage after a long absence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It counts 250 children and teenagers from the favela as its performers. The ballet group provides social support in a community where poverty, hunger and teen pregnancy are constant issues.

Nazira Inoyatova is a radio host and the creative/programme director at Avtoradio FM 102.0 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Photo courtesy Azamat Abbasov

Radio journalist gives the facts on COVID-19 in Uzbekistan

The pandemic has put many people to the test, and journalists are no exception. Coronavirus has waged war not only against people's lives and well-being but has also spawned countless hoaxes and scientific falsehoods.

COMMENTS

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