essay on time management in covid 19

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

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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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Productivity Center

9 Ways to Manage Your Time During a Pandemic

Albert Costill

Time Management

Wednesday, May 27th, 2020

As you are entirely aware, pandemics, such as COVID-19, can completely turn your world upside down. What’s more, the uncertainty and break in normalcy can wreck all of the strides you made in managing your time . Here are nine ways to manage your time during a pandemic.

Thankfully, you can get back on track. It’s not going to happen overnight. But, with a little trial and error, as well as patience, you can once again master the art of time management. And, here are nine ways to help you get there.

1. Prioritize your health and well-being with mico-practices.

Right now, the most important thing for you to do is to take care of your health and well-being . After all, how can you stay focused and energized when you’re not feeling 100% physically, emotionally, and mentally?

I don’t want to bore you with the same advice you’ve been told a million times. Exercise. Eat healthily. Get plenty of sleep. And, if you need to talk to some, please reach out to someone who trusts or a professional mental health professional.

All of the above are known as “macro-practices.” But, research has found that just as effective are “micro-practices.”

These are practices that only take a few seconds or minutes to do. They can also be anchored to existing activities. And, they’ve been found to promote calmness and relaxation. For instance, when washing your hands, conduct a self-wellness check-in. Another example would be doing breathing exercises when taking a break from work or writing in a gratitude journal during your evening routine.

2. What’s the best way to structure your day?

When a pandemic strikes, it’s going to disrupt our routines . Even if you were already working from home, COVID-19, as an example, you now have to manage your time homeschooling your kids or sharing a workplace with your spouse or roommate.

In short, while you should have a broad plan on how you’re going to spend your days, it also shouldn’t be too rigid that you don’t have any wiggle room. Remember, during uncertain times, things can change daily. And, since this is already a stressful time, you don’t want to add the pressure of following a strict schedule.

So, how can you achieve this? To be honest, that depends on what exactly is going on in your life. For instance, you may have to be a “teacher” for your kids between 9 am and 11 am. Or, maybe your significant other has a virtual meeting at 1 pm that forces you to hang out in the backyard for its duration.

If you’re in these types of situations, then you need to construct your schedule around them. Perhaps block time for uninterrupted work before you have to homeschool your children. If you have an invite at the same time as your better half, consider an alternative time.

Most importantly, try to work during your personal production peaks . During lulls, leave your calendar open. And forgive yourself if your day didn’t go exactly as planned. Despite what it may seem like, tomorrow is a new beginning to get back on track.

3. Designate a workplace.

A calm, clean, and dedicated workspace is essential. No matter how much you plan or motivated you are, it’s impossible to stay focused when you’re sitting on the couch with the TV on and your family chatting in the background. Moreover, how can you remain productive when you have a messy desk that’s stealing your attention from your work?

In a perfect world, you would have your own home office where you could shut the door and work in silence. But, that’s not possible for everyone . At the least, try to find a quiet area in your home and set up shop there. Make sure that you have everything you need to get your work done. And, make sure that you keep it clean and clutter-free.

Don’t be afraid to experiment or get creative. Is there a closet that you could place a desk in? Could you purchase a small folding table and move it around as needed? Would a wall unit work? Is there a shed or garage that could be converted into a home office?

4. Pay attention to fragmented time.

What exactly is fragmented time? Well, H.V. MacArthur describes this as occurs those “small pockets of 15 to 30-minute blocks of time that exist between scheduled meetings.” I call these time buffers. But, whatever terminology you want to use, the concept is the same.

Having gaps in your schedule gives you a chance to breathe and take a break . It can even be used to help you prepare for your next meeting or to-do-list. And, it ensures that if that Zoom call went into overtime, you aren’t to run late into your next appointment.

Despite these benefits, “most of us are very passive with our calendars,” writes MacArthur. “Clockwise saw a 17% increase in the amount of fragmented time per person per week (blocks of time less than 2 hours) and a 1.27-hour (8%) decrease in the amount of focus time per person per week (blocks of time longer than 2 hours).”

The reason? “People tend to schedule us for meetings based on what works for them and the open space they spot in our calendars,” MacArthur states. “But that may leave you very little time to actually get work done and the fragmented time ends up sucked up in busy but unproductive activities.”

The solution? Bome more “intentional about the ratio of fragmented to focused time you allow in your schedule.”

5. Find a healthier balance with your screens.

Before the coronavirus, we were already dependent on our gadgets. In fact, it’s been found that we tap, click, and swipe our phones a whopping 2,617 times a day. I can’t imagine what that’s up to now, what with the latest news updates, virtual activities , and staying connected to your work.

Sure. It’s of the utmost importance to remain informed and in-touch. But, it can also be distracting. Even worse, being glued to your screen for too long can be exhausting.

How can you create a healthier relationship with your phone? Well, Catherine Price, author of How To Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan To Take Back Your Life, suggests trying “to gently get into the habit of cultivating moment-to-moment awareness.” It gives you a chance to see see how you feel while on your screens.

“I also recommend reducing ‘ease of access,’” adds Price. “If you’ve got that device in your pocket, it’s very easy to access every news app in the universe.” A quick fix would be to “create a charging station for your phone somewhere nearby, but not within arm’s reach.”

“If you’re having issues with compulsively checking before bed, maybe get your phone out of your bedroom and put a book on your bedside table instead,” states Price. “Put some kind of craft project or a puzzle out on your table so that when you do have a down moment, you have some option that’s easy to get to that’s not your phone.”

Price also recommends being more selective with your apps. That means only keeping those that are beneficial and uninstalling those that aren’t. You may also want to remove social media apps fro your Home screen. And, instead of imposing more things on yourself, reduce the amount of Zoom meeting or conference calls you have on your schedule.

6. Put first things first in your calendar.

“Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities,” Stephen Covey famously wrote. “It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.”

In other words, identify your priorities and add them to your calendar. If not, something of less importance will take precedence. Best of all, because you should only a handful of priorities, you can maintain a healthy balance of structure and malleability.

7. Don’t put yourself in calendar debt.

“Lots of people spend time coming up with budgets so they can improve their finances,” writes Kayla Sloan in another Calendar article . “Then they spend additional time tracking their finances and comparing everything to their budget. After that, they may tweak one or the other, and sometimes both, as they balance their spending and income.”

“Sticking to a budget and doing financial planning goes a long way toward reaching your money goals,” adds Kayla. However, “have you ever thought about time in a similar way?” After all, “you can always make more money.”

But, as for time? Well, “once spent, you can’t make more“ of it. “That’s why you should budget your time like you budget money,” suggests Kayla.

Creating a budget for the first time may seem overwhelming. In reality, though, it’s not all that complicated. The key is to know exactly how you want to spend your most valuable asset.

To help you get started, here are some recommendations from Kayla:

Find and use a calendar app .
Put your most important tasks in a list.
Create healthy routines like planning ahead and exercise.
Block out time for tasks like email.
Determine what can be automated, delegated, and eliminated from your schedule.
Learn shortcuts, such as keyboard shortcuts.
Schedule downtime.
Keep motivated by setting personal and work goals.

And, as Dave Ramsey explains, when you have a time budget, you gain a sense of traction. As a result, you’ll be more efficient and won’t waste your time on activities that leave you feeling drained.

8. Keep your values in sight.

Think of your values as a compass. Even if you’ve hiked in the same forest hundreds of times, it’s easy to turn yourself around and get lost. Thankfully, you have your trusty compass to guide you out of the woods safely.

When you know the value of your work, by alining it with your mission and values, it’s much easier to stay on track — especially during these unprecedented times. Instead of wasting your time on meaningless activities, you’re only focusing on the things that are bringing you closer to your goals.

9. Look after your peeps.

In this day in age, I highly doubt that you’re working entirely by yourself. I mean, even freelancers and solopreneurs may outsource tasks to others.

Regardless of how many people you’re collaborating with, it’s imperative that you check-in on them. We’re living in strange times right now. And, it’s undoubtedly affecting or mental health, which in turn will impact our performance.

Even just saying “hi” to others can make them feel connected and less isolated. More importantly, you can also make sure that they’re aware of their purpose and help them address any possible issues.

For example, if they’re struggling with time management, make sure that they’re only focusing on their top priorities. If not, and they’re wasting time on something else, then that can bottleneck your own productivity.

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My name is Albert Costill and I'm a content marketer at Calendar. If I can help people become more productive in my journey, even better. If you ever have a question about your Calendar or how you can use it - - don't hesitate to reach out. I'm a Calendar Pro.

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The complexity of managing COVID-19: How important is good governance?

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Alaka m. basu , amb alaka m. basu professor, department of global development - cornell university, senior fellow - united nations foundation kaushik basu , and kaushik basu nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development @kaushikcbasu jose maria u. tapia jmut jose maria u. tapia student - cornell university.

November 17, 2020

13 min read

This essay is part of “ Reimagining the global economy: Building back better in a post-COVID-19 world ,” a collection of 12 essays presenting new ideas to guide policies and shape debates in a post-COVID-19 world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of public health systems worldwide, casting a shadow that we could not have imagined even a year ago. As the fog of confusion lifts and we begin to understand the rudiments of how the virus behaves, the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight. The number of cases and the deaths continue to rise. The latter breached the 1 million mark a few weeks ago and it looks likely now that, in terms of severity, this pandemic will surpass the Asian Flu of 1957-58 and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-69.

Moreover, a parallel problem may well exceed the direct death toll from the virus. We are referring to the growing economic crises globally, and the prospect that these may hit emerging economies especially hard.

The economic fall-out is not entirely the direct outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic but a result of how we have responded to it—what measures governments took and how ordinary people, workers, and firms reacted to the crisis. The government activism to contain the virus that we saw this time exceeds that in previous such crises, which may have dampened the spread of the COVID-19 but has extracted a toll from the economy.

This essay takes stock of the policies adopted by governments in emerging economies, and what effect these governance strategies may have had, and then speculates about what the future is likely to look like and what we may do here on.

Nations that build walls to keep out goods, people and talent will get out-competed by other nations in the product market.

It is becoming clear that the scramble among several emerging economies to imitate and outdo European and North American countries was a mistake. We get a glimpse of this by considering two nations continents apart, the economies of which have been among the hardest hit in the world, namely, Peru and India. During the second quarter of 2020, Peru saw an annual growth of -30.2 percent and India -23.9 percent. From the global Q2 data that have emerged thus far, Peru and India are among the four slowest growing economies in the world. Along with U.K and Tunisia these are the only nations that lost more than 20 percent of their GDP. 1

COVID-19-related mortality statistics, and, in particular, the Crude Mortality Rate (CMR), however imperfect, are the most telling indicator of the comparative scale of the pandemic in different countries. At first glance, from the end of October 2020, Peru, with 1039 COVID-19 deaths per million population looks bad by any standard and much worse than India with 88. Peru’s CMR is currently among the highest reported globally.

However, both Peru and India need to be placed in regional perspective. For reasons that are likely to do with the history of past diseases, there are striking regional differences in the lethality of the virus (Figure 11.1). South America is worse hit than any other world region, and Asia and Africa seem to have got it relatively lightly, in contrast to Europe and America. The stark regional difference cries out for more epidemiological analysis. But even as we await that, these are differences that cannot be ignored.

To understand the effect of policy interventions, it is therefore important to look at how these countries fare within their own regions, which have had similar histories of illnesses and viruses (Figure 11.2). Both Peru and India do much worse than the neighbors with whom they largely share their social, economic, ecological and demographic features. Peru’s COVID-19 mortality rate per million population, or CMR, of 1039 is ahead of the second highest, Brazil at 749, and almost twice that of Argentina at 679.

Similarly, India at 88 compares well with Europe and the U.S., as does virtually all of Asia and Africa, but is doing much worse than its neighbors, with the second worst country in the region, Afghanistan, experiencing less than half the death rate of India.

The official Indian statement that up to 78,000 deaths 2 were averted by the lockdown has been criticized 3 for its assumptions. A more reasonable exercise is to estimate the excess deaths experienced by a country that breaks away from the pattern of its regional neighbors. So, for example, if India had experienced Afghanistan’s COVID-19 mortality rate, it would by now have had 54,112 deaths. And if it had the rate reported by Bangladesh, it would have had 49,950 deaths from COVID-19 today. In other words, more than half its current toll of some 122,099 COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided if it had experienced the same virus hit as its neighbors.

What might explain this outlier experience of COVID-19 CMRs and economic downslide in India and Peru? If the regional background conditions are broadly similar, one is left to ask if it is in fact the policy response that differed markedly and might account for these relatively poor outcomes.

Peru and India have performed poorly in terms of GDP growth rate in Q2 2020 among the countries displayed in Table 2, and given that both these countries are often treated as case studies of strong governance, this draws attention to the fact that there may be a dissonance between strong governance and good governance.

The turnaround for India has been especially surprising, given that until a few years ago it was among the three fastest growing economies in the world. The slowdown began in 2016, though the sharp downturn, sharper than virtually all other countries, occurred after the lockdown.

On the COVID-19 policy front, both India and Peru have become known for what the Oxford University’s COVID Policy Tracker 4 calls the “stringency” of the government’s response to the epidemic. At 8 pm on March 24, 2020, the Indian government announced, with four hours’ notice, a complete nationwide shutdown. Virtually all movement outside the perimeter of one’s home was officially sought to be brought to a standstill. Naturally, as described in several papers, such as that of Ray and Subramanian, 5 this meant that most economic life also came to a sudden standstill, which in turn meant that hundreds of millions of workers in the informal, as well as more marginally formal sectors, lost their livelihoods.

In addition, tens of millions of these workers, being migrant workers in places far-flung from their original homes, also lost their temporary homes and their savings with these lost livelihoods, so that the only safe space that beckoned them was their place of origin in small towns and villages often hundreds of miles away from their places of work.

After a few weeks of precarious living in their migrant destinations, they set off, on foot since trains and buses had been stopped, for these towns and villages, creating a “lockdown and scatter” that spread the virus from the city to the town and the town to the village. Indeed, “lockdown” is a bit of a misnomer for what happened in India, since over 20 million people did exactly the opposite of what one does in a lockdown. Thus India had a strange combination of lockdown some and scatter the rest, like in no other country. They spilled out and scattered in ways they would otherwise not do. It is not surprising that the infection, which was marginally present in rural areas (23 percent in April), now makes up some 54 percent of all cases in India. 6

In Peru too, the lockdown was sudden, nationwide, long drawn out and stringent. 7 Jobs were lost, financial aid was difficult to disburse, migrant workers were forced to return home, and the virus has now spread to all parts of the country with death rates from it surpassing almost every other part of the world.

As an aside, to think about ways of implementing lockdowns that are less stringent and geographically as well as functionally less total, an example from yet another continent is instructive. Ethiopia, with a COVID-19 death rate of 13 per million population seems to have bettered the already relatively low African rate of 31 in Table 1. 8

We hope that human beings will emerge from this crisis more aware of the problems of sustainability.

The way forward

We next move from the immediate crisis to the medium term. Where is the world headed and how should we deal with the new world? Arguably, that two sectors that will emerge larger and stronger in the post-pandemic world are: digital technology and outsourcing, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

The last 9 months of the pandemic have been a huge training ground for people in the use of digital technology—Zoom, WebEx, digital finance, and many others. This learning-by-doing exercise is likely to give a big boost to outsourcing, which has the potential to help countries like India, the Philippines, and South Africa.

Globalization may see a short-run retreat but, we believe, it will come back with a vengeance. Nations that build walls to keep out goods, people and talent will get out-competed by other nations in the product market. This realization will make most countries reverse their knee-jerk anti-globalization; and the ones that do not will cease to be important global players. Either way, globalization will be back on track and with a much greater amount of outsourcing.

To return, more critically this time, to our earlier aside on Ethiopia, its historical and contemporary record on tampering with internet connectivity 9 in an attempt to muzzle inter-ethnic tensions and political dissent will not serve it well in such a post-pandemic scenario. This is a useful reminder for all emerging market economies.

We hope that human beings will emerge from this crisis more aware of the problems of sustainability. This could divert some demand from luxury goods to better health, and what is best described as “creative consumption”: art, music, and culture. 10 The former will mean much larger healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors.

But to take advantage of these new opportunities, nations will need to navigate the current predicament so that they have a viable economy once the pandemic passes. Thus it is important to be able to control the pandemic while keeping the economy open. There is some emerging literature 11 on this, but much more is needed. This is a governance challenge of a kind rarely faced, because the pandemic has disrupted normal markets and there is need, at least in the short run, for governments to step in to fill the caveat.

Emerging economies will have to devise novel governance strategies for doing this double duty of tamping down on new infections without strident controls on economic behavior and without blindly imitating Europe and America.

Here is an example. One interesting opportunity amidst this chaos is to tap into the “resource” of those who have already had COVID-19 and are immune, even if only in the short-term—we still have no definitive evidence on the length of acquired immunity. These people can be offered a high salary to work in sectors that require physical interaction with others. This will help keep supply chains unbroken. Normally, the market would have on its own caused such a salary increase but in this case, the main benefit of marshaling this labor force is on the aggregate economy and GDP and therefore is a classic case of positive externality, which the free market does not adequately reward. It is more a challenge of governance. As with most economic policy, this will need careful research and design before being implemented. We have to be aware that a policy like this will come with its risk of bribery and corruption. There is also the moral hazard challenge of poor people choosing to get COVID-19 in order to qualify for these special jobs. Safeguards will be needed against these risks. But we believe that any government that succeeds in implementing an intelligently-designed intervention to draw on this huge, under-utilized resource can have a big, positive impact on the economy 12 .

This is just one idea. We must innovate in different ways to survive the crisis and then have the ability to navigate the new world that will emerge, hopefully in the not too distant future.

Crisis Management in the COVID-19 Era

Explore more.

How I Teach

N o business is immune from crises—whether facing external forces such as the current health pandemic or situations of an organization’s own making. Yet, businesses are often measured by their responses to such incidents—from customers, investors, the media, or the public.

In this audio interview, Neeley School of Business Professor Mary Waller takes a deep dive into her MBA course on crisis management, a topic she says has struggled as a discipline despite its obvious importance. The tides have changed, however, with the current global impact of the pandemic. Hear her discuss her holistic approach to teaching crisis management and how the discipline—and her way of teaching—is evolving.

About This Podcast

How I Teach is an audio series that features conversations with educators who break down complex topics and explain their approach to teaching them. We pair the audio interviews with a full transcript as well as recommended readings to help you navigate classroom discussions on tough subjects.

*Audio Music: www.bensound.com

Listen to or read the full transcript of the audio interview to learn:

The rewards and challenges of teaching crisis management [3:06]

Why it’s important to introduce this subject matter to undergraduates as well as MBAs [5:31]

The difference between crisis management and disaster management [7:26]

How the Neeley School adjusted to the abrupt move to online learning, and what the fall strategy might look like [9:23]

What materials Waller uses in her crisis management course (and why), how she structures her course, and what she hopes students will learn by the end of class [12:21]

How Waller approached her asynchronous class—including using videos to walk through her slides each week [18:46]

How Waller used synchronous sessions to successfully run her end-of-course simulation [20:47]

What course planning looks like amid continued uncertainty [23:30]

Mark Rennella: Welcome to Harvard Business Publishing’s How I Teach podcast, where educators share their insights and approaches on teaching important business topics. I am your host Mark Rennella. Now that we’re deep into the COVID-19 era, we’ll also be including some questions that look into how this pandemic has—or hasn’t—had an impact on business instructors, their courses, and the institutions where they teach.

Today’s topic is crisis management, a skill that has historically been given relatively little attention in management training. But in the midst of our current outbreak of seismic cultural, political, and health predicaments, the ability for organizations to deal with crises will be increasingly sought-after.

It’s obvious that we need to cultivate strong leadership that has the capability to manage during these moments. What’s the best way to train leaders for the emerging uncertainties that lie ahead? This training relates both to major problems that originate externally from an organization (generally known as “disaster management”) and those that originate from within (which falls under “crisis management”). Each requires sophisticated training to supply executives with the tools and the perspective to deal with decision-making under significant pressures. Today, our focus is crisis management.

I’m delighted to have as a guest today Professor Mary Waller, who’s M.J. Neeley Professor of Management at the Neeley School of Business TCU in Fort Worth, Texas. She’s taught courses on crisis management, managing team dynamics, organizational behavior, introduction to management, and organizational theory.

Mary, thanks so much for your time and sharing your insights with our listeners.

Mary Waller: My pleasure to be here.

Rennella: Great. Well, let’s start with you. Could you tell us about your background and especially how it led up to your interest in team dynamics and crisis management?

Waller: Sure. I was a late bloomer coming to academics. I spent about a decade in industry. I started out working in oil and gas as a petroleum land man. I was going to school at night. I got a Master of Science degree in information systems. I moved from oil and gas to software development management. And during that decade working in oil and gas and software development, it seemed like I was always working in a team of people working under time pressure, working in some kind of crisis situation, usually of the organization’s own making. So, after that decade, when I decided to go back to school and get a Ph.D., it seems like a natural progression to study team dynamics in critical situations. So that’s how that all transpired.

And then at the University of Texas at Austin, where I got my Ph.D., I met Bob Helmreich , who did tremendous work in aviation psychology. I ended up doing my dissertation research with aviation crews and a full motion flight simulator. So, a lot of my research then was done looking at flight crews, nuclear power plant control room crews, underground mine rescue teams, as well as teams like emergency department trauma teams and those types of teams as they deal with critical situations.

Rennella: That’s a fascinating topic. It really is so interesting how you were just digging deeper toward there through your whole career.

Waller: Pretty much a one-trick pony.

Rennella: Well, it’s an important trick. So, getting back to crisis management, what do you like teaching about crisis management? What are its rewards and challenges in the classroom?

Waller: I think one of the big challenges is that crisis management as a topic rarely appears in management or organization behavior textbooks for whatever reason. So, it’s really struggled as a discipline, as a topic, to make its way into mainstream management and find its place in terms of legitimate topics in business schools. That might change, I think, with the pandemic.

But the great thing about teaching crisis management, I think, is that it’s a very practical application of a lot of our organizational behavior and organization theory ideas and principles in a particular domain. So, we can take pieces of organizational behavior and pieces of organization theory and put them in this domain and really see them work in a particular context. That’s really exciting and really gives students, particularly more advanced students—I love teaching crisis management with students who already have some practical experience in organizations—a way to see, “Oh, gosh, the stuff that we talk about really does actually work.” That’s pretty exciting.

Rennella: Could you see it as part of any discipline? I did a previous podcast talking about cybersecurity, and the professor brought up the case that you can apply cybersecurity to every part of the organization. Is that the same here?

Waller: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are individual responses to a crisis situation and there are team-level responses. We know, for instance, contagion happens at the team level. We know that there are team-level responses to crisis situations, and we certainly know that there are organizational-level responses to crisis situations, and they all impact each other. They all fit together like pieces to a puzzle.

Rennella: And it’s not as if a crisis won’t happen, right? They always do. It’s interesting how you’re saying it should be in your intro course. You have a section on crisis management, because that’s just part of what organizations deal with.

Waller: Exactly. In the past, there have been these stances regarding crisis management. First of all, lower level students don’t need to know about crisis management because that’s something that the C-suite and the board are going to deal with, and we don’t need to bother undergraduate students with this type of stuff. Well, you know, undergraduate students do need to know that this kind of stuff is going on, because it’s certainly going to impact them. Or, crisis management is something that we’re going to farm out to a consultant. So, we really don’t need to be taking up class time with something like crisis management when that’s something that a PR firm is going to deal with for us. We know that’s an inadequate response. These types of responses just don’t hold water anymore.

Rennella: Is there anything you’re learning about crisis management that you didn’t see as clearly before our current health crisis?

Waller: Well, that a lot more people are interested in it now, just based on the number of phone calls and emails I’ve been getting recently. I think a lot more organizations are interested in business continuity now, which is probably a really good thing. They probably don’t have the bandwidth right now to devote a lot of time and energy to it right now. But I think they’re saying, "when we do have the bandwidth, maybe in six months, maybe in a year, we’ve got to be ready for the next one." And that’s a good thing.

Rennella: You brought up in a previous communication with me to be cognizant of the difference between crisis management and disaster management. Could you bring up the salient differences that people should know about?

Waller: I developed my course when I worked at The Schulich School of Business at York University. York has a wonderful program in disaster management outside the business school. The people in the disaster management program are the ones who really helped me develop an understanding of the difference between crisis management as it has existed in the management department in the business school and disaster management, because they really did have different training and it is a different discipline. It involves working with public institutions. It involves crises like a pandemic or like a natural disaster that are much longer lived than a lot of the crises that business organizations typically deal with. They deal with crises that are not self-inflicted, typically. They deal with crises that are universally affecting a wide range of organizations simultaneously so you’re all in the same boat. You’re competing for the same resources during the crisis. And those are qualitatively different situations than the crises that organizations deal with individually, like a product recall, like executive malfeasances, like the typical crises that we want our graduates who will find themselves in the C-suite or near C-suite situations to be ready to deal with.

Rennella: Just thinking about your own immediate environment, I’m curious about how your colleagues or your school or your department are dealing with this crisis right now. Any interesting things going on?

Waller: The organization as a whole, the university, just like every other university, is engaging in their organizational business continuity plans and trying to figure out, "OK, what’s the best strategy to employ for the fall semester and ongoing?" That’s unfolding day by day, trying to look at resources and figure out what the best plan is for everyone. But in addition to that, I think what I really appreciate about the Neely School is that, like everybody else, we’ve moved to having virtual department meetings, virtual faculty staff meetings where you have 100 people online at the same time. And you virtually raise your hand and you miss seeing people and communicating face-to-face and everything. But what I really appreciate is the Neeley School taking the extra step and really making an effort to do things like having virtual bingo games and carving out a little bit of time and effort and energy to have virtual time together that is just fun time. You know, we’re not talking about work. We’re going to meet, and we’re just going to be silly together. We’re just going to have fun together, because we just need some time together to blow off some steam. And that has been so nice.

Rennella: You might want to call that human continuity in this crisis situation.

Waller: Exactly. And at the Neeley School we do such a good job of celebrating with each other. It’s really part of their culture.

Rennella: Well, that’s unanticipated, but now that you mentioned, it seems to be an extremely important part of navigating a big crisis like this, you know, keeping our human connections. So, it reminds me of that apocryphal quote from Winston Churchill when they asked him, "Why are you funding the arts right now during WWII?" And he said, "Well, what are we fighting for, if not for this?"

Waller: Exactly. We have to be able to keep our culture intact, and our culture is high touch. We take such pride in knowing our students and having a personal, professional relationship with our students. And it’s hard to do that online. And we care deeply about each other. It’s hard to do that, electronically, but we’re doing our best.

Rennella: Getting back to the teaching of crisis management, I’m just wondering if you could give us a general description of the course you teach; maybe it’s central focuses and what students should know by the end of it?

Waller: I love the article by Pearson and Clair. I really let that guide me.

Rennella: What’s the title of that?

Waller: [Reframing] Crisis Management by Pearson and Clair. They had this wonderful model in that article, and we walk through that model from left to right during the progression of the course. It really starts out looking at the orientation of top management in the organization and the cognition of the top management as it pertains to crisis management and walks through to the point that a crisis actually occurs. Then looking at the aftermath of that event in terms of how teams might respond, how individuals might respond, and then the outcome.

So, we talk about that progress at every stage of the game, but really how I structure the course is talking about crisis management, like I said before, at the individual level, the team level, and the organization level. Then we put the pieces together. What I really want students to be able to do at the end of the course is to go into a crisis situation and be able to identify the type of crisis that they’re in and let the type of crisis guide them in terms of the strategic actions they should take. Then, we really key in on situational crisis communication theory in terms of the type of crisis communication they should engage in. So those two things: the crisis type (and we really rely on Lerbinger’s identification of crisis type and strategic actions that line up with crisis type), and then Tim Coombs’ situational crisis communication theory in terms of the strategic communication that they should be engaging in, and then, which stakeholders at which times should they be talking to.

Rennella: I imagine that something you might have to think about is to make sure that the students really assess a particular situation thoroughly and not come to it with a preconceived formula or framework beforehand. Do you find that that’s an issue?

Waller: Absolutely. And so, if I put some students in a situation of, "OK, imagine you’re the top management team of this organization. This, this, and this has happened and then you have this crisis coming at you. How would you respond?" Before they learn about crisis types and strategic actions, and how the public is likely to respond—we talk a lot about attribution theory—they give me one set of answers. And then after they learn about the strategic responses, attribution theory, how the public is likely to see certain actions, and we look at lots and lots and lots of real examples. The sad thing is that I have tons of real examples that I can bring into the class and show them, "Here’s what the organization did in this situation and here’s how the public responded. Why do you think this happened?" And then I can bump it against the theory, and I can show them, "Here’s what the theory said would happen. Here's what actually happened. Look. The theory actually works, right?"

I have tons of examples to show that yeah, this stuff really does work. Then, at the end of the course, we do a real-time crisis management simulation that lets them try it out on their own. And they usually do pretty well.

Rennella: That’s great. And just wondering, from all these great discussions and case situations you bring up, do you have one or two memorable moments in class, a super "aha" moment that the class just loved, or a surprise that occurred?

Waller: The most exciting things usually happen during that crisis management simulation at the end. They’re usually nervous. They don’t know what the crisis is going to be. They’ve gotten information about the organization that they’re managing—they play the role of the top management team. They get a lot of background information about the organization, and then they meet. They know that there’s going to be a crisis. The crisis unfolds. They talk about, "OK, what crisis type is this? What should we be doing?" They engage in those actions, and they’re getting real time emails and tweets from angry investors and the press wants to know stuff and customers want to know stuff. They’re responding to these people, and at the end of the simulation, they usually gasp for air and they say it’s stressful.

But the greatest thing is, at the end of the simulation, they lean back and high five each other. They’re relieved but they’re proud of themselves that, "We really did learn something here and we have a new capability that we didn’t have eight weeks ago." I think that’s a big revelation. That makes it all worth it.

Rennella: Yeah, I can’t imagine a more satisfying end for a teacher. For them to see all their proverbial light bulbs going on at the end of that exercise.

Waller: Exactly.

Rennella: You mentioned as well in our previous communication that your course became asynchronous online. I’m just wondering, are there any big takeaways for you about either the differences between teaching in class and online in an asynchronous manner or maybe some things you’ve learned about teaching asynchronously that you would bring to this the next time?

Waller: I made the choice to go asynchronous because of the situation that my students were in. They had all these demands on them. I wanted to make the course as flexible as possible for them. I did a module a week. I had my slides, and I did a video a week—a video voice-over of my slides—one a week, so they could watch that any time during the week that they wanted to. They had assignments with deadlines associated with them each week. So, they had to get that done each week, but anytime they wanted to watch the video, they could. If they were homeschooling and they wanted to watch the video at midnight, they could. If they want to watch it at six in the morning, they could. I really tried to minimize the amount of teamwork stuff that I did. Usually, when we meet face to face, I have team exercises that I do in class, and it really is a high-touch class with a lot of interaction. I had to find a way to work around that. But I really wanted to make it as flexible as I could for them in their situation right now. I wish that I had worked in a little more discussion board stuff in there for them, but I’m not sure they would have taken advantage of it. I did have one open discussion period, and nobody took advantage of it. I didn’t know quite how to interpret that, but they just didn’t need it. Their plates were so full.

Rennella: You mentioned how great it was to see them finish the simulation. So, I imagine they didn’t do that this semester. Did you have a substitute for that?

Waller: No, the simulation was the one thing that we did synchronously. We did it one team at a time, and we did it with Zoom. So, they did two things synchronously. They met as a team to discuss their crisis management plan. Each team put together a plan for this fictitious organization that they played the top management team for that role. Then the next week, we did the crisis management simulation. It was about 90 minutes long. We met via Zoom, and I watched them on Zoom go through the crisis management simulation. I recorded them as they went through the crisis management simulation so I could watch their simulation later and provide them debrief feedback. The next week, every team got some debrief feedback on that. And actually, I took all the text that they generated. All the emails that they generated as a team that went back to those characters that were sending them emails during the simulation. I took all the text that each team generated, and I fed it through linguistic inquiry and word count to measure the emotional tone of what the team generated. I did a little quantitative analysis to compare the team’s emotional tone, and then showed that to them. It was interesting because it really did line up with the strategies that the teams chose.

Rennella: Have they generally been appreciative of this asynchronous option?

Waller: Yeah; I asked them afterwards if they wished that we had done something more synchronously, and a few of them said, "Well, maybe once at the beginning, but otherwise it was fine." And that they did really appreciate having the flexibility. The flexibility was really, really nice.

Rennella: And was there any use of the current pandemic in your class?

Waller: You know, I did refer to it several times, but it was sort of like trying to hit a moving target. In terms of how the pandemic was being managed, it was a moving target. Even if I had wanted to use it as an example, it would have been difficult.

Rennella: Any anticipation of how you’re going to teach this the next time now that you’ve gone through this change? Of course, there’s all sorts of unknown factors, like are you going to have a blended class? Will you see these people? But I’m just wondering about any thoughts right now about how you might change how you’ve taught this compared to say, two, three years ago?

Waller: If we go to blended, I would start out with face-to-face first, and then maybe move to asynchronous with some kind of chat function or something like that, maybe. But the asynchronous worked pretty well, to tell you the truth. Everything worked pretty well. I couldn’t be happier, really, with the output of the students. Their crisis management plans were right on target. Their performance in the crisis management simulation was really good. And I’m comparing them with the face-to-face classes that I’ve taught in the past. And I really don’t have any regrets about that.

Rennella: It’s interesting, other professors I’ve talked to about other disciplines, they often say, "I use stuff in the news to bring into class so I can get people to start talking, or I’ll bring in a YouTube video that was made last month about XYZ, so they can get started talking." So that’s why I was thinking, "Oh, you’ve got this pandemic. Maybe it’s a disaster and not so much a crisis, but there’s some things to learn from that." But I guess it, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, I’m thinking it’s too big and sprawling to use right now?

Waller: It’s almost like COVID overload. It’s just too much. Plus, in my course—and I made this clear in the very first video, I think, that I made for the course—I focus mainly on event-based crises. So, we’re focusing mainly on crises like management misconduct or product recalls or things like that. Sort of traditional, if you can think of them that way, organizational crises that they’re likely to see. Even crises like hacking. Where there’s been some kind of attack against the organization. But the widespread disaster-type thing is really a different animal that really requires a focus on business continuity. I would love to teach business continuity, but I need another eight weeks to do that.

Rennella: I’m just thinking, what are the fundamentals of crisis management that never change? Each crisis has its own fingerprint, pretty much. But as far as my light acquaintance with the literature, it seems that there are tried and true ways to approach a lot of these. I’m just wondering, what are, in general, some of the things that don’t change in crisis management?

Waller: You know, a lot of people have a lot of different opinions about that. And that’s part of the problem with crisis management. Everyone has their own special sauce, their own special recipe. And that makes it difficult for organizations that reach out. There are a lot of purveyors of the fundamentals of crisis management.

Rennella: Like innovation in a way. Innovation has a million flavors, and people are selling lots of different kinds of innovation.

Waller: Exactly. In my course, like I said, being able to recognize the crisis type, the fundamentals of the type of crisis you’re dealing with and being able to let that crisis type drive a set of action strategies that you take. And those action strategies have actual empirical research behind them. Letting the research suggest to us what the best actions to take are versus some other source that we might choose. And then paying attention to things like Tim Coombs’ research on situational crisis communication to suggest to us how best to explain to people inside and outside the organization what we’re doing.

Rennella: I’m curious; what’s the best case study or moment? What’s what of your favorite things to delve into that seems very rich or very easy or interesting for students to get involved in?

Waller: A case study that I use is a film that is on PBS. It was produced by FRONTLINE and ProPublica on the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis . To me it’s a great example of how organizational culture can perpetuate an organization’s proclivity to be crisis prone. And it brings home a lot of the things that we cover in the course in one organization. It’s a great example, unfortunately. The students watch that film, and it’s a great video case study.

Rennella: Excellent. I really appreciate this; you had a lot of great insights.

Waller: That is great and thank you; it was fun.

Crisis Management Sample Course Schedule

Waller outlines her 8-week course’s topics and readings:

Week 1: Course Introduction—Waller, M. J., & Roberts, K. H. (2003). High reliability and organizational behavior: Finally the twain must meet. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 24(7), 813.

Week 2: Crisis Types—Pearson, C. M., & Clair, J. A. (1998). Reframing crisis management. Academy of Management Review , 23(1), 59-76.

Week 3: Imagining the Unthinkable—Staw, B. M., Sandelands, L. E., & Dutton, J. E. (1981). Threat rigidity effects in organizational behavior: A multilevel analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly , 501-524.; Roberts, K. H., & Bea, R. (2001). Must accidents happen? Lessons from high-reliability organizations. Academy of Management Perspectives , 15(3), 70-78.; Pearson, C. M., & Mitroff, I. I. (1993). From crisis prone to crisis prepared: A framework for crisis management. Academy of Management Perspectives , 7(1), 48-59.

Week 4: Organizational Factors—Neal, A., & Griffin, M. A. (2006). A study of the lagged relationships among safety climate, safety motivation, safety behavior, and accidents at the individual and group levels. Journal of Applied Psychology , 91(4), 946.; Tucker, A. L., & Edmondson, A. C. (2003). Why hospitals don't learn from failures: Organizational and psychological dynamics that inhibit system change. California Management Review , 45(2), 55-72.

Week 5: Crisis Teams and Plans—Waller, M. J., Lei, Z., & Pratten, R. (2014). Focusing on teams in crisis management education: An integration and simulation-based approach. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(2), 208-221.; Uitdewilligen, S., & Waller, M. J. (2018). Information sharing and decision‐making in multidisciplinary crisis management teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 39(6), 731-748.

Week 6: Crisis Communication—Stephens, K. K., Malone, P. C., & Bailey, C. M. (2005). Communicating with stakeholders during a crisis: Evaluating message strategies. The Journal of Business Communication (1973), 42(4), 390-419.; Stephens, K. K., Waller, M. J., & Sohrab, S. G. (2019). Over-emoting and perceptions of sincerity: Effects of nuanced displays of emotions and chosen words on credibility perceptions during a crisis. Public Relations Review, 45(5), 101841., Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (2002). Helping crisis managers protect reputational assets: Initial tests of the situational crisis communication theory. Management Communication Quarterly , 16(2), 165-186.

Week 7: Simulation

Week 8: Quiz and Debrief/Wrap-up

The Reading List

Use the following articles, notes, and cases to further the discussion on crisis management in your classroom. Consider assigning these readings to students, or use them as tools to help frame the class discussion.

David Dao on United Airlines

The Organizational Apology

“We Need to Intensify Our Sense of Urgency”

“Reframing Crisis Management”

Simulations

Organizational Behavior Simulation: Judgment in a Crisis

Harvard ManageMentor

Harvard ManageMentor: Crisis Management

Other Resources

FRONTLINE: The Spill

Mary Waller is the M.J. Neeley Professor of Management at Neeley School of Business, TCU. Her expertise covers organizational behavior including team dynamics, interaction, and effectiveness; crisis management in organizations; and human factors in complex technological systems.

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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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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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http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1512-4471 Emily Long 1 ,
Susan Patterson 1 ,
Karen Maxwell 1 ,
Carolyn Blake 1 ,
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7342-4566 Raquel Bosó Pérez 1 ,
Ruth Lewis 1 ,
Mark McCann 1 ,
Julie Riddell 1 ,
Kathryn Skivington 1 ,
Rachel Wilson-Lowe 1 ,
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4409-6601 Kirstin R Mitchell 2
1 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
2 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Institute of Health & Wellbeing , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
Correspondence to Dr Emily Long, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G3 7HR, UK; emily.long{at}glasgow.ac.uk

This essay examines key aspects of social relationships that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses explicitly on relational mechanisms of health and brings together theory and emerging evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to make recommendations for future public health policy and recovery. We first provide an overview of the pandemic in the UK context, outlining the nature of the public health response. We then introduce four distinct domains of social relationships: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy, highlighting the mechanisms through which the pandemic and associated public health response drastically altered social interactions in each domain. Throughout the essay, the lens of health inequalities, and perspective of relationships as interconnecting elements in a broader system, is used to explore the varying impact of these disruptions. The essay concludes by providing recommendations for longer term recovery ensuring that the social relational cost of COVID-19 is adequately considered in efforts to rebuild.

inequalities

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated and/or analysed for this study. Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated or analysed for this essay.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2021-216690

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Introduction

Infectious disease pandemics, including SARS and COVID-19, demand intrapersonal behaviour change and present highly complex challenges for public health. 1 A pandemic of an airborne infection, spread easily through social contact, assails human relationships by drastically altering the ways through which humans interact. In this essay, we draw on theories of social relationships to examine specific ways in which relational mechanisms key to health and well-being were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Relational mechanisms refer to the processes between people that lead to change in health outcomes.

At the time of writing, the future surrounding COVID-19 was uncertain. Vaccine programmes were being rolled out in countries that could afford them, but new and more contagious variants of the virus were also being discovered. The recovery journey looked long, with continued disruption to social relationships. The social cost of COVID-19 was only just beginning to emerge, but the mental health impact was already considerable, 2 3 and the inequality of the health burden stark. 4 Knowledge of the epidemiology of COVID-19 accrued rapidly, but evidence of the most effective policy responses remained uncertain.

The initial response to COVID-19 in the UK was reactive and aimed at reducing mortality, with little time to consider the social implications, including for interpersonal and community relationships. The terminology of ‘social distancing’ quickly became entrenched both in public and policy discourse. This equation of physical distance with social distance was regrettable, since only physical proximity causes viral transmission, whereas many forms of social proximity (eg, conversations while walking outdoors) are minimal risk, and are crucial to maintaining relationships supportive of health and well-being.

The aim of this essay is to explore four key relational mechanisms that were impacted by the pandemic and associated restrictions: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy. We use relational theories and emerging research on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response to make three key recommendations: one regarding public health responses; and two regarding social recovery. Our understanding of these mechanisms stems from a ‘systems’ perspective which casts social relationships as interdependent elements within a connected whole. 5

Social networks

Social networks characterise the individuals and social connections that compose a system (such as a workplace, community or society). Social relationships range from spouses and partners, to coworkers, friends and acquaintances. They vary across many dimensions, including, for example, frequency of contact and emotional closeness. Social networks can be understood both in terms of the individuals and relationships that compose the network, as well as the overall network structure (eg, how many of your friends know each other).

Social networks show a tendency towards homophily, or a phenomenon of associating with individuals who are similar to self. 6 This is particularly true for ‘core’ network ties (eg, close friends), while more distant, sometimes called ‘weak’ ties tend to show more diversity. During the height of COVID-19 restrictions, face-to-face interactions were often reduced to core network members, such as partners, family members or, potentially, live-in roommates; some ‘weak’ ties were lost, and interactions became more limited to those closest. Given that peripheral, weaker social ties provide a diversity of resources, opinions and support, 7 COVID-19 likely resulted in networks that were smaller and more homogenous.

Such changes were not inevitable nor necessarily enduring, since social networks are also adaptive and responsive to change, in that a disruption to usual ways of interacting can be replaced by new ways of engaging (eg, Zoom). Yet, important inequalities exist, wherein networks and individual relationships within networks are not equally able to adapt to such changes. For example, individuals with a large number of newly established relationships (eg, university students) may have struggled to transfer these relationships online, resulting in lost contacts and a heightened risk of social isolation. This is consistent with research suggesting that young adults were the most likely to report a worsening of relationships during COVID-19, whereas older adults were the least likely to report a change. 8

Lastly, social connections give rise to emergent properties of social systems, 9 where a community-level phenomenon develops that cannot be attributed to any one member or portion of the network. For example, local area-based networks emerged due to geographic restrictions (eg, stay-at-home orders), resulting in increases in neighbourly support and local volunteering. 10 In fact, research suggests that relationships with neighbours displayed the largest net gain in ratings of relationship quality compared with a range of relationship types (eg, partner, colleague, friend). 8 Much of this was built from spontaneous individual interactions within local communities, which together contributed to the ‘community spirit’ that many experienced. 11 COVID-19 restrictions thus impacted the personal social networks and the structure of the larger networks within the society.

Social support

Social support, referring to the psychological and material resources provided through social interaction, is a critical mechanism through which social relationships benefit health. In fact, social support has been shown to be one of the most important resilience factors in the aftermath of stressful events. 12 In the context of COVID-19, the usual ways in which individuals interact and obtain social support have been severely disrupted.

One such disruption has been to opportunities for spontaneous social interactions. For example, conversations with colleagues in a break room offer an opportunity for socialising beyond one’s core social network, and these peripheral conversations can provide a form of social support. 13 14 A chance conversation may lead to advice helpful to coping with situations or seeking formal help. Thus, the absence of these spontaneous interactions may mean the reduction of indirect support-seeking opportunities. While direct support-seeking behaviour is more effective at eliciting support, it also requires significantly more effort and may be perceived as forceful and burdensome. 15 The shift to homeworking and closure of community venues reduced the number of opportunities for these spontaneous interactions to occur, and has, second, focused them locally. Consequently, individuals whose core networks are located elsewhere, or who live in communities where spontaneous interaction is less likely, have less opportunity to benefit from spontaneous in-person supportive interactions.

However, alongside this disruption, new opportunities to interact and obtain social support have arisen. The surge in community social support during the initial lockdown mirrored that often seen in response to adverse events (eg, natural disasters 16 ). COVID-19 restrictions that confined individuals to their local area also compelled them to focus their in-person efforts locally. Commentators on the initial lockdown in the UK remarked on extraordinary acts of generosity between individuals who belonged to the same community but were unknown to each other. However, research on adverse events also tells us that such community support is not necessarily maintained in the longer term. 16

Meanwhile, online forms of social support are not bound by geography, thus enabling interactions and social support to be received from a wider network of people. Formal online social support spaces (eg, support groups) existed well before COVID-19, but have vastly increased since. While online interactions can increase perceived social support, it is unclear whether remote communication technologies provide an effective substitute from in-person interaction during periods of social distancing. 17 18 It makes intuitive sense that the usefulness of online social support will vary by the type of support offered, degree of social interaction and ‘online communication skills’ of those taking part. Youth workers, for instance, have struggled to keep vulnerable youth engaged in online youth clubs, 19 despite others finding a positive association between amount of digital technology used by individuals during lockdown and perceived social support. 20 Other research has found that more frequent face-to-face contact and phone/video contact both related to lower levels of depression during the time period of March to August 2020, but the negative effect of a lack of contact was greater for those with higher levels of usual sociability. 21 Relatedly, important inequalities in social support exist, such that individuals who occupy more socially disadvantaged positions in society (eg, low socioeconomic status, older people) tend to have less access to social support, 22 potentially exacerbated by COVID-19.

Social and interactional norms

Interactional norms are key relational mechanisms which build trust, belonging and identity within and across groups in a system. Individuals in groups and societies apply meaning by ‘approving, arranging and redefining’ symbols of interaction. 23 A handshake, for instance, is a powerful symbol of trust and equality. Depending on context, not shaking hands may symbolise a failure to extend friendship, or a failure to reach agreement. The norms governing these symbols represent shared values and identity; and mutual understanding of these symbols enables individuals to achieve orderly interactions, establish supportive relationship accountability and connect socially. 24 25

Physical distancing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 radically altered these norms of interaction, particularly those used to convey trust, affinity, empathy and respect (eg, hugging, physical comforting). 26 As epidemic waves rose and fell, the work to negotiate these norms required intense cognitive effort; previously taken-for-granted interactions were re-examined, factoring in current restriction levels, own and (assumed) others’ vulnerability and tolerance of risk. This created awkwardness, and uncertainty, for example, around how to bring closure to an in-person interaction or convey warmth. The instability in scripted ways of interacting created particular strain for individuals who already struggled to encode and decode interactions with others (eg, those who are deaf or have autism spectrum disorder); difficulties often intensified by mask wearing. 27

Large social gatherings—for example, weddings, school assemblies, sporting events—also present key opportunities for affirming and assimilating interactional norms, building cohesion and shared identity and facilitating cooperation across social groups. 28 Online ‘equivalents’ do not easily support ‘social-bonding’ activities such as singing and dancing, and rarely enable chance/spontaneous one-on-one conversations with peripheral/weaker network ties (see the Social networks section) which can help strengthen bonds across a larger network. The loss of large gatherings to celebrate rites of passage (eg, bar mitzvah, weddings) has additional relational costs since these events are performed by and for communities to reinforce belonging, and to assist in transitioning to new phases of life. 29 The loss of interaction with diverse others via community and large group gatherings also reduces intergroup contact, which may then tend towards more prejudiced outgroup attitudes. While online interaction can go some way to mimicking these interaction norms, there are key differences. A sense of anonymity, and lack of in-person emotional cues, tends to support norms of polarisation and aggression in expressing differences of opinion online. And while online platforms have potential to provide intergroup contact, the tendency of much social media to form homogeneous ‘echo chambers’ can serve to further reduce intergroup contact. 30 31

Intimacy relates to the feeling of emotional connection and closeness with other human beings. Emotional connection, through romantic, friendship or familial relationships, fulfils a basic human need 32 and strongly benefits health, including reduced stress levels, improved mental health, lowered blood pressure and reduced risk of heart disease. 32 33 Intimacy can be fostered through familiarity, feeling understood and feeling accepted by close others. 34

Intimacy via companionship and closeness is fundamental to mental well-being. Positively, the COVID-19 pandemic has offered opportunities for individuals to (re)connect and (re)strengthen close relationships within their household via quality time together, following closure of many usual external social activities. Research suggests that the first full UK lockdown period led to a net gain in the quality of steady relationships at a population level, 35 but amplified existing inequalities in relationship quality. 35 36 For some in single-person households, the absence of a companion became more conspicuous, leading to feelings of loneliness and lower mental well-being. 37 38 Additional pandemic-related relational strain 39 40 resulted, for some, in the initiation or intensification of domestic abuse. 41 42

Physical touch is another key aspect of intimacy, a fundamental human need crucial in maintaining and developing intimacy within close relationships. 34 Restrictions on social interactions severely restricted the number and range of people with whom physical affection was possible. The reduction in opportunity to give and receive affectionate physical touch was not experienced equally. Many of those living alone found themselves completely without physical contact for extended periods. The deprivation of physical touch is evidenced to take a heavy emotional toll. 43 Even in future, once physical expressions of affection can resume, new levels of anxiety over germs may introduce hesitancy into previously fluent blending of physical and verbal intimate social connections. 44

The pandemic also led to shifts in practices and norms around sexual relationship building and maintenance, as individuals adapted and sought alternative ways of enacting sexual intimacy. This too is important, given that intimate sexual activity has known benefits for health. 45 46 Given that social restrictions hinged on reducing household mixing, possibilities for partnered sexual activity were primarily guided by living arrangements. While those in cohabiting relationships could potentially continue as before, those who were single or in non-cohabiting relationships generally had restricted opportunities to maintain their sexual relationships. Pornography consumption and digital partners were reported to increase since lockdown. 47 However, online interactions are qualitatively different from in-person interactions and do not provide the same opportunities for physical intimacy.

Recommendations and conclusions

In the sections above we have outlined the ways in which COVID-19 has impacted social relationships, showing how relational mechanisms key to health have been undermined. While some of the damage might well self-repair after the pandemic, there are opportunities inherent in deliberative efforts to build back in ways that facilitate greater resilience in social and community relationships. We conclude by making three recommendations: one regarding public health responses to the pandemic; and two regarding social recovery.

Recommendation 1: explicitly count the relational cost of public health policies to control the pandemic

Effective handling of a pandemic recognises that social, economic and health concerns are intricately interwoven. It is clear that future research and policy attention must focus on the social consequences. As described above, policies which restrict physical mixing across households carry heavy and unequal relational costs. These include for individuals (eg, loss of intimate touch), dyads (eg, loss of warmth, comfort), networks (eg, restricted access to support) and communities (eg, loss of cohesion and identity). Such costs—and their unequal impact—should not be ignored in short-term efforts to control an epidemic. Some public health responses—restrictions on international holiday travel and highly efficient test and trace systems—have relatively small relational costs and should be prioritised. At a national level, an earlier move to proportionate restrictions, and investment in effective test and trace systems, may help prevent escalation of spread to the point where a national lockdown or tight restrictions became an inevitability. Where policies with relational costs are unavoidable, close attention should be paid to the unequal relational impact for those whose personal circumstances differ from normative assumptions of two adult families. This includes consideration of whether expectations are fair (eg, for those who live alone), whether restrictions on social events are equitable across age group, religious/ethnic groupings and social class, and also to ensure that the language promoted by such policies (eg, households; families) is not exclusionary. 48 49 Forethought to unequal impacts on social relationships should thus be integral to the work of epidemic preparedness teams.

Recommendation 2: intelligently balance online and offline ways of relating

A key ingredient for well-being is ‘getting together’ in a physical sense. This is fundamental to a human need for intimate touch, physical comfort, reinforcing interactional norms and providing practical support. Emerging evidence suggests that online ways of relating cannot simply replace physical interactions. But online interaction has many benefits and for some it offers connections that did not exist previously. In particular, online platforms provide new forms of support for those unable to access offline services because of mobility issues (eg, older people) or because they are geographically isolated from their support community (eg, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) youth). Ultimately, multiple forms of online and offline social interactions are required to meet the needs of varying groups of people (eg, LGBTQ, older people). Future research and practice should aim to establish ways of using offline and online support in complementary and even synergistic ways, rather than veering between them as social restrictions expand and contract. Intelligent balancing of online and offline ways of relating also pertains to future policies on home and flexible working. A decision to switch to wholesale or obligatory homeworking should consider the risk to relational ‘group properties’ of the workplace community and their impact on employees’ well-being, focusing in particular on unequal impacts (eg, new vs established employees). Intelligent blending of online and in-person working is required to achieve flexibility while also nurturing supportive networks at work. Intelligent balance also implies strategies to build digital literacy and minimise digital exclusion, as well as coproducing solutions with intended beneficiaries.

Recommendation 3: build stronger and sustainable localised communities

In balancing offline and online ways of interacting, there is opportunity to capitalise on the potential for more localised, coherent communities due to scaled-down travel, homeworking and local focus that will ideally continue after restrictions end. There are potential economic benefits after the pandemic, such as increased trade as home workers use local resources (eg, coffee shops), but also relational benefits from stronger relationships around the orbit of the home and neighbourhood. Experience from previous crises shows that community volunteer efforts generated early on will wane over time in the absence of deliberate work to maintain them. Adequately funded partnerships between local government, third sector and community groups are required to sustain community assets that began as a direct response to the pandemic. Such partnerships could work to secure green spaces and indoor (non-commercial) meeting spaces that promote community interaction. Green spaces in particular provide a triple benefit in encouraging physical activity and mental health, as well as facilitating social bonding. 50 In building local communities, small community networks—that allow for diversity and break down ingroup/outgroup views—may be more helpful than the concept of ‘support bubbles’, which are exclusionary and less sustainable in the longer term. Rigorously designed intervention and evaluation—taking a systems approach—will be crucial in ensuring scale-up and sustainability.

The dramatic change to social interaction necessitated by efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 created stark challenges but also opportunities. Our essay highlights opportunities for learning, both to ensure the equity and humanity of physical restrictions, and to sustain the salutogenic effects of social relationships going forward. The starting point for capitalising on this learning is recognition of the disruption to relational mechanisms as a key part of the socioeconomic and health impact of the pandemic. In recovery planning, a general rule is that what is good for decreasing health inequalities (such as expanding social protection and public services and pursuing green inclusive growth strategies) 4 will also benefit relationships and safeguard relational mechanisms for future generations. Putting this into action will require political will.

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Twitter @karenmaxSPHSU, @Mark_McCann, @Rwilsonlowe, @KMitchinGlasgow

Contributors EL and KM led on the manuscript conceptualisation, review and editing. SP, KM, CB, RBP, RL, MM, JR, KS and RW-L contributed to drafting and revising the article. All authors assisted in revising the final draft.

Funding The research reported in this publication was supported by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00022/1, MC_UU_00022/3) and the Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU11, SPHSU14). EL is also supported by MRC Skills Development Fellowship Award (MR/S015078/1). KS and MM are also supported by a Medical Research Council Strategic Award (MC_PC_13027).

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Read the full text or download the PDF:

Governments today are facing serious, seemingly intractable public management issues in the aftermath of COVID-19 that go to the core of effective governance and leadership, testing the very form, structure, and capacity required to meet these problems head-on. Leaders have found it necessary to go beyond established parameters and institutional structures, working across organizational boundaries in pursuit of multilayered, networked approaches that better respond to system and societal shocks brought by the pandemic.

In fall 2020, the IBM Center for The Business of Government initiated a Challenge Grant competition soliciting essays from academics and practitioners describing how government can best transform the way it works, operates, and delivers services to the public in light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Edited by Center Leadership Fellow Michael J. Keegan, COVID-19 and its Impact: Seven Essays on Reframing Government Management, features selected commentary on sustaining transformation and increasing resilience. ICMA's Tad McGalliard, director of research and development, and Laura Goddeeris, director of survey research, are among the contributing authors. Their essay draws upon ICMA survey research in exploring which pandemic-driven innovations and operational changes might prevail in a post-pandemic environment.

Expert Insight

"The key to transformation is not to lose momentum and fall back on the old ways, when potentially innovative practices and programs are still evolving from the crisis." -- Tad McGalliard, ICMA director of research and development

Key takeaways from this report include:

The pandemic accelerated changes in the way government works and delivers services that were already underway. This change has unlocked opportunities to build a new civic future.
Local leaders will need to address numerous policy issues raised by these changes in work environments and service delivery. Fostering a more flexible and outcome-driven culture will contribute to a new model of success for government.
Expectations of individuals and communities will focus on access to continued online services even after conditions merit reopening of government facilities. Building a hybrid operating model to engage with citizens that adopts consistent standards for customer experience will be necessary for successful government performance.
Cities and counties across the country are leading the way in understanding how to deliver COVID and other services to communities in need, who suffer disproportionately during the pandemic.
Governments must anticipate risks and develop data-driven programs to mitigate risks, respond to events, and be resilient in the aftermath of inevitable threats—physical and cyber—that face agencies at all levels.
Unprecedented demand on public procurement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveal significant vulnerabilities in government supply chains and procurement processes. The pandemic offers the opportunity to consider how governments can make contracting more resilient going forward.

Essays featured in this compendium:

Five Ways COVID-19 Changes How Local Governments Do Business, by Richard Feiock
The Future of Work in Local Governments Beyond COVID-19, by Sherri Greenberg
Transforming Local Government Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID-19, by Tad McGalliard and Laura Goddeeris
Community Driven Government—Reimagining Systems in a Pandemic, by Maya McKenzie and Gurdeep Gill
COVID-19 and the Resilience Imperative in Public Procurement: Building Back Better, by Zach Huitink
Achieving Supply Chain Immunity: Planning, Preparation, and Coordination in National Emergency Response, by Rob Handfield
Trust and Resilience: How Public Service Principles Encouraged Compliance with COVID-19 Public Health Guidelines in New Zealand, by Rodney Scott and Eleanor Merton

You may be interested in related resources from ICMA survey research:

COVID-19 Impacts on Local Governments (complete survey summary), July 2020
New ICMA Survey Shows Depth of Economic Downturn for Cities and Counties, July 2020
New Data Estimates Local Governments Will Spend Up to $20 Billion On COVID-19 Actions, March 2020
Government Technology Solutions Survey (complete survey summary), 2017

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Long Covid at Work: A Manager’s Guide

Katie Bach,
Ludmila N. Praslova,
Beth Pollack

Nearly 18 million U.S. adults have long Covid, a multisystem illness that sometimes appears after a bout of Covid-19. Its wide range of symptoms vary from person to person, veer from mild to severe, and can wax and wane over time. There are no official treatments for long Covid; while some people see their symptoms resolve, others remain chronically ill. For those employees, the right workplace support can be transformative. Employers must not only help these individual employees but also build disability inclusion into their cultures and talent practices. A menu of accommodations along with individual job redesign efforts will help companies retain employees with long Covid and other chronic illnesses and enable them to contribute more than they could otherwise.

It’s time for organizations to be inclusive of employees with chronic illnesses. Here’s how.

Before the pandemic, Dara was a research engineer, thriving in a job that involved complex technical design and problem-solving. (Names in this article have been changed for privacy.) She was also an avid baker and a voracious reader. Then in March 2020, she got Covid-19. Even after the acute illness had passed, many symptoms remained: Dara struggled to sit up for more than half an hour, was too breathless and lightheaded to walk even short distances, and had severe brain fog that left her unable to hold a conversation or write an email. She used all of her paid and unpaid leave to rest and try to recover. Eventually she improved enough to return to work — but she knew her job needed to change.

Katie Bach works with companies to improve job quality and employee experience. She has written extensively about the labor market impact of long Covid, including as a former nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and serves as board chair of PolyBio Research Foundation , which focuses on complex chronic conditions. Follow her on LinkedIn . kathrynsbach
Ludmila N. Praslova , PhD, SHRM-SCP, uses her extensive experience with neurodiversity and global and cultural inclusion to help create talent-rich workplaces. The author of The Canary Code , she is a professor of graduate industrial-organizational psychology and the accreditation liaison officer at Vanguard University of Southern California. Follow Ludmila on LinkedIn .
Beth Pollack is a research scientist at MIT . She studies long Covid and associated illnesses and leads research on their overlaps and shared pathophysiology in MIT’s Tal Research Group. Beth is the chair of the ME/CFS Less Studied Pathologies Subgroup and a member of the ME/CFS Research Roadmap Working Group at the National Institutes of Health, working to create a national plan to advance research on the illness toward clinical trials. Currently collaborating on three clinical studies on long Covid and associated chronic illnesses, she is a member of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative and a former senior researcher at Harvard University. Follow Beth on LinkedIn .

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A portrait of Shaun Barcavage, who holds his forehead as though in pain.

Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

All vaccines have at least occasional side effects. But people who say they were injured by Covid vaccines believe their cases have been ignored.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City, said that ever since his first Covid shot, standing up has sent his heart racing. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

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By Apoorva Mandavilli

Apoorva Mandavilli spent more than a year talking to dozens of experts in vaccine science, policymakers and people who said they had experienced serious side effects after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

Published May 3, 2024 Updated May 4, 2024

Within minutes of getting the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, Michelle Zimmerman felt pain racing from her left arm up to her ear and down to her fingertips. Within days, she was unbearably sensitive to light and struggled to remember simple facts.

She was 37, with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and until then could ride her bicycle 20 miles, teach a dance class and give a lecture on artificial intelligence, all in the same day. Now, more than three years later, she lives with her parents. Eventually diagnosed with brain damage, she cannot work, drive or even stand for long periods of time.

“When I let myself think about the devastation of what this has done to my life, and how much I’ve lost, sometimes it feels even too hard to comprehend,” said Dr. Zimmerman, who believes her injury is due to a contaminated vaccine batch .

The Covid vaccines, a triumph of science and public health, are estimated to have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths . Yet even the best vaccines produce rare but serious side effects . And the Covid vaccines have been given to more than 270 million people in the United States, in nearly 677 million doses .

Dr. Zimmerman’s account is among the more harrowing, but thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government — but to little avail. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600 .

Some scientists fear that patients with real injuries are being denied help and believe that more needs to be done to clarify the possible risks.

“At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University. But people who say they have post-vaccination injuries are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added.

Michelle Zimmerman sits on the floor of a ballroom where she used to dance, with a pair of dancing shoes next to her. She wears a dark skirt and a red velvet shirt.

In interviews and email exchanges conducted over several months, federal health officials insisted that serious side effects were extremely rare and that their surveillance efforts were more than sufficient to detect patterns of adverse events.

“Hundreds of millions of people in the United States have safely received Covid vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history,” Jeff Nesbit, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement.

But in a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration, who retired in February, said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies.

“I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.”

“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”

Federal officials and independent scientists face a number of challenges in identifying potential vaccine side effects.

The nation’s fragmented health care system complicates detection of very rare side effects, a process that depends on an analysis of huge amounts of data. That’s a difficult task when a patient may be tested for Covid at Walgreens, get vaccinated at CVS, go to a local clinic for minor ailments and seek care at a hospital for serious conditions. Each place may rely on different health record systems.

There is no central repository of vaccine recipients, nor of medical records, and no easy to way to pool these data. Reports to the largest federal database of so-called adverse events can be made by anyone, about anything. It’s not even clear what officials should be looking for.

“I mean, you’re not going to find ‘brain fog’ in the medical record or claims data, and so then you’re not going to find” a signal that it may be linked to vaccination, Dr. Woodcock said. If such a side effect is not acknowledged by federal officials, “it’s because it doesn’t have a good research definition,” she added. “It isn’t, like, malevolence on their part.”

The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

‘I’m Not Real’

Patients who believe they experienced serious side effects say they have received little support or acknowledgment.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City who has worked on clinical trials for H.I.V. and Covid, said that ever since his first Covid shot, merely standing up sent his heart racing — a symptom suggestive of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome , a neurological disorder that some studies have linked to both Covid and, much less often, vaccination .

He also experienced stinging pain in his eyes, mouth and genitals, which has abated, and tinnitus, which has not.

“I can’t get the government to help me,” Mr. Barcavage said of his fruitless pleas to federal agencies and elected representatives. “I am told I’m not real. I’m told I’m rare. I’m told I’m coincidence.”

Renee France, 49, a physical therapist in Seattle, developed Bell’s palsy — a form of facial paralysis, usually temporary — and a dramatic rash that neatly bisected her face. Bell’s palsy is a known side effect of other vaccines, and it has been linked to Covid vaccination in some studies.

But Dr. France said doctors were dismissive of any connection to the Covid vaccines. The rash, a bout of shingles, debilitated her for three weeks, so Dr. France reported it to federal databases twice.

“I thought for sure someone would reach out, but no one ever did,” she said.

Similar sentiments were echoed in interviews, conducted over more than a year, with 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid shots. They described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular.

All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines.

Even leading experts in vaccine science have run up against disbelief and ambivalence.

Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.

He received polite responses to his many emails, but “I just don’t get any sense of movement,” he said.

“If they have done studies, those studies should be published,” Dr. Poland added. In despair that he might “never hear silence again,” he has sought solace in meditation and his religious faith.

Dr. Buddy Creech, 50, who led several Covid vaccine trials at Vanderbilt University, said his tinnitus and racing heart lasted about a week after each shot. “It’s very similar to what I experienced during acute Covid, back in March of 2020,” Dr. Creech said.

Research may ultimately find that most reported side effects are unrelated to the vaccine, he acknowledged. Many can be caused by Covid itself.

“Regardless, when our patients experience a side effect that may or may not be related to the vaccine, we owe it to them to investigate that as completely as we can,” Dr. Creech said.

Federal health officials say they do not believe that the Covid vaccines caused the illnesses described by patients like Mr. Barcavage, Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. France. The vaccines may cause transient reactions, such as swelling, fatigue and fever, according to the C.D.C., but the agency has documented only four serious but rare side effects .

Two are associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is no longer available in the United States: Guillain-Barré syndrome , a known side effect of other vaccines , including the flu shot; and a blood-clotting disorder.

The C.D.C. also links mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to heart inflammation, or myocarditis, especially in boys and young men. And the agency warns of anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction, which can occur after any vaccination.

Listening for Signals

Agency scientists are monitoring large databases containing medical information on millions of Americans for patterns that might suggest a hitherto unknown side effect of vaccination, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“We toe the line by reporting the signals that we think are real signals and reporting them as soon as we identify them as signals,” he said. The agency’s systems for monitoring vaccine safety are “pretty close” to ideal, he said.

Those national surveillance efforts include the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). It is the largest database, but also the least reliable: Reports of side effects can be submitted by anyone and are not vetted, so they may be subject to bias or manipulation.

The system contains roughly one million reports regarding Covid vaccination, the vast majority for mild events, according to the C.D.C.

Federal researchers also comb through databases that combine electronic health records and insurance claims on tens of millions of Americans. The scientists monitor the data for 23 conditions that may occur following Covid vaccination. Officials remain alert to others that may pop up, Dr. Daskalakis said.

But there are gaps, some experts noted. The Covid shots administered at mass vaccination sites were not recorded in insurance claims databases, for example, and medical records in the United States are not centralized.

“It’s harder to see signals when you have so many people, and things are happening in different parts of the country, and they’re not all collected in the same system,” said Rebecca Chandler, a vaccine safety expert at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

An expert panel convened by the National Academies concluded in April that for the vast majority of side effects, there was not enough data to accept or reject a link.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing whether the nation’s vaccine-safety surveillance was sufficient, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, “I do believe we could do better.”

In some countries with centralized health care systems, officials have actively sought out reports of serious side effects of Covid vaccines and reached conclusions that U.S. health authorities have not.

In Hong Kong, the government analyzed centralized medical records of patients after vaccination and paid people to come forward with problems. The strategy identified “a lot of mild cases that other countries would not otherwise pick up,” said Ian Wong, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong who led the nation’s vaccine safety efforts.

That included the finding that in rare instances — about seven per million doses — the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine triggered a bout of shingles serious enough to require hospitalization.

The European Medicines Agency has linked the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to facial paralysis, tingling sensations and numbness. The E.M.A. also counts tinnitus as a side effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, although the American health agencies do not. There are more than 17,000 reports of tinnitus following Covid vaccination in VAERS.

Are the two linked? It’s not clear. As many as one in four adults has some form of tinnitus. Stress, anxiety, grief and aging can lead to the condition, as can infections like Covid itself and the flu.

There is no test or scan for tinnitus, and scientists cannot easily study it because the inner ear is tiny, delicate and encased in bone, said Dr. Konstantina Stankovic, an otolaryngologist at Stanford University.

Still, an analysis of health records from nearly 2.6 million people in the United States found that about 0.04 percent , or about 1,000, were diagnosed with tinnitus within three weeks of their first mRNA shot. In March, researchers in Australia published a study linking tinnitus and vertigo to the vaccines .

The F.D.A. is monitoring reports of tinnitus, but “at this time, the available evidence does not suggest a causal association with the Covid-19 vaccines,” the agency said in a statement.

Despite surveillance efforts, U.S. officials were not the first to identify a significant Covid vaccine side effect: myocarditis in young people receiving mRNA vaccines. It was Israeli authorities who first raised the alarm in April 2021. Officials in the United States said at the time that they had not seen a link.

On May 22, 2021, news broke that the C.D.C. was investigating a “relatively few” cases of myocarditis. By June 23, the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS had risen to more than 1,200 — a hint that it is important to tell doctors and patients what to look for.

Later analyses showed that the risk for myocarditis and pericarditis, a related condition, is highest after a second dose of an mRNA Covid vaccine in adolescent males aged 12 to 17 years.

In many people, vaccine-related myocarditis is transient. But some patients continue to experience pain, breathlessness and depression, and some show persistent changes on heart scans . The C.D.C. has said there were no confirmed deaths related to myocarditis, but in fact there have been several accounts of deaths reported post-vaccination .

Pervasive Misinformation

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects, some experts said. Much of the narrative on the purported dangers of Covid vaccines is patently false, or at least exaggerated, cooked up by savvy anti-vaccine campaigns.

Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.

“The sheer nature of misinformation, the scale of misinformation, is staggering, and anything will be twisted to make it seem like it’s not just a devastating side effect but proof of a massive cover-up,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University.

Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were immunized for Covid, some number would have had heart attacks or strokes anyway. Some women would have miscarried. How to distinguish those caused by the vaccine from those that are coincidences? The only way to resolve the question is intense research .

But the National Institutes of Health is conducting virtually no studies on Covid vaccine safety, several experts noted. William Murphy, a cancer researcher who worked at the N.I.H. for 12 years, has been prodding federal health officials to initiate these studies since 2021.

The officials each responded with “that very tired mantra: ‘But the virus is worse,’” Dr. Murphy recalled. “Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.”

A deeper understanding of possible side effects, and who is at risk for them, could have implications for the design of future vaccines, or may indicate that for some young and healthy people, the benefit of Covid shots may no longer outweigh the risks — as some European countries have determined.

Thorough research might also speed assistance to thousands of Americans who say they were injured.

The federal government has long run the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program , designed to compensate people who suffer injuries after vaccination. Established more than three decades ago, the program sets no limit on the amounts awarded to people found to have been harmed.

But Covid vaccines are not covered by that fund because Congress has not made them subject to the excise tax that pays for it. Some lawmakers have introduced bills to make the change.

Instead, claims regarding Covid vaccines go to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program . Intended for public health emergencies, this program has narrow criteria to pay out and sets a limit of $50,000, with stringent standards of proof.

It requires applicants to prove within a year of the injury that it was “the direct result” of getting the Covid vaccine, based on “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence.”

The program had only four staff members at the beginning of the pandemic, and now has 35 people evaluating claims. Still, it has reviewed only a fraction of the 13,000 claims filed, and has paid out only a dozen.

Dr. Ilka Warshawsky, a 58-year-old pathologist, said she lost all hearing in her right ear after a Covid booster shot. But hearing loss is not a recognized side effect of Covid vaccination.

The compensation program for Covid vaccines sets a high bar for proof, she said, yet offers little information on how to meet it: “These adverse events can be debilitating and life-altering, and so it’s very upsetting that they’re not acknowledged or addressed.”

Dr. Zimmerman, the neuroscientist, submitted her application in October 2021 and provided dozens of supporting medical documents. She received a claim number only in January 2023.

In adjudicating her claim for workers’ compensation, Washington State officials accepted that Covid vaccination caused her injury, but she has yet to get a decision from the federal program.

One of her therapists recently told her she might never be able to live independently again.

“That felt like a devastating blow,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “But I’m trying not to lose hope there will someday be a treatment and a way to cover it.”

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

What the <i>Black Twitter</i> Docuseries Gets Wrong

What the Black Twitter Docuseries Gets Wrong

B lack Twitter will not save us for what’s to come. As the days towards the 2024 presidential election draw near and the rage-filled screams of college students fill the halls of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, the United States finds itself at a crossroads. Will the most powerful country in the world revert back to when Donald Trump won the White House, or will we vote for Joe Biden to maintain his stronghold? This is the question that every American must answer before and on November 5.

If the everyday American (specifically the everyday Black American) was undecided about which candidate to vote for, it only takes one watch of Black Twitter: A People’s History , a three part docuseries based on journalist Jason Parham’s 2021 WIRED article “ A People’s History of Black Twitter ,” to understand that we must vote for Biden.

The series attempts to archive, document, and chronicle the force that is known as Black Twitter, two words that have been used to characterize Black digital life on the social media platform. It’s a platform that the series will remind you was not created by Black people, but brought into prominence by the attitudes, mannerisms, and behaviors of Black users on Twitter. But despite incessant commentary about how Black people are not a monolith, the docuseries—in its attempt to associate the Black Twitter community with an era that supposedly no longer exists—ultimately treats Black Twitter as such.

Creation is at the core of the series’ story. The words of Amiri Baraka’s " Technology & Ethos " essay are repeated and paraphrased throughout the three-part series in a fashion similar to a mother reading her child’s favorite tall tale before tucking them into bed. The essay opens with the following: “Machines (as Norbert Weiner said) are an extension of their inventor-creators. That is not simple once you think. Machines, the entire technology of the West, is just that, the technology of the West.” Baraka continues: “Nothing has to look or function the way it does. The West man’s freedom, unscientifically got at the expense of the rest of the world’s people, has allowed him to xpand his mind–spread his sensibility wherever it cdgo, & so shaped the world, & its powerful artifact-engines.”

The next line is where Black Twitter, or more broadly the relationship between Black people and technology, come into play. “Political power is also the power to create—not only what you will—but to be freed to go where ever you can go—(mentally physically as well). Black creation—creation powered by the Black ethos brings very special results.”

In the case of both Twitter the platform and also Twitter the company—where Black people acquired leadership positions at one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, used their presence online to enact change in the areas of racial justice and police reform, and increased diversity and representation from Hollywood to Silicon Valley and everywhere in between—what did those very special results bring? That answer is complicated, and one that the docuseries tries to grapple with but falls short.

As seen in the series, #OscarsSoWhite corrected a decades long practice of exclusion by the Academy and created opportunities for actors of color to receive membership into the voting body that decides the Oscars. In the nine years since the hashtag’s creation, gradual efforts were made towards greater representation on screen. Yet, the subsequent mass exodus of women of color in Hollywood leadership positions and the low number of films directed by women and people of color seems to contradict the docuseries’ overarching narrative of a hashtag's singular impact. Yes, the hashtag narrative as an idiom to bring forth change is powerful, but the counter response to them is just as telling.

The most blatant example of this is the #BlackLivesMatter portion of the docuseries. The docuseries chronicles the pivotal role Twitter played in the rise of citizen journalism, particularly during the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It also looks at the creation of #SayHerName, a social media response to the erasure of Black women, such as Sandra Bland, and Black trans women, like Mya Hall, who lost their lives to police violence, but were often overlooked by the male-centered BLM movement.

This is where Baraka is felt the most: Black creators have harnessed the power of technology, in order to counteract the West’s political power, which puts them in danger of losing their lives. Minute after minute, frame after frame, the docuseries asks the viewer to bear witness to the ways in which Black Twitter, through the creation and utilization of hashtags, on-the-ground reporting, and 24/7 news coverage, has long been victimized by police violence.

But like Baraka said, the machine is an extension of its inventor-creator, and the creator, or in this case the executive producers of the docuseries, have a hand in its invention. It's a creation that feels foreign to those who birthed and have maintained Black Twitter as a living and breathing cultural archive of Black digital life. A life that has no singular partisan belief or political agenda. A life that, in many ways, bites the hand of the docuseries creators. It’s a hand that delicately weaves the ascension of Barack Obama to the presidency with the birth and rise of Black Twitter. The two are in a covenant of holy matrimony.

Just ask Brad Jenkins, former associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, who frequently appears throughout the docuseries. Or Carri Twigg, the former Associate Director of Public Engagement of the White House, who serves as one of the series’ executive producers. There is no direct mention that the Black Lives Matter movement started under the Obama administration—or acknowledgment of the overwhelming collective action by Black students at the University of Missouri during that time, as well as the solidarity actions that occurred across college campuses in the U.S.

The series goes on to connect the rise of misinformation, the proliferation of Russian bots, and the 2016 election of Donald Trump as a reaction to the Obama presidency and Black Twitter. In fact, the series’ somber moments—where anti-Black sentiment is seen in reports of algorithms being altered to increase traffic towards users that display racist and misogynistic behaviors online, and clips of white women calling the police to inflict harm and violence on Black people for simply living — are linked to the Trump portion of the series. But that is ahistorical in and of itself because Black women have been calling attention to the ways in which they are subjected to anti-Black violence and harassment online since the 1990s . BBQ Becky is just Carolyn Bryant by another name.

Read More: Twitter Offers More Transparency on Racist Abuse by Its Users, but Few Solutions

If the Obama years of Black Twitter were fun, the docuseries posits, the Trump years of Black Twitter were hell. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the global uprisings over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the year 2020 within the docuseries is marked by culture shifts towards violence, including the misogynoir Megan Thee Stallion experienced online after she came forward about being physically assaulted by Tory Lanez. The year is also peppered with glimmers of a Black Twitter of yesteryear: a communal moment of gathering to live tweet “Verzuz” challenges or to watch The Last Dance as a family. Communal moments that are thought to be associated with the Obama administration.

And just like that, the docuseries pivots to showcase the Black voters in South Carolina, who are thanked for their votes for Biden in the 2020 election. Biden is even described as Obama’s right hand man. It is in this moment that the series wants the audience to remember the joy of the Obama years, the hope of the Obama years, and most importantly, the impact of Black voters in the Obama years.

I do not mean to spoil the climax of the 2020 section of the docuseries, but Biden won and Elon Musk replaced Trump as the villain of the series. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, is met with despair, exodus, and rage. Efforts to humble and humiliate Musk are flashed across the screen as former Black employees at Twitter in one-on-one interviews discuss the destruction of their years of labor and hard work to diversify the platform. Black academics, celebrities, and personalities lament as they say a goodbye to the good days of Twitter. Mastodon, BlueSky, Spill, LinkedIn, and of course TikTok are depicted as places of solace for Black users who feel unwelcome on X. (X has since eliminated any protections for marginalized and disenfranchised users on the platforms.)

Four years after the election of Biden to the presidency and with the forthcoming election looming, the series bids Black Twitter adieu with the foresight that Black people will always continue to innovate, despite not being given the tools or resources to create. This is exemplified by a reference to soul food, and a call to action to create our own archives—the thesis of Black Twitter: A People’s History.

But what Black Twitter fails to realize—and simply can’t capture—is that we are not in 2008 anymore. Or 2012. Or 2020. The Obama coalition is dead. The Biden coalition is falling apart by the day and culturally resonant programming falls flat compared to the citizen-led reporting that is coming to life in front of our very eyes. Just look at the actions of the student journalists at WKCR , the Columbia University radio station that covered the raid of Hamilton Hall by the New York Police Department. Or the wave of anti-war protests by Black students at HBCUs. Guess where these students learned how to organize from? Black Twitter. They’re not just archiving their own stories—they’re creating them.

But that’s the flaw of content like this. It doesn’t have the capacity to capture the legacy of a movement because it’s a movement that isn't over. It is still unfurling—still morphing and coming to life in front of our very eyes. These are children who came of age on Black Twitter. They’re still using those tools to make us laugh, to inspire change, to create community.

If there is anyone who will save us (and in turn, if there’s anything worth saving), it's them. Not Black Twitter.

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Perspective

When pto stands for 'pretend time off': doctors struggle to take real breaks.

Mara Gordon

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off.

A few weeks ago, I took a vacation with my family. We went hiking in the national parks of southern Utah, and I was blissfully disconnected from work.

I'm a family physician, so taking a break from my job meant not seeing patients. It also meant not responding to patients' messages or checking my work email. For a full week, I was free.

Taking a real break — with no sneaky computer time to bang out a few prescription refill requests — left me feeling reenergized and ready to take care of my patients when I returned.

But apparently, being a doctor who doesn't work on vacation puts me squarely in the minority of U.S. physicians.

Research published in JAMA Network Open this year set out to quantify exactly how doctors use their vacation time — and what the implications might be for a health care workforce plagued by burnout, dissatisfaction and doctors who are thinking about leaving medicine.

"There is a strong business case for supporting taking real vacation," says Dr. Christine Sinsky , the lead author of the paper. "Burnout is incredibly expensive for organizations."

Shots - Health News

Health workers know what good care is. pandemic burnout is getting in the way.

Researchers surveyed 3,024 doctors, part of an American Medical Association cohort designed to represent the American physician workforce. They found that 59.6% of American physicians took 15 days of vacation or less per year. That's a little more than the average American: Most workers who have been at a job for a year or more get between 10 and 14 days of paid vacation time , according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, most doctors don't take real vacation. Over 70% of doctors surveyed said they worked on a typical vacation day.

"I have heard physicians refer to PTO as 'pretend time off,'" Sinsky says, referring to the acronym for "paid time off."

Sinsky and co-authors found that physicians who took more than three weeks of vacation a year had lower rates of burnout than those who took less, since vacation time is linked to well-being and job satisfaction .

And all those doctors toiling away on vacation, sitting poolside with their laptops? Sinsky argues it has serious consequences for health care.

Physician burnout is linked to high job turnover and excess health care costs , among other problems.

Still, it can be hard to change the culture of workaholism in medicine. Even the study authors confessed that they, too, worked on vacation.

"I remember when one of our first well-being papers was published," says Dr. Colin West , a co-author of the new study and a health care workforce researcher at the Mayo Clinic. "I responded to the revisions up at the family cabin in northern Minnesota on vacation."

Sinsky agreed. "I do not take all my vacation, which I recognize as a delicious irony of the whole thing," she says.

She's the American Medical Association's vice president of professional satisfaction. If she can't take a real vacation, is there any hope for the rest of us?

I interviewed a half dozen fellow physicians and chatted off the record with many friends and colleagues to get a sense of why it feels so hard to give ourselves a break. Here, I offer a few theories about why doctors are so terrible at taking time off.

We don't want to make more work for our colleagues

The authors of the study in JAMA Network Open didn't explore exactly what type of work doctors did on vacation, but the physicians I spoke to had some ideas.

"If I am not doing anything, I will triage my email a little bit," says Jocelyn Fitzgerald , a urogynecologist at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the study. "I also find that certain high-priority virtual meetings sometimes find their way into my vacations."

Even if doctors aren't scheduled to see patients, there's almost always plenty of work to be done: dealing with emergencies, medication refills, paperwork. For many of us, the electronic medical record (EMR) is an unrelenting taskmaster , delivering a near-constant flow of bureaucratic to-dos.

When I go on vacation, my fellow primary care doctors handle that work for me, and I do the same for them.

But it can sometimes feel like a lot to ask, especially when colleagues are doing that work on top of their normal workload.

"You end up putting people in kind of a sticky situation, asking for favors, and they [feel they] need to pay it back," says Jay-Sheree Allen , a family physician and fellow in preventive medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

She says her practice has a "doctor of the day" who covers all urgent calls and messages, which helps reduce some of the guilt she feels about taking time off.

Still, non-urgent tasks are left for her to complete when she gets back. She says she usually logs in to the EMR when she's on vacation so the tasks don't pile up upon her return. If she doesn't, Allen estimates there will be about eight hours of paperwork awaiting her after a week or so of vacation.

"My strategy, I absolutely do not recommend," Allen says. But "I would prefer that than coming back to the total storm."

We have too little flexibility about when we take vacation

Lawren Wooten , a resident physician in pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco, says she takes 100% of her vacation time. But there are a lot of stipulations about exactly how she uses it.

She has to take it in two-week blocks — "that's a long time at once," she says — and it's hard to change the schedule once her chief residents assign her dates.

"Sometimes I wish I had vacation in the middle of two really emotionally challenging rotations like an ICU rotation and an oncology rotation," she says, referring to the intensive care unit. "We don't really get to control our schedules at this point in our careers."

Once Wooten finishes residency and becomes an attending physician, it's likely she'll have more autonomy over her vacation time — but not necessarily all that much more.

"We generally have to know when our vacations are far in advance because patients schedule with us far in advance," says Fitzgerald, the gynecologist.

Taking vacation means giving up potential pay

Many physicians are paid based on the number of patients they see or procedures they complete. If they take time off work, they make less money.

"Vacation is money off your table," says West, the physician well-being researcher. "People have a hard time stepping off of the treadmill."

A 2022 research brief from the American Medical Association estimated that over 55% of U.S. physicians were paid at least in part based on "productivity," as opposed to earning a flat amount regardless of patient volume. That means the more patients doctors cram into their schedules, the more money they make. Going on vacation could decrease their take-home pay.

But West says it's important to weigh the financial benefits of skipping vacation against the risk of burnout from working too much.

Physician burnout is linked not only to excess health care costs but also to higher rates of medical errors. In one large survey of American surgeons , for example, surgeons experiencing burnout were more likely to report being involved in a major medical error. (It's unclear to what extent the burnout caused the errors or the errors caused the burnout, however.)

Doctors think they're the only one who can do their jobs

When I go on vacation, my colleagues see my patients for me. I work in a small office, so I know the other doctors well and I trust that my patients are in good hands when I'm away.

Doctors have their own diagnosis: 'Moral distress' from an inhumane health system

But ceding that control to colleagues might be difficult for some doctors, especially when it comes to challenging patients or big research projects.

"I think we need to learn to be better at trusting our colleagues," says Adi Shah , an infectious disease doctor at the Mayo Clinic. "You don't have to micromanage every slide on the PowerPoint — it's OK."

West, the well-being researcher, says health care is moving toward a team-based model and away from a culture where an individual doctor is responsible for everything. Still, he adds, it can be hard for some doctors to accept help.

"You can be a neurosurgeon, you're supposed to go on vacation tomorrow and you operate on a patient. And there are complications or risk of complications, and you're the one who has the relationship with that family," West says. "It is really, really hard for us to say ... 'You're in great hands with the rest of my team.'"

What doctors need, says West, is "a little bit less of the God complex."

We don't have any interests other than medicine

Shah, the infectious disease doctor, frequently posts tongue-in-cheek memes on X (formerly known as Twitter) about the culture of medicine. Unplugging during vacation is one of his favorite topics, despite his struggles to follow his own advice.

His recommendation to doctors is to get a hobby, so we can find something better to do than work all the time.

"Stop taking yourself too seriously," he says. Shah argues that medical training is so busy that many physicians neglect to develop any interests other than medicine. When fully trained doctors are finally finished with their education, he says, they're at a loss for what to do with their newfound freedom.

Since completing his training a few years ago, Shah has committed himself to new hobbies, such as salsa dancing. He has plans to go to a kite festival next year.

Shah has also prioritized making the long trip from Minnesota to see his family in India at least twice a year — a journey that requires significant time off work. He has a trip there planned this month.

"This is the first time in 11 years I'm making it to India in summer so that I can have a mango in May," the peak season for the fruit, Shah says.

Wooten, the pediatrician, agrees. She works hard to develop a full life outside her career.

"Throughout our secondary and medical education, I believe we've really been indoctrinated into putting institutions above ourselves," Wooten adds. "It takes work to overcome that."

Mara Gordon is a family physician in Camden, N.J., and a contributor to NPR. She's on X as @MaraGordonMD .

American Medical Association

A Rare Bright Spot for a Canine Lover Doing Time: Raising Puppies to Become Service Dogs

Adam roberts reflects on the highs and occasional lows of training labrador retrievers for the puppies behind bars program..

An illustration shows a man, wearing a cap and a tan prison uniform, holding onto a leash as he walks his yellow Labrador retriever. A label is near the dog that reads "Lexi." In the background, one panel shows an image of a person smiling as they face a black puppy with the label that reads "Lee." Another panel shows a close-up image of a yellow puppy with the label "Annie."

C hristmastime 2022 saw me getting up on another wall in Fishkill Correctional Facility. As in, painting another mural, the seventh since early November — when my pup Lexi left. I was staying busy to avoid spinning too adrift in a spacey dark void of loss.

“That's why I couldn’t join that program,” my friend Ant said. He was talking about Puppies Behind Bars (PBB), a program that allows incarcerated people to live in a special unit and train Labrador retrievers to become service dogs.

I took my first PBB class in August 2019. I signed the puppy raiser contract, agreeing that if I was assigned a dog, it would stay with me no longer than two years before being placed with a wounded war veteran, first responder or law enforcement agency.

The housing unit for PBB was serene relative to the madhouse maximum security dorm I’d come from two months prior. Before I could set down my bags, two Labs came wagging over, sniffing out the new guy. I was so happy. Between the dogs, single rooms and the courtyard with trees, I didn’t feel imprisoned. And for the first time since 1999, I was touching a dog.

A s the new guy, I looked for opportunities to contribute — exercising dogs, wiping them down, picking up poop. Outside of the weekly classes taught by outside instructors, I learned from senior raisers and by closely watching the dogs. I developed favorites: There was Charlotte, a big yellow girl, and Shadow, an elder statesman.

After a month, when instructors and peers deemed me ready, I was permitted to have my first overnight with a dog — Shadow — who slept in a crate in the room. For 24 hours, I was responsible for his feeding and toileting. I had to provide him with three hours of exercise and review commands he’d been taught by his raiser, Ron.

Ever since, I’ve been giving PBB my all, back-burnering my art and publishing , and decreasing the amount of hours I work as a peer counselor in Transitional Services.

I n March 2020, when COVID-19 happened, there was death and deprivation the world over. But my life was a luxury vacation of sleeping in, playing with dogs, training, learning, napping, cooking elaborate meals, more playing, sleeping and repeating. Puppy life, at least, kept on. When Atticus was destined for a family (“fear barking” disqualified him from working as a service dog), I walked him to the gate, crying — he was the only pup who chose to hang out with me.

Three months into the pandemic, I was selected for a puppy! Lee arrived with siblings, Maddie and Jules. They were all beautiful black Labs, aged 10 weeks. On June 8, 2020, our bond began. I was now responsible for another’s well-being: I was Lee’s raiser, trainer and first responder. I celebrated every accomplishment, fretted over problematic behaviors and saved baby teeth to tape into the weekly journal we keep for our pups, showing the dog’s sponsor and their forever person what puppyhood was like. Oh, to be a Lab in its first years! And what you think of as a harsh prison, is actually a dog’s dream: pack mates ready to romp, humans who “speak dog” and weekend socialization trips to New York City with volunteers.

I was learning so much about dogs and their behavior, but also about softening my ego by asking others for help. Then November struck.

Through a video screen, I learned that Lee’s “environmental awareness” suited him for scent work. He’d be leaving for further training to become an explosive detection canine. You might envision a dog being blown up, but what I learned in preparing Lee is that detection work is fun for a dog. They get to sniff, jump, climb and find. On Dec. 21, 2020, I walked my best friend to the gate one last time, sobbing the entire way.

Over the six months we had together, I had watched Lee grow, helped him learn and nursed him post-neuter. When he left, I remember coming back to the unit and staring at a blank TV. I realized just how close we’d become and what he meant to me as someone who’s always looking to connect with others. It was a dark, cold winter.

W hen I was selected for my next pup, Lexi, I felt I wouldn’t be able to love her as I did Lee. I needn’t have worried. On Feb. 18, 2021, I got Lexi, a little yellow furball who looked up and, as I tucked her into my coat, sighed with contentment.

Every month, I charted her height on my door, and I began to think of her eventual departure. That summer, Lexi was chosen for breeding. Upshot: She’d be with me for at least another year.

The memories we made could fill a book, and someday will. Like all the dogs I’ve worked with, I brought Lexi to the facility’s weekly orientation for new arrivals. Guys on the compound, registering her growth, asked, “Is that the same dog?”

O n May 6, 2022, Lexi began a two-month “swap” with Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the women’s prison where Gloria Gilbert Stoga founded Puppies Behind Bars in 1997. (Fishkill was the next site, in 1998.) Swaps “generalize” the dog to working with others. Typically, a swap lasts one month, but Lexi’s was extended so I could work with Mikey, a funny, quirky girl who quickly grew on me. And it wasn’t just Mikey. There were other dogs who visited. Though I wasn’t their swap raiser, I enjoyed playing uncle to Lee’s brother, Vinny, and Lexi’s sister, Lori.

Still, every departure is a disconnection. It doesn’t get easier with practice, but I know I can do it. Though knowing is not always enough. With 24 years in prison and a parole hearing in sight, incarceration lands on me differently these days.

Is this a “darkest before the dawn” situation? PTSD? Anxiety and depression? Likely, it’s some funky combination. So, when I got the heads-up that Lexi would be staying for at least a year, I was partially relieved.

For 20 months we moved as partners. All you need to know about Lexi is that she’s a unicorn who happens to look like a dog. She is the best of all things: smart (seeming to learn commands by osmosis); spunky (ready to romp with big boys like her buddy, Jules); self-contained (making her own fun with toys in the yard); a rockstar partner (moving through crowds was a breeze). Because people aren't used to seeing me without a dog, I could hear in advance, ‘Hey, where is she?’”

I resisted the urge to note our last time doing something — last nail cutting, last fetch session, last night in art class. When her final morning with me came, it was so hard.

I used all the tools: writing about it, drawing, talking to others, self-referring to a mental health clinician. Staying busy helping newer raisers and making art provided the gift of space and time to work through the loss of Lexi.

I n the winter of 2023, with a week’s notice, I received Annie. She was my third dog, and puppy-proofing was old hat: set up the crate for a tiny pup, remove choking hazards from the floor and bank lots of sleep.

On Jan. 5, an instructor came after dark. She handed Phil, a puppy who looked like a baby polar bear, to my unit-mate Josue. She gave me Annie, a big-eyed little girl who was an animation studio’s version of cute. Annie’s a different dog from Lexi — they’re all unique — but she is equally lovely in different ways. She challenges me to be a better trainer.

Each of my dogs has been a teacher. Lee: Stay present, you can choose what you pay attention to. Lexi: Smile and get on with it. Annie has taught me the most. And what I’ve learned is that caring for others is my special purpose.

Annie may “graduate” this summer. She’ll be 20 months, and I’ll be going before the parole board after 25 years. Who knows? Maybe we’ll leave prison around the same time.

I sure hope so, but one thing is certain: Like the contract stipulates, we’ll part company. I will miss Annie something fierce. But I will move forward, richer for her unconditional love.

Adam Roberts is an artist, writer and actor. See his work on Instagram at @adam_drawseverything. He is serving time in New York for arson and murder.

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