How the Pandemic Changed My Time in Prison

An Inmate Reflects on Nearly Three Years of Shifting Health Protocols and Halted Rehabilitation Efforts

Intense debates about the role of government interventions in public health became the norm during the pandemic. When do the benefits of prevention and containment policies aimed at stopping COVID’s spread outweigh the costs to individual rights?

I watched these debates from behind prison walls, where the rights of inmates are secondary to safety concerns. Here inside Ironwood State Prison, like every other correctional facility in California, prisoners are afforded a narrow range of “rights,” which are mostly privileges that can be suspended to preserve institutional security.

This principle meant that beginning …

How Do Pandemics End? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Do Pandemics End?

Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion

The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”: a story of infection that builds to a climax of widespread illness and …

California Housing Is Becoming More Affordable—Relatively, Anyway | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

California Housing Is Becoming More Affordable—Relatively, Anyway

You Still Get More House for Your Money in Austin or Boise Than L.A. or San Francisco, But the Difference Is Dwindling

California housing prices have soared during the pandemic. The California Association of Realtors reports that the median selling price of a single-family house here increased 11 percent, to $796,000, between …

Public Health Experts, They’re Just Like Us!

It’s Easy to Forget That Our Scientific Community Is Learning About COVID in Real Time, Too

A friend recently reminded Kavita, a physician epidemiologist, about a text exchange the two had shared in February 2020. When he asked how worried he should be about SARS-CoV-2, then …

Our Favorite Essays of 2021

At a Moment Where There Are No Easy Answers, Zócalo Contributors Asked Unexpected, Tough—and Sometimes Quixotic—Questions

It felt like 2021 was a year of firsts—the first rollout of new vaccine technology; the first insurrection in Washington, D.C.; the first female U.S. vice president; and the first …