Past Events

“After COVID” is hard to imagine, as is just how long it will take us—globally, nationally, regionally— to get there. The term “new normal” has already become old and overused, but what does it really mean? The truth is that we can’t provide any concrete answers to this complex question, but we can examine empirical patterns that are already observable. A panel including Dr. Michael Osterholm, White House advisor, epidemiologist and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Rachel Silverman, policy fellow Center for Global Development, and Dr. Amesh Adalja Johns Hopkins, Center for Global Health and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security predict what might change fundamentally and what lessons about preparedness we will have learned. Politics in the Era of Global Pandemic— 2.0, is produced by Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, the Political Science & Legal Studies department at Suffolk University, and the GBH Forum Network. Guest speakers examine the issues at play in year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, from global infection rates to the havoc on the economy, our politics, and our trust in our governments. ### RESOURCES “[The Case for Investing in Public Health](https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/278073/Case-Investing-Public-Health.pdf ) ”, by the European Health Organization, 2020. “[About Variants](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant.html) ” CDC, 08/06/202. “[‘Act now’ on global vaccines to stop more-dangerous variants, experts warn Biden](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/10/health-experts-demand-global-vaccines-pandemic/) ” By Dan Diamond and Yasmeen Abutaleb, The Washington Post, 08/10/2021.

Today our economy is utterly dependent on fossil fuels. They are essential to transportation, manufacturing, farming, electricity, and to make fertilizers, cement, steel, roads, cars, and half a million other products. This discussion with Alice Friedemann is a reality check on where energy will come from in the future. One day soon, fossil fuels will no longer be abundant and affordable. That time may be nearer than we realize. Some experts predict oil shortages as soon as 2022 to 2030. What will our options be for replacing the fossil fuels that turn the great wheel of civilization? Alice Friedemann's book, "Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy," surveys the arsenal of alternatives – wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, catenary systems, fusion, methane hydrates, power2gas, wave, tidal power and biomass – and examines whether they can replace or supplement fossil fuels. Taking off the rose-colored glasses, author Friedemann will join Bio4Climate Executive Director Adam Sacks in conversation to consider our options.

When COVID-19 initially began to rage across the globe, it was described as an equal opportunity killer that didn’t differentiate between hosts; everyone was vulnerable. It quickly became apparent that not everyone was impacted in the same way. While the virus itself does not discriminate, our responses to it – geographically, socioeconomically, and politically – have resulted in vastly different outcomes. The past 18 months have exposed massive inequalities at both the national and international levels when it comes to combating the virus. This expert panel examines some of the most disappointing and surprising developments in COVID responsiveness and asks essential questions to better understand what role resources, ideology and geography have played in creating such divergent responses. They also discuss what can be done to level the playing field going forward. ## Resources Check out this [Percent of Population Fully Vaccinated by Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) ](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-equity) interactive map, published by the CDC. More from [Kaiser Health's Lauren Weber](https://khn.org/news/author/lauren-weber/) [“Wealthy Countries Have Left the Rest of the World Behind”](https://www.thenation.com/article/world/vaccine-nationailsm/) By Rajan Menon, 06/22/2021 [“Covid-19 Is Revealing America’s Fault Lines”](hhttps://www.thenation.com/article/society/coronavirus-trump-fault-lines/) By Rajan Menon, 04/20/2020 [“The defining moments of the COVID-19 pandemic”](https://recommendations.theindependentpanel.org/companion-report/) By the IPPR, 2021 [“One big question about the end of Covid-19”](https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/23/opinions/pandemic-response-commission-covid-19-dybul/index.html) by Mark Dybul, 05/23/2021 [“The Case for Investing in Public Health”](https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/278073/Case-Investing-Public-Health.pdf ) , by the European Health Organization, 2020,

We could see COVID-19 as a common enemy to unite us, yet several responses to the pandemic have resulted in misinformation that creates confusion, hostility and even violence. Antagonism around how we define the crisis caused by COVID-19 inspires outrage toward mask and vaccine mandates, lockdowns, school and business closures. To make matters worse, global leaders have manipulated information, undermined trust in vaccines, and advanced political agendas by politicizing public health responses. Heidi Legg, Fellow at Harvard University Future of Media project, will moderate a panel discussion with Peggy Slasman, VP of of Public Affairs at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. William Schnaffer, Professor of Preventative Medicine and Infectious Disease at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, and Jonas Kaiser, Ph.D. Associate at Harvard Berkman Klein Center and Assistant Professor at Suffolk University. Together they will consider how effectively public health information and policy has been communicated by governments, public health officials, media, and civic organizations, as well as ways to combat misinformation as we make our way through the pandemic.

How can nations gain influence, strengthen alliances and protect their own populations against a global threat? Here’s one way: provide support in the battle against the common enemy. With less than 10 percent of the globe vaccinated and surges in infections from the COVID-19 Delta variant on the rise, getting shots in arms everywhere should be a public health priority, a national security strategy and a moral imperative, especially for high income countries. Yet vaccine nationalism, underfunded international organizations, and arguments over intellectual property rights, rather than vaccine diplomacy and robust international coordination, have slowed progress. This week, Foreign Policy Magazine's Elise Labott moderates a panel discussion to help us understand the complex issues governing the global response to the pandemic to date, the prospects for getting it right in the future and how Covid-19 is shaping geopolitics in a changing world. RESOURCES Duke University's data visualizations on inequities in vaccine access: https://launchandscalefaster.org/covid-19/vaccinepurchases “The Folly of Hoarding Knowledge in the COVID-19 Age Let Vaccine Producers in Poor Countries Help End the Pandemic,” by Tahir Amin, Foreign Affairs, January 29, 2021 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2021-01-29/folly-hoarding-knowledge-covid-19-age "Covid-19 has exposed the limits of the pharmaceutical market model," by Tahir Amin and Rohit Malpani, STAT News May 19, 2020 https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/19/covid-19-exposed-limits-drug-development-model/ Oxfam’s call for A People’s Vaccine: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/peoples-vaccine-fastest-way-to-end-the-covid-19-pandemic/ Op-Ed “Beyond ample supply, hurdles abound in the race to vaccinate the globe,” By MARK MCCLELLAN, KRISHNA UDAYAKUMAR, MICHAEL MERSON AND GARY EDSON The Hill, July 8, 2021 https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/562059-despite-ample-supply-hurdles-abound-in-the-race-to-vaccinate-the-globe

As the latest hybrids continue to reveal themselves, COVID-19 has proved to be the biggest global public health and economic challenge in history. Although it has posed the same threat across the globe, countries have responded very differently and some are faring better than others. UCLA historian Peter Baldwin has followed how various countries have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, with some clearly faring much better than others. He is joined for this conversation by epidemiologist William P. Hanage, researching the evolution of viruses at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. His recent book, “Fighting The First Wave: How the Coronavirus was tackled so differently across the globe,” offers examples of how nations responded to the crisis based upon the political tools available - and how firmly authorities could order citizens' lives and how willingly the strict rules would be obeyed. In Asia, nations quarantined the infected and their contacts. In the Americas and Europe, they shut down their economies, hoping to squelch the spread of the virus. In some countries, like England, there were fines for disobeying lockdown limits. Others, above all Sweden, responded with a light touch, putting their faith in social consensus over coercion. Whether citizens would follow their leaders' requests and how soon they would tire of their demands were crucial to their hopes of taming the pandemic. The story of how different countries have tackled this problem is still evolving, since the publication of this book in April. Some have now changed strategy due to recent surges in the Delta variant in Australia, Canada, Europe and elsewhere.

Even if we could switch today to entirely renewable energy, it will be necessary to remove trillions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Of the various methods being developed, the carbon capture and conversion system Dr. Khan and his colleagues have devised is of particular interest. This capture and conversion system has a more efficient CO2 capture mechanism and the system can produce useful products.

Following the outbreak of a novel strain of coronavirus identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China, was a series of epic failures and missteps that led to a pandemic — and it’s still raging 18 months later. The global death toll for 2021 already exceeds all of 2020. How did we get here and what will be the lasting impacts of this public health crisis? POLITICO’s Renuka Rayasam will moderate a panel discussion assessing some of the most consequential failures, successes and impacts of the COVID19 crisis to date. Panelists are Dr. Helen W. Boucher, Interim Dean at Tufts University School of Medicine; Jonathan Haughton, Chair of Economics at Suffolk University; and Social Scientist Jan Vogler. Together the panel will help us understand how we moved from outbreak to uncontrolled pandemic, the impact of the pandemic geographically, economically and what pandemics of the past can teach us about how to anticipate what the new normal will be. _This talk is part of the series Politics in the Era of Global Pandemic 2.0, produced by Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, the Political Science & Legal Studies department at Suffolk University, and the GBH Forum Network. For six weeks students, faculty and guest speakers examine the issues at play in year two of the COVID-19 pandemic._ ### Resources “Pandemics and Political Development: The Electoral Legacy of the Black Death in Germany” Daniel W. Gingerich and Jan P. Vogler: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887121000034 “Hot Vax Summer, meet Not Vax Summer” Politico Nightly 06/23/2021 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2021/06/23/hot-vax-summer-meet-not-vax-summer-493347 Check out Dr. Boucher’s recent video on “[Antimicrobial Resistance, the Silent Pandemic](https://youtu.be/qUfXzjFDhSc)” See the New York Times Vaccine Rollout tracker: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

Despite the damage and carnage, the pandemic accelerated our ingenuity and innovation and good things happened. Multi-disciplinary collaborations took place across continents, Zoom partnerships developed and vaccine production took off at record speed. Peloton sales exploded, home offices and gyms sprung up in garages, people gardened and baked bread. And according to psychologists, 10% of us will undergo PTG (post traumatic growth). What good things will you keep from 2020? To explore this further, we brought together Sharon Peacock, founding director of COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium; Amy Canevello, UNC Professor in Health Psychology; and Douglas Alexander, Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s “Future of Diplomacy” Project to discuss. Resources More Resources Opinion “[Vaccine passports -- A technical, not an ideological issue](https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/19/opinions/vaccine-passport-covid-19-baldwin/index.html) ” Essay: [It’s Time to Embrace the Vaccine Passport](https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2021/05/05/vaccine-passports-covid/ideas/essay/)

Scholar Stephen Bown shares his compelling narrative history of Canada’s famous Hudson's Bay Company. Follow its rise from a small 1670 trading business backed by Royal Charter through its intersections as a political and economic force working with indigenous people as well as French, and American settlers on both sides of the 49th parallel and beyond. The Company became the single biggest political and economic force in North America, influencing the lives of people from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific Ocean. See Bown’s illustrated presentation and insights on this rich and peopled history; and his discussion of Canada, then and now, with fellow countryman Jeff Breithaupt. ### RESOURCES Learn more about Stephen Bown and his books, including “The Company,” https://stephenrbown.net/ More about our moderator Jeff Breithaupt and his podcast, Canadians Among Us. https://twitter.com/jeffbreithaupt Find additional author events, webinars, and family history resources, chat with an expert genealogist at www.americanancestors.org Check out the many resources at American Ancestors, like this French-Canadian Genealogy page: https://www.americanancestors.org/education/learning-resources/read/french-canadian-guide