Back in March, we wrote a blog on the new and mysterious COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. The blog was published just two days after the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and at the time of the post, only 135,000 people had been infected.
Little did we know how life as the world knew it would be upended and redefined.
A Disease Goes Global
It was soon discovered that COVID-19 could rapidly progress from mild cold and flu symptoms to severe respiratory distress requiring intubation and, at times, causing organ failure or death. COVID-19 was found to be highly contagious, overwhelming hospitals and creating so many critically ill patients that hospitals often did not have enough beds, supplies, or ventilators to support afflicted patients. In New York City, for example, the original epicenter of the disease in the United States, refrigerated trucks were parked in the streets to hold the bodies of the dead because morgues could not accommodate the number of fatalities.
Now, at the time of this blog post, there have been more than 20 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and nearly 740,000 deaths. Maintaining social distance and complying with state-issued orders to wear masks have become flashpoint political issues. As the year turns toward autumn, states across the country grapple with whether to open schools for in-person instruction and whether to require students to wear masks. 17.8 million Americans who were suddenly unemployed by the pandemic still don’t know whether their federal unemployment supplement will continue. Just this past weekend, President Trump authorized an extra $400 in weekly unemployment insurance benefits, but many are unsure when exactly the payments will arrive.
An Authoritative New Resource to Ease the Uncertainty
While we may not know what the next months will bring in this COVID-19 pandemic, HeinOnline has launched COVID-19 in America: Response, Issues, and Law to empower its users with information. To make this information as accessible as possible, this new database is included at no additional charge for all HeinOnline Core subscribers.
Hundreds of Government Reports
Publications from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyze the various ways COVID-19 has impacted every aspect of life, from testing issues in the medical field to unemployment and economic impact. These reports provide insight into federal response to the pandemic, discussing not only those issues that are highly prevalent in the media (for example, the process of vaccine development), but also those that may not have been considered by the casual researcher—for example, the pandemic’s effect on organ donation and transplantation, the U.S. blood supply, support for the homeless, and the implications of digital surveillance of carriers.
For ease of access, this material has been grouped around the areas of life in America impacted by the disease: Economics, Health, and Society. An additional subcollection entitled Global Impact has been dedicated to analyses of the pandemic’s effect on the rest of the world. Select a subcollection dedicated to an area of impact and then navigate its content using the handy A-Z index.
Scholarly Articles and External Links
HeinOnline editors have also curated an expanding list of scholarly articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic from across all of HeinOnline. By default, articles are listed by Most-Cited. Change the view to sort instead by Article Title, Author, or Year, or perform a search to find a specific article.
Keep researching beyond HeinOnline with a list of external resources related to COVID-19. Samples of linked content found in this collection include resources from Oxford University Press, Johns Hopkins University, The Lancet, ProQuest, the American Bar Association, and more.
Stay Tuned for Even More COVID-19 Content
This database, much like our understanding of the disease, will continue to evolve over the coming months and years as new content is published and integrated with regular updates.
For help navigating the COVID-19 database, check out the LibGuide below. If you’re a Core subscriber, log in now to access the database for yourself!
