Weekly Writers Round-Up: What COVID-19 Means for Foreign Policy, Home-Based Businesses, and Appalachian Healthcare

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Applications for the summer session are now open!

Don’t Let Maduro and the Mullahs Escape Blame From Coronavirus by Jorge González-Gallarza Hernández (Summer 2018) in The National Interest
The midst of a global pandemic is a ripe time for sanctioned regimes to play victim—and a delicate one for the United States to hold up “maximum pressure” campaigns. In Iran and Venezuela, tyrants are seizing on COVID-19’s local ravages to cover up their own role in leaving their people and economies vulnerable. Their pleas for sanctions relief would more easily be exposed as the blame-shifting demagoguery they are if they weren’t backed up by… you guessed it: the European Union.

Tracing back the virus’ spread helps set the stage. COVID-19 is thought to have been brought into Iran by a merchant flying back from Wuhan to his hometown of Qom, south of Tehran, with the first two casualties reported on February 19. What soon became the world’s second largest outbreak—since surpassed by European hotspots and the United States—seemed casually sparked at first. It soon turned inevitable by Iran’s stubborn refusal to cancel flights from China, just as every major airline called off theirs…

Home-Based Businesses Are Coming by Nolan Gray (Fall 2015) in City Journal
With the rapid spread of Covid-19, working from home is having a moment. With most major cities now under stay-at-home orders and nonessential businesses closing down across the country, millions of Americans are working remotely for the first time. Will it stick?

Indeed, even before the coronavirus and self-quarantining, more and more Americans have been running businesses from home. According to recent research, the number of home-based businesses nearly doubled between 1992 and 2012, constituting one in six businesses by 2014. Evidence from this period indicates that such businesses are more likely to be run by people otherwise excluded from conventional work: single parents, the disabled, the unemployed, and caregivers, among others…

As COVID-19 Reaches the Mid-Ohio Valley, the FDA Hampers What States Can Do by Anthony Hennen (Spring 2019) in expatalachians
As the coronavirus spreads, its presence in the Mid-Ohio Valley feels increasingly real. With the second confirmed case in Wood County, West Virginia last Friday, this part of Appalachia is preparing for bigger problems.

Washington County, Ohio, across the river from Wood County, has three confirmed cases, as noted by the Marietta Times. Athens County, Ohio also has three cases (and one death), and Pleasants County, West Virginia has one case. Jackson County, West Virginia has eight cases. The largest confirmed outbreak in Appalachia is centered on Pittsburgh, where Allegheny County has 290 confirmed cases and two deaths, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission, which is tracking cases for the region. In total, the region has about 2,000 cases…