epidemics

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• 3/14/2021
  

  Remembering the Father of Vaccination

  by Richard Gunderman

  "Whether or not Jenner truly saved more lives than any other person, there is no doubt that his pioneering work on immunization laid the groundwork for today’s most effective tool against COVID-19, the vaccine."

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  10/2/2020
  

  Fearing a Fear of Germs

  by Heather Murray

  Will responses to the Coronavirus, like early public health steps taken in response to HIV, foster suspicion and mistrust? 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  5/1
  

  Loosening Public-Health Restrictions Too Early Can Cost Lives.

  by Nancy Bristow

  On Jan. 25, 1919, nearly 2,000 San Franciscans showed up at Dreamland Rink for a public meeting of the Anti-Mask League.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/27/2020
  

  During Epidemics, Media (and now Social Media) have Always Helped People to Connect

  by David Paul Nord

  For several hundred years, people have used media — reading, writing and print — to maintain human contact and community in times of epidemic disease.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/24/2020
  

  Public Health Isn't the Enemy of Economic Well-Being

  by Melanie A. Kiechle

  Public health is a prerequisite for a functional—or booming—economy. And failing to adequately invest in public health over time has made the pandemic worse.

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• SOURCE: WIRED
  4/10/2020
  

  The History of Pandemics Teaches Us Only That We Can't Be Taught

  As Howard Markel, a physician and historian of science, wrote in WIRED last month, “I feel like quoting Yogi Berra: It’s ‘déjà vu all over again,’ albeit a nightmarish blend of several déjàs vu into one.”

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• 4/12/2020
  

  HNN's Robin Lindley Interviews Medical Historian Frank Snowden

  by Robin Lindley

  Professor Frank Snowden discusses the situation in Italy, the progress of COVID-19 and governments' responses to it, and his career researching the history of epidemics.  

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• SOURCE: Public Seminar
  4/6/2020
  

  COVID-19: When History Has No Lessons

  by Gaëtan Thomas and Guillaume Lachenal

  Guillaume Lachenal and Gaëtan Thomas argue that an over-reliance on the allure of ‘pandemic precedents’ needs to be replaced with an enhanced understanding of the capacity of present crises to resist historical interpretation.

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• SOURCE: Fast Company
  3/24/2020
  

  The Untold Origin Story of the N95 Mask

  The most important design object of our time was more than a century in the making.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/29/2020
  

  The Government Must Pay People to Stay Home

  by Gabriel N. Rosenberg

  The earliest effective government responses to epidemic illness in the United States came not in the context of human health, but in the context of livestock.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/28/2020
  

  The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the US to COVID-19

  The Coronavirus Task Force squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/25/2020
  

  This Is Just the Beginning

  by Yascha Mounk

  If we commit to strict social distancing now, we can radically curtail the number of new cases and buy time—time to put in place the measures we need to contain the pandemic in a less economically destructive way.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/26/2020
  

  The Power of Purell Compels You!

  The Purellification of America is about sanitation, but it is really about sanity. Fear, control, and the fear that we have no control.

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• SOURCE: NBC News
  3/22/2020
  

  Progress is Why Viruses Aren't Named After Locations Anymore

  While the White House has stood by President Donald Trump's frequent use of the phrase "Chinese virus" in reference to COVID-19 experts say the argument just doesn't hold up.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/23/2020
  

  Our Medical Professionals Are Lions. Too Many Political Leaders Are Donkeys.

  by Max Boot

  Today, the lions are the medical professionals risking their lives to fight the worst pandemic in a century. They are being betrayed by many of their political leaders.

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• SOURCE: Michigan Radio
  3/23/2020
  

  What Does “Flatten the Curve” Mean? We Asked the UM Medical Historian who Helped Coin the Term

  Markel and his cohorts designed a study of the 1918-19 flu pandemic to compare cities that did flatten the curve--with those that didn't.

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• SOURCE: Associated Press
  3/23/2020
  

  Presidents in Health Crises: Trump More Hands-On Than Many

  Most American presidents will confront a crisis—or crises—before they leave office, whether it is a natural disaster, war, economic downturn, public health threat or terrorism.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/21/2020
  

  A Historical Lesson in Disease Containment

  Tuberculosis sanatoriums offered patients fresh air, entertainment, and socialization—for those who could afford them.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/22/2020
  

  The Virus Can Be Stopped, But Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say

  In interviews with a dozen of the world’s leading experts on fighting epidemics, there was wide agreement on the steps that must be taken immediately.

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• SOURCE: Citylab
  3/14/2020
  

  Why You Should Stop Joking That Black People Are Immune to Coronavirus

  by Brentin Mock

  As Dr. Rana Hogarth wrote in her book Medicalizing Blackness about the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia: “The idea of innate black immunity placed an undue burden on the city’s black inhabitants."