epidemics 
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
6/30/2023
Americans Will Regret Dismissing 100 Years of Public Health Progress
by Craig Spencer
Politicians have felt free to attack public health authorities to score points in the wake of the pandemic because the profession's achievements have allowed the public to forget just how much damage contagious illness can cause.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/18/2023
Jonathan Kennedy Tells the World's History through Eight Plagues
A new book asks whether microbes have been bending the narrative arc of history all along.
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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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