Disease

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  12/12/2022
  

  Why Has American Progress Stalled? Blame Our Belief in "Eureka!"

  Moments of creative innovation matter, but invention depends on a society that is prepared to take advantage and distribute the benefits. 

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• 11/13/2022
  

  Monkeypox Has Been Around for Decades; This Outbreak is a Product of Neglect

  by Alessandro Hammond and Cameron Sabet

  The world's response to viral outbreaks in poor nations demonstrates the hoarding of resources in the Global North, but it's ultimately self-defeating for rich nations, too. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/5/2022
  

  Ukraine's Next Enemy: Disease

  by Max Brooks, Lionel Beehner and John Spencer

  "If we want to help the Ukrainian resistance, we shouldn’t be sending them only Javelins and body armor. They need emergency supplies — bulk sanitation items such as alcohol-based hand sanitizer, ammonium nitrate to counter food-borne illness, and rat traps and poisons."

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/5/2021
  

  The Inescapable Dilemma of Infectious Disease

  by Kyle Harper

  Control of infectious diesase is arguably humanity's greatest triumph. Has that triumph changed our environment to make diseases tougher to control? Has our success stopped us from being able to think of how to thrive without control of infections? 

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• SOURCE: ABC Radio National
  5/17/2020
  

  How Epidemics And Pandemics Have Changed History

  This podcast features historians Jo Hays, Frank Snowden, and Elizabeth Fenn in a discussion of the role of infectious disease in history.

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• SOURCE: New York Post
  4/18/2020
  

  Miracle ‘Coronavirus Cures’ Haven’t Changed in 700 Years

  by Jennifer Wright

  The many bizarre "cures" for the coronavirus circulating online are nothing new. Rather, they have a lineage that stretches back to the bubonic plague.

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/12/2020
  

  The Dangerous History of Immunoprivilege

  by Kathryn Olivarius

  We’ve seen what happens when people with immunity to a deadly disease are given special treatment. It isn’t pretty.

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• SOURCE: New Yorker
  4/13/2020
  

  The Pandemic Is Not a Natural Disaster

  by Kate Brown

  Zoonotic diseases can seem like earthquakes; they appear to be random acts of nature. In fact, they are more like hurricanes—they can occur more frequently, and become more powerful, if human beings alter the environment in the wrong ways.

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• 4/12/2020
  

  The Other Pandemic

  by Alan M. Kraut

  The coronavirus will not succeed in doing to American society what fascism did to Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, but it has sparked a virulent wave of racism and intolerance, especially aimed at Chinese Americans.

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• SOURCE: Atlas Obscura
  4/8/2020
  

  In 19th-Century America, Fighting Disease Meant Battling Bad Smells

  Melanie Kiechle, a history professor at Virginia Tech, foul smells or "miasmas" were considered to indicate risk of disease before the germ theory of disease developed.

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• 4/5/2020
  

  Historian William McNeill Warned in 1976 that a Mutated Flu Virus Could Cause a Pandemic

  by James Thornton Harris

  McNeil’s major achievement was to incorporate developments in microbiology, anthropology and archeology and synthesize them in a popular world history that identified disease as a primary shaper of world history.  

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• SOURCE: Vox
  3/30/2020
  

  A Brief History of Beards and Pandemics

  Unlike what was thought during the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918, beards cannot trap germs nor transfer disease.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  3/3/2020
  

  How Pandemics Change History

  In his new book, “Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present,” Frank M. Snowden, a professor emeritus of history and the history of medicine at Yale, examines the ways in which disease outbreaks have shaped politics, crushed revolutions, and entrenched racial and economic discrimination.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/25/20
  

  The rising panic over coronavirus is likely to make containing it harder

  by Danielle B. Wetmore

  Panics spread misinformation that make crafting sound medical solutions more difficult, while fueling bigotry.

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• SOURCE: NCBI
  Accessed 2/26/20
  

  The History of the Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control

  The current era of globalization is more properly viewed as an intensification of trends that have occurred throughout history. 

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  1/13/20
  

  Assassination as Cure: Disease Metaphors and Foreign Policy

  by Sarah Swedberg

  Kinzinger’s words fit within a long historical tradition of badly used disease metaphors that often accompany bad outcomes.

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• SOURCE: AHA Perspectives
  12-1-14
  

  Historians are joining with scientists in a breakthrough approach

  by Monica Green

  Historians haven't traditionally welcomed scientists into their corner of research, but they should -- and now we're doing it. 

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• 8-15-14
  

  We Can't Give in to Ebola Scaremongering

  by Alison Bateman-House

  It is too easy to think that keeping the sick out of the nation will protect America’s health.

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• SOURCE: NBC News
  8-1-14
  

  Pandemic 101: The Most Infectious Plagues in History (Video)

  A quick tour through history of the worst of the worst pandemics.

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• SOURCE: BBC News
  20-21-2013
  

  Medieval Social Networks: A Small World?

  The spread of the Black Death in the 14th Century reveals our medieval ancestors' social networks and shows how connected they were.