Contact tracing's long, turbulent history holds lessons for COVID-19
Trust in the confidentiality of contact tracing broke down during the AIDS epidemic. Today, it's faltering again.
July 16, 2020 • ~10 min
Tags: health covid-19 coronavirus history pandemic surveillance contact-tracing sexually-transmitted-diseases aids syphilis stds
5 ways the world is better off dealing with a pandemic now than in 1918
A century ago, the influenza pandemic killed about 50 million people. Today we are battling the coronavirus pandemic. Are we any better off? Two social scientists share five reasons we have to be optimistic.
June 19, 2020 • ~9 min
Tags: influenza covid-19 coronavirus history pandemic vaccines flu quarantine sars-cov-2 1918-flu-pandemic h1n1-influenza us-history swine-flu-pandemic
The cholera outbreak in a Victorian asylum that anticipated the coronavirus crisis in care homes
There is a sad precedent of pandemic disease threatening the residents of care institutions – and of authorities not heeding the dangers.
Tags: covid-19 history cholera in-depth insights-series care-homes
Rewilding: lessons from the medieval Baltic crusades
The Baltic crusades had a long term impact on the local environment – 700 years later, the details of this are clear.
May 11, 2020 • ~8 min
Tags: environment biodiversity history archaeology interdisciplinarity rewilding medieval-history deep-time
Patient zero: why it's such a toxic term
Why we should wash our hands of this unhealthy phrase.
April 1, 2020 • ~23 min
Tags: covid-19 coronavirus hivaids history pandemic social-stigma
Calling COVID-19 a 'Chinese virus' is wrong and dangerous – the pandemic is global
Emphasizing foreign origins of a disease can have racist connotations and implications for how people understand their own risk of disease.
March 25, 2020 • ~10 min
Tags: history-of-medicine infectious-diseases covid-19 coronavirus history ebola pandemic rift-valley-fever wuhan world-health-organization sars-cov-2 2019-ncov epidemics new-coronavirus world-health-organization-who norovirus wuhan-coronavirus lassa-fever cholera bush-meat ebola-virus ebola-virus-disease rift-valley-fever-virus ebola-zaire ebola-blame covid-19-pandemic
When restaurants close, Americans lose much more than a meal
Restaurants have always been about more than feeding city residents. During the 1918 flu pandemic, they were kept open as sites of social solidarity.
March 20, 2020 • ~8 min
Tags: coronavirus history food coronavirus-2020 france restaurants public 1918-flu-pandemic
10 misconceptions about the 1918 flu, the 'greatest pandemic in history'
The so-called 'Spanish flu' didn't actually come from Spain. What else do people often misunderstand about this famous crisis?
March 17, 2020 • ~9 min
Tags: influenza covid-19 coronavirus history pandemic flu coronavirus-2020 spanish-flu 1918-flu-pandemic world-war-i
Climate change: how Senegal's colonial history made it more vulnerable
We need to understand colonial histories to understand climate risks.
March 6, 2020 • ~7 min
Tags: history agriculture farming colonialism rainfall peanuts senegal
Naming the new coronavirus – why taking Wuhan out of the picture matters
While identifying a new disease by its place of origin seems intuitive, history shows that doing so can have serious consequences for the people that live there.
Feb. 18, 2020 • ~9 min
Tags: history-of-medicine infectious-diseases covid-19 coronavirus history ebola rift-valley-fever wuhan world-health-organization 2019-ncov epidemics new-coronavirus wuhan-coronavirus lassa-fever cholera ebola-virus ebola-virus-disease rift-valley-fever-virus
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