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Luísa Reis-Castro: mosquitoes, race, and class

LuisaReisCastro
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As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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Emergency response was completely lacking in man power and containment efforts. There wasn't much structure to the efforts taken by emergency response in terms of containment and education of the public. There were far too many of those in need and way too few emergency response teams. Hospitals closed due to lack of personnel as well as doctors getting infected themselves. People were dying left and right and being left on the side of the street. Responders weren't able to get to people in time in some cases. Locals began to take out aggressions and frustrations on emergency responders, despite them working at full capacity. The lack of man power, communication and education lead to the emergency response being sub par in this situation. 

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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Emergency response isn’t directly addressed in this article. Yet, conditions and forms of violence that are discussed in the article that emergency responders have been documented with facing, clearly effect the way they work and respond to calls. Though emergency response isn’t directly addressed, this article is very relevant to emergency responders since its implications can highly effect the work of EMS and other medical care providers.

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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I researched current protocols and strategies in place in terms of biosafety. I also researched current microbial threats in terms of organisms and the ways in which we have currently developed to help prevent those specific forms of bioterrorism. I also read up on past bioterrorism events and the effects it had on global protocols as well as the development of emergency response. 

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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This site runs like any run of the mill website. If there are any issues or questions about the website there is contact information provided to seek assistance with the site or ask questions regarding the information. 

By phone: 866-692-9827
By email: wtchr@health.nyc.gov
By fax: 347-396-2893
By mail: WTC Health Registry
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
42-09 28th Street, CN 6W
Queens, NY 11101-4132

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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The way in which the research was done is what made this an interesting read and peaked my interest in this article. Primary sources of information are quoted and interviewed. The conditions and treatment of inmates were documented and revealed by residents both past and present of Rikers, who have first hand insight into what it was like being detained there. Inmate testimony, as well as facts and statistics about the deteriorating facilities, pollution and poor conditions there were also provided. This information was supplied by numerous different organizations as well as studies and articles and then complied into this article. 

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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"Depression and anxiety disorders were pervasive. Many residents had regular nightmares of waking up in water. They talked about recurring “breakdowns” in which they became overcome with emotion and physically collapsed. A 2007 study showed that 20 percent of New Orleans residents were categorized as having a Katrina-related serious mental illness, and 19 percent showed signs of minimal to mild mental illness (Sastry and VanLandingham 2008; Thomas 2008).  "

"The stress-inducing factors that prevailed among New Orleans residents were multiple and layered, including physical, psychological, and social displacements around house and home, work, financial security, and family security. The loss of home and jobs and, in some cases, the cost of rebuilding produced huge financial worries for residents. "

"What I experienced was coming back to the devastation of the city. No grocery stores, no cell phone service, certainly no phone service, no regular phone service. We actually had to get other cell phones. You know, it was a ghost town. I think I, probably, maybe not now, but I was in shock, you know, because I couldn’t take in the enormity of it. I wondered knowing the politics of the city, and the state, and actually the federal government, how it was ever going to be fixed.  "

“Chronic disaster syndrome” thus refers in this analysis to the cluster of trauma-and posttrauma-related phenomena that are at once individual, social, and political and that are associated with disaster as simultaneously causative and experiential of a chronic condition of distress in relation to displacement.  "

"Not surprisingly, residents and those still trying to return to New Orleans are asking the question: Where did all the federal money go? Residents still living out of their trailers wonder why they could not get Road Home or FEMA funds and continue to wait to find out if their rental housing will be rebuilt.  "

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Sara_Nesheiwat
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The article is supported through the recollection of the past decade of research on this topic of mental health effects due to disasters. First, the article delves into the PTSD and MDD mental illness association with disasters and the background of theses disorders. The authors then utilize numerous epidemiological studies that have been developed and discussed on the matter over that last 190 years. Experiences of those that are dealing with mental illnesses are also utilized as supporting evidence of the effect disasters have on mental health conditions on those effected.