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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?

Disaster response and epidemic response is addressed but on-the-field EMS isn't mentioned. This article focuses more on policies and organization than specifics.

-          The article describes Dr. Astaneh-Asl, a Berkeley Professor sent by the ASCE to investigate and determine the structural causes of the collapse of the World Trade Center, and his search for answers. When he arrived in NYC, he finds his evidence he was hoping to investigate, the 310,000 tons of debris, had been sent by the city to be scrapped and recycled.

-          The article goes on to explain the challenges faced by the three organizations presiding over the investigation, FEMA, ASCE and NIST, not being permitted access to documentation, records, or witness testimonies. From these problems arose inter-agency conflict and dischord, as the three failed to work together cohesively with clear goals and purpose. There was a clear lack of leadership, made apparent when Rep. Anthony Weiner asked “Whoever is in charge of this investigation, please raise your hand,” which was met with three people claiming leadership.

-          Knowles goes on to state that these problems and conflicts in the wake of the attack were not unique to the World Trade Center attack. He goes through a number of national tragedies, comparing and contrasting the investigation process of each, explaining the hurdles faced by investigators. This drives home how, over centuries, this is a reoccurring issue.

The Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhoad Island

Require internet, doesn't have a system for downloading these things directly. Not terribly applicable with this platform because it's not meant to be used for more than browsing.

According to google scholar this article has been cited 45 times. Some articles include:

"Medically unexplained physical symptoms in the aftermath of disasters"

"Postdisaster health effects..."

"Mental and social health in disasters..."

She used field data she researched from visits to Ukraine over the course of a few years, conducted interviews and observing the socio-political situations within the commmunity. 

Sonja D Schmid. She is an assistant professer in Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech. She studies the history of nuclear energy and the decisions governments make around nuclear power. Due to her background of studies, she appears to be a trustable source.

She has discussed responses to nuclear disasters, however she has no on the field background that I could find. She is on a CERT team but thats not in the field.

“During our interviews in Turkey, many of the conversations we had - with those suffering seizures, with family members, persons in the community, and health care providers - were made up largely of stories. We were told stories of the sudden and shocking onset of seizures or fainting, of particularly dramatic episodes of seizures or extended loss of consciousness, of years of efforts in which families and individuals engaged in a quest to find a cure, of especially memorable interactions with physicians and with religious healers, and of experiences at work, with friends, and, for example, in marriage negotiations that were influenced by the illness.”

“The same issue was raised in our attempts to elicit a "history" of the illness _ again, a problem shared by physicians who attempt to elicit a clinical history. The stories we heard were life stories, and the temporal structure was organized around events of importance to individuals and families.”

“Narrative is a form in which experience is represented and recounted, in which events are presented as having a meaningful and coherent order, in which activities and events are described along with the experiences associated with them and the significance that lends them their sense for the persons involved. But experience always far exceeds its description or narrativization.”

Dr. John Watson, the primary author of this study, works for WHO as a medical epidemiologist with the Disease Control in Humanitarian Emergencies Program (this program is the one providing technical and operational support for the study). In his work, he particularly studies respiratory disease and tuberculosis, focusing on surveillance, prevention and control. He is a Chairman of the International Society for Influenza.