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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?

The report comes within a much larger book edited by Richard Hindmarsh focused on the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The book as whole explores social, environmental, and political issues in the aftermath of the incident. It appears to be available at multiple collegiate libraries including Boston College, Williams College, Harvard University, MIT, and Cornell University.

BSVAC was founded during the height of the crack-cocaine epidemic, when gang and drug violence were rampant throughout the city. While violence has decreased in Bed-Struy, felony assaults as of 2013 stood at around 5.9/1000, well over double the NY city-wide rate of 2.4/1000. This is an area rife with poverty, with median income of about $19,000 and a population heavily dominated by non-white individuals (latino, african-american, multi-race, ect.). Hence, the organization has been heavily molded by this urban, highly volatile environment. The vast majority of BSVAC personnel are of color and outreach is primarily aimed at keeping non-white youth away from street or drug life. The heavy emphasis on gun and drug violence in the area shapes the call volume and type, with shooting and stabbing wounds being a regular occurrence. The agency, for the most part, is a trauma-based service. Thus, their responses to calls would be different than an ambulance without this lengthy history and experience. Moreover, BSVAC has played a role in volunteering and responding to large-scale disasters, such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Haiti. As members are highly experienced in high volumes of large traumatic injuries, they are well-equipped to handle larger emergencies (similar to the ER physicians in County Hospital of LA or the trauma surgeons in Cook County outside Chicago).

The report quite clearly details the need to change our approaches to healthcare and epidemic emergencies. Currently, we seem to address these events in a singular method, and are unwilling to alter this approach. This is partially due to the narrow scope of patient care; for the most part, administering care to patients follows a standard guideline that does not seek to reach beyond that singular case. It is beyond the scope of a practitioner to attempt to mitigate socioeconomic discrepancies within their clinics alone. However, as Farmer and his colleagues argue, broadening this standard is necessary to combat illness. Biosocial factors, not just medicinal factors, need to be tackled in order to fully combat disease.

The article seems to be primarily composed of thoughts from the author supported by evidence from historical, well-known occurrences. Moreover, both authors seem to have personal research in the fields identified here, making many of their arguments based on field experiences. There are cited reports and publications, but there does not appear to be an associated "Works Cited" page provided. 

This article particularly focuses on analysis in the aftermath of emergencies. Specifically, in the investigative processes of structural disasters. It highlights the awkward melding of various agencies in the face of public demand for answers. More than anything, it presents this instability in the investigative processes surrounding many emergencies; understanding the logistics of a building's collapse or how a fire rapidly spread only furthers comprehension of the disaster as a whole. Moreover, findings from this analysis could provide strategies for avoiding future emergencies of a similar nature. The article opens investigations for scrutiny, asking why such an integral part of the post-disaster process often gets swept aside.

The chapter appears to be a compilation of accounts of immigrant medical treatments and overviews of the historical context behind several key situations. There is no bibliography, making it difficult to discern where these accounts came from. I can only assume most of this historical context came from Fissan's peers or other peer-reviewed works-- potentially another anthropological book. 

The report includes information gathered by both authors during the course of their own research, including citing several of their own publications within the report. Moreover, as a review article, the report includes work from other prominent epidemiologists, psychologists, and organizers of disaster relief; additionally, there appear to be several reports from various emergency response agencies providing data for prevalence of various mental disorders

It addresses the public as a whole. Throughout the film, those involved in fighting for information/responsibility over Camp Lejeune emphasize the power of the public to write or speak about this issue. Moreover, it strongly demonstrates how often public welfare is shunned by those in power-- ironically, the least effected group.