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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?

MSF works in environments where there is not a lot of wealth or health-care avaliability. This forces them to implement solutions that are cost-effective and able to be distributed to massive amounts of people having similar problems. Operating in these conditions has allowed them to see that those in the lowest socioeconomic groups are the ones who typically need care the most.

This program is targeted to students who would like to work in the the field of Homeland Security. It appears to be targeted toward younger students rather than those who have been out of school for many years or may be trying to get a doctorate or the like.

This report discusses the adverse consequences that result from people being forcibly displaced from their homes. These consequences include reduced or eliminated access to public health and utilities, which can further exacerbate the problem because those native to the area where people are traveling can lose access when immigrants flood their systems.

Dr. Schmid discusses emergency response to nuclear incidents, albeit at a very high level. She deals much more with the large scale factors involved in responding to an incident rather than the individual locality. She also addresses the importance of international NGOs in assisting locals after the first-responders have done what they can.

This article was published on PLOS.org and has been viewed over 96,000 times and has been cited over 175 times. An attempt to access the exact articles in which it had been cited was made, but that information was hidden behind a paywall.

The article discusses how many current organizations use a cost-benefit analysis to determine how much effort needs to be put into a response. This goes from vaccination to quarantine. The article also discusses how tuberculosis was fought in post-Soviet Georgia. Finally, it discusses how "biosecurity" will be looked at under a different and more holistic lens. The article didn't make an argument, so it was difficult to find support.

"The 'disaster investigation,' ... actually emerges as a hard-fought contest to define the moment in politics and society, in technology and culture." (page 1).

"[Answers about the World Trade Center] were not reassuring, or especially enlightening answers." (page 16)

"... so many players appeared guildty that none could be singled out for punishment." (page 16)

The argument is supported by the use of anecdotal evidence from immigrants, discussion of the relevant laws and their impacts, and an examination of several case studies of specific immigrants moving through the system.