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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?

Every year the IAEA releases various reports on its members and the state of nuclear safety, safeguards implementation reports, nuclear technology review, and technical cooperation reports. These documents report the progress of the IAEA on accomplishing its mission statement.

The bibliography was not attached to the article, nor could I find one.

                The methodology of the study is fairly standard. It uses basic reasoning, supported with conclusive data to make its point on the true and falsehoods of communicable diseases associated with natural disasters.

Those that cannot pay for healthcare services (or are suspected to not be able to) are the most vulnerable population as they can literally die because of their social standing getting in the way of care and treatment. 

The argument is sustained by some big number facts but mostly through interviews with people on the ground and involved in the community of central Liberia.

                Very little scientific information is provided by the film. The main goal of the film is to highlight the social aspects of the disease.

                The film appeals emotionally, starting with following the personal story of the Urey family that becomes divided between the US and Liberia. Throughout the film, there is much appeal to the viewer’s emotion when presenting the difficulties and challenges in this case, such as law enforcement shooting the legs of a boy during civil unrest.

 I researched more into why the fire department’s Radios were having difficulties and issues, especially on the higher floors. First, the agency primarily used VHF (very high frequency) radios which are better for long distance when there is line-of-sight form point-to-point with minimal obstructions. UHF operates on a higher frequency and thus transmits with shorter wave-lengths which is better for object penetration. There are many challenges with radio communications in a city like NYC, starting with the sheer fact that to transmit directly from the ground to the top requires going through over a hundred stories of steel and concrete.

The repeaters worked to an extent. We know that they were operational and working, at least partly, as they recorded the relayed transmissions. The police used a separate but almost identical repeater as the fire department with mostly success. The NYFD experienced more issues. I found reports that claimed from fire fighters in the towers that while the transmissions were getting through, they were not understood due to the loud working environment and congested radio traffic.

The Incident Command System was largely ineffective. The only agency that was properly trained in ICS was the fire department which made inter-agency command and control through ICS moot. It was because of the events on 9/11/2001 that resulted in the development of the Nation Incident Management System, by the Department of Homeland Security, which encompasses ICS and more. Federal funding for emergencies now requires that NIMS be used as well as all first responders that respond to hazardous materials incidents be trained in the ICS.

Didier Fassin—

“Didier Fassin is an anthropologist and a sociologist who has conducted fieldwork in Senegal, Ecuador, South Africa, and France. Trained as a physician in internal medicine and public health, he dedicated his early research to medical anthropology, illuminating important dimensions of the AIDS epidemic, mortality disparities, and global health. He later developed the field of critical moral anthropology, which explores the historical, social, and political signification of moral forms involved in everyday judgment and action as well as in the making of international relations with humanitarianism. He recently conducted an ethnography of the state, through a study of urban policing as well as the justice and prison systems in France. His current work is on punishment, asylum, inequality, and the politics of life, and he is developing a reflection on the public presence of the social sciences. He occasionally writes for the French newspapers Le Monde and Libération. His recent books include The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry Into the Condition of Victimhood (2009), Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (2011), Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing (2013), At the Heart of the State: The Moral World of Institutions (2015), and Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition (2016).” (https://www.ias.edu/scholars/fassin)

“Based upon research that the DRLA leadership has conducted with reputational leaders in the field, including leaders from within other premier academic institutions, international organizations, prestigious NGOs, the United Nations, the donor community, think tanks and the Red Cross movement, it is widely agreed that a systematic and interdisciplinary approach to leadership is widely needed in the community and insufficiently addressed in most academic programs. As Tulane University itself has exhibited such resilience and strength of leadership in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it represents and ideal setting to support such an approach to disaster resilience leadership education and allows students to experience the living laboratory of recovery and resilience that is the city of New Orleans.” -- Louisiana Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters.