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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 main findings of this article is that worldwide diasese cannot be trated with traditional methods such as giving medicines and/or placing clinics. The infrastructure needs to be changed, neighbors or family members to help implement procedures that prevent spread of diasese. For example AIDS is spread from mother to child from breast milk, to prevent this you cannot just tell mothers not to keep their children alive, instead the article supports the use of infrastrucutre-materials, to prevent the spread of infection through making sure they are helping prevent their infection through antibody treatment.

Three ways the argument is supported is through explanations of what humantarism is and its types and explaining the backround of sexual violence and how it is the perfect scapegoat. The article uses MSF's history of treatment in the Congo and toher countries and points out the high incidients of rape. The artilce also uses meetings and quotes that describe sexual violence as a staple issue to explain the argument.

The main findings presented in the article is preventing epidemics, watching global health patterns, reviewing past health epidemics. The article analyzes the ways health can be secured through keeping food in your home country, to preventing epidemics by looking at health globally. The article also mentions factors that can cause illness that include: bio weapons, biological labs, the food industry, travel, etc.

The film suggests to change the healthcare system in America. Perhaps by providing universal healthcare to those who are in need, or allowing public hospitals to provide patients without insurance some form of care. Everyone has the right to be seen and treated.

The implications that this policy has on first responders and others is that the whole country supports the cause of those who fight to protect the rights of others in a time of need. It foreshadows that if something drastic was to happen again, that those who work to save others would get the needed recognition.

The data/reports they have collected to support their approach to help disaster include annual reports and newsletters that define the issues they are currently focusing on: what it includes, how one person can help. Their website also includes resources that describe the issue they are tackling their position and what is going on to prevent/cure the problem. Their website has experts, a university that specializes on 'empowering global communities' in order to be able to recoginze their lack of human rights. They also have a blog and first hand video accounts.

Three ways the article is supported is through first hand accounts of diverse residents that have lived in New Orleans- their opinions of how the rebuild process is progressing as well as the lack of a connection between need and aid from the government. The interviews also provide an emotional perspective into the lives of those who experienced the disaster. The article includes direct quotes from federal disaster efforts such as FEMA and HOME, who provided statistics into how many people received trailer homes and money to rebuild their lives. Another way this article was supported was using records of mail, who had lived in New Orleans before the hurricane and after. This evidence provides an insight into how many people were actually homeless because they had no way of getting federal aid.

The system was built to serve those who cannot afford mental health care and to those who are not educated on mental health disorders. This system was built was reduce problems such as: senseless violence, broken families, lost productivity, and costly physical illness from mental disorders- the app can help these issues over time. To ultimately build healthier communities, workplaces, homes, personal relationships, preventing these in future generations.