Luísa Reis-Castro: mosquitoes, race, and class
LuisaReisCastroAs 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?
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Andreas_RebmannVulnerable populations for mental health issues seem to be covered by pay exclusion. Those younger than 21 or 22 are included, which appear to be the most at-risk for mental illness.
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Andreas_RebmannThis was created to support the existing Good Samaritan Policy. The afformentioned policy would not be applicable during biohazard or chemhazard events due to the policy that involve such events. This could cause a delay in treatment that could potentially lead to the deaths of the affected community. In order to allow for treatment without delay the hazard issues would be 'ignored' by the EPA and the responders not prosecuted. They would also receives support from the EPA and FOSC for protecting themselves from any damages lawsuits coming from the potential contamination from the response.
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Andreas_RebmannI read through some information about the Bhopal disaster that was referenced, as well as some other articles on Nuclear Emergency Response. I also found some protocol for Radiation Sickness. (Potassium Iodide, Prussian Blue, DTPA, Neupogen)
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Andreas_RebmannThe author speaks of Dr. Per Bech, a Dutch Psychiatrist, and his co-author Lone Lindberg, and his patient who suffered from mental illness over the course of his life, and how the vignette Bech wrote about this patient had value and relevance for understanding the use of Zoloft.
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Andreas_RebmannMore studies referencing corpses and their effects on epidemics
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/envsan/tn08/en/
Emergency preparedness in developing nations
How EMS deals epidemics
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Andreas_RebmannEMS protocol for spit
Usual punishments for abuse by Police
Other stories of similar events
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Andreas_RebmannDoctors without Borders has facilities in many countries already established for humanitarian aid. For instance, they had been in Haiti since 1991, so their assistance in 2010 was aided by their already established position there. In that case they upped their projects within the country in response to the disaster.
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Andreas_RebmannThe personal stories of the event, especially of the one paramedic whose name I didn't catch (Hispanic, Female). The emotional tellings of the events were incrediably visceral. I cannot conceive a scenario worse than what they had to deal with.
Artisanal or Snall Scale Mining in Geita.