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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?

This article finds that the people living in the area of the Chernobyl disaster are still experiencing the aftermath of the situation. Due to the health and financial results of the disaster, they have become dependent on the infrastructures that can help them, such as the healthcare system. This prevents them from making independent decisions, or moving anywhere that would reduce their ability to recieve help.

Laura Garro is a professor of anthropology at UCLA, so this shows her extensive background in athropology, and indicates that she writes this article with that sort of background, rather than a medical one.

I followed up by looking at rape rates across the world, how rape is regarded in different countries, and when humanitarian aid started.

The article dicusses how the UN has caused major health issues but is not being held accountable by the court's decision, so that is a clear injustice for Haiti. Additionally, the only money that goes directly to Haitians to spend in the recovery has been spent on helping increase children's immunizations rates and increase HIV medical treatment, so they have shown some ability to help themselves when given the resources.

There clearly need to be some policy changes in the healthcare system. I think Obamacare is not the answer and is way too much policy and not enough sense, but we need something. People need affordable coverage for the issues that make sense for their gender and age bracket, they need to be given more help when they are trying to work, and there needs to be more incentive to become a doctor so that there are more PCPs out there nipping a lot of these issues in the bud. So the ER is for emergencies and is a less stressful, long-wait, ridiculous situation.

They researched a lot into tuberculosis/HIV and the social issues that were discussed. Articles on asthma were also reviewed and used, despite asthma not being directly discussed, as well as lead poisoning. This could indicate that more diseases are affected by social issues than discussed in the article, or maybe those diseases didn't show any correlation.

I looked up how regualtions are formed and put into law after outbreaks of disease to prevent similar outbreaks from happening again. I also looked into how viruses become resistant to drugs and are able to mutate and continue to infect people, even after they have been "controlled". Additionally, I found a list of the safety measures that are recommended for emergency responders based on CDC guidelines.

I looked into the wide varitey of illnesses that stemmed from the cleanup. I also investigated where the hazards came from - the get fuel, the burning chemicals and computer parts and building materials.