public health

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/3/2022
  

  With Omicron, We Need to Understand the 1918 Flu Pandemic More than Ever

  by Christopher McKnight Nichols

  "It may be that only now, in the winter of 2022, when Americans are exhausted with these mitigation methods, that a comparison to the 1918 pandemic is most apt."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/21/2021
  

  Epidemiologist: Even Best-Case Scenario with Omicron Will be Bad

  by William Hanage

  "Hope is not an effective strategy for dealing with a pandemic. Two years in, we should all know that."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/19/2021
  

  History Can Guide Fixes for America's Abysmal Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes

  by Michelle Bezark

  The brief history of the U.S. Children's Bureau shows that treating the health of mothers and infants as a national issue can get results. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  12/19/2021
  

  Out of Context COVID Stats are Misleading

  by Jim Downs

  The first epidemiologists worked in a narrative mode, without advanced statistical measures. Without discarding quantitative methods, the field needs to refocus on telling evidence-based stories about the pandemic to clarify what's working, what isn't, and what people should do. 

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• 12/19/2021
  

  In Critical Ways, the 1918 Flu Remains a Forgotten Pandemic

  by George Dehner

  The news has made many comparisons between the current pandemic and the 1918 influenza – especially the grim milestones of infections and deaths – but it's clear that lessons about public policy and public health practices based on the failures of the past remain unlearned.

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• SOURCE: WGBH
  11/9/2021
  

  MA Jewish Leaders: COVID Mandates Nothing Like Holocaust

  "When COVID deniers and people who refute data-driven public health policy wrongly invoke the Holocaust, they pervert history, trivialize the memories of victims and survivors, and desensitize people to the monstrous atrocities that occurred."

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/5/2021
  

  An Illustrated History of Vaccine Requirements for Schoolchildren

  Vaccine mandates for school attendance are two centuries old. An illustrated history.

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  11/5/2021
  

  Where Did the Public Toilets Go?

  Peter Baldwin offers context for how American cities haltingly adopted and quickly abandoned public toilets, a story that encompasses the racial, gender and class politics of how people interact in urban space. 

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  10/28/2021
  

  Black Women in Noxubee County, Miss. Fight Historical Inequities Exposed by COVID

  COVID-19 has highlighted the historical processes of agricultural labor, land ownership, and economic underdevelopment that have made Black residents of Noxubee County in eastern Mississippi vulnerable to both illness and economic from the pandemic. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  10/14/2021
  

  America as a “Shining City on a Hill”—and Other Myths to Die By

  by Gregg Gonsalves

  "Our relationship to disease, to pandemics past, is obscured by this myth of fundamental American goodness. If we accept that we are capable of barbarity, official cruelty, these myths shatter and leave us with a national story that is far more complicated to tell, a legacy to work against."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/7/2021
  

  Herd Immunity is Almost Here. What Next?

  by John M. Barry

  The best-case scenario for humanity's future with the Coronavirus, in which virus strains produce much fewer and much less dangerous cases of illness, requires reducing the number of unvaccinated people around the globe. 

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  10/14/2021
  

  Manhood, Madness, and Moonshine

  by Dillon Carroll

  Today's concern for "deaths of despair" among white Americans isn't unprecedented; a wave of alcoholism and temperance advocacy after the Civil War highlighted the relationship between social unsettlement, substance abuse and social reformism.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/12/2021
  

  History of Past Pandemics Shows COVID Will Be an Era, not an Event

  Medical and Science Historians Allan Brandt, Jeremy Greene, Frank Snowden and Jonathan Moreno argue that we are unlikely to experience any clear end of the COVID pandemic. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/5/2021
  

  The Inescapable Dilemma of Infectious Disease

  by Kyle Harper

  Control of infectious diesase is arguably humanity's greatest triumph. Has that triumph changed our environment to make diseases tougher to control? Has our success stopped us from being able to think of how to thrive without control of infections? 

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• SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  10/4/2021
  

  Georgia State Professor Files Complaint over Denied Request to Teach Remotely

  “I would like to be at a place where my administration cares about my health, my basic fundamental health, and is not willing to put my life at risk for a Board of Regents political policy,” historian Dan Immergluck said.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/5/2021
  

  The Lesson of Venice's 17th Century Plague? Tax the Rich

  by Yong Kwon

  By making only a temporary commitment to public works funded by taxing the city's merchant elite, Venice emerged from the plague with an overburdened workforce, less ability to attract labor, and a declining economy. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/5/2021
  

  Frustration, Anger, and Deaths Won't Convince the Unvaccinated

  by Matthew Newsom Kerr

  "Vaccine resisters in the 19th century significantly stymied public health efforts, and the anger felt by health officials shaped their responses — not always for the best."

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/27/2021
  

  The Legal Standard Encouraging Religious Exemptions to Vaccination is Baffling

  by Charles McCrary

  American courts have established sincerity of individual belief as the standard for recognizing a religious accommodation or exemption. Even though no major religions ban vaccination, this standard could still sustain widespread refusal of coronavirus vaccines. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/22/2021
  

  With Students Back on Campus, Faculty Push Back Against COVID Policies They Consider Inadequate

  "Many are enjoying seeing students back on campus. But for others those scenes are fraught."

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• SOURCE: ABC News
  9/20/2021
  

  US COVID Death Count Surpasses Estimates of 1918 Influenza

  Historian Christopher McKnight Nichols notes "we have effective vaccines now.... the thing they most wanted in 1918, we've got. And for a lot of different reasons, we botched the response."