Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19

Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19
Author: Kari Nixon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982172517

"Throughout history, there have been numerous epidemics that have threatened mankind with destruction. Diseases have the ability to highlight our shared concerns across the ages, affecting every social divide from national boundaries, economic categories, racial divisions, and beyond. Whether looking at smallpox, HIV, Ebola, or COVID-19 outbreaks, we see the same conversations arising as society struggles with the all-encompassing question: What do we do now? Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19 demonstrates that these conversations have always involved the same questions of individual liberties versus the common good, debates about rushing new and untested treatments, considerations of whether quarantines are effective to begin with, what to do about healthy carriers, and how to keep trade circulating when society shuts down. This immensely readable social and medical history tracks different diseases and outlines their trajectory, what they meant for society, and societal questions each disease brought up, along with practical takeaways we can apply to current and future pandemics--so we can all be better prepared for whatever life throws our way."--Amazon.com.

Pandemics in Singapore, 1819–2022

Pandemics in Singapore, 1819–2022
Author: Kah Seng Loh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2023-11-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000999564

Singapore has faced many pandemics over the centuries, from plague, smallpox and cholera to influenza and novel coronaviruses. By examining how different governments responded, this book considers what we can learn from their experiences. Public health strategies in the city-state were often affected by issues of ethnicity and class, as well as failure to take heed of key learnings from previous outbreaks. Pandemics are a recurrent and normal feature of the human experience. Alongside medical innovation and evidence-based policymaking, the study of history is also crucial in preparing for future pandemics.

Curiosities in Medicine

Curiosities in Medicine
Author: Sibylle Scholtz
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2022-12-14
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 3031140028

This anthology is devoted to the curious side of Medical History. Carl Sagan said: ”You have to know the past to understand the present.” This collection of 80 short stories, written by experts in the field, inspires curiosity and provides a detailed look at the History of Medicine. It investigates many topics, including ancient Egyptian knowledge, the fundamental importance of toothache and how it birthed Anesthesia, and why and when women were allowed to run marathons. The authors report on the background of rubber gloves, the stethoscope and the intraocular lens. Historically important biographies are included, such as those of Arthur Conan Doyle, Napoleon Bonaparte and Claude Monet. The book is relevant for those interested in Medicine and its curious history.

The Fault in Our SARS

The Fault in Our SARS
Author: Rob Wallace
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2023-02-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1583679936

Proposes the pragmatic changes we must make to survive COVID and the worst of the new diseases on the horizon The Trump administration’s neglect and incompetence helped put half-a-million Americans in the ground, dead from COVID-19. Joe Biden was elected president in part on the promise of setting us on a science-driven course correction, but, a little more than a year later, another half-a-million Americans were killed by the virus. What happened? In The Fault in Our SARS, evolutionary epidemiologist Rob Wallace catalogs the Biden administration's failures in controlling the outbreak. He also shows that, beyond matters of specific political persona or party, it was a decades-long structural decline associated with putting profits ahead of people that gutted U.S. public health. COVID-19 isn’t just an American tragedy. Each in its own way, countries around the world following the "profit-first" model failed their people. Global vaccination campaigns were bottled up by efforts to protect pharmaceutical companies' intellectual property rights. Economies were treated as somehow more real than the people and ecologies upon which they depend. Frustrated populations pushed back against lockdowns, abuses of governmental trust, and, fair or not, the very concept of public health. A social rot meanwhile wended its way into the heart of the sciences that, tasked with controlling disease, serve the systems that helped bring about COVID-19 in the first place. In The Fault in Our SARS, Wallace and an array of invited contributors aim to strip down the capitalist social psychology that in effect protected the SARS virus. The team proposes instead new approaches in health and ecology that appeal both to humanity's highest ideals and the pragmatic changes we must make to survive COVID and the worst of the new diseases on the horizon.

The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus

The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus
Author: Troy Tassier
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2024-02-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1421448238

How can we make society more resilient to outbreaks and avoid forcing the poor and working class to bear the brunt of their harm? When an epidemic outbreak occurs, the most physical and financial harm historically falls upon the people who can least afford it: the economically and socially marginalized. Where people live and work, how they commute and socialize, and more have a huge impact on the risks we bear during an outbreak. In The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus, economist Troy Tassier examines examples ranging from the 430 BCE plague of Athens to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate why marginalized groups bear the largest burden of epidemic costs—and how to avoid these systemic failures in the future. The links between epidemics and social issues—such as inequality, discrimination, and financial insecurity—are not always direct or clear. Tassier reveals truths hidden in plain sight, from the way population density statistics can be misleading to the often-misunderstood differences between risk and uncertainty. The disproportionate harm experienced by marginalized individuals is not the product of their own decisions; instead, the collective choices of society and the tangled web of interactions across people and communities leave these groups most exposed to the perils of epidemics. However, there is reason to hope. Utilizing a wealth of economic and population data, Tassier argues that we can leverage lessons learned from historic and recent outbreaks to design better economic and social policies and more just institutions to protect everyone in society when inevitable future epidemics arrive.

Pandemics: Insurance and Social Protection

Pandemics: Insurance and Social Protection
Author: María del Carmen Boado-Penas
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2022
Genre: Applied mathematics
ISBN: 3030783340

This open access book collects expert contributions on actuarial modelling and related topics, from machine learning to legal aspects, and reflects on possible insurance designs during an epidemic/pandemic. Starting by considering the impulse given by COVID-19 to the insurance industry and to actuarial research, the text covers compartment models, mortality changes during a pandemic, risk-sharing in the presence of low probability events, group testing, compositional data analysis for detecting data inconsistencies, behaviouristic aspects in fighting a pandemic, and insurers' legal problems, amongst others. Concluding with an essay by a practicing actuary on the applicability of the methods proposed, this interdisciplinary book is aimed at actuaries as well as readers with a background in mathematics, economics, statistics, finance, epidemiology, or sociology.

Appreciative Leadership: Building Sustainable Partnerships for Health

Appreciative Leadership: Building Sustainable Partnerships for Health
Author: Kathy Malloch
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Learning
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2020-12-21
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1284231666

Appreciative Leadership: Building Sustainable Partnerships for Health explores how newly trained graduates and experienced leaders can leverage an intersdisciplinary approach focused on the strength of their teams to transform healthcare in today’s complex environment. T

Pandemic India

Pandemic India
Author: David Arnold
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2022-03-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9781787387096

Covid-19 has given renewed, urgent attention to 'the pandemic' as a devastating, recurrent global phenomenon. Today the term is freely and widely used--but in reality, it has a long and contested history, centred on South Asia. Pandemic India is an innovative enquiry into the emergence of the idea and changing meaning of pandemics, exploring the pivotal role played by--or assigned to--India over the past 200 years. Using the perspectives of the social historian and the historian of medicine, and a wide range of sources, it explains how and why past pandemics were so closely identified with South Asia; the factors behind outbreaks' exceptional destructiveness in India; responses from society and the state, both during and since the colonial era; and how such collective catastrophes have changed lives and been remembered. Giving a 'long history' to India's current pandemic, the book offers comparisons with earlier epidemics of cholera, plague and influenza. David Arnold assesses the distinctive characteristics and legacies of each episode, tracking the evolution of public health strategies and containment measures. This is a historian's reflection on time as seen through the pandemic prism, and on the ways the past is used--or misused--to serve the present.