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How to Make a Deadly Pandemic in Indian Country

From the 1918 Spanish flu to Covid-19, broken treaties have been the foundation of health crises among Native people.

The Influenza Masks of 1918

Images from a century ago of people doing their best to keep others and themselves safe.

On the Uses of History for Staying Alive

Reflections on reading Nietzsche in Alaska in the early days of Covid-19.

The Empire of All Maladies

Indigenous scholars have long contested the “virgin-soil epidemics” thesis. Today, it is clear that the disease thesis simply doesn’t hold up.
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Epidemic Proportions

How Americans have understood epidemics, from the Columbian Exchange to COVID-19.

A doctor treating an AIDS patient
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What the Bungled Response to HIV Can Teach Us About Dealing With Covid-19

Politics, public health and a pandemic. What we didn’t learn from HIV.

Makers of Living, Breathing History: The Material Culture of Homemade Facemasks

Masks have a history associated with disease, status, gender norms, and more.
Painting of an ornate urn

How Cremation Lost Its Stigma

The pro-cremation movement of the nineteenth century battled religious tradition, not to mention the specter of mass graves during epidemics.

Historical Insights on COVID-19, the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, and Racial Disparities

Illuminating a path forward.
Demonstrators protest COVID public health measures.
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Conservative Fatalism About the Coronavirus Might Actually Help Us

The philosophy behind calls to lift stay-at-home orders.

Patients and Patience: The Long Career of Yellow Fever

Extending the narrative of Philadelphia's epidemic past 1793 yields lessons that are more complex and less comforting than the story that's often told.

Pandemics Go Hand in Hand with Conspiracy Theories

From the Illuminati to “COVID-19 is a lie,” how pandemics have produced contagions of fear.

How Racism Is Shaping the Coronavirus Pandemic

For hundreds of years, false theories of “innate difference and deficit in black bodies” have shaped American responses to disease.
Prison security guard wearing a mask.
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The Policy Mistakes From the 1990s That Have Made Covid-19 Worse

Being tough on crime and cutting benefits from the poor left millions more susceptible to disease.

Why Humanity Will Probably Botch the Next Pandemic, Too

A conversation with Mike Davis about what must be done to combat the COVID-19 pandemic – and all the other monsters still to come.

Writing Histories of Intimate Care and Social Distancing in the Age of COVID-19

Unlike cholera, physical and sensory proximity can spread COVID-19 among the populations most vulnerable to it.

Disease Has Never Been Just Disease for Native Americans

Native communities’ vulnerability to epidemics is not a historical accident, but a direct result of oppressive policies and ongoing colonialism.
A woman videochats on her phone
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During Epidemics, Media (And Now Social Media) Have Always Helped People to Connect

In a devastating 1793 epidemic people transformed their newspaper into something like today’s social media.
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Public Health Isn’t The Enemy of Economic Well-Being

As 19th century reformers showed, only a healthy workforce can fuel economic prosperity.
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Thomas Jefferson, Yellow Fever, and Land Planning for Public Health

Jefferson envisioned land-use policies that he hoped would mitigate epidemics – and other urban evils.
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Coronavirus Has a Playlist. Songs About Disease Go Way Back.

Coronavirus songwriting has gone as global as the pandemic itself, creating a new genre called pandemic pop. It’s a tradition with a long history.

“Infection Unperceiv’d, in Many a Place”: The London Plague of 1625, Viewed From Plymouth Rock

In 1625, New England’s “hideous and desolate” isolation suddenly began to seem a God-given blessing in disguise.
Trump at a press conference.
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Covid-19 Needs Federal Leadership, Not Authoritarianism from Trump

Official responses to the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 shows that the refusal to accept responsibility can have catastrophic consequences.

A Once-In-A-Century Pandemic

We’re repeating a lot of the same mistakes from the 1918 “Spanish Flu” H1N1 outbreak.
Nurse Minnie Sun holding a baby in the Chinese Hospital

When Chinese Americans Were Blamed for 19th-Century Epidemics, They Built Their Own Hospital

The Chinese Hospital in San Francisco is still one-of-a-kind.
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The Other Pandemic

In addition to COVID-19, another pandemic is preying upon the human spirit, nourished by a vulgar bigotry that has gone viral.
Women wearing masks during the 1918 Flu.
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To Save Lives, Social Distancing Must Continue Longer Than We Expect

The lessons of the 1918 flu pandemic.
People mourning AIDS victims at a vigil.
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Coronavirus Is Different from AIDS

People comparing covid-19 and AIDS may obscure more than they clarify.

America's Devastating First Plague and the Birth of Epidemiology

In the 1790s a plague struck the new American nation and killed thousands. Noah Webster told the story of pandemics and invented a field.

Yellow Fever Led Half of Philadelphians to Flee the City. Ten Percent of the Residents Still Died.

Schools closed, handshaking ceased and people wore handkerchiefs over their faces as the virus ravaged what was then the nation’s capital.

How American Samoa Kept a Pandemic at Bay

A story of quarantine.

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