BIO 245X
7/19/18
Noah Delaney-Manuel
Reflective Essay
In this summer session course of epidemics, I have learned a lot about infectious diseases. Whether that was learning about the transmission of these diseases or even the symptoms. What I found through each assignment was the impact they had on society and the response us people have had to these crisis’. From the earliest epidemics of our world that we studied, these outbreaks always caused a change in how life was lived and how we approached our public health. The three main points that I will take away from this course is that we as humans always contribute to outbreaks of disease, epidemics can change society as a whole, and how important our role is in containing outbreaks of disease or infection.
When I say that I believe that humans have a role in the outbreaks of disease and infection, I mean that in every way. Not only do we contribute to creating a healthy environment for these diseases, like when European society harbored the plague (Artifact 2, The Plague), but our own ignorance in medicine often contributes to these outbreaks. When the plague broke out across the eastern hemisphere of the world, we as a society of humans had no idea how to cure this disease or how it was caused. The only thing we knew was that most, if not all, people who got the plague died a horrible death. Often people resorted to pointing fingers to social groups which were different from their own, causing more problems. Unfortunately, with the emergence of a more educated public on matters such as these, people still panic at events such as outbreaks of deadly disease. Just in the late 20thcentury, when the outbreak of AIDS occurred, our society looked at the gay community as the culprit for spreading the disease to all of society. Even though one of the biggest contributing factors with AIDS was in the drug community (Artifact 8, AIDS). This event reflects again on how our society is both ignorant, and often responsible for many of our struggles with epidemics.
For every outbreak in any society, there comes a degree of change that occurs because of the outbreak. One prime example of this is the potato blight in Ireland (Artifact 5, Irish potato blight). Before the disease that struck Ireland’s gold crop, it was a society which thrived in harvesting and trading the potato. Despite the fact that they were a rather poor country, they still were prosperous and since the potato was such a easy crop to grow, there were not many cases of starving across the country. Once the potato blight struck though, all of Ireland’s people were shocked at the degree in which their lives changed. From feast to famine, the Irish had to adjust their ways of life. Unfortunately, this change often involved migration to other countries such as the U.S. Another impact this had on their society was famine and death. Millions died from either famine or disease; disease was so prevalent because people were hungry and weak. Cholera is also a epidemic which changed how we live in society. Since cholera is carried in water and can kill within 24 hours of infection, people from all over the world had to be careful with the water that they used to cook, bathe with, and drink (Artifact 7, Cholera). With our knowledge of emerging or re-emerging diseases, we must too adjust our way of life to ensure that we will have a life to live.
We as a society also have a large role in the prevention of diseases from emerging or re-emerging. With our knowledge of the earliest appearances of plagues (Artifact 1, The appearance of plagues), we know what contributes to the emergence of these plagues. Most of the epidemic outbreaks that we have had in our society have been greatly helped by our own ignorance. When the black death was spread, our society was living, both literally and figuratively, in our own filth. Streets were littered with animal feces, along with human feces, and even sometimes dead animals. Fortunately, we have learned from these mistakes of our ancestors and we know where we can stop these kinds of outbreaks from ever happening again. But, we are not clear of all of the risk factors which put our past humans at risk. With the dependence on animal products and close proximity we have with these animals, there will always be a risk of humans getting zoonotic diseases (Artifact 4, Smallpox). We also as a society have to be weary of how much we push into nature. With the exploration of forests and jungles, comes the inevitable discovery of unknown bacteria and viruses. Since we have no knowledge on these viruses and how they work, we could potentially create a new plague that stems from our desire to have more land. Regardless of how much our knowledge had grown medically, we still have so much we need to learn about and cure before we can ever say another plague of some sort will not occur.
This course has been one of my favorite classes that I have taken so far at VMI. Not only does this course reflect on history that dates back thousands of years, but it also talks about how some epidemic events have still not been overcome after all these years. To me, that is both scary and interesting at the same time. We never know when the next epidemic will come around and try to wipe us out as a species which is also very interesting to me. But, in conclusion, this course taught me that we contribute a large impact on all our epidemics, epidemics can change how our society functions, and we have a large role in the prevention and cure of emerging and re-emerging diseases.
Help received: Artifacts from course
Noah Delaney-Manuel