This summer session we covered numerous epidemics and pandemics and how they affected individuals and the population as a whole. It was a great way to get a grasp on infectious diseases and what they really do to the society. It was cool to see the history of the diseases and epidemics and how they went about fixing the problems at hand and giving us the vaccines and some of the cures we use today. I want to first say that I really enjoyed the artifacts. I was able to learn numerous things about different topics and then use that new knowledge and talk about it in a blog form. I think having to regenerate the information in that format really helped me retain more of the information. I also never knew about the portfolio website VMI has to offer or how to create a blog. I thought it was very intriguing to learn how to set up a blog and made doing the assignments more enjoyable. I also know that for myself personally being able to incorporate humor, like witty titles or funny photos really helps me remember the topic and information about the ideas that I covered. That was the cool thing about blogs was the individuality and adding our own personal ideas and such to it. Allowing the customization and our own likes and interest made the artifacts very fun.
The first artifact we did was about bacteria. The title I used shows an example of the humor I used to help myself learn. The title of “Bacteria. The only Culture some People Have” I believe shows a good comical title for the way I went about the artifact. I thought this was a cool artifact to start with because it was bacteria and that is a good one to start with because a lot of the epidemics we talked about had to deal with bacteria and things of that nature. This assignment opened me up to the ideas that we would be dealing with during the course and was a great way to start. Doing this artifact I learned different things. First being that just by good hygiene and cleanliness we can eliminate a lot of bacteria from affecting our bodies and causing illness (Artifact 1). There are also three factors that contribute to the spreading of bacteria today: Economic Activity, Demographic Changes, and large-scale and systematic environmental impacts (Artifact 1). These three factors played a role a few hundred years ago and still have a big impacts on today’s society. For economic activity we see this because we have to trade and spread goods globally in order to maintain life and sustain a good healthy globe, but bacteria is able to spread this way because different areas have different bacteria’s so it is easy to spread it through out the globe, especially with our huge global economy and the way it works (Artifact 1). For the demographic changes we see people traveling to different areas of the world very easily. Today it is very easy to travel allowing more people to do it. Also a good amount of jobs require travel to different areas of the world and that makes people bring new bacteria and also become exposed to new bacteria (Artifact 1). This is seen with immigrants from different countries they can bring new diseases and bacteria when they come to look for a new life here in America. Then finally there is large scale and systematic environmental impacts, examples of these are when society can’t clean and separate germs. So things like water sources and food become contaminated. This happened a lot years ago when they didn’t have the science or technology to prevent it but it is also seen today in poorer countries because they cannot afford to fix this problem (Artifact 1). I really learned a lot about bacteria with this artifact. It was clear that there has been a lot of growth on fighting and preventing of bacteria but there is still a lot more that needs to be done. There are trillions more bacteria than people so the fight and prevention against them will never stop but we have learned how to prevent large epidemics and have done a good job with keeping a healthy society because of it (Artifact 1).
Another artifact that I did that does a good job shaping my learning on epidemics and society is artifact #2 with the plagues, especially the discussion about the bubonic plague. This artifact was really interesting and was the first look into what a epidemic/pandemic really was. It taught me about how plagues have been affecting the world for ages but also showed the impact they have on society. This class was about epidemics so we learned about one of the first and worst to ever exist; that being the Bubonic Plague. Artifact #2 showed how a plague would get started and spread. It came from rats but showed how easy it is to spread. The disease got on furs and blankets and all then was spread throughout the European region through trade (Artifact 2). Then also because people did travel, carriers like rats were able to ride these boats and help spread this disease like a forest fire (Artifact 2). This showed how plagues could get around the world and affect different groups of people. It was also interesting because plagues showed many things at this time to people. This was the first real event where people saw that God and that praying didn’t cause it and such couldn’t make it better. There needed to be a scientific fix to the problem. This is when people really learned about medicine and the need of studying these problems and figuring out that a microorganism like a bacteria or virus was the cause (Artifact 2). The bubonic plague also showed that plagues could affect anyone, whether a poor farm man or the king, the plague knew no boundaries and if you came in contact with it you had the high potential on contracting it (Artifact 2). This artifact showed the beginning of the plague epidemic and the potential it had on affecting the whole globe. It stressed the need to pursue medicine and study the body and diseases to learn from them to make sure we could prevent this from happening again (Artifact 2). It changed a good amount of the European region because of all the deaths during the plague. Different wars were fought within the countries against each other because people were frightened by what was happening and didn’t know how to react to them so they became violent trying to get rid of those they believed to be the problem (Artifact 2).
For my third and final artifact I’m going to cover to show about the epidemics knowledge I gained is the most previous one discussing zoonotic diseases. In artifact 9 it talked about the diseases we get when they are transferred from animals to humans, or better known as zoonotic diseases (Artifact 9). This artifact helped me learn about the potential risks that society and myself risk with the everyday interaction we have with animals. This artifact showed how society, today, can still promote the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases because we come in contact with a lot of animals and sometimes do not know what we have until it is too late and due that we can still spread diseases around (Artifact 9). This artifact was also showed me that even today with our technology and medicine contact with different animals can still spread things. Mosquitos travel all around the world and can transmit diseases very easily and sometimes you won’t feel a mosquito on your body until after it bit you (Artifact 9). This was shocking and a little scary to think about but I found it really eye opening and important to know because it is possible to contract things still today, so becoming aware of that is important.
I found this summer course very interesting. Everything we covered has shaped and affected how we live in society with the medicine, vaccines, precautions, and reactions to different diseases. I could have used any artifact we did to show this, it was hard to really decide which ones to use. They all were beneficial to my learning and what I obtained during this class. I truly did enjoy learning all of these ideas and topics and liked the way we used the portfolio to help us learn it. What I learned from class will go on with me forever as go out into the world, and it will make sure I keep clean and be aware of my surroundings because there are so many bacteria’s out there that haven’t been discovered, so I need to be on the look out. But that also makes me intrigued to learn more and follow what happens with the information that we learn and develop over the years.