I have nothing to offer here except to just say that this is damned interesting. Ancient DNA from bubonic plague victims buried in cemeteries on the old Silk Road trade route in Central Asia has helpe
As always, natural disasters are really human-disasters, exacerbating preexisting inequalities that people don’t want to talk about. With Covid, and for that matter with other communicable disea
Lots of gems of self-medication here: It was a similar scene a century ago when Spanish flu ravaged the globe and the panicked masses turned to alcohol – as well as onions and opium – to ward off
Once again, a long, long, long history of racism in science, technology, and medicine has real-life implications in dealing with the COVID pandemic. The tribes have had horrifying levels of COVID deat
COVID-19 is not a creation of globalization, but it’s rapid spread around the globe is. And it is just one of many, many diseases that globalization has whipped around the world, many of which d
The Spanish were able to conquer the Mexica (Aztecs) due to the smallpox wiping out Tenochtitlan between 1519-21. But in the writings that survived the Spanish conquest, there were guides to the emper
I want to take a minute, step back a bit, and talk about comparative responses to the last two major flu (or flu-like) epidemics in the United States. This came up in comments to Paul’s post tod
If there’s one voice we need to hear from on COVID-19, it is that of Mike Davis, the great writer about disasters and inequality. His take is bracing. A year from now we may look back in admirat