Vampire Pandemics - Past and Present: Recent Episodes
Jonathan Roberts
Pandemic diseases are like vampires: they can’t live without us, they never die, yet we are reluctant to kill them. Follow the story of our dysfunctional relationship with epidemic diseases throughout the ages, from bubonic plague to COVID-19, and ask yourself - why have we let this go on for so long?
In a fascinating twist to our pandemic narrative, President Trump got Covid-19. He survived, thanks to experimental new treatments. This commentary asks what we, and our leaders, have become in a world of antibody cocktails and experimental therapy.
Like vampires, pandemics have been stalking us for millennia, draining us of our vitality and causing dissension in our ranks. Do we really need to live with them, or is eradication a more worthy goal?
Ebola, the most terrifying of pandemics, is a deadly infectious disease but it is also a symptom of the racism inherent in our global medical system.
HIV AIDS changed sexuality forever, but its most profound impact was on its home turf of Africa.
We have a dysfunctional relationship with Influenza, our buddy, the "flu." It comes to visit us regularly and we have come to accept its presence, despite the fact that we might just be able to defeat it someday, maybe.
Smallpox is defeated but it is not gone. It has disfigured global societies permanently, often with our blessing. We have imprisoned it within the bowels of our secret laboratories, but are reluctant to eradicate it forever. In this podcast, smallpox will teach us about who we are as homo sapiens.
There have been three major pandemics of bubonic plague, each changing out world dramatically. What the plague revealed about power relations and our moral and ethical weaknesses can teach us much about how to manage our pandemic, COVID-19.
Every pandemic follows certain rules. The pathogen seeks to reproduce and its hosts seek to fight it off. The results tend to follow a pattern of denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, and even gratitude. In this episode, we will find out what the pandemics of the past can teach us about our pandemic - COVID-19.
Like every pandemic, COVID-19 is more than just a disease caused by a microscopic pathogen - it takes a lot more than a virus to cause a global pandemic. In this episode, we will find out more about the biological, environmental, social and cultural causes of our pandemic - COVID-19.