Reddit reviews Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Updated with a New Preface
We found 4 Reddit comments about Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Updated with a New Preface. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I'm a medical anthropology Ph.D student studying/interested in infectious diseases. Let me try to explain.
It's not so much that educating people about biomedicine is not going to work, more that the education is not being done in a good way. Weird people walking in trying to get them to completely disregard their long, LONG standing beliefs for this new form of "witchcraft" that is completely counter-intuitive is never going to work; this is a cliche, but imagine if the tables were turned and they came here to help us fight an epidemic and insisted germs weren't real and that it was sorcery that was the issue (I know, not a perfect analogy because of one of the systems of knowledge is "scientifically correct" and the other isn't). But, your solution of coming up with brand new magic to incorporate into their beliefs wouldn't help either, because it's not a deeply-ingrained belief. These people have been living with these belief systems for thousands of years. Every part of what they believe about health is interrelated with what they believe about God, relationships with each other and nature, etc. Every part of knowledge is connected with every of type of knowledge. So to run in and say, "Here are your new magic beliefs on health," would never work, because the new beliefs wouldn't be compatible with the rest of their beliefs.
What actually needs to happen is finding a way to make biomedical knowledge compatible with their traditional knowledge. Think of it kind of like how the Christians "got" pagans by turning their old holidays into new Christian holidays. This is why anthropologists (think "cultural brokers") are so sorely needed in situations like this--and the CDC and WHO know this and are hiring/consulting with medical anthropologists...but it should be done before disasters happen, because, like everything, it takes time.
This is rather stream of consciousness so it might not make sense, but it's all I can crank out for now.
Edit: For the people who are interested in medical anthro, I'd suggest reading Stranger in the Village of the Sick by Paul Stoller, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, and especially Inequalities and Infections by Paul Farmer.
> Mountains Beyond Mountains
Paul Farmer is a fantastic human being. If you want to read some of his own work, I highly recommend Infections and Inequalities.
Oh shit, so I meant to add these as well, but they're the physical books which explains my forgetfulness. Apologies if not everything seems to relate but my original goal was "how did we get from slavery to where African-Americans are today as still-oppressed people?", which obviously the reason is "because white people have historically shown serious inferiority complexes n' mental issues and have been all-around assholes to everyone else" but truly history is tied into everything so, uh, yeah:
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues
> socialism already has democratic elements built into the system.
Not necessarily, example USSR. This video touches on the delineation well enough.
>there weren't as many corporate subsidies that would have ravaged our revenue
I could not possibly agree with you more.
As for programs medicaid, let's acknowledge that it is a poor indicator of how single payer healthcare would function in our society. The redundancy of departments mixed with required paperwork/administration (thus ensuing systemic inefficiency), inability to negotiate price with pharmaceutical companies, and the endless pitfalls of profit motive in warping ethical decision making create an environment where healthcare is senselessly expensive and inefficent. Free market profit motives cannot be trusted to fix our healthcare issues. A government body, for better or worse, is the only institution of sufficient size and importance that is able to offer us an ability to manage population level health care properly.
Not to mention the increased public health benefits gained by a society through providing basic human health care are undeniable (in terms of pocketbook as well as basic safety in our future. I can't recommend Paul Farmer's "Infections and Inequality" highly enough to learn more about the ever growing importance of public health and safety and its relation to economics).
I'm not saying current programs are adequately functional to serve their intended purpose, in fact quite the opposite. I don't believe it wise to dismiss the goal of universal health care or the benefits of social welfare programs in principle because we don't currently achieve perfection. Saying 'we tried these programs, and they just don't work, you end up with too many takers' is illogical.
Fundamentally, I think what might separate us in our ways of thinking is the level of trust we are willing to put into the free market to optimally work out our problems (socially, politically, economically, etc.)