I often find that "old history" is an interesting genre--like slightly outdated, but still interesting. Because it catches a moment in time when the knowledge was XYZ and you can see what was known, what has changed, what is now known.
He had one lecture titled "Municipal Bonds" about how cities make us all connected. He was talking about plague as metaphor, and related a morality tale from the nineteenth century: A homeless widow goes door to door in a neighborhood looking for aid, and all doors are shut against her. She then dies, homeless, of typhus fever. She causes an epidemic that kills 14 other people. The point being, you can say she is not your sister all you want, but she is, and what happens to her affects everyone.
I was thinking about how this uncomfortable realization of connectedness is still true, and is the reason, I think, for the panic in NYC over Ebola. Because it is making us realize what close contact we come into with others. I see thousands of people every day. I physically touch probably a couple dozen. Every day. What happens to one in a city happens to everybody. Having this brought to our attention is possibly why flu vaccinations are up 50% over last year in NYC.
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I was thinking about how this uncomfortable realization of connectedness is still true, and is the reason, I think, for the panic in NYC over Ebola. Because it is making us realize what close contact we come into with others. I see thousands of people every day. I physically touch probably a couple dozen. Every day. What happens to one in a city happens to everybody. Having this brought to our attention is possibly why flu vaccinations are up 50% over last year in NYC.
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