session 9 notes zombies Contagious Priscilla Wald

This academic text, likely from a book or extended essay, explores the concept of the "outbreak narrative," a recurring storyline used in scientific, journalistic, and fictional accounts of disease emergence. It argues that these narratives are shaped by historical precedents, cultural anxieties, and evolving scientific understanding. The text examines how figures like "healthy carriers" and events like the SARS outbreak materialize broader anxieties about human interdependence and globalization. Ultimately, it posits that these narratives function as a form of modern myth, reflecting and influencing societal responses to disease threats and social change.

Key Concepts and Themes

1. The Outbreak Narrative

  • A formulaic story structure that emerges across scientific, journalistic, and fictional accounts of disease outbreaks.

  • Begins with identification of a new disease, followed by its spread through global networks, and ends with efforts to contain it.

  • This narrative simultaneously reveals fears of human interdependence and celebrates scientific cooperation and globalization.

2. Disease as Cultural and Social Discourse

  • Contagion is not only biological but also a metaphor and organizing concept in religion, social theory, and politics.

  • Microbial transmission mirrors the transmission of ideas, beliefs, and behaviors, shaping collective identity.

3. Superspreaders and Scapegoating

  • The media's focus on individuals like SARS "superspreaders" shows how outbreak narratives personalize and dramatize the spread of disease.

  • These individuals often become symbols or scapegoats, conflating unintentional carriers with intentional wrongdoers.

4. Medicalized Nativism

  • Outbreak narratives can reinforce xenophobia, depicting non-Western cultures (e.g., Chinese "primitive farms") as sources of disease.

  • This stigmatization reflects and perpetuates colonial and racial stereotypes, particularly during global health crises.

5. Mythic Dimensions of Disease

  • Disease narratives draw on mythic structures—e.g., the plague as divine punishment or the microbe as nature’s revenge.

  • Figures like Typhoid Mary and Patient Zero become archetypes that express collective anxieties and moral judgments.

6. Bacteriology and Social Theory

  • The bacteriological revolution reshaped understandings of both disease and society.

  • Thinkers like Durkheim and Freud used contagion as a metaphor for social cohesion and taboo, reflecting the influence of medical ideas on social theory.

7. Biopolitics and Public Health

  • Drawing on Foucault = french sociologist/ and Rosen, Wald notes how epidemics lead to the creation of public health infrastructures and state control over bodies (biopolitics).

  • Outbreaks justify surveillance, regulation, and the moralizing of behavior through disease management.

Narrative and Representation

  • The news media, popular science, and fiction all reinforce the outbreak narrative using visual and narrative tropes (e.g., masked people, exotic animal markets).

  • These representations shape public responses, influence policy, and reflect deeper cultural fears about globalization, race, and modernity.

we need someone/public health systems to get the dead bodies/ don’t drink the water

RFK jr blaming autism a contagion narrative blaming it on red40

public health officials =detective procedural

Purpose of the Book

  • Wald seeks to critically analyze how outbreak narratives influence understanding and responses to disease.

  • She argues that recognizing the cultural work of these narratives can foster more ethical and effective public health responses

This document, "Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic," presents a comic book-style narrative about a man named Todd who experiences a vivid dream of a zombie apocalypse and the subsequent need for emergency preparedness. While the story uses a fictional zombie outbreak as a catalyst, the true focus is on highlighting the importance of creating a disaster kit and having a family plan. The comic depicts a rapid spread of a virus causing zombie-like symptoms, the efforts of the CDC to develop a vaccine, and the challenges of reaching safe zones. Ultimately, the "zombie pandemic" is revealed to be a dream, but the experience motivates Todd to prioritize real-world emergency preparations, as reinforced by the checklist of essential items for an emergency kit provided within the document.

contagion film

detective story

Doc from CDC investigates patient zero in Hong Kong —> kidnapping = who gets resources for vaccine first = teaches the children trade me for the vaccine who is the bad guy

Jude law= conspiracy theorist/ makes money off this /sells his own vitamin or cure

social order changed journalist listens to conspiracy theorist/ loses job Jude Law has money and power

gun shots in a suburban neighborhood = social disruption

day 1= beth’s company patient 0 = eating pork company buldoze tree bats released capitalist started this/ primative affected by modern/ no regard for nature affected cheapest easiest thing

not the hated other but the thing within you/ defy nature