79-251 COVID-19: What History Can Teach Us
3 units, Carnegie Mellon University
For many, the COVID19 Pandemic feels like a rupture in time a disaster unprecedented in scale and impact. Yet onehundred years ago, the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 killed between 17 million and 50 million people. That virus infected approximately a third of all human beings on the planet some 500 million people. Since then, humanity has faced a series of influenza epidemics and other global catastrophes, from world wars to HIVAIDS. Like COVID19, those crises were shaped by preexisting forms of inequality and discrimination based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, and other forms of identity. Pandemics affect everyone, but not equally. For many of the worlds poorest and most oppressed people, the COVID19 pandemic feels less like a rupture than an escalation of longstanding inequalities. In the United States, the racial disparities of the pandemic reflect the long history of systemic racism. What can we learn from the past about how to cope with our current crisis How can we confront the inequities and injustices of the world in the midst of such a crisis This course will offer a historical lens on many of the most urgent and difficult questions that we face as a result of COVID19.
Prerequisites: none listed
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