Why is it important to understand and study infectious diseases?

1. many of them kill rampantly even in cases where diseases are easily preventable
2. diseases are critical to understanding societies: the way they manifest, the way they impact our bodies, our minds, our society
3. diseases in many contexts also highlight our societal and physiological weaknesses, insecurities and vulnerabilities
4. the philosophical and metaphoric nature of disease is insurmountable
Sometimes we often realize the devastating emotional, physiological and psychological impact of diseases on our bodies. Most people perceive diseases be be ailments of the body and although this is true we ought to look deeper.
the truth is that disease fits into the larger context of social problems
As I perceive it here are the problem areas:
1. structural inequalities
- in health
- in education
- in housing
- in employment opportunities
2. the allocation of resources
- the few rich of the world use up most of the resources
3. access
- fundamentally the first two points touch on access
- what ends up happening is that some people are never able to even get to the ladder to climb it.
4. the fixation with the top down approach
- obviously it really has not worked well
- yes, policies are important to change but they are more likely to change if more people in the ground level and aware and want these issues changes
- more community organizing needs to be done including community based participatory research so we arent just going into places and assuming thier needs
-community organizing allows us to undertstand the needs and the desires of communities first hand.
5. human nature, desire and capitalism
- it is so easy to get caught up in our own lives
when we do it ourselves it seems so harmless, but if everyone only looks out for themselves then we will all be worse off(i think, even though i know econ people would disagree with this)
- there is much less trust, respect.
- we are conditioned to compete, fight, and conditioned to be driven, even if this means we leave some people behind.
but this survival of the fittest idea is scary
-we may be black white yellow brown but what most people forget is that we are human first. human always.
and if survival of the fittest...and profit..are the only things that drive us..we as mankind will not be surviving.
all people in the world deserve
1. health
2. shelter
3. food
4. love and support
its maslows hierachy of needs.
wut is so odd is that the happiest people i have known have very little and it is the ones who own a lot are unhappy.