Can Social Scientists Help Control Epidemics?

The eradication of smallpox offers lessons and insight for health officials and governments focused on containing the novel coronavirus and avoiding future pandemics. Although COVID-19 presents unique challenges – such as asymptomatic transmission – lessons from the smallpox era show that "a well-funded, well-supported public health system" was a key to success.

As coronavirus continues to spread around the world, social distancing is being implemented due to its proven success with helping to drastically slow the spread of the Spanish flu in St. Louis Missouri. In a comparison of St. Louis and Philadelphia – a city that did not institute social distancing practices – limiting the time in public spaces helped to keep per capita flu-related deaths in St. Louis "to less than half of those in Philadelphia."

When a case of the Ebola disease struck a little girl in Africa, health officials in Mali collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization to contain the illness and quarantine people. The episode also has changed social customs and expanded sanitation procedures so that more people are aware of how to keep themselves healthy.

From 1802 until 1895, Philadelphia ran a quarantine center that required all in-bound ships to stop and all on-board to be quarantined until cleared of any possible infectious diseases. Although the center is no longer in use, it provides a unique history lesson for the current coronavirus pandemic of the success that can come by restricting movement to prevent further spread.

Patrick Ball, cofounder of the nonprofit Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), has helped use quantitative data to put numbers behind things that were before unprovable — i.e. the difference between genocide and random violence. Ball and HRDAG have analyzed existing data to come up with the "invisible" data, overlaying several sets of statistics with machine learning to come up with stats like the fact that you were eight times more likely to be killed by the army in the Ixil region in the early 1980s if you were indigenous. Ball also advises nine truth commissions, four UN commissions, and more.

A research center in rural Bangladesh has continuously collected health data for decades, thereby improving public health in the region and serving as a control population for vaccine programs.

HEAR/HERE is a mobile digital history project that documents and shares the stories of Black Oaklanders. The HEAR/HERE truck visits community events and gathering places and asks attendees to answer questions that are designed to help them connect with their neighbors.

When the Public Iconographies project asked people in St. Louis "how would you map the monuments of St. Louis?", it got 750 hand-drawn maps telling stories of often-overlooked sites throughout the city. By letting people from the community determine what is important, the project ended up with a data-filled report channeling freeform responses. They included the spot where a Ferguson police officer killed Michael Brown, the site of a 1917 race riot, and Cahokia Mounds, a pre-Columbian site in the city. The project formed a counterpoint to efforts to remove problematic symbols, like a Columbus statue.

In an effort to help get accurate information to the communities who are being disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, a program called Live Chair Health has started to train barbers "on chronic issues that disproportionately affect Black communities" and teach them "how to have conversations with their clients about the diseases." Aside from providing COVID-19 information, the initiative has helped patrons access primary care and address other medical issues such as high blood pressure.

To contain the coronavirus and reopen the economy, state governments throughout the United States are implementing public health lessons that were learned in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak. Although the two outbreaks differ in many ways, the similarities between how citizens have reacted to the implementation of mass restrictions allow for lessons such as increased information transparency and compassionate contact tracing to be relevant.