Question 2 The Plague

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Introduction 

 Hello World History Class,

 I need to confess that I had a hard time and spend an amount of time thinking in what to write about my interest in the World History for this assignment.  First because I am used to having in person interaction class and if I have any doubt about the assignment I can ask right away with the professors or classmates. I have been struggling with communications at NDNU by email , it became a little difficult and this  concerns me. I don’t know if this is just happening with me or with a large number of students. In some departments at NDNU it sometimes takes time for someone to return your email. I have experienced that I didn’t hear from the person for about 10 days after I sent an important email. After I communicated with another department that reached out to this person, I find out that my emails went to her junk emails.  Computer skills are not my strength and sometimes are synonymous with frustration. Maybe some of you are more comfortable to navigate in the virtual world, but I am not.  I will tell you why so you can understand my struggles right now, for those who were born in my generation or earlier generations maybe have a similar story like mine, will understand what I have to say.

I was born in 1975, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I am 44 years old , and I didn’t grow up with technology around me like the young kids who are growing up with access to technology right now. I just had limited access to a computer in the 90’s. If I needed to use a computer I needed to go to a lan house and pay by the hour. Maybe those who live in the US  had more chance to be exposed to technology earlier because of  their social status. I come from a very poor working class family. My mom had 6 children , she was a stay  at home mom . She was taking care of us while my dad worked in two jobs, one in the morning and one at night. In the 80’s Brazil was struggling with a very difficult economy.  There was very high inflation that was affecting mostly the working class. Even with my dad having two jobs we couldn’t make ends meet, and my siblings and I  had to work selling things in  the street to help support the family. I was just 9 years old. We went to school during the week and worked in the informal economy on the weekends. I am the first generation in my family to go to college. In Brazil, I attended college. In order to afford school I had a full time job during the day, attended night classes, and then often picked up gigs after class.

Before getting my degree, I moved to the US due to the better economic prospects. Initially I worked in the cash economy, and  in all these jobs I had no access to a computer. I worked as a housekeeper and as a nanny. Because of my legal status at that time, some employers took advantage of me. Some did not pay me for my work, and others made me work extra hours without pay. I felt powerless at this time, it was around 2001 in the beginning of the 21th century , but I felt like a slave.

I have lived in the US for 19 years, and I decided to return to college in middle age. I am divorced and I have a 10 year old child. To be able to support him and myself to live in the Bay Area, I need a better education.  I decided to study Human Services due to my own personal life experience and my goal is that someday I will work at a non-profit organization helping victims of domestic abuse and also helping the homeless community that has been increasing around the Bay Area over the years.  Right now everything seems so rushed because in my case I need to take so many classes at the same time so I can graduate in Spring 2021 at NDNU.

Last Sunday I lost my uncle in Brazil due to COVID-19,   I have been hearing news, seeing the statistics of death around the country and the globe, but I need to confess that it’s so hard when something like this happens with someone so close to you. The way that he was treated was so sad. My uncle went to the hospital , nobody could stay with him, and after his death, there was a lot of  bureaucracy to bury him. Definitely COVID-19 affected the whole world and became History. We are still living in the presence of  this COVID-19 pandemic  and the future is uncertain with what will happening with the economy of so many countries.

If we look back to the history in 1918 we had the Spanish Flu, that also spread all over the world.  And if we look closely with the things in common in both pandemics , we are adopting the same health measures that were being asked in 1918. It was required that people use masks, stay at home, wash their hands.  In the United States there formed an Anti-Mask League, and refusing to stay home, this group reacted poorly to public health measures. If we look for this moment with COVID-19 , the complaints from the history from the past may feel familiar today. If we look at the history of that pandemic by the end of the war, these celebratory parades caused a huge increase in infections.

Will history repeat itself today? Are we reopening the economy too soon? We know that regardless of when we reopen the economy, more people will get sick and die, but will we see a surge that once again overwhelms our health care system and leads to many more unnecessary deaths? Time will tell.

I am also motivated to learn how humans evolved from a very primitive existence to our current state. I want to know how we evolved from primitive apes to Neanderthals to humans who evolved to hunter gatherers to farmers to city dwellers. Even before that, how did the Universe come into existence? Big history.

But since that I am grieving my uncle’s death I would like to bring to your attention this pandemic that we are living through now, and if we look through history we can see from the past, and the events and choices that drove additional waves of infection and death, and we will see so many resemblances.