The Epidemiologists

Hello World, I'm Tomasino.

This is SolarPunk Prompts,

a series for writers where we discuss SolarPunk,

a movement that imagines a world where technology is used

for the good of the series,

we spend each episode exploring a single SolarPunk story

prompt, adding some commentary, some inspirations,

and some considerations.

Most importantly,

we consider how that story might help us to better envision

a sustainable civilization.

If this is your first time here,

I'd recommend checking out our introduction episode first,

or the season's introduction,

where we talk about what SolarPunk is, why you should care,

and why this series came into being.

Today's prompt is,

The Epidemiologists A collection of doctors,

epidemiologists,

and educators is researching new pandemic threats and

trying to convince multiple communities that they need to

vaccinate and change their behaviors without using violence

or direct power.

We already touched on the topic of medical professionals

and medicine in the last season, in the Expedition episode.

This prompt goes a bit wider,

as it welcomes you to paint the social and infrastructural

aspect of medical services and asks how to replace the

hierarchical structures of today.

In your world and in its communities,

is there an organization serving medical licenses?

What makes a doctor a doctor?

Do doctors physically work from or travel to the

communities?

disease, or do they use telemedicine for smaller issues?

The questions of the day -to -day reality of medical care

can take us on a thematic journey and provide unique

imagery to create a visual language of solar -punk

medicine,

but there are bigger questions that we should consider

first.

As much as the moonshot and the miners discuss the idea of

multiple stakeholders acting in good faith,

this one feels much closer after COVID.

It forces us to outline how much freedom we are willing to

surrender for the common good,

and who defines that common good.

Mass vaccination programs are responsible for some of the

greatest health -related achievements in human history.

Thanks to vaccines,

smallpox and rinderpest have been completely eradicated.

Smallpox alone was responsible for an estimated 10% of all

deaths in the 20th century.

Thanks to vaccines, measles, mumps,

and rubella are all but distant memories,

while polio is closing in on total eradication.

Yet, as we have seen during the COVID -19 pandemic,

trust in vaccinations has declined sharply.

Why the lack of trust?

Clearly,

there is active disinformation and misinformation in heavy

circulation on social media during the pandemic.

Isolated reports, whether factual or not,

spiraled quickly and were picked up as talking points in an

effort to discredit the work.

And these falsehoods are incredibly difficult to combat.

Brandolini's law,

also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle,

emphasizes this problem, stating,

the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order

of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

One of the best examples of Brandolini's law is the claim

that vaccines cause autism.

Two studies have been cited with that claim,

and both studies are critically flawed.

Despite decades of research and attempts to educate the

public, we have failed to eradicate that misinformation.

Whether accurate or not,

there are many other sources of criticism and skepticism

toward vaccines.

Some feared the quick pace of development and production

during the pandemic,

assuming a rushed job was more likely to have unknown

implications.

Others worried that there was a financial incentive behind

the sudden rollout,

and not one motivated by actual health concerns.

For many communities, the fear goes much deeper.

Take the Tuskegee Public Health Service wanted to study the

progression of untreated syphilis in African American men.

Nearly 400 of the men enrolled in the study were diagnosed,

but never informed they carried syphilis,

despite risks of spreading the disease.

By the end of that study, 40 years later,

only 74 of the men had survived,

and 40 of the participants' wives had been infected.

This event has had incredibly long -lasting applications

for the black community toward public health in the United

States.

It has been worsened further by a lack of education around

the criminal study,

perhaps owing to a systemic suppression of racial history

and injustice.

A 1999 survey showed that 80% of African American men

wrongly believed that the men in the study had actually

been injected with syphilis.

And one can understand why this type of experimentation on

minorities and indigenous groups is far from unique.

The U .S.

finally ended its forced sterilizations of Native American

women only in the 1970s, and in Canada,

There have been at least 12 ,000

forced sterilizations since the 1970s,

with some as recent as 2019.

With such strong community distrust of organized medical

care,

what steps must take place to begin to heal that rift?

Scientific research shows us that even with significant

ecological action,

like returning land to nature and stopping the industrial

meat we can still expect epidemics and pandemics.

To stop these,

we will need to act quickly and get everyone to work

together.

So imagine a setting 30 years in the future and ask

yourself what's changed?

Where did we act and in what ways?

Why is trust in vaccinations growing in our solar setting?

How real is that change?

Will it involve a lot of door -to -door emotional work

focused at the individual level?

Or is there activism within these communities?

Or from peer groups pressuring each other?

Do religious communities have a role to play?

Did the change happen in a single evolution or did opinions

rebound several times?

Questions like these can prompt a lot of possible paths for

your story to explore, even if it's just in the backstory.

One of these possible paths is the negative.

Do you find yourself stuck imagining a dystopia here?

This can't work.

People won't change their minds because of argument.

It's a natural reaction and something we should think about

as writers.

After all, if we can't imagine how that future came to be,

how can we expect our readers to believe it?

This taps into one of the more serious challenges of solar

punk activism.

How do you affect change in a community diametrically

opposed to to your means.

How do we face science antagonism without violence?

For the anarchist -minded, this is especially difficult.

A stateless society lacks many of the means to force change

on the unwilling.

So what do we do?

We start by imagining realistic scenarios that lean in the

right direction.

What if communities withhold services, products,

or even physical passage to those unvaccinated?

We saw some of this behavior begin and stores during the

pandemic.

What happens if that idea expands?

Does an organic societal pressure influence change?

Does the change come painfully late as groups suffer

unequally?

We can think more narratively with our potential futures as

well.

What if an elder community within an indigenous Canadian

nation like the Kree?

pushes for public health adoption despite their long

history of distrust.

These influential few could begin a transformative process.

Others from this group might then become ambassadors of

change, reaching out to yet more communities.

Sometimes it's easier to imagine a small change than a big

one, and those little changes can add up.

If this part of the prompt appeals to you,

you might even focus your entire story here.

A SolarPunk story can exist in today's present timeline

after all.

Perhaps your community protagonists are there at the very

beginning of an essential change for the future.

Thinking of our three guidelines for SolarPunk,

what do we mean by the human environmental context in this

prompt?

SolarPunk doesn't have to be about the climate.

What if our environmental context is public health?

When we think about where stories fall within the genre,

it's a question of more than just time period.

Your unique angle may help us all better envision that

brighter future.

Until next time, I'm Thomas Seymour.

I hope you'll join me for the next SolarPunk prompt.

Music in this episode is Suspension and Omaj by Kjartan

you

you