Under the skin and out of sight: epidemics that never end

Abstract

During the pandemic crisis caused by sars-cov-2, or covid-19, there was an increasing public interest on past epidemics and on the ways they ended. However, a closer exam of those epidemics reveals they did not really end; they lost visibility. In this article, I analyze some historical epidemics that lost visibility, impact and morbidity, but did not really end. I will use data from different research projects in different times: hiv/aids in Brazil and the us, from my PhD; syphilis in early 20th century Lisbon, from my project on science and health transitions; leprosy in Hawaii and measles on board of the migrant ships, from my project on plantation societies and the racialization of labor.