Secondly, it is abysmal that the medical humanities and medical historians have (a) not had their expertise used more concretely as part of our strategy and (b) that STEM leaders have believed that rationality, logic, and facts alone could carry the science communication water.

More broadly, the historical profession as a whole, and humanities generally, have relegated disease & disease history to a bad story about the way the past used to be. So in the liberal arts and social sciences, people who study health make little impression on the big picture.

That's a gigantic failure. We have these blistering political fights in American about stupid memorials to Confederate soldiers and generals, and indeed forts named after them, but we've got few memorials to diseases that killed us to remind us of our past.

Every decent-sized city with a park could have a memorial to those who died of influenza. Every decent-sized city park could have a memorial to those who died of HIV/AIDS. You go to Europe - you find public reminders of plague. Frequently. Most small museums talk about it.

Where are the statues celebrating vaccination in America? Is it such a damn surprise that so many Americans are anti-vaccines? Where the hell do they learn to celebrate them? Medical history isn't taught in high schools. Edward Jenner isn't a household name.

Most university departments of history don't have a trained historian of healthcare - and indeed don't want one. This - at a time when history enrollments are crashing - and medical history classes FILL!

When exactly was it that we had television, film, books, short stories or any damn public history that didn't represent disease as something unstoppable. The Hollywood dystopia; the Netflix melodrama; the average Atwood novel - all of this teaches people: We. Can. Do. Nothing.

It is total crap. We have had centuries of doing things about disease successfully. We have had centuries of experience learning about the politics & cultures of disease. We know about the ideologies that stand in the way... about the way the mega-rich disdain public health.

You want to know how medical historians collectively think we are doing? I don't even need a survey. You could ask all 1000 members of the American Association of the History of Medicine, and I know for a fact every damn one of them would say "What the hell are we doing!!!"

You know why? Because at this point there are past societies that existed before the advent of antibiotics that did a better job controlling disease than we are doing right now. in the USA That's not polemic. That's not a lie. That's the God Awful Truth.

Every Medical Historian could tell you that. Every damn one of them. That's right - American society has made so many collectively stupid and bad decisions - that we cannot say we are doing better than the people who taught us how to deal with pandemic disease.

We need to put 300,000 crosses in the ground in a field. Put a camera on it; have 100 people add crosses every time someone dies. The public needs to see that daily - on the news, on the internet. Everywhere. It needs to be something that cannot be blocked out

We need to name names at this point of failed leadership. We need their phones to never stop ringing. We need stacks of flowers outside the White House for every American who died and will die by Christmas. The same outside every Governors' mansion.

And let's stop talking about Fauci & Birx as though they are somehow blameless. Fauci could have quit his job & screamed that this is a national scandal. Birx could have too. This nonsensical worship of personalities as people die is insanity. Its Whig history at its worst.

And the President-Elect isn't going to get a pass either if he doesn't make clear from the outset that 3000 dead a day is unacceptable. It. Is. Not. Acceptable. These are preventable deaths. They are preventable because of the work of generations before us.

Don't believe me. Ask a medical historian who is not me.