Profs and Pints Online presents, “Covid-19, Humans, and Pandemics,” a look at the current pandemic in the broader context of science, human evolution, and history, with Rui Diogo, associate professor of anatomy at Howard University's College of Medicine and resource faculty member at George Washington University's Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology.

Much of what we read or hear about our current coronavirus crisis focuses on specific victims or on responses to it by government and the health-care industry. We’re also encountering no shortage of conjecture as to whether this pandemic stems from some conspiracy or represents some effort by the universe to teach us a broader lesson—reflections of our deep need to avoid facing how much in our lives is random and beyond our control. What’s missing is sufficient discussion of the science of viruses and how such pandemics fit into the overall story of our species.

Join Rui Diogo, a biologist and anthropologist, for a discussion of how Covid-19 fits in with what we know about viruses, about other pandemics that our species has encountered, and about how such pandemics were perceived at the time.

Professor Diogo will offer us a clear-eyed view of viruses as purposeless organisms—reminding us of the often-neglected fact that they are not living beings—and take us on a journey through time to see how viruses have affected us through the ages. Viruses predate human history, but it was the rise of agriculture and “civilization” that paved the way for pandemics and plagues. We’ll look at some of the deadliest—including the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, and, most recently, the “Spanish Flu”—and how they did not discriminate based on how societies were structured, killing those who lived under capitalism just as surely as those who lived under feudalism. What all such waves of death have had in common is how much our perceptions of them have been divorced from a thorough understanding of science and our history and place in nature. (This talk remains available in recorded form.)

Profs & Pints Online: Covid-19, Humans, and Pandemics