Stinky Contexts (Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition 2023)

There is such a thing as epidemiological realism because epidemiological concepts and concerns have seeped into the fabric of social life, redrawing in the process the contours of the body, while shifting a shared sense of ordinariness. Terms like “exposure,” “contamination,” “PCR,” “risk,” “confinement,” “droplets,” “variants,” “PPE,” “herd immunity,” “fomites” have people talking, taking sides, telling stories, and listening intently in a state of heightened receptivity to anecdotal evidence, contested models, and debunked theories. As such, epidemiological realism inevitably brings into focus issues of shared competency between domains of expertise. The point of this book, however, is not to recover what epidemiologists already know (about rabies, about HIV/AIDS, about Alzheimer) in an incidental archive made up of stories people tell (about rabies, HIV/AIDS, or Alzheimer). It is to meet halfway the world of chance encounters between humans, animals, and infrastructures in which epidemiology deploys its repertoire of gestures and concepts.