We explore ways in which statistics can be used to understand disease spread and support decision-making by governments. "Past performance does not guarantee future results"--we hope. We discuss and show examples from the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded COVID-Inspired Data Science Education through Epidemiology (CIDSEE) project.…

Taking fear as the core emotion in the experience of major disasters and echoing French historian Jean Delumeau's classic thesis on the social and cultural construction of coping strategies against it, this article outlines some lessons and prospects from the (complex but also distinctive) regime of experiences and behaviours historically…

Outbreaks of respiratory infections have impact on schools. The present article draws upon sources from the school archives of the former teachers' seminary Muristalden in the city of Bern in Switzerland. The aim is to ascertain how the various pandemic waves 1918/1919 affected school operations and the people living at Muristalden. During the…

The growing multidisciplinary historiographic interest in the study of the misnamed "Spanish flu", which caused 50 to 100 million deaths in the world and between 260,000 and 270,000 in Spain, has not spread to the History of Education. The main objective of this article is to provide an initial approach to the analysis of certain aspects…

Meta-analyses of diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) studies have been gaining prominence in research in clinical epidemiology and health technology development. In these DTA meta-analyses, some studies may have markedly different characteristics from the others and potentially be inappropriate to include. The inclusion of these "outlying"…

This article aims to map the news and debates that circulated in the press in the context of the outbreak of the Spanish flu in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Brazil) in the years 1918-1919. We are interested in reflecting on the criticisms and alternatives glimpsed regarding education and care for the population. In Brazil, the…

The development of a vaccine marks a breakthrough in the fight against infectious diseases. However, to eradicate highly infectious diseases globally, the immunization of large parts of the population is needed. Otherwise, diseases, such as polio, measles, or more recently COVID-19, will repeatedly flare-up, with devastating effects on individuals…

In this article, I present the eighteenth century's polemic of Bernoulli and d'Alembert concerning the smallpox epidemic and a prevention method called inoculation. Through an analysis of the polemic and the related resources, I show that this historical debate has various interests for mathematics education; and more specifically it can help…

This paper explores 'articulations' or 're-turnings' of ill-/health and energy/fatigue in education, re/configuring bodies and minds as 'body_minds'. The Luxembourg vocational school "Institut Émile Metz" (IEM) thereby serves as a starting point. This institute is analysed 'diffractively' through health education institutes as part of an…

In an academic semester, living in social isolation and under restrictions of the pandemic, we organized weekly multidisciplinary seminars from a postgraduate course program in Curitiba, Southern Brazil, integrating students from different regions of Brazil and South America. Outstanding researchers from Brazil, Germany, France, Argentina, Mexico,…

The question "What does this have to do with everything else?" refers to ecological thinking. In this article, we use an ecological approach to explore the interrelationships between the incidence of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, its trajectories and impacts on education. Our emphasis on children and their environment, as specific…

The negative impact of human activity has been known throughout history. The epic tale of Gilgamesh, Koranic and biblical texts all make clear the potential that humans have to destroy the world in which they live. Climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse and zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 have also been predicted well in advance. The…

It is a rare event when senior scholars and actors in a field come together; more so when that takes place in the company of new and emerging scholars. Even rarer are such occasions in the Oceania region, where distance can mediate against key players coming together in time and space. When the stars align, the opportunity must be seized. This…

Convergence education of medicine and theology (CEMT) is an effective religious education learning model in a secular age. The highly elaborate rationality of the secular environment encourage es dialogical discourse between science and religion. There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between medicine and theology even given each…

Zoonoses, or diseases that can be transferred between humans and animals, such as variant swine influenza, avian influenza A viruses, and coronaviruses, comprise a large percentage of all newly identified and existing infectious diseases (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). As a result, there is an ever-growing need for a One Health…