WATCH: Plagues and pandemics - Trinity experts on how history can help us battle Covid-19

IrishCentral featured a live stream of the "Behind the Headlines: Plagues and Pandemics" discussion from Trinity College Dublin's Long Room Hub.

The discussion Behind the Headlines: Plagues and Pandemics examined what we can learn from the pandemics and plagues of the past to help address the current Covid-19 global public health crisis.

You can watch the discussion here:

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As Covid-19 pervades homes, societies and minds and governments across the world take extraordinary emergency measures to curb the spread and impact of this deadly new virus, we seek to understand what might be learned from past occurrences of plagues and pandemics as we approach Covid-19 today.

Bringing together our customary multi-disciplinary panel, the Trinity Long Room Hub discussed the Black Death, the 1918 ‘Spanish’ flu, ethics and epidemics, immunology and the work currently underway by scientists, public health officials, individuals and society to tackle this pandemic.

The Trinity Long Room Hub’s Behind the Headlines discussion series offers background analyses to current issues by experts drawing on the long-term perspectives of Arts & Humanities research. It aims to provide a forum that deepens understanding, combats simplification and polarization and thus creates space for informed and respectful public discourse

The experts

Who: The speakers are Dr. Ida Milne, Dr. Brendan O’Connell, Professor Luke O’Neill, and Dr. Jacob Erickson.

Dr. Ida Milne is a lecturer in European History at Carlow College and a Visiting Fellow at Trinity’s School of Histories and Humanities.  Her primary research interest is in the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, which killed more than 50 million people globally, and more than 23,000 in Ireland.

Dr. Brendan O'Connell is an Assistant Professor in Middle English Literature at Trinity’s School of English. He is currently teaching medieval literary responses to the Black Death focusing on several texts that implicitly respond to the Black Death.

Professor Luke O’Neill (Chair of Biochemistry) is an Immunologist at Trinity’s School of Biochemistry and Immunology. An avid public commentator on everything to do with science, his recent contributions to media and public debate have focused on measures to tackle the spread of Covid-19 in Ireland.

Dr. Jacob Erickson is an Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Trinity’s School of Religion. A frequent contributor to debates on Environmental Ethics, Queer Theologies, and LGBTIQ Ethics, his current works sees him writing about theology in times of plague.

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