1984-Discovery of the First Anti-HIV Drug, Suramin.

In 2021, we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the identification of the disease AIDS, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a name that for the first time in history was launched in 1981 [...].

[A Mythological Anamnesis: from AIDS Spiders to the Bats of Ebola or Covid-19 - Revised Version of the Paper Presented at the Colloquium "Cultural and Social Perspectives on Epidemics", musée du quai Branly-Jacques-Chirac, June 27, 2019]. / Une anamnèse mythologique : des araignées du sida aux chauves-souris d'Ebola ou de la Covid-19 ­ Version remaniée de la communication présentée au colloque Regards culturels et sociaux autour des épidémies, musée du quai Branly-Jacques-Chirac le 27 juin 2019.

This article focuses on some representations of the origin of AIDS and Ebola in Burkina Faso, against a new background of Covid-19 which began in early 2020 in connection with two animals: the spider and the bat. These are also, if not first and foremost, heroes of oral literature (from tales to myths) from this region of West Africa. It is up to anthropologists to explore the meandering symbolism and imagination of these liminal animals that move back and forth between the worlds inhabited by humans and the "bush" worlds of non-humans. Here arises a mythological anamnesis. These "trickster" animals challenge categories and understanding of both virologists and anthropologists.

Cet article porte sur quelques représentations de l'origine du sida et d'Ebola en pays lobi burkinabè, avec la Covid-19 en nouvel arrière-plan depuis le début de l'année 2020, en lien avec deux animaux : l'araignée et la chauve-souris. Ce sont aussi, voire d'abord, des héros de la littérature orale (des contes aux mythes) de cette région d'Afrique de l'Ouest. Des anthropologues ont exploré les méandres des symboliques et des imaginaires de ces animaux liminaires qui vont et viennent entre les mondes habités par les humains et les univers de « brousse ¼ des non-humains. Une anamnèse mythologique est mise à jour. Ces animaux rusés se jouent de nos catégories et de notre entendement, virologues et anthropologues ici confondus.

The model crisis, or how to have critical promiscuity in the time of Covid-19.

During the past forty years, statistical modelling and simulation have come to frame perceptions of epidemic disease and to determine public health interventions that might limit or suppress the transmission of the causative agent. The influence of such formulaic disease modelling has pervaded public health policy and practice during the Covid-19 pandemic. The critical vocabulary of epidemiology, and now popular debate, thus includes R0, the basic reproduction number of the virus, 'flattening the curve', and epidemic 'waves'. How did this happen? What are the consequences of framing and foreseeing the pandemic in these modes? Focusing on historical and contemporary disease responses, primarily in Britain, I explore the emergence of statistical modelling as a 'crisis technology', a reductive mechanism for making rapid decisions or judgments under uncertain biological constraint. I consider how Covid-19 might be configured or assembled otherwise, constituted as a more heterogeneous object of knowledge, a different and more encompassing moment of truth - not simply as a measured telos directing us to a new normal. Drawing on earlier critical engagements with the AIDS pandemic, inquiries into how to have 'theory' and 'promiscuity' in a crisis, I seek to open up a space for greater ecological, sociological, and cultural complexity in the biopolitics of modelling, thereby attempting to validate a role for critique in the Covid-19 crisis.

Covid-19 in Historical Context: Creating a Practical Past.

Decades ago, in his foundational essay on the early days of the AIDS crisis, medical historian Charles Rosenberg wrote, "epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, following a plot line of increasing revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift toward closure." In the course of epidemics, societies grappled with sudden and unexpected mortality and also returned to fundamental questions about core social values. "Epidemics," Rosenberg wrote, "have always provided occasion for retrospective moral judgment" (Rosenberg 1989, pp. 2, 9). Following Rosenberg's observations, this essay places COVID-19 in the context of epidemic history to examine common issues faced during health crises-moral, political, social, and individual. Each disease crisis unfolds in its own time and place. Yet, despite specific contexts, we can see patterns and recurring concerns in the history of pandemics: (1) pandemics and disease crises in the past, along with public health responses to them, have had implications for civil liberties and government authority; (2) disease crises have acted as a sort of stress test on society, revealing, amplifying or widening existing social fissures and health disparities; (3) pandemics have forced people to cope with uncertain knowledge about the origin and nature of disease, the best sources of therapies, and what the future will hold after the crisis. While historians are not prognosticators, understanding past experience offers new perspectives for the present. The essay concludes by identifying aspects of history relevant to the road ahead.