THE CATASTROPHIST EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS
Explore more from the world of Lauren Gunderson’s THE CATASTROPHIST with interviews, infographics, videos, and more below.
THE DRAMATURGICAL SCIENCE CORNER
FROM CATASTROPHIST PROGRAM, BY DRAMATURG MARTINE KEI GREEN-ROGERS, PHD
One of my favorite aspects of dramaturgy is that every play I work on becomes an opportunity to learn something new. For example, did you know that, contrary to popular lexicon, it is redundant to call COVID-19 a “global pandemic?” This is because the word “pandemic” in and of itself implies “global.” For this reason, I thought it may be useful to all of you who have watched, or are about to watch, The Catastrophist to provide a small series of basics on the science in this play.
PANDEMICS 101
What is a pandemic, and how is that different than an epidemic or an outbreak? The short version of that answer really lies in the scale of the spread. As defined by the CDC,
an Epidemic refers to an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population in that area. Outbreak carries the same definition of epidemic, but is often used for a more limited geographic area. Cluster refers to an aggregation of cases grouped in place and time that are suspected to be greater than the number expected, even though the expected number may not be known. Pandemic refers to an epidemic that has spread over several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people (www.cdc.gov/ csels).
What is sincerely interesting about pandemics and epidemics is that the definition of these terms vary depending on the source. For example, in the book Pandemics: A Very Short Introduction by Christian W. McMillen, he states that:
Several infectious disease specialists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health (NIH) came up with a broad framework that can work to help define what a pandemic is and has been. They suggested that it must meet eight criteria: wide geographic extension, disease movement, high attack rates and explosiveness, minimal population immunity, novelty, infectiousness, contagiousness, and severity.
McMillen goes on to point out several ideas that ring very true with our current pandemic, such as:
• “[There is a] relationship between poverty and disease and the geography of epidemics and pandemics”.
• “Fear and dread characterize epidemics”.
• “Epidemics and pandemics cannot occur without a dense and mobile population.”
What is sad to acknowledge about the current pandemic is that, globally, the lack of infrastructure to deal with pandemics has not strengthened in a substantial way since the most recent pandemics in modern history. All of this is to note
that maybe while it is important to figure out how to define a pandemic, the more important thing may be to figure out how to deal with a pandemic once something has been determined to be a pandemic. That leads us to the people and areas of science that deal with pandemics.
ABOVE Illustration of the five stages through which pathogens of animals evolve to cause diseases confined to humans—a pathogen exclusively infecting animals (Stage 1) may become transformed into a pathogen exclusively infecting humans (Stage 5). Each of the 25 major diseases discussed in this article are assigned to one of these five stages. The four agents depicted have reached different stages in the process, ranging from Rabies (still acquired only from animals) to HIV-1 (now acquired only from humans).
Source: “Origins of major human infectious diseases,” by Nathan Wolfe, Claire P. Dunavan, Jared Diamond, © Nature Publishing Group 2007. Origins of major human infectious diseases (nih.gov)
VIROLOGY 101
Nathan Wolfe, PhD, the subject of The Catastrophist, is a virologist.
Virology is “the scientific discipline concerned with the study of the biology of viruses and viral diseases, including the distribution, biochemistry, physiology, molecular biology, ecology, evolution and clinical aspects of viruses” (www. nature.com/subjects/virology). In short, a virologist is a scientist who studies everything about viruses.
As when discussing pandemics vs. epidemics, one has to discuss virology with the fields of epidemiology and immunology. According to the CDC, Epidemiology is the “study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in specified populations, and the application of this study to the control of health problems” (www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section1.html). In a more wordy but maybe clearer way, it is a field of science that is interested in the distribution (frequency and pattern), determinants (causes and other factors that influence the occurrence of disease and other heath events), and application (applying the knowledge gained by the studies to community-based practices)
of health events in the population. Similarly, but definitely not the same thing, Immunology is “the study of the immune system” and is a “branch of the medical and biological sciences” (www.immunology.org/public-information/what- is-immunology).
These three fields of study come together in times of a pandemic to help determine the best courses of action to deal with the pandemic. Virologists are the scientists who are concerned with hows and the whys of the virus itself, and in cases like our current pandemic, especially the hows and whys of zoonotic viruses (the diseases/pathogens that have jumped from an animal to a human). Virologists are those scientists who either discover the beginnings of a virus spread or the point of origin of a novel virus by trying to figure out how the disease came into existence.
What this play, and Dr. Wolfe’s book, The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, discusses is that sometimes a virologist’s work can be pretty “un-sexy” (for lack of a better term) but when a virologist discovers something— we should be thankful and pay attention, since they are usually the first ones to know when a disease with the possibility of becoming a pandemic begins.
From the press
An immune system for the planet: Exclusive interview with Nathan Wolfe
I think about the secondary effects of diseases like AIDS that cause a population’s immune system to be suppressed, as a whole. I think of this as a tear in the planet’s meta-immune system. This tear increases the possibility that a new virus will enter. With immunosuppressed hunters, a virus that normally couldn’t survive or adapt to human populations might get a few extra generations and be permitted to adapt to these individuals and humanity.
Before there was COVID, Lauren Gunderson married a virus hunter. ‘The Catastrophist’ is her play about him.
In The Catastrophist, Lauren Gunderson has written a story for this moment in time about Dr. Nathan Wolfe, the award-winning virologist who years before the COVID-19 outbreak proposed a plan to protect the economy from pandemics. Wolfe also happens to be Gunderson’s husband.
Eureka Stories: The Power of Putting Science Center-Stage
Co-hosted by the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, Marin Theatre Company, and Round House Theatre
Using as a launchpad the new play THE CATASTROPHIST (about virologist Dr. Nathan Wolfe), by Lauren Gunderson, recognized as America’s most produced living playwright, “Eureka Stories: The Power of Putting Science Center-Stage” will bring together a cohort of formidable writers in dialogue about the power, purpose, and necessity of telling the stories of science and scientists. Science needn’t be contained solely in nonfiction. How do plays, films, novels, musicals, and journalism about science offer other prismatic perspectives on the work, adventure, and humanity of great contemporary and historical scientists?
Learn more about the speakers featured in the video below here.