User:Scmnr8/sandbox

Ideas For LA plague page

 * hyperlink to actual pneumonic plague
 * timeline section
 * public response
 * government response
 * aftermath (were new laws put in place or policies changed?)
 * impact on minorities

Additions to Transmission Section
R0 is the expected number of infections after a first person is infected. Rc is average number of secondary actual cases after someone gets it and is in contact with other people. If control measures are effective, Rc < R0,

1001 plague cases reported in the US from 1900 to 2009. 81% occured pre-antibiotic. In that time period, 64% of exposures were from animal contact. 92% of cases were fatal. 11% of cases went on to transmit infection. After the 1924 outbreak, there haven't been any transmissions from secondary cases. In LA outbreak,

Actual Addition
Between 1900 and 2009, there were 1001 reported cases of pneumonic plague. Of these cases, 81% occurred before antibiotics were widely available (1900-1943). In that time period, 92% of cases were fatal.

After the 1924 Los Angeles outbreak, there have been no secondary transmissions (transmission of the disease from a secondary case).

Addition
On October 29, bacteria characteristic of pneumonic plague was discovered in the lungs of a plague victim, but it wasn't made public.(REF) As more cases arrived at the hospital, a telegram was sent on October 31, recommending that federal aid be sent to the city.(TELEGRAM REF) At all steps, care was taken that news of the pneumonic plague never became public. In the telegram, the words for "pneumonic plague," "death," and "situation bad" were replaced with code. (TELEGRAM REF) One of the first actions taken to contain the plague was to quarantine the eight blocks where the plague had originated, which housed around 2,500 Mexican immigrants. (REF) Authorities went house-to-house to inspect the residents and look for signs of new plague cases. (REF)

At the time, it was widely believed that rodents or small animals were the cause of spread of the plague (REVIEW REF). After the San Francisco plague outbreak of 1900, squirrels with the bacillus bacteria were found in California.(REVIEW REF) The Los Angeles City government hired people to systematically eradicate rodents, specifically squirrels (REF). They also tagged rodents in order to get a more accurate count of how many were in the city. (REF)

Media Coverage
Media coverage of the plague in Los Angeles could be considered vague when compared to other cities' coverage of the same events (BOOK REF). The plague wasn't referred to by name until November 6th, when the outbreak was essentially over (REF 13). On November 3rd, the sub-heading in The Examiner's article referred to "pneumonia," saying "Officials Believe Virulent Pneumonia Outbreak Controlled (BOOK REF). On the same day, the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Seven are Dead from Pneumonia," without mentioning that seven had died the previous day, not as the total death toll (BOOK REF). For comparison, the New York Times and the Washington Post talked about the plague by name, even comparing it to the bubonic plague of the 14th century (REF).

Addition to Leading Section
The 1924 Los Angeles pneumonic plague outbreak began on October 30, 1924, and was declared fully contained on November 13, 1924. It represented the first time plague had emerged in Southern California; plague outbreaks had previously arisen in San Francisco and Oakland. The Los Angeles outbreak began on October 30, lasted two weeks, and killed 30 people. Public health officials credited the lessons learned from the San Francisco outbreak coupled with swiftly implemented measures, including hospitalization of the sick and all their contacts, a neighborhood quarantine, and a large-scale rat eradication program, with saving lives.

Add:

The plague mainly hit the district of Los Angeles that housed Mexican immigrants, and they were the almost exclusive victims of the plague. There was considerable racism in dealing with the outbreak, and the government did not make the outbreak public until it was over. The media coverage of the outbreak reflected that decision.

Peer Review LucioFulci (talk) 16:41, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
The information itself here is good. However, it seems that you’re missing citations for both sections. I did notice you put (REF) on some of the sentences, so I assume the references are sitting somewhere and just haven’t been put there as of yet, and that in the article itself you had references. The references that were in the article itself I felt were good sources, and you used multiple sources there. I really like the way you’ve planned to split the article into new sections. The idea for a government response section is logical and interesting to me, and of relevant interest particularly in these times. The other ideas also seemed good, and I think will provide a nice structure to the article. I wonder about the placement of the part mentioning the Mexican immigrants, since it seems related to the planned “impacts on minorities” section more so than the “government response” section. The tone was neutral for the additions, which was good.

Response to Peer Edit
I agree that there need to be references in the text. References for the first addition were added in the Wikipedia page, and the references for the second addition will also be added as soon as it is added to the main article. I also agree that the information on Mexican immigrants should go into the impacts on minorities section, and I think my group member is working more on that section.

Apart from the peer review, I would like to get a few things done in the next few weeks:


 * finish the government response section (look at book reference for more details)
 * add an aftermath subsection in the government response section (find more sources about this)

Article Evaluation

 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * Everything in this article does relate to Hartree and his life. There wasn't anything particularly distracting.
 * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * The article is neutral.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * It does talk a lot more about his work with differential equations than with computational chemistry, but I would have to do more research to see if that's justified or not. The section on his later life and work was much longer and had more detail than other sections as well.
 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?'
 * The citations work and they do support the claims in the article. Some sources aren't the most professional and I can't tell who actually wrote them. All the other sources are relevant and helpful.
 * Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
 * References are well utilized throughout the text. Information mostly comes from books or university sources.
 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
 * I'm mainly familiar with Hartree for his work with computational chemistry. I would like there to be more about his personality or his thought process in coming up with these methods. Other than his early life, there isn't much information about his personal life or how that affected his work.
 * Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * The only conversation was asking a question about his brothers. Other than that, there haven't been any real conversations.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * This is a C-class rated article, and it is a WikiProject in the Physics, Mathematics, and Science and Academia.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * We haven't talked about this topic in class. It puts more emphasis on his mathematics than physics, which is what I've learned about him in other classes.