Cha
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In Perspective
A
Spattergroit and Public Health
by Rose Jean
Muggles Explain Magic:
This past summer camp was interrupted by a Spattergroit epidemic that infected over 20 students and alumni. Activities moved to a near standstill as people avoided the infected. St. Mungo’s expanded its second floor to accommodate an unusually high number of patients all carrying the contagious disease. Healers were overworked as they dealt with the epidemic, which prods the question: could this all have been avoided in the first place?
The answer: YES. We can look to Muggles to see how they have dealt with epidemics and how they prevent them from happening again. While Healers focus on treating patients, a relatively new field called public health focuses on reducing the number of patients altogether. St. Mungo’s has a section dedicated to public health warnings, though it’s not quite as extensive as the Muggle concept. Let’s look at how a Muggle Public Health Official would deal with the Spattergroit outbreak and see how St. Mungo’s did during such an unprecedented health emergency.
Protection
Muggles break public health down into three P’s. The first is Protection. This is all about taking a close look at the population and making sure there is nothing threatening their health. It’s similar to the Ministry using the Trace to track underage magic, except Muggles use fancy devices and math to track health issues. The Healers at St. Mungo’s did a great job protecting those whose health was at risk. Rae, the first person to contract Spattergroit, was immediately placed in the hospital to get her back on the road to health. Anyone exposed to disease was also admitted for a few days of observation, and stayed longer if they became infected. These fast actions made sure that patients were given a good fighting chance against the disease.
Promotion
The last P is Promotion. This is one of the key elements of public health that might have caused the Spattergroit outbreak to go out of hand. For Muggles, health promotion means educating the public on how to stay healthy. It is also about enabling people to make healthy choices. This is where St. Mungo’s public health division was most visible as they posted warnings all over camp telling people to be careful about the outbreak. Alas, this warning simply came too late. Rae contracted Spattergroit on May 19th, and though warnings were posted just three days later, by that point 9 people had already been exposed. The disease simply moved too fast before the public could be educated and preventative actions promoted.
Thankfully, at the time of writing this article, the worst of the Spattergroit outbreak is now over. There were no lasting health effects as Healers moved quickly to help everyone in need. The only mark Spattergroit leaves behind now is an entry in the history books and hopefully a lesson in public health well-learned
Prevention
The second P stands for Prevention. This is one people usually think of first when they think of public health. When Muggles find out that a person has a disease, they find any means to prevent anyone else from getting the same disease. In the case of contagious disease like Spattergroit, they would minimize contact between the infected individual and the public. Again, St. Mungo’s did a great job trying to prevent Spattergroit from spreading. They made sure that all exposed patients stayed in the same ward and were not allowed to have visitors. Healers themselves had to suit up when interacting with patients. The Green Eggs and Ham Café also temporarily closed the popular One Fish, Two Fish… game because so many people were being exposed through it.
There is a revolution.
And not a penguin one. . .
But a Dodie one.
As you may know, quite a few users on our wonderful site have adopted a "Dodie avatar". Dodie is a YouTuber who posts vlogs and videos of her own songs. I have watched a few of her videos, and whilst they are quite nice, I wondered why so many people on mH love her as much as they do.
So, I took it upon myself to PM those who had a picture of Dodie in their signature or had expressed their love for Dodie in some way. The extensive paragraphs I got in reply were--, well, they were something else.
I managed to find out how this craze started on mH. Some people discovered the artist simply from others' conversations about her on mH and other places online. Others had simply found her channel through YouTube.
"I first found her channel when the Dodie craze was going on", said Miss_Lovegood, "I fell in love with her music and thought of her as a young Sabrina Carpenter". For those of you who don't know, Sabrina is an American songwriter and singer that released her first professional music album at the age of 16. Miss_Lovegood continued by saying, and I must admit that I love this sentence, "I kind of loved the British-ness of some of her videos." Please bear in mind that Miss_Lovegood wrote a 6 paragraph essay in response to my question, and these quotes are but a few of her glowing praise for Dodie and her channel.
Evie Riddle spoke at a length about Dodie as well. "I found Dodie’s channel from my friend's vlog and watched some of her videos." She then proceeded to say, "the next day at school told her [that] I like Dodie and she started quizzing me on [her], asking questions that only a person [who has watched] every single one of her vlogs would know." This proved to me that Dodie was a person worth learning more about. Evie mentioned how Dodie’s music and her videos were funny, sometimes sad, and most often inspiring. Although I am not a huge Dodie fan myself, I had to agree with her on that.
Rowena Riddle said that she had discovered Dodie through a "collab video", a video made by more than one artist, with Dodie and Jon Cozart. Like me, at the time, she didn’t think much of Dodie but decided it couldn't hurt to explore the singer's channel. "I can relate to so many things Dodie has to say, especially the lyrics to her songs and [her vlogs]", said Rowena. She then went on to talk about "Dodie’s lovely personality" and her "nice sister. Gahhh, I just love her so much. I can't even explain", she exclaimed. Rowena was inspired by chloecs' Dodie avatar and decided to the same thing in order to show her love for the young singer, as well.
Finally, one last excited Dodie fan, Eowyn29 (Becky) said she found Dodie through Kyla’s (Starlight) avatar. By using her stalking skills, she figured out who the artist was. Becky maintained that "Dodie was simply a funny, sweet, and talented and that she is very inspiring."
For any of you out there that was wondering who this "Dodie" is and why we have a Dodie revolution on our hands, I've explained why! ;)
Got any more mysteries worth investigating? Problems to solve? Send me an owl, and I’ll strive to write an article on the answer.
Luna, over and out!
The Dodie Revolution
by LunaHP
By Bazile
Speaking of Graduation. . .
My next thought was that perhaps it’s just a British thing to not make such a huge deal of prom. Now if it is a British thing, I’d be totally fine with that because Britishy stuff is very cool, but after doing my research I learned that other British schools do make a bigger deal about graduating than we do at Hogwarts. So dead end there.
So maybe we just have a super secret party for graduating NEWT students that they aren’t allowed to tell us about because it’s a surprise. Okay, that was a bit random. And not very plausible. But I won’t know until I get there… It’s possible. And would be very cool. Too cool. Which would make sense because we’re too cool. Maybe… maybe we’re just too cool for graduation parties too. I guess that’s why we don’t get a prom.
Aw well, maybe there isn’t any reason why don’t have a massive party… Or maybe it’s because our terms are only a couple weeks long and it’s hard to have a dance when we can’t meet in person. Either way, we have fun at our end of term feast, and there's no awkward head bobbing because no one actually wants to dance at a dance.
One of my muggle siblings is about to graduate from their muggle school, and that got me thinking about the graduations here at Hogwarts. Or moreover, the lack of graduations. I mean sure, we move up in the years and yes, some of us leave the school, but we don’t make as big a deal about it. With my sibling graduating, all kinds of plans are being made; parties, trips, dresses, makeup, dances... Basically, the whole nine yards.
When we graduate here on mH, we have a dinner, vote on some prizes, but it’s not nearly on the same level. We don’t have dances or parties and we never dress up. Okay, I admit I’m a bit happy about the no dances. But still, I couldn’t help but wonder why we never make as big a deal about graduating as the muggles do. Seriously, with all the magic we have we could definitely make way cooler parties.
My first thought was that perhaps it’s because we don’t change schools after we graduate here at Hogwarts, and that’s one of the things that muggles celebrate at their graduation. *cough cough* And ditching the school they were at before. *cough cough* I mean, we might have WizU, but that's really just more Hogwarts... One of the biggest graduating parties for graduating muggles is when they finish they’re mandatory education (and so aren’t necessarily going to another school). This outrageous party is called "prom" and happens at about the same time when we graduate in our final year after our NEWTs.
