pandemics

Americans Will Regret Dismissing 100 Years of Public Health Progress

by Craig Spencer

Politicians have felt free to attack public health authorities to score points in the wake of the pandemic because the profession's achievements have allowed the public to forget just how much damage contagious illness can cause.

Jonathan Kennedy Tells the World's History through Eight Plagues

A new book asks whether microbes have been bending the narrative arc of history all along. 

Keri Leigh Merritt on the Politics of Grief and the Power of Historians' Witness to COVID

Three years since the public became aware of the seriousness of the COVID pandemic, a recent collection of essays turns the skills of historians toward reflection on grief, survival, and connecting understanding of the past to a better collective future.

Monkeypox Has Been Around for Decades; This Outbreak is a Product of Neglect

by Alessandro Hammond and Cameron Sabet

The world's response to viral outbreaks in poor nations demonstrates the hoarding of resources in the Global North, but it's ultimately self-defeating for rich nations, too. 

Does the Forgotten "Russian Flu" of the 1800s Give Clues How COVID Will Wind Down?

One lesson seems clear: there is no neat two-year timeline for pandemics, and viruses can circulate at a low profile for a long time. 

Racism and the 19th Century Yellow Fever Epidemic in New Orleans

by Karin Wulf

Karin Wulf interviews Kathryn Olivarius about her new book on the social and racial factors that prolonged a contagious epidemic that may have killed as many as 150,000 people in New Orleans between 1803 and 1861. 

The Plague, in the Plague: Have Black Death Comparisons Taught us Anything?

by Peter Manseau

The author of a new novel of the Black Plague and the co-author of a revisionist book on the medieval period discuss the tendency to make "rainbow connections" between past and present that oversimplify events to give moral guidance. 

Historians on the Lessons from 1918's Pandemic Fatigue

Medical historians Nancy Bristow and Thomas Ewing reflect on how public discontent with public health measures has limited the society's capacity to control pandemics. 

How did this Level of Death Become Normal?

In absolute and relative terms, The United States has fared horribly in the coronavirus pandemic. Historians and social scientists help writer Ed Yong explain why the nation meets mass death with a collective shrug. 

Was the Black Death Less Severe and Shorter than We Think?

by Adam Izdebski, Alessia Masi and Timothy P. Newfield

"While no two pandemics are the same, the study of the past can help us discover where to look for our own vulnerabilities and how to best prepare for future outbreaks. To begin to do that, though, we need to reassess past epidemics with all the evidence we can."

New York Survived the 1832 Cholera Epidemic

by Daniel S. Levy

The 1832 Cholera epidemic roiled New York, terrorizing the city across lines of class and neighborhood. Today, the city's resilience can be a source of encouragement, but also a caution that today's pandemic won't be the last. 

Wishful Thinking on COVID is as Dangerous as Prior Episodes of Denial

by Gregg Gonsalves

A convergence has emerged between the right and the center that the Omicron variant is the last hurrah of the COVID pandemic and a signal to go back to "normal." A public health scholar warns this is potentially sacrificing the vulnerable to the wishes of the powerful.

What Will We Remember of 2022?

by Tom Engelhardt

The response to the pandemic shows how the contemporary American urge toward nation un-building has returned home. 

With Omicron, We Need to Understand the 1918 Flu Pandemic More than Ever

by Christopher McKnight Nichols

"It may be that only now, in the winter of 2022, when Americans are exhausted with these mitigation methods, that a comparison to the 1918 pandemic is most apt."

Out of Context COVID Stats are Misleading

by Jim Downs

The first epidemiologists worked in a narrative mode, without advanced statistical measures. Without discarding quantitative methods, the field needs to refocus on telling evidence-based stories about the pandemic to clarify what's working, what isn't, and what people should do. 

Herd Immunity is Almost Here. What Next?

by John M. Barry

The best-case scenario for humanity's future with the Coronavirus, in which virus strains produce much fewer and much less dangerous cases of illness, requires reducing the number of unvaccinated people around the globe. 

The Inescapable Dilemma of Infectious Disease

by Kyle Harper

Control of infectious diesase is arguably humanity's greatest triumph. Has that triumph changed our environment to make diseases tougher to control? Has our success stopped us from being able to think of how to thrive without control of infections? 

US COVID Death Count Surpasses Estimates of 1918 Influenza

Historian Christopher McKnight Nichols notes "we have effective vaccines now.... the thing they most wanted in 1918, we've got. And for a lot of different reasons, we botched the response." 

We are All Becoming Cassandras: Leaders Must Heed the People on Climate, Disarmament, and Pandemic

by Lawrence Wittner

In classical myth, Cassandra was a lone prophet whose accurate predictions were ignored. Today, a growing share of humanity are playing the Cassandra role against a political and economic elite standing in the way of solutions to the threats of climate change, pandemic disease and nuclear annihilation. 

Not Everyone Can Afford to ‘Learn to Live With’ COVID-19

by Kyle Harper

"This two-track recovery, where protection against the disease mirrors wealth and power, unfortunately reflects a historical pattern that is several centuries old. The world’s only hope lies in breaking it."