Article ID: CBB423977567

Uses of History During the First Nine Months of COVID (2021)

unapi

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, historians of medicine, disease, and health became frequent guests in academic talks and even in national media. These historians' expertise suddenly appeared relevant, particularly those who worked on two previous pandemics, the 14th-century Black Death and the 1918 influenza pandemic. This article examines how history was searched for possible insights and predictions about the present-day pandemic. The article then traces why assumptions about what COVID would do based on the past, such as COVID leading to a leveling of inequality, were faulty: these supposed lessons from the past flattened pandemics into one-size-fits-all approaches, which existed in neither the past nor the present. To understand the possibilities and limits of what pandemics do, we must ground the differing experiences of a pandemic in their specific times and places. In particular, framing pandemic responses in terms of resilience serves to center the market and the state, rather than individuals. The article concludes with thoughts on how to make changes during a pandemic that center people, not states or profits.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB423977567/

Similar Citations

Article Mary Augusta Brazelton; (2020)
Viral Reflections: Placing China in Global Health Histories (/isis/citation/CBB279381939/)

Article David Arnold; (2020)
Pandemic India: Coronavirus and the Uses of History (/isis/citation/CBB315140259/)

Article Flavio D'Abramo; Giulia Gandolfi; Gerardo Ienna; Pietro Daniel Omodeo; Charles Wolfe; (2021)
Political epistemology of pandemic management (/isis/citation/CBB689255536/)

Article Kenneth Pomeranz; (2020)
Afterword: Lives Interrupted, Trends Continued? (/isis/citation/CBB459754529/)

Article Stefano Santasilia; (2020)
Pandemia e stili di vita: pazienza (/isis/citation/CBB845461986/)

Article Warwick Anderson; (April 2021)
The model crisis, or how to have critical promiscuity in the time of Covid-19 (/isis/citation/CBB248429145/)

Article Stefania Achella; (2020)
Ragioni della scienza e ragioni politiche. Alcune considerazioni filosofiche (/isis/citation/CBB319793049/)

Article Franklin G. Miller; (2021)
Liberty and Protection of Society During a Pandemic: Revisiting John Stuart Mill (/isis/citation/CBB564910589/)

Book Fernando Rosa; Alessandra Parodi; (2024)
Essere in una pandemia. Filosofia, medicina e Covid-19 (/isis/citation/CBB335674855/)

Article Silvia Caianiello; (2020)
Accelerazione. Riflessioni sulle temporalità della pandemia (/isis/citation/CBB072366901/)

Article Michael P. Kelly; Federica Russo; (2021)
The epistemic values at the basis of epidemiology and public health (/isis/citation/CBB856188518/)

Article Anne-Emanuelle Birn; (2020)
Perspectivizing pandemics: (How) do epidemic histories criss-cross contexts? (/isis/citation/CBB751896961/)

Article Kate McDonald; (2020)
Olympic Recoveries (/isis/citation/CBB028444617/)

Article Geoffrey W. Rice; (2020)
How reminders of the 1918–19 pandemic helped Australia and New Zealand respond to COVID-19 (/isis/citation/CBB418629553/)

Article Davide Orsini; James A. Ostenson; Francesco Brigo; Mariano Martini; (2023)
Pandemics and Mental Disorders: From the Thought of the 19th Century Psychiatrist Andrea Verga to long-term effects of COVID-19 (/isis/citation/CBB934514442/)

Article Giuseppe Armocida; (2020)
Di nuovo una storia vecchia. L’emergenza Coronavirus (/isis/citation/CBB710967498/)

Book Jo Robertson; (2022)
The International Campaign Against Leprosy: 1948 - 2005 (/isis/citation/CBB146380609/)

Authors & Contributors
Fernando Rosa
Gerardo Ienna
John Harriss
Arnold, David J.
Brigo, Francesco
Stefania Achella
Concepts
Public health
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Pandemics
Medicine and society
Medicine and politics
Epidemics
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
India
New Zealand
Japan
Italy
China
Australia
Institutions
World Health Organization (WHO)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment