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New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives
New Pandemics, Old Politics explores how the modern world adopted a martial script to deal with epidemic disease threats, and how this has failed - repeatedly. Europe first declared 'war' on cholera in the 19th century. It didn't defeat the disease but it served purposes of state and empire. In 1918, influenza emerged from a real war and swept the world unchecked by either policy or medicine. Forty years ago, AIDS challenged the confidence of medical science. AIDS is still with us, but we have learned to live with it - chiefly because of community activism and emancipatory politics.
Today, public health experts and political leaders who failed to listen to them agree on one that we must 'fight' Covid-19. There's a consensus that we should target individual pathogens and suppress them - rather than address the reasons why our societies are so vulnerable. Arguing that this consensus is mistaken, Alex de Waal makes the case for a new democratic public health for the Anthropocene.
Today, public health experts and political leaders who failed to listen to them agree on one that we must 'fight' Covid-19. There's a consensus that we should target individual pathogens and suppress them - rather than address the reasons why our societies are so vulnerable. Arguing that this consensus is mistaken, Alex de Waal makes the case for a new democratic public health for the Anthropocene.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionScience
282 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 31, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 30, 2021
Still not prepared for the next one....
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...
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The book is pretty academic. This stood out to me....
The next step was constructing a family tree of all influenza strains that have circulated since 1918. Reviewing the evidence in 2009, three of the world’s leading infectious disease specialists – David Morens, Jeffery Taubenberger, and Anthony Fauci – concluded:
It is remarkable not only that direct ‘all-eight-gene’ descendants of the 1918 virus still circulate in humans as epidemic H1N1 viruses and in swine as epizootic H1N1 viruses, but also that for the last 50 years the original virus and its progeny have continually donated genes to new viruses to cause pandemics, epidemics and epizootics. The novel H1N1 virus associated with the ongoing 2009 pandemic is a fourth-generation descendant of the 1918 virus.
That is a chilling conclusion that compels us to rethink the life history of the disease. In fact the 1918 influenza didn’t disappear at all. Instead, the last hundred-plus years of influenza can best be understood as a single pandemic. It's endemic, meaning it always with us.
Survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic maintained strong antibody responses against that virus for almost ninety years. And yet adults still get the flu approximately once every five years, because the influenza virus’s rapid evolution insures that each year brings new variants. On average, flu viruses acquire half a dozen mutations each year.
We are falling sick and dying every winter from the viral harvest of that Great War, because the viral progeny of the 1918 pandemic influenza are still with us, reaping their seasonal toll and occasionally recombining to generate a pandemic.
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More.....
https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-unw...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...
=============
The book is pretty academic. This stood out to me....
The next step was constructing a family tree of all influenza strains that have circulated since 1918. Reviewing the evidence in 2009, three of the world’s leading infectious disease specialists – David Morens, Jeffery Taubenberger, and Anthony Fauci – concluded:
It is remarkable not only that direct ‘all-eight-gene’ descendants of the 1918 virus still circulate in humans as epidemic H1N1 viruses and in swine as epizootic H1N1 viruses, but also that for the last 50 years the original virus and its progeny have continually donated genes to new viruses to cause pandemics, epidemics and epizootics. The novel H1N1 virus associated with the ongoing 2009 pandemic is a fourth-generation descendant of the 1918 virus.
That is a chilling conclusion that compels us to rethink the life history of the disease. In fact the 1918 influenza didn’t disappear at all. Instead, the last hundred-plus years of influenza can best be understood as a single pandemic. It's endemic, meaning it always with us.
Survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic maintained strong antibody responses against that virus for almost ninety years. And yet adults still get the flu approximately once every five years, because the influenza virus’s rapid evolution insures that each year brings new variants. On average, flu viruses acquire half a dozen mutations each year.
We are falling sick and dying every winter from the viral harvest of that Great War, because the viral progeny of the 1918 pandemic influenza are still with us, reaping their seasonal toll and occasionally recombining to generate a pandemic.
======
More.....
https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-unw...
February 13, 2022
A fantastic read. Pandemics strike across different eras and involve different pathogens, but they act like stress tests that take advantage of social maladies and structural inequalities in the societies they afflict to exact maximum penalty. Alex de Waal presents an erudite and highly readable synopsis of how pandemic organisms interact with their host communities and their environment to wreck havoc. From Cholera and Influenza, to AIDS and COVID-19, different scripts fill a familiar story. The antagonism of 19th century British liberalism to quarantine measures against the spread of Cholera as obstacles to free trade find their echos in 21st century resistance to public health interventions in the COVID-19 crisis as detrimental to economic activity. In the process we are reminded of the towering figure of Virchow and his penetrating insights into the crucial role of the social conditions in creating the necessary grounds for pandemics to emerge. Highly recommended.
December 17, 2025
Zeer interessant boek over hoe overheden in het verleden het metafoor "oorlogvoeren tegen epidemieën" hebben ingezet. Het boek is af en toe een beetje technisch, maar wel erg waardevol
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February 3, 2022Total waste of time reading this book. The author is very biased in his views. He loves the sounds of his own voice. It take him 4 sentences to make one small point. He must have wrote this with a dictionary to fill it with the biggest words he could find. Ok. We get it you are an academic!
By the way, there was no mention of Canada’s Covid response which has been more successful than many countries. Enough about Trump!
His does outline and explain past outbreaks but his message is lost. If he truly had one outside of blah blah blah!
By the way, there was no mention of Canada’s Covid response which has been more successful than many countries. Enough about Trump!
His does outline and explain past outbreaks but his message is lost. If he truly had one outside of blah blah blah!
March 16, 2022
3.5/5. Solid - a confident start gave way to more speculative and sweeping conclusions. Understandable, in the sense of being written in the first year of the pandemic, but a weakness nonetheless. In between, some good material on narratives and a readable overview of the politics and health responses of pandemics including cholera, influenza, and ebola.
May 19, 2024
The explanation for the pickle we’re in.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews