New Pandemics Old Politics | Alex de Waal | Polity

Looking back now, Covid-19 had revived a lot of interest in the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.  It had seemingly taken most of the world unaware - there was no internet back then when news could become viral - and then disappeared without a trace.  There has been quite a number of books written comparing and contrasting how world leaders back then responded to the Influenza and how today's leaders reacted to Covid-19.  Medical science (as we have been taught to believe in schools and through the mass media) had also either progressed a tremedous lot or not prepared us sufficiently for Covid-19 (depending on how one sees it), which is today still around, although Governments have dialed down considerably their responses to it.

New Pandemics Old Politics is one of the books in the English-speaking world that examines how the world has repeatedly used military concepts in its response to pandemics (cholera, Influenza, SARS and now Covid-19) with repeated failures.  In de Waal's opinion, what was achieved was merely stripping the populace of their rights to livelihood and dignity, while not resolving the Pandemic itself.  

De Waal adopts a critical tone and his point of view obviously places the rights and dignity of the populace above the lock-downs and shutdowns that many cities and countries adopted to varying degrees during the early days of the Pandemic while people grapple with fear of the unknown virus and its mortality rate.

Highsight can be frighteningly perfect, and the populace incredibly forgiving or unforgiving of their politicians.  Yet what the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and Covid-19 had proved is that mankind never remembers and can never be adequately prepared for the unknown future.