PLAGUE, PESTILENCE, PANDEMIC

Centaurus 62:2, 2020

We are currently experiencing one of the most disruptive pandemics in modern history. The outbreak of COVID-19 that was first recorded in Wuhan, China and quickly spread across the globe has resulted in nearly 5 million confirmed cases to date and more than 300,000 deaths. Where we stand now, it is still uncertain how many it will infect or kill worldwide, how long it will continue, and when-if ever-life will return to normal. What we know for sure is that this is a pivotal moment and that we are experiencing a historic event that will transform our societies both profoundly and irreversibly. As we wade into this new age of pandemics, it is critical to rethink how we write the history of pandemics. With a conviction that the past helps us to understand the present and that the present should help us to rethink the past, I turn to the legacy of past plagues. In this essay, I take stock of the lasting legacies of past plagues because they continue to shape the way we think about new pandemics. In particular, I address persistent problems, such as European exceptionalism, triumphalism, and epidemiological Orientalism, that are not only ubiquitous in plague studies, but also staples of public opinion about pandemics, past and present.

Rivista Trimestrale Di Scienza Dell’Amministrazione 2:, 2020

This review offers an overview of several devastating historical epidemics and pandemics. The first pandemic ravaging the Middle East and Ancient Egypt was an unidentified "plague" in the late Bronze Age. The plague of Athens was apparently "only" a local epidemic but with fatal consequences for that ancient democracy. Great empires with well-developed trade routes seem to be very susceptible to rapid and devastating spreads as the Antonine Plague, the Plague of Cyprian and the Justinian Plague testify. The great Medieval plague wave in Europe was absolutely devastating, but for the first time it brought along with it substantial containment measures that are still being successfully used today (e.g. isolation, quarantine) as well as the seeds of the development of a new form of medical theory and practice. The blame game that can be observed in the current COVID-19 pandemic has also been seen in previous epidemics and pandemics. Particularly in the case of syphilis, its origin was often attributed to foreign countries. Finally, the paper comparatively stresses the historical importance of an early implementation of a lockdown-based approach as an effective form of controlling epidemic spreads. Riassunto. Le epidemie e le pandemie nella storia dell'umanità e la maniera tenuta dai governi nel gestirle. Una review dall'Età del Bronzo alla prima Età moderna Questa rassegna offre una panoramica su diverse devastanti epidemie e pandemie nella storia. La prima pandemia che ha devastato il Medio Oriente e l'antico Egitto è stata una "peste" non ancora identificata alla fine dell'Età del Bronzo. La Peste di Atene fu apparentemente "solo" un'epidemia locale, ma con conseguenze fatali per l'antica democrazia. Grandi imperi con vie commerciali ben sviluppate sembrano essere molto suscettibili alla rapida e devastante diffusione epidemica, come testimoniano la Peste Antonina, la Peste di Cipriano e la Peste di Giustiniano. La grande ondata epidemica di peste nell'Europa medievale si è rivelata assolutamente devastante, ma per la prima volta ha portato con sé sostanziali misure di contenimento che ancora oggi vengono utilizzate con successo (ad es. isolamento, quarantena) e lo sviluppo di una nuova forma di teoria e pratica medica. Il gioco dell'incolparsi vicendevolmente che si può osservare nell'attuale pandemia di COVID-19 può, inoltre, essere osservato anche nelle precedenti epidemie e pandemie. In particolare nel caso della sifilide, l'origine del morbo era spesso attribuita a nazioni straniere. L'articolo, infine, sottolinea in maniera comparativa l'importanza storica dell'applicazione precoce di un approccio basato sul confinamento quale forma di di efficace forma di controllo delle diffusioni epidemiche.

Geopolitics Quarterly, 2021

This study investigates the reasons for why people seek new political beginnings after historical plagues. The search for such political restarts appeared during the outbreaks of epidemics, but also they still exist among current historians. This investigation is conducted through historical and contemporary interpretations of epidemics. This study concentrates on examples from European and Muslim worlds, but also looks at that of China. It concludes that the meanings assigned to plagues are intertwined with the historical development of political power and its justification by the societies in question.

Horitzó. Revista de ciències de la religió 5, 2024, pp. 67-79, 2024

Although this recent COVID virus is new, it is well known that this pandemic, in its medical characteristics, in its impact on the population and even in its social and economic repercussions, is nothing new. There is a long tradition of previous pandemics that have affected Western culture and have left literary footprints over the centuries. Pandemics generally share common features: the description of the symptoms, the response of the authorities, even the lockdown of the population, are recurring, and help us to see the current situation with some perspective. However, despite the similarities in the way illness has been metaphorized over the centuries, the divergences are particularly striking: while in ancient and medieval literary accounts illness is seen, in a metaphorical reading, as a moral, social and natural disorder as a whole, and the reaction of the majority of society is always a moral upheaval that leads to the loss of religious and ethical values, in current accounts, the media narrative emphasises shared feelings, popular gestures, and hopeful mimetism that have occurred all over the world. As a result, our civic values and religious belief systems, far from weakening, have been even strengthened. In order to clearly delineate an area for analysis, I will mainly focus on the social reactions to the pandemics described by Thucydides (5th century BC) and by Procopius of Caesarea (6th century AD) and contrast them with social reactions during the current pandemic, especially through media narratives such as news reports and political slogans. I will try to establish the devices in constructing of a story about the pandemic in each cultural context, and to illustrate how the ancient metaphors can be used to better understand the collective story of the current pandemic.

Handbook of Cliometrics, 2023

This article provides an overview of current knowledge about the economic consequences of major epidemics and pandemics in the long run of history, from the Justinianic Plague of the 540s to the Spanish Flu of 1918-19. For the preindustrial period, the analysis concentrates on plagues (and particularly on the Black Death pandemic of the fourteenth century and on the last great European plagues of the seventeenth), which stand out in the comparison with other epidemics both because of their outsized economic and demographic effects, and for having concentrated the attention of economic historians and other social scientists. For the industrial period, cholera is taken as the main pandemic threat of the nineteenth century. The article concludes analyzing the panish Flu, which made the world aware of the danger posed by the influenza viruses – and which is arguably the best term of comparison with the recent Covid-19 pandemic, due to some epidemiological similarities. The article illustrates the short, medium and long-run consequences of the various epidemics and pandemics discussed, and also highlights the importance of the historical context in mediating the impact of any epidemic, against tendencies to generalize from some well-known, but possibly exceptional, cases such as the Black Death. This and other findings teach us some useful lessons for understanding better recent pandemics, like Covid-19, and might help to build preparedness against future threats of a similar kind.

Over time outbreaks of infectious diseases have ravaged humanity and sometimes even changed the course of history. Pandemics are massive outbreaks of common or emergent contagious diseases, such as the Black Death, leprosy, the Spanish Flu, Ebola, HIV/AIDS, or the worldwide spread now Covid-19. The current pandemic situation has had a noticeable impact on daily life across the globe, and is expected to have variable consequences for future societies. In other words, as Snowden argues, infectious diseases "are as important to understanding societal development as economic crises, wars, revolutions, and demographic change" (Snowden 2019: 15). Epidemics and pandemics have helped us to shape our cultural values and our political practices. Their impact can be examined not only in terms of individual life, but also in terms of religion, the arts and modern medicine. Literature has represented communities suffering from contagion since ancient times. Beginning with Homer's Iliad, which starts with a reference to a plague striking the Greek army at Troy, there are numerous examples of contagion fables (plagues, epidemics, infectious diseases, etc.) in the European literary canon. Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, written in the late 1340s and early 1350s, Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), Jack London's The Scarlet Plague (1912) and Albert Camus' La Peste (1947) are among the most outstanding examples. Pandemics have been depicted in various literary genres such as poetry, prose, theatrical plays, biography, memoir, autobiography, letters, fable etc., and span a great range of non-literary texts as well. In this sense, each pandemic narration conveys knowledge and has its own set of figurations (Charon 2006: 9). This issue aims to contribute to the study of pandemic poetics in Western literary texts of the 20 th and 21 st centuries as well as enrich our critical discussion about contemporary pandemics. Pandemics are represented as life patterns, either as phenomena or metaphors of specific individuals or social situations. Contagion can be broadly characterised as any kind of influence that threatens the agentive control of our health, behaviour, emotions and

Rivista Trimestrale di Scienza dell'Amministrazione, 2020

This review offers an overview of several devastating historical epidemics and pandemics. The first pandemic ravaging the Middle East and Ancient Egypt was an unidentified “plague” in the late Bronze Age. The plague of Athens was apparently “only” a local epidemic but with fatal consequences for that ancient democracy. Great empires with well-developed trade routes seem to be very susceptible to rapid and devastating spreads as the Antonine Plague, the Plague of Cyprian and the Justinian Plague testify. The great Medieval plague wave in Europe was absolutely devastating, but for the first time it brought along with it substantial containment measures that are still being successfully used today (e.g. isolation, quarantine) as well as the seeds of the development of a new form of medical theory and practice. The blame game that can be observed in the current COVID-19 pandemic has also been seen in previous epidemics and pandemics. Particularly in the case of syphilis, its origin was often attributed to foreign countries. Finally, the paper comparatively stresses the historical importance of an early implementation of a lockdown-based approach as an effective form of controlling epidemic spreads.

Ceylon Daily News, 2020

The earliest records of plagues and pandemics are shrouded in mystery. Not surprisingly, accounts from those eras attribute them to divine retribution, if not to intrusions by foreign civilisations, prejudices that find their way even to modern scientific studies. This essay is an attempt at examining such accounts and understanding in what historical stages such epidemics occurred, from Ancient Rome to British India.

International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, 2021

Purpose This paper aims to explore right wing populist government responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a narrative overview of right-wing populist policies and strategies, which is loosely structured around fascistic themes set out in Albert Camus’ allegorical novel, The Plague. Findings Although individual responses to the coronavirus pandemic among right-wing populists differ, they appear to coalesce around four central themes: initial denial and then mismanagement of the pandemic; the disease being framed as primarily an economic rather than a public health crisis; a contempt for scientific and professional expertise; and the “othering” of marginal groups for political ends. Populist responses to the pandemic have given rise to increased levels of xenophobia, the violation of human rights and the denigration of scientific expertise. Research limitations/implications This is a narrative overview from a personal viewpoint. Originality/val...