New Pandemics, Old Politics
Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives
We know how a pandemic is supposed to end: we make sacrifices in our daily lives to support a ‘war’ on the pathogen, until medical science deploys a magic bullet to vanquish the invisible enemy. This is comforting, but it hasn’t happened yet.
New Pandemics, Old Politics:
Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives
ALEX DE WAAL
Publisher: Polity Press
ISBN: 9781509547791
At Wiley.com
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. The biggest pandemic of the century defied the script and was scrubbed from history. 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 thing: that we must ‘fight’ Covid-19. There’s a consensus that we must target individual pathogens and suppress them—and not 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.
Media
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
Normal accident theory, developed by the sociologist Charles Perrow in the 1980s, predicts that sooner or later there will be a devastating accident with a nuclear weapon. The list of near misses is terrifying.
December 2, 2021
THE ATLANTIC
We’re Already Barreling Toward the Next Pandemic
This one is far from over, but the window to prepare for future threats is closing fast.
September 29, 2021
THE TYEE
Alex de Waal’s myth-shattering new book deconstructs COVID-19 and two centuries of epidemics. Five deadly misconceptions.
JULY 9, 2021
FOREIGN POLICY
‘War on Disease’ Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The mindset that helped fight the current pandemic is what gets us into situations like this in the first place.
June 13, 2021
LSE Review of Books
Book Review: New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives by Alex de Waal, LSE Review of Books
This one is far from over, but the window to prepare for future threats is closing fast.
June 12, 2021
Video
The World According to Jessie
Author Alex De Waal talks about his latest book, “New pandemics, Old politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives.”
October 17, 2021
Book Talks
- The 2022 Liebert Lecture at Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida (February 18, 2022).
- Presentation to the World Bank, ‘Future of Government Disruptive Debate’ (November 17, 2021).
- Jesse Ventura, (October 28, 2021)
- Book talk at Fletcher Ginn Library (October 28, 2021).
- Keynote address at ‘Pandemics in Society and Education’, annual conference of International Research Association for History and Social Sciences (September 23, 2021).