abstract:

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.

摘要：

在 COVID-19 大流行的第一年，医学、疾病和健康历史学家成为学术演讲甚至国家媒体的常客。这些历史学家的专业知识突然显得很重要，尤其是那些研究过前两次大流行的人，即 14 世纪的黑死病和 1918 年的流感大流行。本文研究了如何搜索历史以寻找有关当今大流行的可能见解和预测。然后，文章追溯了为什么基于过去的关于 COVID 会做什么的假设（例如导致不平等加剧的 COVID）是错误的：这些来自过去的假设教训将流行病扁平化为一刀切的方法，这些方法存在于既不是过去也不是现在。要了解流行病的可能性和局限性，我们必须将流行病的不同经历置于特定时间和地点的基础上。特别是，根据弹性来制定大流行应对措施有助于以市场和国家而非个人为中心。文章最后提出了如何在以人为本，而不是以国家或利润为中心的大流行期间做出改变的想法。