Frank M. Snowden, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present
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BOOK REVIEW
Frank M. Snowden, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. 608 pp. $22.00. ISBN: 978-0300256390 Peter I. Rose 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in our history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” Those words of Albert Camus are uncannily timely. In the late winter of 2020, the people of United States and those of many other countries around the world came to understand the significance of Camus’ words as a rampaging respiratory virus brought everything to a standstill. Schools and universities closed, as did parks and services and most businesses. And, save for first responders, health professionals and those deemed essential workers – which included police, pharmacists, farm workers, grocers and garbage collectors, millions followed orders to shelter in place. Everywhere people began hunkering down, huddling around television sets, following round-the-clock cable newscasts and trying to come to grips with the daily reports of dramatic increases in the number of cases of those were ill and the numbers of those who had died. Within three months the death toll had surpassed all who had perished in the First World War and all those who died in wars in which Americans had fought since the end of World War II. The direct and collateral effect of a form of a coronavirus that became known as Covid-19, including a precipitous plunge of the economy to depths not seen since the 1930s, was also felt everywhere. What to do about all this was marked by a host of mixed signals from health authorities, economists, politicians and
* Peter I. Rose [email protected] 1
Sophia Smith Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology and Senior Fellow of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA
public officials, especially those in the highest reaches of governments. In this country, the president first denied that what had begun in China would reach our shores. Then, once he finally acknowledged that it did and was rapidly spreading, he set up a special task force to address it. But he constantly contradicted its recommendations about everything from social distancing, wearing masks, testing, and shutting down – and when and how to open up again. With rates of infection continuing to rise and an increasing shortage of personal protective equipment and such appliances as ventilators to handle the onslaught, the epidemic soon became a political matter as much as a medical one. While little consolation, in reports on cable news and in major newspapers, the public was repeatedly told that a pandemic such as this was not a new phenomenon. Commentators provided many examples; they often quoted Camus and cited the works of others. Confinement and concern about the cu
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