# Plagues and Their Aftermath  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Brian Michael Jenkins]] - Full Title:: Plagues and Their Aftermath - Category: #books ## Highlights #### AUTHOR’S NOTE > MY USUAL FIELD of analysis is political violence and irregular warfare. ([Location 37](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=37)) > Clearly, however, pandemics have profound effects on society, creating new political tensions which, in turn, may lead to violence. ([Location 43](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=43)) > I finished my chapter for the book, but I was increasingly fascinated with the subject of plagues in general—including the economic, societal, psychological, and political effects of major outbreaks of disease—and I kept going. ([Location 49](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=49)) > Today’s pandemic will eventually fade—we are not sure how or when that will take place—but the normality we knew before will not return. ([Location 52](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=52)) > miasmas—concentrations of poisonous vapors. ([Location 65](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=65)) > The focus in this study is not on the causes of epidemics but on their consequences. ([Location 68](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=68)) > The effects of epidemics are not measured only in mortality. ([Location 75](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=75)) > Secondary effects include the economic and social disruptions caused by the contagion and efforts to contain it, the effects of widespread fear and public hysteria, increased suspicion and scapegoating, the spread of rumors and conspiracy theories, and political disturbances and disorder that undermine government legitimacy. ([Location 79](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=79)) > As Jared Diamond noted in Guns, Germs, and Steel, “Because diseases have been the biggest killers of people, they have been decisive shapers of history.”[5] ([Location 89](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=89)) > Taking a thematic rather than a chronological or geographical approach, ([Location 105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=105)) > This is a preliminary work. As of April 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic is still not contained, making all conclusions tentative. ([Location 119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=119)) #### THE HUMAN TOLL > even rampant epidemics like the Black Death affected populations unevenly. ([Location 135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=135)) > High death tolls can reflect rapid depopulation caused by the disease, or an accumulation of deaths over a long period of time. ([Location 137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=137)) > 1347 and 1351, the first wave of the bubonic plague, or Black Death, killed between 25 and 50 million people in Europe—as much as half of the continent’s population. ([Location 138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=138)) > mid-seventeenth century, when the plague began to decline, ([Location 139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=139)) > 1918 flu pandemic killed 50 to 100 million people in 1918–1919 (including an estimated 675,000 in the United States). ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=140)) > million people so far, but fatalities from AIDS have been spread over a period of nearly forty years since the early 1980s ([Location 141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=141)) > Antonine Plague, ... occurred between 165 and 180 C.E. It was brought back from the Middle East by Roman soldiers and spread quickly throughout the Roman Empire, killing an estimated 5 million people. ([Location 147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=147)) > Justinian Plague, which occurred during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, began in 541–542, but persisted for two hundred years and is considered the third-worst epidemic in history, eventually killing an estimated 25 to 50 million people ([Location 149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=149)) > the 25 to 50 million deaths caused by the first wave of the Black Death would represent no more than 15 percent of the world’s population, but between a third and two-thirds of Europe’s population at the time, perhaps more.[2] ([Location 154](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=154)) > third major plague pandemic—which began in Yunnan Province in China in 1855, reaching Hong Kong in 1894 and from there spreading to India—killed an estimated 15 to 20 million people, less than 2 percent of the world’s population at the time. ([Location 158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=158)) > Thucydides, in his account of the Peloponnesian War ... detail the devastating effects of the plague that struck Athens.[4] ([Location 162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=162)) > Plague in Florence in the 1340s killed half of the city’s population.[5] ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=164)) > Only a quarter of Barcelona’s population reportedly survived the first year of the Black Death.[6] ([Location 165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=165)) > Many small European towns and villages disappeared altogether. ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=167)) > Other towns and villages sealed themselves from outsiders and survived. ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=167)) > The Justinian Plague began with an intense outbreak of bubonic plague that lasted from 541 to 549. This was only the first of fifteen or more waves that lasted until the year 750 before subsiding. ([Location 170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=170)) > Black Death, ... returned in at least seventeen more localized waves over the next three centuries. ([Location 175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=175)) > In 1665, a round of bubonic plague killed more than 100,000 inhabitants of London in eight months. ([Location 176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=176)) > Cholera washed across the world in seven successive waves during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=177)) > In contrast, the 1918 influenza pandemic infected about a third of the world’s population in just two years, but it then faded as people developed immunity. ([Location 178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=178)) > viral descendants combined with other flu strains to create the 1957 Asian flu, the 1968 Hong Kong flu, the 1977 Russian flu, and the 2009 swine flu.[7] ([Location 179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=179)) > 1917 and 1921, typhus, which historically is often associated with wars and troop concentrations, killed as many as 3 million people in Russia. ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=184)) > During the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), starvation, plague, and typhus killed an estimated 10 million people, while 350,000 were killed in combat. ([Location 188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=188)) > Containing new outbreaks may be possible, but a more likely scenario is cohabitation. ([Location 194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=194)) > Even without ascending to the death tolls of history’s earlier epidemics, cohabitation with or a conflagration of COVID-19 would have profound effects on the economy, society, and individual behavior. ([Location 200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=200)) - Note: C19 > Are today’s sensitivities causing people to exaggerate the pandemic? Some might say so, but the numbers suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to enter the ranks of the great calamities of the modern era. ([Location 207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=207)) > World War II (1939–1945) remains the deadliest modern event: six years of total war resulted in 60 to 85 million deaths.[12] ([Location 214](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=214)) > The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the greatest decline in annual life expectancy in the United States since World War II. ([Location 227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=227)) > The effects of COVID-19 on the life expectancy of different sections of American society are unequal. ([Location 233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=233)) > Hispanics declined by 1.8 years, ([Location 234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=234)) > African Americans declined by 2.7 years, ([Location 234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=234)) > decline of 0.8 years for white Americans.[19] ([Location 235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=235)) > ethnic disparities remained significant—Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and Alaska Natives were about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.[20] ([Location 241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=241)) > Celebrations may be inappropriate while a deadly pandemic continues to rage, but the number of lives saved as a result of modern medicine and the valiant work of health professionals is a remarkable achievement that should be kept in mind as one hears daily of science being dismissed, while public health officials, physicians, and health workers are disparaged and sometimes physically assaulted. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=255)) > Excess deaths can include deaths listed as caused only by the COVID-19 infection plus deaths resulting from respiratory, circulatory, or other prevalent conditions where COVID-19 is also listed as a cause. ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=265)) > The Lancet study estimated that excess deaths caused by the pandemic were eight times the recorded COVID deaths in India, twelve times in Egypt, twenty-three times in Pakistan, twenty-six times in Afghanistan, and thirty-three times in Yemen.[27] ([Location 282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=282)) > Previous epidemics often raised suspicions that deaths were being deliberately concealed in order to prevent public panic, to protect the economy, or for reasons of political expediency. ([Location 290](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=290)) > Control of the contagion meant control of the population. ([Location 298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=298)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Many in the lower economic ranks of society suspected that cholera was being deliberately spread as part of a diabolical scheme to cull the poor. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=299)) > Some accused the commercial interests of denying, concealing, or dismissing the outbreaks in order to protect commerce or avoid frightening investors—which was, in fact, sometimes the case. ([Location 300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=300)) > Hamburg delayed the announcement that cholera was present in the city.[31] ([Location 303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=303)) > Italian government officials also conspired to conceal the extent of the cholera outbreak in Naples in 1911.[32] ([Location 305](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=305)) > Early reports of the 1918 flu during the final years of World War I were kept secret by the belligerent powers, ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=307)) > Denials that AIDS was a contagious disease and not the result of poverty and poor nourishment were common. ([Location 311](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=311)) > China has been accused of concealing the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Wuhan, ([Location 312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=312)) > When cholera struck New York in 1832, state and local officials refused to take steps to limit the contagion. Instead, they argued that the disease was caused by the immoral lifestyle of the poor, immigrants, and drunks. ([Location 314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=314)) > Faced with an outbreak of plague in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1900, the governor of California, worried that it would be bad for business, issued a proclamation denying that there was any plague in “the great and healthful city of San Francisco.”[36] ([Location 318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=318)) > Some in the state legislature thought that the health official responsible for identifying the outbreak should be hanged. ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=324)) > Some have gone so far as to claim that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax conjured by government authorities to impose tyrannical controls over the population. This supposed nonexistence is an insidious feature of the current pandemic. ([Location 343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=343)) > Inflows of immigrants were considered essential to economic recovery, and in many cases immigrants were offered incentives to come. ([Location 348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=348)) > Although some nations will bounce back quickly, assuming the pandemic fades in 2022, it will likely take years for the world to fully recover. And some economic scarring will be deep and permanent. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=357)) #### DEEP ECONOMIC SCARS > the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy has been disastrous. ([Location 362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=362)) > pandemic has negatively affected global economic growth “beyond anything experienced in nearly a century.”[1] ([Location 363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=363)) > World Bank said it has produced the deepest global recession since World War II, more than twice as deep as the recession associated with the 2007–2008 financial crisis. ([Location 364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=364)) > In the United States, unemployment levels jumped significantly at the beginning of the pandemic, with the U.S. rate reaching 14.8 percent in April 2020.[7] But, despite the continuing pandemic, jobs returned and employment recovered with the unemployment rate dropping to 3.6 percent by March 2022, only slightly above where it was in December 2019, at the beginning of the pandemic. ([Location 377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=377)) > In contrast, people living paycheck-to-paycheck, with fewer skills and less education—and usually without retirement plans—were severely impacted. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=388)) > Women suffered more than men.[11] Women in the labor force depend heavily on child care or children being in schools. When schools and childcare facilities close down, women are more likely to be forced to give up their jobs or to be prevented from going back to work. ([Location 395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=395)) > since the pandemic is accelerating preexisting trends toward automation and digitalization, many of the jobs lost are never coming back. ([Location 401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=401)) > What economists call “emerging markets” and “low-income countries” have suffered significantly more than countries with advanced economies and their recovery will likely be slower.[13] ([Location 407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=407)) > Depopulation made labor scarce, enabling surviving workers to command higher wages. ([Location 411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=411)) > The more recent epidemics experienced by the world have not resulted in depopulation; they have disrupted economies and societies. ([Location 414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=414)) > Workers remain in ample supply, while jobs are lost. ([Location 415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=415)) > The COVID-19 pandemic will likely push hundreds of millions of people into absolute poverty.[16] ([Location 425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=425)) > For the past thirty years, economic progress has steadily reduced the number of people living in absolute poverty. ([Location 427](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=427)) ##### WILL COVID-19 PROMOTE DEGLOBALIZATION? > Prior to the pandemic, globalization and free trade were articles of faith for many economists. ([Location 485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=485)) > To reduce the costs of building huge factories and holding large inventories, companies adopted “just-in-time” manufacturing processes, where materials and parts would be timed to arrive precisely at the moment they were needed. ([Location 487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=487)) > A single iPhone contains components from suppliers in forty-three countries. ([Location 491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=491)) > The COVID-19 pandemic has upended supply chains. It may contribute to further deglobalization as countries and corporations seek to reduce their vulnerability to disruptions that come with dependence on complex global supply chains.[28] ([Location 492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=492)) > The theoretical model suggested that the time required to set up new assembly lines could mean that they would come into production just as the pandemic was subsiding. ([Location 513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=513)) > The practice of offshoring made products cheaper to buy but, at the same time, decimated American ([Location 529](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=529)) > manufacturing and made companies more vulnerable to disruptions. ([Location 530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=530)) > In March 2022, the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, which is low by historical standards. However, that low rate does not reveal the full picture. In some parts of the country, the unemployment rate remains nearly 7 percent. ([Location 546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=546)) ##### AMERICA’S “GREAT RESIGNATION” > The improved situation of the peasants following the Black Death ([Location 555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=555)) > The 1918 flu pandemic had a far lower mortality rate but was also accompanied and followed by a burst of labor militancy. ([Location 556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=556)) > The prospect of death also promotes reassessments of one’s own personal circumstances. A million reassessments can produce a mass movement. ([Location 566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=566)) > The United States saw a resurgence of labor activism and work stoppages during the pandemic, ([Location 569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=569)) > Labor activism was further fueled by the fact that American corporations in 2021 recorded their highest profit margins since 1950.[34] ([Location 576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=576)) > Under public pressure, politicians have passed relief packages to help companies and to protect jobs and mitigate lost incomes. ([Location 578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=578)) > In fact, individual Americans got about one-fifth of the $4 trillion in economic relief grants, loans, and tax breaks spent by the government to keep the American economy going during the pandemic, while $2.3 trillion went to businesses whether or not they were affected by the pandemic or kept workers on their payroll during shutdowns.[35] ([Location 582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=582)) > refused to return to on-site jobs, citing health concerns. By June 2021, the number of American workers voluntarily leaving their jobs rose by 164,000, to 942,000.[36] That number rose to 4.4 million in September 2021, ([Location 590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=590)) > The highest percentage of those leaving their jobs are those with high school diplomas or less, which usually means that they are leaving minimum-wage jobs and poorer working conditions.[39] ([Location 598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=598)) > Although the United States has the world’s largest economy, according to statistics compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States also has the highest percentage of low-wage earners of all the economically advanced countries.[40] ([Location 600](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=600)) > global economic experts believed that the global recovery will be volatile and uneven over the next three years (2022–2024). ([Location 613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=613)) > We do not know how this ends. The post-pandemic economic landscape is still unclear. ([Location 619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=619)) #### EFFECTS ON SOCIETY > IN HIS 1919 book The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga described European society after the fourteenth-century plague as highly strung, on edge, quick to violence.[1] ([Location 630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=630)) > Historians of past epidemics would not be surprised by the defiance of government-ordered measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. ([Location 640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=640)) > lazarettos—the term comes from the Italian word for beggar—part-hospital, part-prison, where diseased poor persons were held until they died or survived the illness. ([Location 652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=652)) > As Frank Snowden noted in Epidemics and Society, these efforts, while understandable from a public health perspective, marked “a significant extension of state power into spheres of human life that had never before been subject to political authority.”[4] ([Location 658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=658)) > cordons sanitaires—guarded lines preventing people and goods from an area known to be infected by a disease from entering areas where the disease had not been detected. ([Location 666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=666)) > cordons sanitaires as a public health measure declined during the twentieth century, and the term was increasingly used in the purely political sense to denote a barrier to the spread of dangerous ideologies, which came to be seen in the same terms as contagious diseases. ([Location 677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=677)) > The Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, which traces its origins back to 1798, is a uniformed service of commissioned officers commanded by the Surgeon General. One of its original missions was the enforcement of quarantines. From the beginning of the Republic into the twentieth century, quarantines were imposed to control smallpox, typhoid, cholera, plague, yellow fever, diphtheria, and other diseases.[7] ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=680)) > Suspicion of government is a recurring theme. There were suspicions that ulterior political motives drove assertions of authority based on health crises. ([Location 700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=700)) > As in past epidemics, suspicions that government has exploited COVID-19 to expand its authority have been widespread. One commentator warned that lockdowns, “under the guise of a real medical pandemic,” were turning the United States into “a totalitarian state.”[10] ([Location 705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=705)) > According to an August 17–18, 2021, poll, an overwhelming 72 percent versus 28 percent of Americans favored mask mandates as a “matter of health and safety,” ([Location 732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=732)) > The history of resistance to vaccination goes back at least 250 years, to the 1770s. The Chinese had reportedly developed a means of inoculating against smallpox as early as 200 B.C.E.—grinding the scabs from those infected into a powder and inhaling ([Location 735](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=735)) > Franklin noted, suspected that doctors magnified the number of people killed by smallpox while concealing the number who died as a result of inoculation.[17] ([Location 740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=740)) > The rapid creation of a vaccine to prevent infection or ameliorate the effects of COVID-19, along with government-led efforts to vaccinate the population, provoked similar resistance. ([Location 752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=752)) ##### INEQUALITY BARED > Those who could do so fled for their lives, abandoning more-vulnerable relatives. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=761)) > Hoarding led to artificial shortages and fights. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=761)) > According to the fourteenth century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, people in Florence behaved like animals during the plague. ([Location 762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=762)) - Note: Decameron > Today, the hoarding of oxygen tanks by wealthy families has hampered India’s ability to treat coronavirus patients. ([Location 767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=767)) > Epidemics affect economic classes unequally. When the Black Death struck Florence in the fourteenth century, wealthier citizens could flee to their country villas. ([Location 769](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=769)) - Note: Unless you’re the 10 dipshits in the Decameron > History’s epidemics do not create popular prejudices; they reinforce existing ones by creating opportunities for racist rabble-rousers and populist politicians. Nationalist and nativist tendencies intensify. ([Location 785](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=785)) > Athenians blamed the plague that devastated their city in the fifth century B.C.E. on their Spartan enemies, ([Location 789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=789)) > plague struck Sparta centuries later, its then-Christian ruler expelled the city’s entire Jewish population.) ([Location 790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=790)) > Romans faced with the Antonine Plague blamed Christians, ([Location 791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=791)) > Byzantium blamed the Justinian Plague on the licentious behavior of Empress Theodora, ([Location 792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=792)) > The Black Death of the fourteenth century is also believed to have originated in the steppes of Central Asia. ([Location 797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=797)) > When the plague struck Algeria in 1706, the ruler declared it to be the fault of the Jews and ordered the destruction of their synagogues and the confiscation of their property. ([Location 801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=801)) > Venetians in the fifteenth century blamed the plague on Slavs and Albanians. ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=807)) > Irish immigrants for the waves of cholera that struck U.S. cities, ([Location 817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=817)) > These measures did not slow the spread of cholera but they diverted the wrath of angry citizens, who took matters into their own hands, ([Location 830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=830)) > The names can reinforce existing prejudices and lead to medical conceits that contagions have racial preferences or that “superior” races have greater immunity. (A pathogen designed to kill certain “inferior” races or ethnic groups is a dream of white supremacists.) ([Location 836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=836)) > employment, education, and housing.[40] Mexicans were blamed for the 2009 swine flu epidemic, which some people called the “Mexican flu” or “fajita flu.” ([Location 854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=854)) ##### REINFORCING ANTI-CHINESE SENTIMENTS > Chinese entrepreneurs saved their money and opened small businesses—laundries and restaurants. This did not threaten the upper classes, but it enraged those lower down the economic ladder. ([Location 867](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=867)) > Opium-smoking was indeed a Chinese import, but by the late nineteenth century, alcoholism and drug addiction had reached epidemic levels among white Americans.[46] ([Location 876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=876)) > According to an 1871 report, the Chinese were responsible because they were “inferior in organic structure, in vital force, and in the constitutional conditions of full development.”[50] ([Location 888](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=888)) > European populations asserted that it was the “white man’s burden” to civilize indigenous peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. ([Location 894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=894)) > This reinforced long-standing animosity toward all Asian immigrants and their descendants, but especially the Chinese.) ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=905)) ##### NATIVISTS VERSUS NEWCOMERS > However, the 1918 flu pandemic coincided with widespread mob attacks by whites on Black Americans during what came to be called the “Red Summer” of 1919. Race riots and lynchings spread across the country. ([Location 932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=932)) > And recently arrived Blacks were also blamed for spreading the dreaded flu, which was a contributing factor in the violence.[62] ([Location 934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=934)) > The 1918 flu also contributed to nativist sentiments that manifested themselves in the dramatic growth of the Ku Klux Klan following World War I. ... Klan during Reconstruction, expanded its targets to include not only African Americans but also immigrants, Jews, and Catholics as well as communists, socialists, liberals, and progressives. ([Location 936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=936)) > It was no longer a strictly Southern organization. States with the largest membership were Indiana, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oklahoma, New York, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, and Florida. Nearly half of the members were businessmen, salesmen, clerks, lawyers, and doctors.[63] ([Location 941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=941)) #### AN EXCUSE FOR ANTI-SEMITISM > While the tropes remained much the same as those that circulated centuries before—Jews had caused the epidemic; Jews were profiting from its consequences; Jews celebrated the deaths of non-Jews—the recent dissemination of such allegations appears qualitatively different. ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=952)) > During the epidemics of the Middle Ages, anti-Semitism was so deeply embedded in the Christian culture of the time that inciting action against the Jews would hardly have been necessary. ([Location 955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=955)) ##### EPIDEMICS AND RELIGIOUS FAITH > Haredim ... As a result, the Haredi community suffered far more COVID-19 deaths, proportionately, than the rest of the population. The community comprises 12.5 percent of Israel’s population but by early 2021 accounted for 28 percent of the COVID-19 cases.[68] ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=984)) > Many Israelis hoped that the behavior of the Haredim during the pandemic would finally weaken their influence in national politics, just as the Black Death weakened the Catholic Church in the fourteenth century.[69] ([Location 988](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=988)) > It is one of the world’s largest gatherings (2.5 million people made the hajj in 2019), making it a colossal super-spreader event. ([Location 992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=992)) ##### EFFECTS ON RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS > The plague undermined Church authority in a number of ways. Faith did not appear to protect the devout against the disease. The clergy were decimated, and standards for recruiting and training had to be lowered to obtain sufficient replacements, some of whose poor behavior further undermined Church authority. ([Location 1003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1003)) > In fact, the Catholic Church and many others support vaccination for moral reasons, and no major denomination—including the Christian Science church, whose members rely largely on prayer—officially opposes vaccination.[75] ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1033)) > One possible effect of the COVID-19 pandemic could be the further atomization of faith into a purely individual and entirely idiosyncratic selection of beliefs, capable of remote practice without intermediation by an institutionalized religious authority. ([Location 1043](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1043)) - Note: The enlightenment is a driver in the atomization of all things. Rhk ##### CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND MASS DELUSIONS > Conspiracy theories flourish during epidemics. ([Location 1056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1056)) > COVID-19 conspiracies are variations on, or combinations of, several basic themes. ([Location 1067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1067)) > One is that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax, fabricated (or at least greatly exaggerated) by the government to exert greater control over its citizens. ([Location 1068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1068)) > A second theme accepts the virus as real but attributes its origins to various dark forces. ([Location 1069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1069)) > A third theme focuses on nefarious motives behind the promotion of vaccination. ([Location 1069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1069)) > 5G wireless signals trigger it. ([Location 1071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1071)) > pandemic is a hoax invented to coerce the population to accept vaccines containing microchips that will create a global identification system—which, ([Location 1072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1072)) > public. These deaths are not random but are the result of deliberately toxic vaccine batches being sent to Republican-dominated areas in the United States in order to cripple or kill off the conservative population.[84] ([Location 1078](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1078)) - Note: If only… ##### APOCALYPTIC THINKING > The end of the world is nigh. ([Location 1088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1088)) > Another dimension of end-times thinking can be found among the survivalists and preppers, who retreat to remote redoubts where they stockpile food and weapons for self-defense during the anticipated collapse of society. COVID-19 has increased their numbers. ([Location 1099](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1099)) > Epidemics encourage hoarding. ([Location 1101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1101)) > The feeling was that adopting a simpler lifestyle and being prepared for future disasters would not be a bad thing. ([Location 1103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1103)) > Those who could do so also escaped to safer, remote locations. This was hardly a new phenomenon: kings and nobles did the same during previous plagues. ([Location 1104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1104)) > Survivalism reflects Americans’ sense of rugged individualism and their unique affinity for firearms. It requires self-reliance—an American virtue—rather than dependence on government or community. ([Location 1110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1110)) #### FRAYING SOCIAL COHESION > Cholera epidemics in nineteenth-century Europe stretched social cohesion and surfaced latent social antagonisms. ([Location 1116](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1116)) > The 1918 flu pandemic suggests that this might not always be the case. ... state of Kentucky reported people “starving to death not from lack of food, but because the well were panic stricken and would not go near the sick.”[89] Unlike ([Location 1118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1118)) > A combination of the flu, public health measures, and continuous advisories to avoid interpersonal contacts contributed to “a profound climate of suspicion and mistrust.”[90] ([Location 1123](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1123)) > 1918 flu significantly eroded people’s trust, and—the most fascinating finding—this lack of trust was inherited by descendants. ([Location 1130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1130)) > Epidemics also contribute to a coarsening of society. ([Location 1146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1146)) > Civility has been declining for decades for a variety of reasons, and the pandemic has added new layers of edginess, including confrontations over mask-wearing, which political leaders have fomented.[93] ([Location 1148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1148)) > There is not just a loss of comity but an increase in aggression. ([Location 1150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1150)) > antisocial behavior during the pandemic—actions that violate the rights of others or are disruptive to society—on prolonged isolation, which heightens anxiety, increases irritability, promotes aggression, and diminishes impulse control. ([Location 1151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1151)) > Epidemics cause stress, which in turn limits a person’s ability to restrain impulses. ([Location 1156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1156)) > Chronic stress provokes “displaced aggression”—anger released on someone who has nothing to do with the original source of the provocation.[95] ([Location 1159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1159)) > As Thucydides noted in his horrific account of the 430–429 B.C.E. epidemic that killed up to a third of Athens’s population, and its immediate aftermath, the sudden wave of deaths left disorder in its wake: ([Location 1162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1162)) > Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness. Seeing how quick and abrupt were the changes of fortune which came to the rich who suddenly died and to those who had previously been penniless but now inherited their wealth, people now began openly to venture on acts of self-indulgence…As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately. As for offenses against human law, no one expected to live long enough to be brought to trial and punished.[96] ([Location 1164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1164)) #### VIOLENT CRIME > Reports early in the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2020) indicated a decline in ordinary street crime but “dramatic increases in domestic violence and abuse.”[101] ([Location 1190](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1190)) > Later reports showed that domestic violence climbed by 60 percent in Europe, and in the United States homicides increased by more than 29 percent, to more than twenty thousand, for the first time since 1995. ([Location 1191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1191)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Americans bought 23 million guns in 2020,[104] an increase of 65 percent over the number bought in 2019. ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1196)) > Mass shootings (i.e., shootings in which four or more persons are shot) increased in the United States by 46 percent in 2020.[105] Figures for 2021 show 818 mass shootings resulting in 920 deaths versus 696 mass shootings with 661 killed in 2020. ([Location 1198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1198)) > Some of these involve stabbings or slashing attacks. ([Location 1206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1206)) > Incidents involving unruly passengers on commercial airliners—often disorderly drunks but sometimes violent assaults on crew or passengers—have ([Location 1207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1207)) > Students returning to in-person classes saw a significant increase in fights, riots, and attacks on teachers and staff. In August and September 2021, a total of fifty-six instances of gunfire on school grounds were recorded.[108] ([Location 1213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1213)) > Assaults at hospitals also increased by more than 23 percent in 2020. (Figures are not yet available for 2021.) These were “non-aggravated” assaults—that is, assaults with no or only minor injuries. At the same time, there was a 24 percent increase in disorderly conduct.[109] While ([Location 1217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1217)) > However, an increase in brutish behavior may be a lasting legacy of the pandemic. ([Location 1222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1222)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Few of the deaths are known to have been caused by the protesters themselves.[111] ([Location 1230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1230)) > increase domestic violence. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1234)) > out of work had more time on their hands. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1234)) > Hospitals already crowded with patients may have been unable to treat the sick or people ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1234)) #### ORGANIZED CRIME > International criminal rings have siphoned billions of dollars from pandemic relief funds.[113] ([Location 1248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1248)) > With increased border controls and restrictions on immigration that are likely to persist after the pandemic subsides, migrant smuggling is likely to become a bigger business. ([Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1256)) > Criminal enterprises routinely resort to violent coercion but they also rely on complicity and collaboration and they compete with government for popular support. ([Location 1264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1264)) > In some countries, competing criminal organizations have negotiated truces with each other, and even with government, to concentrate on the health crisis. In several countries, criminal organizations are enforcing quarantines and other public health measures in areas they control. In a number of cases, cartels and mafias are directly providing humanitarian aid—food packages and other necessities—sometimes delivered in branded boxes carrying the provider’s name and logo. ([Location 1269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1269)) > criminals perceived as Robin Hoods—should not be overstated.[117] ([Location 1274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1274)) > Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an individual diagnosis, but societies can collectively display symptoms of anxiety, hypervigilance, suspicion, belligerence, aggressive behavior. ([Location 1281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1281)) #### TURNING THE PAGE > History merely provides clues; it does not mark a path. ([Location 1293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1293)) #### POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS > FROM THE BLACK Death to the COVID-19 pandemic, epidemics have been accompanied and followed by civil disobedience, social unrest, violent protests, increases in communal violence, armed uprisings, rebellions, and war. ([Location 1296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1296)) > Epidemics have not only killed people, they have brought down governments and ended dynasties. ([Location 1298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1298)) > The ruler kept the Mandate of Heaven to rule “only so long as he retained the support of the people, for it was through the ‘heart’ of the people that Heaven made its will known.” ([Location 1300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1300)) - Note: Confucian scholars in ancient China Mandate of Heaven > Francis Fukuyama, observed that a “lingering epidemic combined with deep job losses, a prolonged depression, and an unprecedented debt burden will inevitably create tensions that turn into political backlash—but against whom is as yet unclear.”[2] ([Location 1304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1304)) > The pandemic proved tenacious. By the spring of 2022, the fifth wave, ([Location 1308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1308)) #### POLITICAL CASUALTIES > Fate, not fraud, destroyed President Trump’s re-election bid. ([Location 1315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1315)) > President Biden ... and—in a moment of political hubris—rashly promised, “I will end this.” It was foolhardy. ([Location 1321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1321)) > The president of Peru ([Location 1325](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1325)) > United Kingdom’s ([Location 1326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1326)) > India ([Location 1329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1329)) > Russia, ([Location 1331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1331)) > Colombian ([Location 1333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1333)) > The Confucian concept of the Mandate of Heaven, even when less poetically described, has broader application. In Western history, rulers might have claimed to rule by divine right, but widespread misfortune—famine, war, pestilence—eroded faith in leadership. ([Location 1342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1342)) > Unlucky rulers were vulnerable. ([Location 1344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1344)) > The Black Death decimated European officialdom, crippling the bureaucracies that collected taxes, administered the law, and ran the everyday machinery of government. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1345)) > The deliberate delay in announcing that cholera was present in Hamburg’s water supply, and further delays in voting funds to combat the spread of the disease, resulted in the “moral discrediting” of the Hamburg government in 1892.[7] ([Location 1352](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1352)) > The cholera outbreak in Naples in 1884, and especially the outbreak in 1911, posed a major political challenge to the government of Italy. ([Location 1354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1354)) > The government’s initial response to the epidemic was a denial of the outbreak, publication of fake statistics, and the use of “repressive means to impose a veil of silence.”[8] As Frank Snowden noted in his masterful history Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884–1911, “The process of moral erosion, once established, proved irreversible. ([Location 1357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1357)) - Note: Recall The Plague, Camus > As Richard Evans observes in his monumental study of the 1892 cholera epidemic in Hamburg, “The structures of social inequality, the operations of political power, the attitudes and habits of mind of different classes and groups in the population, come to light with a clarity of profile unimaginable in more normal times.”[11] ([Location 1371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1371)) > COVID-19 pandemic has flayed the body politic, laying bare its acute social tensions, economic divides, racial prejudices, political disfunction, and inherent frailties. ([Location 1375](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1375)) #### DEMOCRACY OR POPULISM > according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index—many governments exploited the health emergency to erode democratic gains. ([Location 1382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1382)) > Populist leaders have tended to downplay the pandemic, dramatize their own responses, and assert their own views and solutions, ([Location 1399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1399)) > It is classic populist behavior that sharpens political differences and polarizes populations. ([Location 1402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1402)) #### FAULT LINES > Microbes have no politics. ([Location 1404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1404)) > There are numerous examples of political authorities combining forces with commercial interests during the later pandemics and cholera outbreaks of the nineteenth century—in German, British, Italian, and American cities—to protect commerce against controls favored by health officials. ([Location 1407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1407)) > Epidemics divide communities along racial, ethnic, class, and political lines. They provide fertile ground for demagogues and rabble-rousers, racists and nativists, political and religious fanatics. ([Location 1409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1409)) > Every aspect of an epidemic becomes a battleground: ([Location 1411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1411)) > The disputes overlap, creating a mosaic of alliances and adversaries. ([Location 1414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1414)) > The governor also ordered that state health authorities be present at all autopsies conducted by federal officials to make their own determination as to whether plague was the cause of death. Needless to say, these clashes hindered collaborative efforts to eradicate or mitigate the outbreak.[14] ([Location 1421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1421)) > fundamentally different political philosophies. We will avoid malleable terms like liberal, conservative, or progressive—their meaning shifts with time and place. ([Location 1429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1429)) > The basic question is: Which takes priority— the well-being of the state or the protection of its citizens? ([Location 1430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1430)) > In epidemics, the state’s well-being is generally defined in terms of economic health, which means opposition to anything that restricts commerce, impedes trade, or gets in the way of the availability of labor. ([Location 1444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1444)) > Others would define the good of the country in terms of the survival and welfare of its population. ([Location 1447](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1447)) > Is it the patriotic duty of the elderly to accept greater risk in order to protect the able-bodied young and future generations? ([Location 1458](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1458)) > To remain profitable, hospitals have to be lean and efficient, a sort of just-in-time approach to public health. ([Location 1466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1466)) > Shutdowns to slow the spread of the virus have been considered necessary to prevent treatment capacity from being overwhelmed. ([Location 1468](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1468)) #### PUBLIC DISORDERS > Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe. Strikes and urban uprisings “against city oligarchies and mayors, changes in monetary policy, rises in house rents, the privileges and impositions of the crown, and above all against the imposition of new taxes” ([Location 1473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1473)) > Italy saw clashes that pitted those without citizenship or political status, commoners, wool workers, weavers, merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans against landed and mercantile aristocracies in continuing class warfare that sometimes led to the overthrow of local regimes. ([Location 1477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1477)) > Subsequent waves in 1361, 1369, and 1375 further reduced the population to 2.5 million, 45 percent of what it had been when the plague first struck. ([Location 1489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1489)) - Note: England > Agricultural production was hindered by climate change and extreme weather events in the form of exceptional cold spells and heavy rains that led to harvest failures. ([Location 1493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1493)) > Contagious diseases also caused huge die-offs of cattle and sheep.[21] ([Location 1494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1494)) > The second takeaway is the recognition that the Black Death was not the sole cause of political turmoil in England. ([Location 1512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1512)) > extreme weather events, ([Location 1513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1513)) > crop failures, ([Location 1513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1513)) > outbreaks of disease affecting domesticated animals, ([Location 1514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1514)) > heavy financial burden ([Location 1514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1514)) > consequences of continuing war, ([Location 1514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1514)) #### EUROPE’S CHOLERA RIOTS > Political concerns and commercial interests in nineteenth-century Europe generally sought to deny, conceal, or diminish the existence of cholera, a behavior we have seen today. ([Location 1521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1521)) > common conspiracy theories motivated anger across the European continent.[26] ([Location 1527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1527)) > deliberate plot by the elites to cull the poor and that government officials, ([Location 1531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1531)) > killing off individuals to ensure a supply of cadavers for dissection.[27] ([Location 1533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1533)) > “resurrectionists,” ([Location 1535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1535)) > In some cases, the body snatchers did not wait for a corpse but “burked” victims (suffocated them to leave little trace of violence) for their bodies. ([Location 1536](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1536)) > There was a concurrent, albeit contradictory, rumor that cholera was a fiction designed to suppress the rights of the poor. ([Location 1543](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1543)) > As the power of the state to enforce control measures increased, people increasingly blamed the state itself, especially its administrative and medical bureaucracy.[31] ([Location 1551](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1551)) > These motives dictated targets that differed from those of the angry crowds in earlier pandemics. The rioters attacked medical personnel and hospitals, especially the facilities where cholera victims were segregated ([Location 1554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1554)) > The cholera riots intensified class hatreds. ([Location 1566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1566)) > Government is held accountable for failing to halt the spread of the disease, yet measures to control the contagion—and even administer a vaccine—are portrayed by some as tyranny. ([Location 1574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1574)) > Political leaders and health authorities are the targets of popular wrath, with some receiving death threats and requiring personal security for themselves as well as their families. ([Location 1576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1576)) > It was not until the latter part of the century that cholera was recognized as a waterborne bacterium—prevention required water treatment and sewage treatment systems. By the end of the century, a preventive vaccine for cholera had been developed—it was the first widely used vaccine made in a laboratory. ([Location 1580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1580)) #### DEGENERATION > Social thinkers were increasingly obsessed with “degeneration,” a fear that society was declining as a result of biological changes determined by habitat and heredity. ([Location 1584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1584)) > Some in society, however, perceived a growing threat of “moral diseases.”[36] ([Location 1589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1589)) > Degeneration theorists defined disease broadly to encompass medical and social pathologies. Maladies included not just physical ailments but mental deficiencies, immorality, and ideological disorders. ([Location 1590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1590)) > Crowded living conditions, lack of sanitation, excessive consumption of alcohol, use of tobacco, lax morals, prostitution, sexual perversion, syphilis, physical weakness, laziness, insanity, feeble-mindedness, a propensity for crime, and susceptibility to contagious diseases—even to subversive ideologies like anarchism and communism—were all symptoms of a single pathology. ([Location 1592](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1592)) > Degeneration theory lent itself to racial theories of medicine. ([Location 1596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1596)) > Other races had degenerated from the ideal physique and moral superiority of the white race. ([Location 1596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1596)) > deemed to be lower on a presumed human scale—they were degenerates, culpable for their own dismal condition. Society was better off without them. ([Location 1599](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1599)) > racist theories that later characterized Nazi Germany, though they were expanded to other groups deemed “degenerate.” ([Location 1601](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1601)) > killed by the Nazis as they were unworthy of life and a threat to “race health.” ([Location 1605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1605)) > This provoked growing intolerance and anger toward the unvaccinated, whose plight is seen as a consequence of their own behavior but also as a burden on all and a source of continuing danger to the rest of society. ([Location 1619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1619)) #### THE 1918 PANDEMIC AND SOCIAL DISORDER > Anger over the high number of deaths and inadequacy of medical response contributed to protests and uprisings across the world, from Western Africa to New Zealand. ([Location 1630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1630)) > According to the Global Protest Tracker maintained by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, anti-government protests increased worldwide in 2020 and 2021. ([Location 1638](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1638)) > Most of the grievances in the early protests concerned racism, corruption, political oppression, or claims of fraudulent elections. ([Location 1639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1639)) #### PANDEMIC COMMUNICATIONS > The changing messages at the onset of the contagion reflected uncertainty at the time about the nature of the virus and precisely how it was spread—whether ([Location 1649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1649)) > Knowing nothing else, washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, social distancing, avoiding crowds, and wearing masks to reduce the spread of the virus through the air all made sense in dealing with any contagious disease. ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1650)) > medical professionals learned more, the recommended control measures were adjusted—usually ([Location 1653](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1653)) > the major concern shifted to slowing the spread of the disease enough to prevent hospitals and health workers from being overwhelmed by the surge. ([Location 1655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1655)) > It is essential during any crisis for those in charge to speak with a single voice, ([Location 1659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1659)) > Discord began at the top. President Trump gave marathon press conferences, often making incorrect or misleading assertions. ([Location 1663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1663)) > COVID-19 spread during a contentious election year, guaranteeing that views of the virus would quickly be politicized, further adding to the divisions. ([Location 1666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1666)) > government—a plural entity—never spoke with a single voice, ([Location 1668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1668)) > Fauci saw COVID-19 as a potential mass killer, and his paramount concern was saving lives. ([Location 1672](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1672)) > Fauci was a man of science at a time when a growing number of Americans rejected science. ([Location 1684](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1684)) > In the closed communities of those who rejected medicine—on religious grounds, or in line with political loyalties, or as members of in-groups like anti-vaxxers, those who simply hated all authority, or subscribers to conspiracy theories—medical experts like Fauci represented the enemy. ([Location 1685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1685)) > The dismissal of science, the replacement of truth with assertions based on “alternative facts,” the rejection of expert knowledge, and the impossibility of dismissing wacky conspiracy theories describes not just public affairs during the pandemic but Plato’s “ship of fools.”[41] ([Location 1729](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1729)) > The ship of fools is an allegory for an anarchic and violent democracy where every individual is convinced that they possess knowledge and skills equal to all others, and therefore they need not listen to any authority or heed any advice to inform their decisions. It is a republic that denigrates wisdom. Instead, we are warned by the ancient philosopher, “the loudest voices will dominate, irrational, ill-motivated decisions will be made and the complex arena of politics…will turn into a crazy circus.”[42] And it will end in tyranny. ([Location 1733](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1733)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### EPIDEMICS AND ARMED CONFLICT > But do epidemics cause wars? ([Location 1746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1746)) > Throughout history, epidemics and wars have circled each other like binary stars. ([Location 1747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1747)) > The first plague pandemic began with the Plague of Justinian in 541–549 but also included successive epidemics of the bubonic plague that continued in the Middle East and Europe until 750. ([Location 1748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1748)) > Bubonic plague became endemic ... outbreaks occurring somewhere in Europe almost every year between 1347 and 1671. ... with major outbreaks in 1710, 1738, 1743, 1770, 1772, 1812, and 1813. England in the fifteenth century had no less than twenty plague epidemics. ([Location 1756](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1756)) > Plague of Athens was probably typhus. ([Location 1761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1761)) > Europeans brought it and other contagious diseases to the Americas, where in a hundred years the new microbes wiped out as much as 90 to 95 percent of the indigenous people, who had no immunity to them.[2] ([Location 1762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1762)) > War, famine, and pestilence ride side by side. ([Location 1771](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1771)) > But caution is in order before we argue that the epidemics produced the turmoil. Correlation is not causality. ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1773)) > The consequences of the Black Death were not the same everywhere. But overall, the depopulation caused by the plague undermined the feudal system, clearing the way for the remarkable flowering of science and culture that came to be known as the Renaissance. ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1784)) ##### WHY PEOPLE TAKE UP ARMS > Revolution is likely when a sharp downturn occurs after a long period of rising expectations satisfied by material progress. ([Location 1792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1792)) > Expectations continue to rise but they are no longer being fulfilled, creating a widening gap between elements of society that ultimately leads to anger and rebellion.[4] ([Location 1793](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1793)) > What pushes a society toward collective violence, according to Gurr’s hypothesis, is the discrepancy between what people are getting and what they think they deserve.[5] ([Location 1798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1798)) > Deprivation implies more than mere inequality. It suggests that an unequal and unfair system is depriving one portion of the population of what they need and deserve. ([Location 1800](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1800)) ##### RECENT EPIDEMICS AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE > The proliferation of infectious disease may thereby compromise state capacity, and may destabilize the institutional architecture of the state.”[13] ([Location 1852](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1852)) > Stewart Patrick has done—that it is the prevalence of armed conflict that prevents public health systems from reducing disease. Patrick notes that “rampant disease is believed to further weaken already fragile states, depleting human capital, intensifying poverty, and in some cases exacerbating insecurity.”[16] ([Location 1867](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1867)) > In a recent study, Katariina Mustasilta warns that the COVID-19 pandemic will make bad situations worse in countries like Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Sudan, and Colombia. ([Location 1878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1878)) > At the height of the outbreak, the Athenian leader, Pericles, sent a large military force to attack the enemies of Athens. This lifted the morale of the Athenians and mobilized Athenian military forces out of the plague-stricken city. ([Location 1893](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1893)) > The Antonine Plague thinned the ranks of the legions protecting the Roman Empire’s frontiers, inviting incursions by the Parthians in the east and Germanic tribes in the north. ([Location 1900](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1900)) > A number of historians date the end of classical antiquity to the Islamic invasions of the seventh century, which are seen as a direct consequence of the Justinian Plague.[23] ([Location 1911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1911)) > There are reports that the British army in the eighteenth century sent smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians around their forts. ([Location 1917](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1917)) > Some Western analysts attribute Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine at least partially to the two years he spent in extreme isolation as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. ([Location 1942](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1942)) > People living in cities under siege, without access to adequate food, drinking water, or sanitation facilities, are vulnerable to dysentery and other waterborne diseases like typhoid fever and cholera.[32] Ukraine’s death toll from COVID-19, which already surpassed 100,000, may arc upward as access to medical care declines, oxygen supplies dwindle, and hospitals are overwhelmed by the wounded or destroyed by Russian attacks. ([Location 1974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1974)) > It will be hard to disaggregate the long-term effects of the virus from the lasting aftereffects of the war, especially on the world’s economy. ([Location 1984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1984)) #### POST-PANDEMIC TERRORISM > The deadliest terrorist attacks in the 1970s had resulted in tens of fatalities. ... The totals escalated to hundreds of fatalities in the worst attacks of the 1980s. ... In 2001, the death toll climbed to the thousands. ... The only way death tolls of this scale could be achieved outside of conventional warfare would require the use of nuclear or biological weapons. ([Location 1996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1996)) ##### WHAT HISTORY SUGGESTS > conflict. It may be even more difficult to anticipate direct cause-and-effect links between the pandemic and terrorism. ([Location 2011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2011)) > 1817 and 1899. Authorities saw both anarchism and “Asiatic cholera,” as it was called then, as menaces coming from the poorer working classes. ([Location 2021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2021)) > poor. A number of the noted revolutionary anarchists had firsthand experience. ([Location 2033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2033)) > As successive cholera epidemics continued during the nineteenth century, the spontaneous anger that erupted in cholera riots and political activism on behalf of an oppressed underclass perpetually beset by poverty, hunger, and disease coalesced into doctrines of revolutionary violence. ([Location 2044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2044)) > Again, cholera epidemics did not cause terrorism; they contributed to the radicalization that created terrorists. ([Location 2050](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2050)) ##### TERRORIST VIOLENCE WILL CONTINUE > The differences in attitudes did not soften as the pandemic surged but instead strengthened over time and were codified in state and local executive orders and legislation. ([Location 2065](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2065)) > The general narrative was that political and class elites were promoting fear and advancing schemes to make society more submissive. ([Location 2093](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2093)) > In August 2021, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned that COVID-19 restrictions and vaccination were being used as a rationale to support calls for violence.[20] ([Location 2102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2102)) > but the virulence of COVID-19 denial and resistance to masks and vaccination has run far beyond what could have been predicted. ([Location 2106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2106)) > While Americans expect government to protect them against new dangers, they are easily enraged by personal inconveniences. ([Location 2108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2108)) > All readily agree that terrorists and their bombs must be kept off of commercial airliners, but security procedures that require passengers to put their hand luggage on conveyor belts to be x-rayed, ([Location 2110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2110)) > Vaccination itself is viewed as evil—the mark of the beast that would prevent salvation.[21] ([Location 2120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2120)) > Admitting the illness would be tantamount to their abandoning God—or being abandoned by God. ([Location 2122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2122)) ##### THE FUTURE TRAJECTORY OF TERRORIST VIOLENCE ##### COVID-19 IN THE CURRENT THREAT MATRIX > Islamic State (IS) propagandists have told their followers that the pandemic is their ally—”one of Allah’s soldiers” sent to punish the infidels. ([Location 2154](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2154)) > Much of the continuing terrorist violence in Africa and Asia falls in the category of being a component of local insurgencies. ([Location 2165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2165)) - Note: Al Quadra > Leon Trotsky reportedly once observed, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”[27] ([Location 2173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2173)) > Fearing infiltration by government agents, right-wing extremists in the United States have generally followed a strategy of “leaderless resistance,” a notion popularized in 1983 by Louis Beam, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.[28] ([Location 2192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2192)) > Anarchism is an ideological movement rather than an organization. Anarchists tend to be organizationally chaotic, almost by definition, with both peaceful and violent factions and frequent ideological disputes. ([Location 2205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2205)) > Seething resentments caused by personal losses or the unequal effects of the pandemic on racial minorities and the poor may not always find space in the existing assemblages of the far left or far right. ([Location 2217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2217)) > Fifty-three percent of the respondents believed that pandemic-related socio-economic and political impacts of the pandemic will increase the threat of violent extremism in the future, ([Location 2221](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2221)) > and 72 percent thought that countering violent extremism had become more challenging as a result of the pandemic.[30] ([Location 2222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2222)) > The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an increase in attacks on Asians, especially in America. ([Location 2229](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2229)) > pandemic and continuing conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America will drive people attempting to escape absolute poverty and wars to migrate at a time when the tolerance for more foreigners is low. ([Location 2230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2230)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In many ways, the pandemic has increased the potential population of lone extremists. ([Location 2233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2233)) > It has created a psychologically unsettling environment that promotes anxiety and apocalyptic thinking and persuades some people to believe in crazy things, ([Location 2234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2234)) > Deprived of daily routines and personal relationships, many people are disoriented, disillusioned, and isolated—creating a receptive audience for fringe ideas and extremist ideologies. ([Location 2235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2235)) > Isolation also weakens the normal checks on individuals’ radicalization. ([Location 2239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2239)) > Relatives and close friends, not authorities, are the first to notice unhealthy changes in attitudes or behavior and the first to intercede to keep those exhibiting them from spiraling toward extremism. ([Location 2239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2239)) > Isolation reduces that vital human contact and removes the human control rods. ([Location 2241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2241)) > Many of today’s terrorists are self-selecting and organizationally untethered. ([Location 2243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2243)) > It is often difficult to distinguish politically motivated acts of terrorism from crimes motivated by hate or other acts of violence reflecting bizarre beliefs or mental instability. ([Location 2254](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2254)) > At times, there have appeared to be two pandemics: the coronavirus, which immunization can ameliorate, and collective madness, for which there is no vaccine. ([Location 2255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2255)) #### THE PANDEMIC AND BIOTERRORISM > “The Stolen Bacillus,” H. G. Wells describes a plot in which anarchists plan to poison London’s water supply with cholera bacilli.[4] ([Location 2285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2285)) > The theme of chosen survivors who rebuild humanity in a post-apocalyptic world figures in a number of terrorist plots involving weapons of mass destruction. ([Location 2315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2315)) > Robert Jay Lifton noted, “The quest for symbolic immortality is an aspect of being human.”[8] These terrorist fantasies offer survival for the chosen and symbolic immortality for the superior race. ([Location 2317](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2317)) > Al-Qaeda, which dedicates itself to mass murder, also attempted to weaponize biological agents, including anthrax, botulinum toxin, and ricin, and there are reports that it sought or acquired Yersinia pestis (plague) bacteria, the Ebola virus, and Salmonella bacteria.[9] These efforts failed. ([Location 2319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2319)) > All of the bioterrorist plots materialized in the closed universes of cults and mental disorder. ([Location 2330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2330)) > And, apart from the 2001 anthrax letters, most of the plots failed because of the difficulty of weaponizing biological agents and the technical limitations of the perpetrators. ([Location 2334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2334)) > Another factor that may dissuade terrorists from using biological agents is the reality that contagious diseases spread quickly and are indiscriminate in whom they kill. ([Location 2342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2342)) > A poster circulated on the Internet advised followers, “What to Do if You Get Corona 19: Visit your local mosque, visit your local synagogue, spend the day on public transport, spend time in your local diverse neighborhood.” This was more an expression of attitude than a terrorist plot. ([Location 2346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2346)) > However, several right-wing extremists in America were convicted of possessing plague, ricin, or botulinum toxin in the 1990s. ([Location 2348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2348)) > Large-scale biological attacks remain difficult to execute. Hoaxes and low-level attacks are far more likely and, given the anxieties already caused by the pandemic, they could cause great alarm. ([Location 2355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2355)) > possibility exists that, under pressure of sanctions or during war, states or rogue elements within a state apparatus might consider the clandestine launching of a biological attack disguised as a natural outbreak. ([Location 2358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2358)) > Both the United States and the United Kingdom considered the possibility of being attacked by biological weapons during World War II and the Cold War and prepared to respond in kind as a deterrent. ([Location 2361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2361)) > Post-invasion inspections showed that the biological weapons program had indeed been suspended. ([Location 2367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2367)) - Note: Iraq > the pandemic points to the risks that the virus might get out of control and harm the country that initiated an attack. ([Location 2370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2370)) > President Bush declared in 2002 that “the gravest danger to freedom lies at the perilous crossroads of radicalism and technology. When the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons…occurs, even weak states and small groups could attain a catastrophic power.” ([Location 2373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2373)) > The declaration, which became known as the Bush Doctrine, was controversial, for it challenged the idea that military force could be used only in response to aggression, although the idea of preemptive action to prevent terrorists from acquiring or employing weapons of mass destruction had been around for decades. ([Location 2377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2377)) - Note: Israelis have been doing this for decades > Calculations of the greater danger posed by state-sponsored attacks remain the same in a post-pandemic world as they were before the outbreak. Biological weapons are not reliable. They are indiscriminate. Contagious diseases, as opposed to toxins derived from plants or microorganisms, are difficult to control. And they entail high risks of massive retaliation and regime change. ([Location 2384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2384)) - Note: But disease can be top cover for other forms of exploitation during all the chaos. #### LOOKING AHEAD > THE HISTORY OF past pandemics doesn’t tell us exactly what the post-pandemic landscape will look like, simply that things will be different. ([Location 2389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2389)) > some argue that the continuities exceed the disruptions.[1] ([Location 2391](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2391)) > Putting aside cataclysmic change, though, our survey shows that major epidemics have economic, social, psychological, and political effects that may persist for years, even decades. ([Location 2393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2393)) > They carve a trail of lost lives, economic devastation, and personal despair. ([Location 2394](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2394)) > Epidemics expose and exacerbate existing economic inequalities. ([Location 2395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2395)) > Political systems are turned upside down. ([Location 2395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2395)) > New forces emerge. ([Location 2396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2396)) > Epidemics leave legacies of distrust and disorder. ([Location 2396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2396)) > They reveal and reinforce existing problems—poor governance, societal divisions, prejudices, inequality, corruption. Social and political cleavages intensify. ([Location 2396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2396)) > They provoke unrest—anger, protests, civil disobedience, increases in violent crime. ([Location 2398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2398)) > they can provoke social discord and political tensions, which in turn promote political violence. ([Location 2399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2399)) > Many of the observed effects derive from a sort of societal comorbidity—the ([Location 2402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2402)) > the preexisting economic, social, and political conditions of a society. ([Location 2403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2403)) > In the United States, a health emergency has come on top of a toxic political environment. ([Location 2403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2403)) > Fairly or unfairly, political leaders are held responsible for the human suffering caused by the disease. ([Location 2408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2408)) > Deeply divided constituencies guarantee that there will be political costs whatever course leaders decide on. ([Location 2411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2411)) > Prioritizing commerce and personal choice can be perceived as denying, ignoring, or minimizing the deadly impact of the disease—a callous disregard for life. ([Location 2412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2412)) > But imposing preventive control measures also comes at a political price. ([Location 2413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2413)) > Scapegoating is a common feature of epidemics. ([Location 2415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2415)) > “Others”—whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Roma, Irish, Italians, Mexicans, Asians, and so on—have been blamed for the outbreak or spread of disease. ([Location 2416](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2416)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The economic damage wrought by the pandemic will take years to repair. ([Location 2419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2419)) > Europeans have shown greater sympathy for refugees fleeing Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine than for those seeking to escape poverty and conflict in the Middle East ([Location 2426](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2426)) > Pandemics test the ability of societies to act collectively, either within nations or internationally. ([Location 2429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2429)) > Even countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, which many would consider as rating high on a “social capital” index, have experienced violence in response to COVID-19 restrictions and requirements. ([Location 2433](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2433)) > In the United States, there was little social capital to begin with. ([Location 2438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2438)) > Modern communications—and especially social media—connect everybody but fragment them into quarreling factions. ([Location 2442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2442)) > Social capital is about relationships. ([Location 2449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2449)) > Fanatics, false prophets, and religious cults arise. ([Location 2453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2453)) > In his account of the Black Death, historian Francis Oakley noted that the plague not only spawned religious fanaticism and social unrest but promoted “the profound pessimism that is one of the distinguishing features of the later Middle Ages.”[3] ([Location 2459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2459)) > Rather than marking the “end of history,” the end of the Cold War unleashed centrifugal forces, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, and global terrorist enterprises—a turbulent world in which technologically superior military power possessed by the United States offered fewer advantages. ([Location 2469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2469)) > Johan Huizinga’s description of European society after the Black Death as one in which people were “on edge, quick to violence” has ominous relevance today. ([Location 2476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2476)) > There is a parallel pandemic of random aggression—automobiles deliberately driven into crowds, mass stabbings, acid attacks, people pushed off of subway platforms, fist fights on airlines. Violence against government is more acceptable. ([Location 2478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2478)) > Yet, while many have wallowed in conspiracy theories, modern medicine has saved millions of lives. ([Location 2483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2483)) > There are no medals for those who fight or the many who have died on the front lines in hospitals; ([Location 2485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2485)) > there is no recognition for those who invented the vaccines in record time. ([Location 2485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2485)) > The pandemic has created dramatically more anti-vaxxers and changed their profile. ([Location 2495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2495)) > Before the pandemic, Democrats were almost twice as likely—and Independents were twice as likely—as Republicans to say that vaccines were unsafe ([Location 2502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2502)) > As resistance to vaccination grew during the pandemic, anti-vaxxers became primarily Republicans. ([Location 2505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2505)) > Some members of anti-vaxxer families secretly traveled to other towns to be vaccinated. ([Location 2516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2516)) > the reddest (pro-Trump) tenth suffered six times the ratio of deaths compared to the bluest (pro-Biden) tenth.[12] ([Location 2521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2521)) > Darwinian dismissal of those who make poor choices in life. ([Location 2524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2524)) > Polls conducted even before the pandemic showed that the average anti-vaxxer in America was a middle-aged, low-income, Midwestern male with a high school diploma, who was not necessarily a parent, lived in a rural area, didn’t often go to doctors, and was less concerned about the environment—hardly a right-wing extremist, but far from the popular profile of anti-vaxxers.[15] ([Location 2550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2550)) > The far right is already an assemblage of groups with differing grievances and ideologies. ([Location 2555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2555)) > European countries also saw a coalescence of anti-vaxxers and far-right elements protesting vaccination mandates and passports. ([Location 2558](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2558)) > protest movements tend to transform rather than retire. ([Location 2569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2569)) > Or, the coalition of far right and anti-vaxxers could just be another example of how politics are being carved into thinner and thinner slices of zeal. ([Location 2573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2573)) - Note: The end result of the enlightenment is slicing finer & finer slices,dividing & atomizing. > By the spring of 2022, the world has experienced five waves of COVID-19. ([Location 2589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2589)) > Instead, COVID-19 may become endemic, with successive waves beginning in different parts of the world and quickly spreading, some more severe than others, prolonging uncertainty and hampering economic recovery. This is closer to the historical pattern of the Justinian Plague, the Black Death, and the repeated cholera outbreaks of the nineteenth century. ([Location 2600](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2600)) > reputation for having the will, the resources, and the technical and organizational skills to lead ambitious global efforts. ([Location 2613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2613)) > The United States squandered opportunities and sometimes did harm, but it did have undeniable capacity and capability. ([Location 2618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2618)) > The pandemic reminds us that the world is a dangerous place. ([Location 2630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2630)) > Oceans provide no protection against disease. ([Location 2631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2631)) > no nation can isolate itself from the rest of the planet. We are in it together—survival requires a collaborative effort, perhaps more so now than ever. ([Location 2631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2631)) > We are one nation, despite the efforts of cynical politicians, their media propagandists, and online rabble-rousers to divide us into little warring enclaves. ([Location 2634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2634)) > The pandemic surely has changed every one of us. We can ensure that it is for the better. ([Location 2637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2637)) #### DRAMATIS PESTILENTIAE ##### 430–426 B.C.E. PLAGUE OF ATHENS ##### 165–180 ANTONINE PLAGUE ##### 249–275 PLAGUE OF CYPRIAN ##### 541–549 JUSTINIAN PLAGUE ##### 558–749 SUBSEQUENT WAVES OF THE FIRST PLAGUE PANDEMIC > 6TH CENTURY–1980 SMALLPOX ([Location 2671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2671)) ##### 1347–1351 THE SECOND PLAGUE PANDEMIC, OR BLACK DEATH ##### 1360–1773 SUBSEQUENT WAVES OF THE SECOND PANDEMIC ##### 15TH CENTURY–20TH CENTURY TYPHUS EPIDEMICS ##### 17TH CENTURY–20TH CENTURY YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMICS ##### 1817–1975 THE SEVEN MAJOR CHOLERA PANDEMICS ##### 1817–1824 FIRST CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1829–1837 SECOND CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1846–1860 THIRD CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1863–1875 FOURTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1881–1896 FIFTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1899–1923 SIXTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1961–1975 SEVENTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1855–1902 THIRD PLAGUE PANDEMIC ##### 1889–1895 RUSSIAN FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1910–1911 MANCHURIAN PLAGUE ##### 1918–1919 THE 1918 (SO-CALLED “SPANISH”) FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1957–1958 ASIAN FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1968–1970 HONG KONG FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1981–PRESENT HIV/AIDS ##### 2002–2004 SARS (SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME) PANDEMIC ##### 2009–2010 SWINE FLU PANDEMIC ##### 2012–PRESENT MERS (MIDDLE EAST RESPIRATORY SYNDROME) ##### 2014–2016 EBOLA VIRUS PANDEMIC ##### 2019–PRESENT COVID-19 PANDEMIC > ENDNOTES ([Location 2791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2791)) > Anja Steinbauer, “The Ship of Fools,” Philosophy Now, Issue 101, March/April 2014. ([Location 3579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=3579)) # Plagues and Their Aftermath  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Brian Michael Jenkins]] - Full Title:: Plagues and Their Aftermath - Category: #books ## Highlights #### AUTHOR’S NOTE > MY USUAL FIELD of analysis is political violence and irregular warfare. ([Location 37](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=37)) > Clearly, however, pandemics have profound effects on society, creating new political tensions which, in turn, may lead to violence. ([Location 43](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=43)) > I finished my chapter for the book, but I was increasingly fascinated with the subject of plagues in general—including the economic, societal, psychological, and political effects of major outbreaks of disease—and I kept going. ([Location 49](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=49)) > Today’s pandemic will eventually fade—we are not sure how or when that will take place—but the normality we knew before will not return. ([Location 52](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=52)) > miasmas—concentrations of poisonous vapors. ([Location 65](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=65)) > The focus in this study is not on the causes of epidemics but on their consequences. ([Location 68](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=68)) > The effects of epidemics are not measured only in mortality. ([Location 75](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=75)) > Secondary effects include the economic and social disruptions caused by the contagion and efforts to contain it, the effects of widespread fear and public hysteria, increased suspicion and scapegoating, the spread of rumors and conspiracy theories, and political disturbances and disorder that undermine government legitimacy. ([Location 79](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=79)) > As Jared Diamond noted in Guns, Germs, and Steel, “Because diseases have been the biggest killers of people, they have been decisive shapers of history.”[5] ([Location 89](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=89)) > Taking a thematic rather than a chronological or geographical approach, ([Location 105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=105)) > This is a preliminary work. As of April 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic is still not contained, making all conclusions tentative. ([Location 119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=119)) #### THE HUMAN TOLL > even rampant epidemics like the Black Death affected populations unevenly. ([Location 135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=135)) > High death tolls can reflect rapid depopulation caused by the disease, or an accumulation of deaths over a long period of time. ([Location 137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=137)) > 1347 and 1351, the first wave of the bubonic plague, or Black Death, killed between 25 and 50 million people in Europe—as much as half of the continent’s population. ([Location 138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=138)) > mid-seventeenth century, when the plague began to decline, ([Location 139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=139)) > 1918 flu pandemic killed 50 to 100 million people in 1918–1919 (including an estimated 675,000 in the United States). ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=140)) > million people so far, but fatalities from AIDS have been spread over a period of nearly forty years since the early 1980s ([Location 141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=141)) > Antonine Plague, ... occurred between 165 and 180 C.E. It was brought back from the Middle East by Roman soldiers and spread quickly throughout the Roman Empire, killing an estimated 5 million people. ([Location 147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=147)) > Justinian Plague, which occurred during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, began in 541–542, but persisted for two hundred years and is considered the third-worst epidemic in history, eventually killing an estimated 25 to 50 million people ([Location 149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=149)) > the 25 to 50 million deaths caused by the first wave of the Black Death would represent no more than 15 percent of the world’s population, but between a third and two-thirds of Europe’s population at the time, perhaps more.[2] ([Location 154](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=154)) > third major plague pandemic—which began in Yunnan Province in China in 1855, reaching Hong Kong in 1894 and from there spreading to India—killed an estimated 15 to 20 million people, less than 2 percent of the world’s population at the time. ([Location 158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=158)) > Thucydides, in his account of the Peloponnesian War ... detail the devastating effects of the plague that struck Athens.[4] ([Location 162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=162)) > Plague in Florence in the 1340s killed half of the city’s population.[5] ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=164)) > Only a quarter of Barcelona’s population reportedly survived the first year of the Black Death.[6] ([Location 165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=165)) > Many small European towns and villages disappeared altogether. ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=167)) > Other towns and villages sealed themselves from outsiders and survived. ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=167)) > The Justinian Plague began with an intense outbreak of bubonic plague that lasted from 541 to 549. This was only the first of fifteen or more waves that lasted until the year 750 before subsiding. ([Location 170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=170)) > Black Death, ... returned in at least seventeen more localized waves over the next three centuries. ([Location 175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=175)) > In 1665, a round of bubonic plague killed more than 100,000 inhabitants of London in eight months. ([Location 176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=176)) > Cholera washed across the world in seven successive waves during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=177)) > In contrast, the 1918 influenza pandemic infected about a third of the world’s population in just two years, but it then faded as people developed immunity. ([Location 178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=178)) > viral descendants combined with other flu strains to create the 1957 Asian flu, the 1968 Hong Kong flu, the 1977 Russian flu, and the 2009 swine flu.[7] ([Location 179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=179)) > 1917 and 1921, typhus, which historically is often associated with wars and troop concentrations, killed as many as 3 million people in Russia. ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=184)) > During the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), starvation, plague, and typhus killed an estimated 10 million people, while 350,000 were killed in combat. ([Location 188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=188)) > Containing new outbreaks may be possible, but a more likely scenario is cohabitation. ([Location 194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=194)) > Even without ascending to the death tolls of history’s earlier epidemics, cohabitation with or a conflagration of COVID-19 would have profound effects on the economy, society, and individual behavior. ([Location 200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=200)) - Note: C19 > Are today’s sensitivities causing people to exaggerate the pandemic? Some might say so, but the numbers suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to enter the ranks of the great calamities of the modern era. ([Location 207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=207)) > World War II (1939–1945) remains the deadliest modern event: six years of total war resulted in 60 to 85 million deaths.[12] ([Location 214](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=214)) > The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the greatest decline in annual life expectancy in the United States since World War II. ([Location 227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=227)) > The effects of COVID-19 on the life expectancy of different sections of American society are unequal. ([Location 233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=233)) > Hispanics declined by 1.8 years, ([Location 234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=234)) > African Americans declined by 2.7 years, ([Location 234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=234)) > decline of 0.8 years for white Americans.[19] ([Location 235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=235)) > ethnic disparities remained significant—Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and Alaska Natives were about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people.[20] ([Location 241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=241)) > Celebrations may be inappropriate while a deadly pandemic continues to rage, but the number of lives saved as a result of modern medicine and the valiant work of health professionals is a remarkable achievement that should be kept in mind as one hears daily of science being dismissed, while public health officials, physicians, and health workers are disparaged and sometimes physically assaulted. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=255)) > Excess deaths can include deaths listed as caused only by the COVID-19 infection plus deaths resulting from respiratory, circulatory, or other prevalent conditions where COVID-19 is also listed as a cause. ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=265)) > The Lancet study estimated that excess deaths caused by the pandemic were eight times the recorded COVID deaths in India, twelve times in Egypt, twenty-three times in Pakistan, twenty-six times in Afghanistan, and thirty-three times in Yemen.[27] ([Location 282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=282)) > Previous epidemics often raised suspicions that deaths were being deliberately concealed in order to prevent public panic, to protect the economy, or for reasons of political expediency. ([Location 290](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=290)) > Control of the contagion meant control of the population. ([Location 298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=298)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Many in the lower economic ranks of society suspected that cholera was being deliberately spread as part of a diabolical scheme to cull the poor. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=299)) > Some accused the commercial interests of denying, concealing, or dismissing the outbreaks in order to protect commerce or avoid frightening investors—which was, in fact, sometimes the case. ([Location 300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=300)) > Hamburg delayed the announcement that cholera was present in the city.[31] ([Location 303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=303)) > Italian government officials also conspired to conceal the extent of the cholera outbreak in Naples in 1911.[32] ([Location 305](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=305)) > Early reports of the 1918 flu during the final years of World War I were kept secret by the belligerent powers, ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=307)) > Denials that AIDS was a contagious disease and not the result of poverty and poor nourishment were common. ([Location 311](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=311)) > China has been accused of concealing the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Wuhan, ([Location 312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=312)) > When cholera struck New York in 1832, state and local officials refused to take steps to limit the contagion. Instead, they argued that the disease was caused by the immoral lifestyle of the poor, immigrants, and drunks. ([Location 314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=314)) > Faced with an outbreak of plague in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1900, the governor of California, worried that it would be bad for business, issued a proclamation denying that there was any plague in “the great and healthful city of San Francisco.”[36] ([Location 318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=318)) > Some in the state legislature thought that the health official responsible for identifying the outbreak should be hanged. ([Location 324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=324)) > Some have gone so far as to claim that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax conjured by government authorities to impose tyrannical controls over the population. This supposed nonexistence is an insidious feature of the current pandemic. ([Location 343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=343)) > Inflows of immigrants were considered essential to economic recovery, and in many cases immigrants were offered incentives to come. ([Location 348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=348)) > Although some nations will bounce back quickly, assuming the pandemic fades in 2022, it will likely take years for the world to fully recover. And some economic scarring will be deep and permanent. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=357)) #### DEEP ECONOMIC SCARS > the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy has been disastrous. ([Location 362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=362)) > pandemic has negatively affected global economic growth “beyond anything experienced in nearly a century.”[1] ([Location 363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=363)) > World Bank said it has produced the deepest global recession since World War II, more than twice as deep as the recession associated with the 2007–2008 financial crisis. ([Location 364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=364)) > In the United States, unemployment levels jumped significantly at the beginning of the pandemic, with the U.S. rate reaching 14.8 percent in April 2020.[7] But, despite the continuing pandemic, jobs returned and employment recovered with the unemployment rate dropping to 3.6 percent by March 2022, only slightly above where it was in December 2019, at the beginning of the pandemic. ([Location 377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=377)) > In contrast, people living paycheck-to-paycheck, with fewer skills and less education—and usually without retirement plans—were severely impacted. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=388)) > Women suffered more than men.[11] Women in the labor force depend heavily on child care or children being in schools. When schools and childcare facilities close down, women are more likely to be forced to give up their jobs or to be prevented from going back to work. ([Location 395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=395)) > since the pandemic is accelerating preexisting trends toward automation and digitalization, many of the jobs lost are never coming back. ([Location 401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=401)) > What economists call “emerging markets” and “low-income countries” have suffered significantly more than countries with advanced economies and their recovery will likely be slower.[13] ([Location 407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=407)) > Depopulation made labor scarce, enabling surviving workers to command higher wages. ([Location 411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=411)) > The more recent epidemics experienced by the world have not resulted in depopulation; they have disrupted economies and societies. ([Location 414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=414)) > Workers remain in ample supply, while jobs are lost. ([Location 415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=415)) > The COVID-19 pandemic will likely push hundreds of millions of people into absolute poverty.[16] ([Location 425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=425)) > For the past thirty years, economic progress has steadily reduced the number of people living in absolute poverty. ([Location 427](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=427)) ##### WILL COVID-19 PROMOTE DEGLOBALIZATION? > Prior to the pandemic, globalization and free trade were articles of faith for many economists. ([Location 485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=485)) > To reduce the costs of building huge factories and holding large inventories, companies adopted “just-in-time” manufacturing processes, where materials and parts would be timed to arrive precisely at the moment they were needed. ([Location 487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=487)) > A single iPhone contains components from suppliers in forty-three countries. ([Location 491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=491)) > The COVID-19 pandemic has upended supply chains. It may contribute to further deglobalization as countries and corporations seek to reduce their vulnerability to disruptions that come with dependence on complex global supply chains.[28] ([Location 492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=492)) > The theoretical model suggested that the time required to set up new assembly lines could mean that they would come into production just as the pandemic was subsiding. ([Location 513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=513)) > The practice of offshoring made products cheaper to buy but, at the same time, decimated American ([Location 529](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=529)) > manufacturing and made companies more vulnerable to disruptions. ([Location 530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=530)) > In March 2022, the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, which is low by historical standards. However, that low rate does not reveal the full picture. In some parts of the country, the unemployment rate remains nearly 7 percent. ([Location 546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=546)) ##### AMERICA’S “GREAT RESIGNATION” > The improved situation of the peasants following the Black Death ([Location 555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=555)) > The 1918 flu pandemic had a far lower mortality rate but was also accompanied and followed by a burst of labor militancy. ([Location 556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=556)) > The prospect of death also promotes reassessments of one’s own personal circumstances. A million reassessments can produce a mass movement. ([Location 566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=566)) > The United States saw a resurgence of labor activism and work stoppages during the pandemic, ([Location 569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=569)) > Labor activism was further fueled by the fact that American corporations in 2021 recorded their highest profit margins since 1950.[34] ([Location 576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=576)) > Under public pressure, politicians have passed relief packages to help companies and to protect jobs and mitigate lost incomes. ([Location 578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=578)) > In fact, individual Americans got about one-fifth of the $4 trillion in economic relief grants, loans, and tax breaks spent by the government to keep the American economy going during the pandemic, while $2.3 trillion went to businesses whether or not they were affected by the pandemic or kept workers on their payroll during shutdowns.[35] ([Location 582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=582)) > refused to return to on-site jobs, citing health concerns. By June 2021, the number of American workers voluntarily leaving their jobs rose by 164,000, to 942,000.[36] That number rose to 4.4 million in September 2021, ([Location 590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=590)) > The highest percentage of those leaving their jobs are those with high school diplomas or less, which usually means that they are leaving minimum-wage jobs and poorer working conditions.[39] ([Location 598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=598)) > Although the United States has the world’s largest economy, according to statistics compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States also has the highest percentage of low-wage earners of all the economically advanced countries.[40] ([Location 600](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=600)) > global economic experts believed that the global recovery will be volatile and uneven over the next three years (2022–2024). ([Location 613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=613)) > We do not know how this ends. The post-pandemic economic landscape is still unclear. ([Location 619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=619)) #### EFFECTS ON SOCIETY > IN HIS 1919 book The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga described European society after the fourteenth-century plague as highly strung, on edge, quick to violence.[1] ([Location 630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=630)) > Historians of past epidemics would not be surprised by the defiance of government-ordered measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. ([Location 640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=640)) > lazarettos—the term comes from the Italian word for beggar—part-hospital, part-prison, where diseased poor persons were held until they died or survived the illness. ([Location 652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=652)) > As Frank Snowden noted in Epidemics and Society, these efforts, while understandable from a public health perspective, marked “a significant extension of state power into spheres of human life that had never before been subject to political authority.”[4] ([Location 658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=658)) > cordons sanitaires—guarded lines preventing people and goods from an area known to be infected by a disease from entering areas where the disease had not been detected. ([Location 666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=666)) > cordons sanitaires as a public health measure declined during the twentieth century, and the term was increasingly used in the purely political sense to denote a barrier to the spread of dangerous ideologies, which came to be seen in the same terms as contagious diseases. ([Location 677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=677)) > The Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, which traces its origins back to 1798, is a uniformed service of commissioned officers commanded by the Surgeon General. One of its original missions was the enforcement of quarantines. From the beginning of the Republic into the twentieth century, quarantines were imposed to control smallpox, typhoid, cholera, plague, yellow fever, diphtheria, and other diseases.[7] ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=680)) > Suspicion of government is a recurring theme. There were suspicions that ulterior political motives drove assertions of authority based on health crises. ([Location 700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=700)) > As in past epidemics, suspicions that government has exploited COVID-19 to expand its authority have been widespread. One commentator warned that lockdowns, “under the guise of a real medical pandemic,” were turning the United States into “a totalitarian state.”[10] ([Location 705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=705)) > According to an August 17–18, 2021, poll, an overwhelming 72 percent versus 28 percent of Americans favored mask mandates as a “matter of health and safety,” ([Location 732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=732)) > The history of resistance to vaccination goes back at least 250 years, to the 1770s. The Chinese had reportedly developed a means of inoculating against smallpox as early as 200 B.C.E.—grinding the scabs from those infected into a powder and inhaling ([Location 735](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=735)) > Franklin noted, suspected that doctors magnified the number of people killed by smallpox while concealing the number who died as a result of inoculation.[17] ([Location 740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=740)) > The rapid creation of a vaccine to prevent infection or ameliorate the effects of COVID-19, along with government-led efforts to vaccinate the population, provoked similar resistance. ([Location 752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=752)) ##### INEQUALITY BARED > Those who could do so fled for their lives, abandoning more-vulnerable relatives. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=761)) > Hoarding led to artificial shortages and fights. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=761)) > According to the fourteenth century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, people in Florence behaved like animals during the plague. ([Location 762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=762)) - Note: Decameron > Today, the hoarding of oxygen tanks by wealthy families has hampered India’s ability to treat coronavirus patients. ([Location 767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=767)) > Epidemics affect economic classes unequally. When the Black Death struck Florence in the fourteenth century, wealthier citizens could flee to their country villas. ([Location 769](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=769)) - Note: Unless you’re the 10 dipshits in the Decameron > History’s epidemics do not create popular prejudices; they reinforce existing ones by creating opportunities for racist rabble-rousers and populist politicians. Nationalist and nativist tendencies intensify. ([Location 785](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=785)) > Athenians blamed the plague that devastated their city in the fifth century B.C.E. on their Spartan enemies, ([Location 789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=789)) > plague struck Sparta centuries later, its then-Christian ruler expelled the city’s entire Jewish population.) ([Location 790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=790)) > Romans faced with the Antonine Plague blamed Christians, ([Location 791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=791)) > Byzantium blamed the Justinian Plague on the licentious behavior of Empress Theodora, ([Location 792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=792)) > The Black Death of the fourteenth century is also believed to have originated in the steppes of Central Asia. ([Location 797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=797)) > When the plague struck Algeria in 1706, the ruler declared it to be the fault of the Jews and ordered the destruction of their synagogues and the confiscation of their property. ([Location 801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=801)) > Venetians in the fifteenth century blamed the plague on Slavs and Albanians. ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=807)) > Irish immigrants for the waves of cholera that struck U.S. cities, ([Location 817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=817)) > These measures did not slow the spread of cholera but they diverted the wrath of angry citizens, who took matters into their own hands, ([Location 830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=830)) > The names can reinforce existing prejudices and lead to medical conceits that contagions have racial preferences or that “superior” races have greater immunity. (A pathogen designed to kill certain “inferior” races or ethnic groups is a dream of white supremacists.) ([Location 836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=836)) > employment, education, and housing.[40] Mexicans were blamed for the 2009 swine flu epidemic, which some people called the “Mexican flu” or “fajita flu.” ([Location 854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=854)) ##### REINFORCING ANTI-CHINESE SENTIMENTS > Chinese entrepreneurs saved their money and opened small businesses—laundries and restaurants. This did not threaten the upper classes, but it enraged those lower down the economic ladder. ([Location 867](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=867)) > Opium-smoking was indeed a Chinese import, but by the late nineteenth century, alcoholism and drug addiction had reached epidemic levels among white Americans.[46] ([Location 876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=876)) > According to an 1871 report, the Chinese were responsible because they were “inferior in organic structure, in vital force, and in the constitutional conditions of full development.”[50] ([Location 888](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=888)) > European populations asserted that it was the “white man’s burden” to civilize indigenous peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. ([Location 894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=894)) > This reinforced long-standing animosity toward all Asian immigrants and their descendants, but especially the Chinese.) ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=905)) ##### NATIVISTS VERSUS NEWCOMERS > However, the 1918 flu pandemic coincided with widespread mob attacks by whites on Black Americans during what came to be called the “Red Summer” of 1919. Race riots and lynchings spread across the country. ([Location 932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=932)) > And recently arrived Blacks were also blamed for spreading the dreaded flu, which was a contributing factor in the violence.[62] ([Location 934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=934)) > The 1918 flu also contributed to nativist sentiments that manifested themselves in the dramatic growth of the Ku Klux Klan following World War I. ... Klan during Reconstruction, expanded its targets to include not only African Americans but also immigrants, Jews, and Catholics as well as communists, socialists, liberals, and progressives. ([Location 936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=936)) > It was no longer a strictly Southern organization. States with the largest membership were Indiana, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oklahoma, New York, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, and Florida. Nearly half of the members were businessmen, salesmen, clerks, lawyers, and doctors.[63] ([Location 941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=941)) #### AN EXCUSE FOR ANTI-SEMITISM > While the tropes remained much the same as those that circulated centuries before—Jews had caused the epidemic; Jews were profiting from its consequences; Jews celebrated the deaths of non-Jews—the recent dissemination of such allegations appears qualitatively different. ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=952)) > During the epidemics of the Middle Ages, anti-Semitism was so deeply embedded in the Christian culture of the time that inciting action against the Jews would hardly have been necessary. ([Location 955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=955)) ##### EPIDEMICS AND RELIGIOUS FAITH > Haredim ... As a result, the Haredi community suffered far more COVID-19 deaths, proportionately, than the rest of the population. The community comprises 12.5 percent of Israel’s population but by early 2021 accounted for 28 percent of the COVID-19 cases.[68] ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=984)) > Many Israelis hoped that the behavior of the Haredim during the pandemic would finally weaken their influence in national politics, just as the Black Death weakened the Catholic Church in the fourteenth century.[69] ([Location 988](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=988)) > It is one of the world’s largest gatherings (2.5 million people made the hajj in 2019), making it a colossal super-spreader event. ([Location 992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=992)) ##### EFFECTS ON RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS > The plague undermined Church authority in a number of ways. Faith did not appear to protect the devout against the disease. The clergy were decimated, and standards for recruiting and training had to be lowered to obtain sufficient replacements, some of whose poor behavior further undermined Church authority. ([Location 1003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1003)) > In fact, the Catholic Church and many others support vaccination for moral reasons, and no major denomination—including the Christian Science church, whose members rely largely on prayer—officially opposes vaccination.[75] ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1033)) > One possible effect of the COVID-19 pandemic could be the further atomization of faith into a purely individual and entirely idiosyncratic selection of beliefs, capable of remote practice without intermediation by an institutionalized religious authority. ([Location 1043](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1043)) - Note: The enlightenment is a driver in the atomization of all things. Rhk ##### CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND MASS DELUSIONS > Conspiracy theories flourish during epidemics. ([Location 1056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1056)) > COVID-19 conspiracies are variations on, or combinations of, several basic themes. ([Location 1067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1067)) > One is that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax, fabricated (or at least greatly exaggerated) by the government to exert greater control over its citizens. ([Location 1068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1068)) > A second theme accepts the virus as real but attributes its origins to various dark forces. ([Location 1069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1069)) > A third theme focuses on nefarious motives behind the promotion of vaccination. ([Location 1069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1069)) > 5G wireless signals trigger it. ([Location 1071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1071)) > pandemic is a hoax invented to coerce the population to accept vaccines containing microchips that will create a global identification system—which, ([Location 1072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1072)) > public. These deaths are not random but are the result of deliberately toxic vaccine batches being sent to Republican-dominated areas in the United States in order to cripple or kill off the conservative population.[84] ([Location 1078](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1078)) - Note: If only… ##### APOCALYPTIC THINKING > The end of the world is nigh. ([Location 1088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1088)) > Another dimension of end-times thinking can be found among the survivalists and preppers, who retreat to remote redoubts where they stockpile food and weapons for self-defense during the anticipated collapse of society. COVID-19 has increased their numbers. ([Location 1099](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1099)) > Epidemics encourage hoarding. ([Location 1101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1101)) > The feeling was that adopting a simpler lifestyle and being prepared for future disasters would not be a bad thing. ([Location 1103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1103)) > Those who could do so also escaped to safer, remote locations. This was hardly a new phenomenon: kings and nobles did the same during previous plagues. ([Location 1104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1104)) > Survivalism reflects Americans’ sense of rugged individualism and their unique affinity for firearms. It requires self-reliance—an American virtue—rather than dependence on government or community. ([Location 1110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1110)) #### FRAYING SOCIAL COHESION > Cholera epidemics in nineteenth-century Europe stretched social cohesion and surfaced latent social antagonisms. ([Location 1116](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1116)) > The 1918 flu pandemic suggests that this might not always be the case. ... state of Kentucky reported people “starving to death not from lack of food, but because the well were panic stricken and would not go near the sick.”[89] Unlike ([Location 1118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1118)) > A combination of the flu, public health measures, and continuous advisories to avoid interpersonal contacts contributed to “a profound climate of suspicion and mistrust.”[90] ([Location 1123](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1123)) > 1918 flu significantly eroded people’s trust, and—the most fascinating finding—this lack of trust was inherited by descendants. ([Location 1130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1130)) > Epidemics also contribute to a coarsening of society. ([Location 1146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1146)) > Civility has been declining for decades for a variety of reasons, and the pandemic has added new layers of edginess, including confrontations over mask-wearing, which political leaders have fomented.[93] ([Location 1148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1148)) > There is not just a loss of comity but an increase in aggression. ([Location 1150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1150)) > antisocial behavior during the pandemic—actions that violate the rights of others or are disruptive to society—on prolonged isolation, which heightens anxiety, increases irritability, promotes aggression, and diminishes impulse control. ([Location 1151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1151)) > Epidemics cause stress, which in turn limits a person’s ability to restrain impulses. ([Location 1156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1156)) > Chronic stress provokes “displaced aggression”—anger released on someone who has nothing to do with the original source of the provocation.[95] ([Location 1159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1159)) > As Thucydides noted in his horrific account of the 430–429 B.C.E. epidemic that killed up to a third of Athens’s population, and its immediate aftermath, the sudden wave of deaths left disorder in its wake: ([Location 1162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1162)) > Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness. Seeing how quick and abrupt were the changes of fortune which came to the rich who suddenly died and to those who had previously been penniless but now inherited their wealth, people now began openly to venture on acts of self-indulgence…As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately. As for offenses against human law, no one expected to live long enough to be brought to trial and punished.[96] ([Location 1164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1164)) #### VIOLENT CRIME > Reports early in the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2020) indicated a decline in ordinary street crime but “dramatic increases in domestic violence and abuse.”[101] ([Location 1190](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1190)) > Later reports showed that domestic violence climbed by 60 percent in Europe, and in the United States homicides increased by more than 29 percent, to more than twenty thousand, for the first time since 1995. ([Location 1191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1191)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Americans bought 23 million guns in 2020,[104] an increase of 65 percent over the number bought in 2019. ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1196)) > Mass shootings (i.e., shootings in which four or more persons are shot) increased in the United States by 46 percent in 2020.[105] Figures for 2021 show 818 mass shootings resulting in 920 deaths versus 696 mass shootings with 661 killed in 2020. ([Location 1198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1198)) > Some of these involve stabbings or slashing attacks. ([Location 1206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1206)) > Incidents involving unruly passengers on commercial airliners—often disorderly drunks but sometimes violent assaults on crew or passengers—have ([Location 1207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1207)) > Students returning to in-person classes saw a significant increase in fights, riots, and attacks on teachers and staff. In August and September 2021, a total of fifty-six instances of gunfire on school grounds were recorded.[108] ([Location 1213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1213)) > Assaults at hospitals also increased by more than 23 percent in 2020. (Figures are not yet available for 2021.) These were “non-aggravated” assaults—that is, assaults with no or only minor injuries. At the same time, there was a 24 percent increase in disorderly conduct.[109] While ([Location 1217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1217)) > However, an increase in brutish behavior may be a lasting legacy of the pandemic. ([Location 1222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1222)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Few of the deaths are known to have been caused by the protesters themselves.[111] ([Location 1230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1230)) > increase domestic violence. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1234)) > out of work had more time on their hands. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1234)) > Hospitals already crowded with patients may have been unable to treat the sick or people ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1234)) #### ORGANIZED CRIME > International criminal rings have siphoned billions of dollars from pandemic relief funds.[113] ([Location 1248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1248)) > With increased border controls and restrictions on immigration that are likely to persist after the pandemic subsides, migrant smuggling is likely to become a bigger business. ([Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1256)) > Criminal enterprises routinely resort to violent coercion but they also rely on complicity and collaboration and they compete with government for popular support. ([Location 1264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1264)) > In some countries, competing criminal organizations have negotiated truces with each other, and even with government, to concentrate on the health crisis. In several countries, criminal organizations are enforcing quarantines and other public health measures in areas they control. In a number of cases, cartels and mafias are directly providing humanitarian aid—food packages and other necessities—sometimes delivered in branded boxes carrying the provider’s name and logo. ([Location 1269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1269)) > criminals perceived as Robin Hoods—should not be overstated.[117] ([Location 1274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1274)) > Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an individual diagnosis, but societies can collectively display symptoms of anxiety, hypervigilance, suspicion, belligerence, aggressive behavior. ([Location 1281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1281)) #### TURNING THE PAGE > History merely provides clues; it does not mark a path. ([Location 1293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1293)) #### POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS > FROM THE BLACK Death to the COVID-19 pandemic, epidemics have been accompanied and followed by civil disobedience, social unrest, violent protests, increases in communal violence, armed uprisings, rebellions, and war. ([Location 1296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1296)) > Epidemics have not only killed people, they have brought down governments and ended dynasties. ([Location 1298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1298)) > The ruler kept the Mandate of Heaven to rule “only so long as he retained the support of the people, for it was through the ‘heart’ of the people that Heaven made its will known.” ([Location 1300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1300)) - Note: Confucian scholars in ancient China Mandate of Heaven > Francis Fukuyama, observed that a “lingering epidemic combined with deep job losses, a prolonged depression, and an unprecedented debt burden will inevitably create tensions that turn into political backlash—but against whom is as yet unclear.”[2] ([Location 1304](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1304)) > The pandemic proved tenacious. By the spring of 2022, the fifth wave, ([Location 1308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1308)) #### POLITICAL CASUALTIES > Fate, not fraud, destroyed President Trump’s re-election bid. ([Location 1315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1315)) > President Biden ... and—in a moment of political hubris—rashly promised, “I will end this.” It was foolhardy. ([Location 1321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1321)) > The president of Peru ([Location 1325](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1325)) > United Kingdom’s ([Location 1326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1326)) > India ([Location 1329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1329)) > Russia, ([Location 1331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1331)) > Colombian ([Location 1333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1333)) > The Confucian concept of the Mandate of Heaven, even when less poetically described, has broader application. In Western history, rulers might have claimed to rule by divine right, but widespread misfortune—famine, war, pestilence—eroded faith in leadership. ([Location 1342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1342)) > Unlucky rulers were vulnerable. ([Location 1344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1344)) > The Black Death decimated European officialdom, crippling the bureaucracies that collected taxes, administered the law, and ran the everyday machinery of government. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1345)) > The deliberate delay in announcing that cholera was present in Hamburg’s water supply, and further delays in voting funds to combat the spread of the disease, resulted in the “moral discrediting” of the Hamburg government in 1892.[7] ([Location 1352](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1352)) > The cholera outbreak in Naples in 1884, and especially the outbreak in 1911, posed a major political challenge to the government of Italy. ([Location 1354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1354)) > The government’s initial response to the epidemic was a denial of the outbreak, publication of fake statistics, and the use of “repressive means to impose a veil of silence.”[8] As Frank Snowden noted in his masterful history Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884–1911, “The process of moral erosion, once established, proved irreversible. ([Location 1357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1357)) - Note: Recall The Plague, Camus > As Richard Evans observes in his monumental study of the 1892 cholera epidemic in Hamburg, “The structures of social inequality, the operations of political power, the attitudes and habits of mind of different classes and groups in the population, come to light with a clarity of profile unimaginable in more normal times.”[11] ([Location 1371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1371)) > COVID-19 pandemic has flayed the body politic, laying bare its acute social tensions, economic divides, racial prejudices, political disfunction, and inherent frailties. ([Location 1375](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1375)) #### DEMOCRACY OR POPULISM > according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index—many governments exploited the health emergency to erode democratic gains. ([Location 1382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1382)) > Populist leaders have tended to downplay the pandemic, dramatize their own responses, and assert their own views and solutions, ([Location 1399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1399)) > It is classic populist behavior that sharpens political differences and polarizes populations. ([Location 1402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1402)) #### FAULT LINES > Microbes have no politics. ([Location 1404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1404)) > There are numerous examples of political authorities combining forces with commercial interests during the later pandemics and cholera outbreaks of the nineteenth century—in German, British, Italian, and American cities—to protect commerce against controls favored by health officials. ([Location 1407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1407)) > Epidemics divide communities along racial, ethnic, class, and political lines. They provide fertile ground for demagogues and rabble-rousers, racists and nativists, political and religious fanatics. ([Location 1409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1409)) > Every aspect of an epidemic becomes a battleground: ([Location 1411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1411)) > The disputes overlap, creating a mosaic of alliances and adversaries. ([Location 1414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1414)) > The governor also ordered that state health authorities be present at all autopsies conducted by federal officials to make their own determination as to whether plague was the cause of death. Needless to say, these clashes hindered collaborative efforts to eradicate or mitigate the outbreak.[14] ([Location 1421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1421)) > fundamentally different political philosophies. We will avoid malleable terms like liberal, conservative, or progressive—their meaning shifts with time and place. ([Location 1429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1429)) > The basic question is: Which takes priority— the well-being of the state or the protection of its citizens? ([Location 1430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1430)) > In epidemics, the state’s well-being is generally defined in terms of economic health, which means opposition to anything that restricts commerce, impedes trade, or gets in the way of the availability of labor. ([Location 1444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1444)) > Others would define the good of the country in terms of the survival and welfare of its population. ([Location 1447](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1447)) > Is it the patriotic duty of the elderly to accept greater risk in order to protect the able-bodied young and future generations? ([Location 1458](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1458)) > To remain profitable, hospitals have to be lean and efficient, a sort of just-in-time approach to public health. ([Location 1466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1466)) > Shutdowns to slow the spread of the virus have been considered necessary to prevent treatment capacity from being overwhelmed. ([Location 1468](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1468)) #### PUBLIC DISORDERS > Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe. Strikes and urban uprisings “against city oligarchies and mayors, changes in monetary policy, rises in house rents, the privileges and impositions of the crown, and above all against the imposition of new taxes” ([Location 1473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1473)) > Italy saw clashes that pitted those without citizenship or political status, commoners, wool workers, weavers, merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans against landed and mercantile aristocracies in continuing class warfare that sometimes led to the overthrow of local regimes. ([Location 1477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1477)) > Subsequent waves in 1361, 1369, and 1375 further reduced the population to 2.5 million, 45 percent of what it had been when the plague first struck. ([Location 1489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1489)) - Note: England > Agricultural production was hindered by climate change and extreme weather events in the form of exceptional cold spells and heavy rains that led to harvest failures. ([Location 1493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1493)) > Contagious diseases also caused huge die-offs of cattle and sheep.[21] ([Location 1494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1494)) > The second takeaway is the recognition that the Black Death was not the sole cause of political turmoil in England. ([Location 1512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1512)) > extreme weather events, ([Location 1513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1513)) > crop failures, ([Location 1513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1513)) > outbreaks of disease affecting domesticated animals, ([Location 1514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1514)) > heavy financial burden ([Location 1514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1514)) > consequences of continuing war, ([Location 1514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1514)) #### EUROPE’S CHOLERA RIOTS > Political concerns and commercial interests in nineteenth-century Europe generally sought to deny, conceal, or diminish the existence of cholera, a behavior we have seen today. ([Location 1521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1521)) > common conspiracy theories motivated anger across the European continent.[26] ([Location 1527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1527)) > deliberate plot by the elites to cull the poor and that government officials, ([Location 1531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1531)) > killing off individuals to ensure a supply of cadavers for dissection.[27] ([Location 1533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1533)) > “resurrectionists,” ([Location 1535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1535)) > In some cases, the body snatchers did not wait for a corpse but “burked” victims (suffocated them to leave little trace of violence) for their bodies. ([Location 1536](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1536)) > There was a concurrent, albeit contradictory, rumor that cholera was a fiction designed to suppress the rights of the poor. ([Location 1543](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1543)) > As the power of the state to enforce control measures increased, people increasingly blamed the state itself, especially its administrative and medical bureaucracy.[31] ([Location 1551](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1551)) > These motives dictated targets that differed from those of the angry crowds in earlier pandemics. The rioters attacked medical personnel and hospitals, especially the facilities where cholera victims were segregated ([Location 1554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1554)) > The cholera riots intensified class hatreds. ([Location 1566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1566)) > Government is held accountable for failing to halt the spread of the disease, yet measures to control the contagion—and even administer a vaccine—are portrayed by some as tyranny. ([Location 1574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1574)) > Political leaders and health authorities are the targets of popular wrath, with some receiving death threats and requiring personal security for themselves as well as their families. ([Location 1576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1576)) > It was not until the latter part of the century that cholera was recognized as a waterborne bacterium—prevention required water treatment and sewage treatment systems. By the end of the century, a preventive vaccine for cholera had been developed—it was the first widely used vaccine made in a laboratory. ([Location 1580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1580)) #### DEGENERATION > Social thinkers were increasingly obsessed with “degeneration,” a fear that society was declining as a result of biological changes determined by habitat and heredity. ([Location 1584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1584)) > Some in society, however, perceived a growing threat of “moral diseases.”[36] ([Location 1589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1589)) > Degeneration theorists defined disease broadly to encompass medical and social pathologies. Maladies included not just physical ailments but mental deficiencies, immorality, and ideological disorders. ([Location 1590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1590)) > Crowded living conditions, lack of sanitation, excessive consumption of alcohol, use of tobacco, lax morals, prostitution, sexual perversion, syphilis, physical weakness, laziness, insanity, feeble-mindedness, a propensity for crime, and susceptibility to contagious diseases—even to subversive ideologies like anarchism and communism—were all symptoms of a single pathology. ([Location 1592](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1592)) > Degeneration theory lent itself to racial theories of medicine. ([Location 1596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1596)) > Other races had degenerated from the ideal physique and moral superiority of the white race. ([Location 1596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1596)) > deemed to be lower on a presumed human scale—they were degenerates, culpable for their own dismal condition. Society was better off without them. ([Location 1599](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1599)) > racist theories that later characterized Nazi Germany, though they were expanded to other groups deemed “degenerate.” ([Location 1601](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1601)) > killed by the Nazis as they were unworthy of life and a threat to “race health.” ([Location 1605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1605)) > This provoked growing intolerance and anger toward the unvaccinated, whose plight is seen as a consequence of their own behavior but also as a burden on all and a source of continuing danger to the rest of society. ([Location 1619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1619)) #### THE 1918 PANDEMIC AND SOCIAL DISORDER > Anger over the high number of deaths and inadequacy of medical response contributed to protests and uprisings across the world, from Western Africa to New Zealand. ([Location 1630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1630)) > According to the Global Protest Tracker maintained by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, anti-government protests increased worldwide in 2020 and 2021. ([Location 1638](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1638)) > Most of the grievances in the early protests concerned racism, corruption, political oppression, or claims of fraudulent elections. ([Location 1639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1639)) #### PANDEMIC COMMUNICATIONS > The changing messages at the onset of the contagion reflected uncertainty at the time about the nature of the virus and precisely how it was spread—whether ([Location 1649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1649)) > Knowing nothing else, washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, social distancing, avoiding crowds, and wearing masks to reduce the spread of the virus through the air all made sense in dealing with any contagious disease. ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1650)) > medical professionals learned more, the recommended control measures were adjusted—usually ([Location 1653](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1653)) > the major concern shifted to slowing the spread of the disease enough to prevent hospitals and health workers from being overwhelmed by the surge. ([Location 1655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1655)) > It is essential during any crisis for those in charge to speak with a single voice, ([Location 1659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1659)) > Discord began at the top. President Trump gave marathon press conferences, often making incorrect or misleading assertions. ([Location 1663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1663)) > COVID-19 spread during a contentious election year, guaranteeing that views of the virus would quickly be politicized, further adding to the divisions. ([Location 1666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1666)) > government—a plural entity—never spoke with a single voice, ([Location 1668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1668)) > Fauci saw COVID-19 as a potential mass killer, and his paramount concern was saving lives. ([Location 1672](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1672)) > Fauci was a man of science at a time when a growing number of Americans rejected science. ([Location 1684](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1684)) > In the closed communities of those who rejected medicine—on religious grounds, or in line with political loyalties, or as members of in-groups like anti-vaxxers, those who simply hated all authority, or subscribers to conspiracy theories—medical experts like Fauci represented the enemy. ([Location 1685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1685)) > The dismissal of science, the replacement of truth with assertions based on “alternative facts,” the rejection of expert knowledge, and the impossibility of dismissing wacky conspiracy theories describes not just public affairs during the pandemic but Plato’s “ship of fools.”[41] ([Location 1729](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1729)) > The ship of fools is an allegory for an anarchic and violent democracy where every individual is convinced that they possess knowledge and skills equal to all others, and therefore they need not listen to any authority or heed any advice to inform their decisions. It is a republic that denigrates wisdom. Instead, we are warned by the ancient philosopher, “the loudest voices will dominate, irrational, ill-motivated decisions will be made and the complex arena of politics…will turn into a crazy circus.”[42] And it will end in tyranny. ([Location 1733](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1733)) - Tags: [[favorite]] #### EPIDEMICS AND ARMED CONFLICT > But do epidemics cause wars? ([Location 1746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1746)) > Throughout history, epidemics and wars have circled each other like binary stars. ([Location 1747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1747)) > The first plague pandemic began with the Plague of Justinian in 541–549 but also included successive epidemics of the bubonic plague that continued in the Middle East and Europe until 750. ([Location 1748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1748)) > Bubonic plague became endemic ... outbreaks occurring somewhere in Europe almost every year between 1347 and 1671. ... with major outbreaks in 1710, 1738, 1743, 1770, 1772, 1812, and 1813. England in the fifteenth century had no less than twenty plague epidemics. ([Location 1756](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1756)) > Plague of Athens was probably typhus. ([Location 1761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1761)) > Europeans brought it and other contagious diseases to the Americas, where in a hundred years the new microbes wiped out as much as 90 to 95 percent of the indigenous people, who had no immunity to them.[2] ([Location 1762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1762)) > War, famine, and pestilence ride side by side. ([Location 1771](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1771)) > But caution is in order before we argue that the epidemics produced the turmoil. Correlation is not causality. ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1773)) > The consequences of the Black Death were not the same everywhere. But overall, the depopulation caused by the plague undermined the feudal system, clearing the way for the remarkable flowering of science and culture that came to be known as the Renaissance. ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1784)) ##### WHY PEOPLE TAKE UP ARMS > Revolution is likely when a sharp downturn occurs after a long period of rising expectations satisfied by material progress. ([Location 1792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1792)) > Expectations continue to rise but they are no longer being fulfilled, creating a widening gap between elements of society that ultimately leads to anger and rebellion.[4] ([Location 1793](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1793)) > What pushes a society toward collective violence, according to Gurr’s hypothesis, is the discrepancy between what people are getting and what they think they deserve.[5] ([Location 1798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1798)) > Deprivation implies more than mere inequality. It suggests that an unequal and unfair system is depriving one portion of the population of what they need and deserve. ([Location 1800](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1800)) ##### RECENT EPIDEMICS AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE > The proliferation of infectious disease may thereby compromise state capacity, and may destabilize the institutional architecture of the state.”[13] ([Location 1852](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1852)) > Stewart Patrick has done—that it is the prevalence of armed conflict that prevents public health systems from reducing disease. Patrick notes that “rampant disease is believed to further weaken already fragile states, depleting human capital, intensifying poverty, and in some cases exacerbating insecurity.”[16] ([Location 1867](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1867)) > In a recent study, Katariina Mustasilta warns that the COVID-19 pandemic will make bad situations worse in countries like Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Sudan, and Colombia. ([Location 1878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1878)) > At the height of the outbreak, the Athenian leader, Pericles, sent a large military force to attack the enemies of Athens. This lifted the morale of the Athenians and mobilized Athenian military forces out of the plague-stricken city. ([Location 1893](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1893)) > The Antonine Plague thinned the ranks of the legions protecting the Roman Empire’s frontiers, inviting incursions by the Parthians in the east and Germanic tribes in the north. ([Location 1900](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1900)) > A number of historians date the end of classical antiquity to the Islamic invasions of the seventh century, which are seen as a direct consequence of the Justinian Plague.[23] ([Location 1911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1911)) > There are reports that the British army in the eighteenth century sent smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians around their forts. ([Location 1917](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1917)) > Some Western analysts attribute Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine at least partially to the two years he spent in extreme isolation as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. ([Location 1942](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1942)) > People living in cities under siege, without access to adequate food, drinking water, or sanitation facilities, are vulnerable to dysentery and other waterborne diseases like typhoid fever and cholera.[32] Ukraine’s death toll from COVID-19, which already surpassed 100,000, may arc upward as access to medical care declines, oxygen supplies dwindle, and hospitals are overwhelmed by the wounded or destroyed by Russian attacks. ([Location 1974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1974)) > It will be hard to disaggregate the long-term effects of the virus from the lasting aftereffects of the war, especially on the world’s economy. ([Location 1984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1984)) #### POST-PANDEMIC TERRORISM > The deadliest terrorist attacks in the 1970s had resulted in tens of fatalities. ... The totals escalated to hundreds of fatalities in the worst attacks of the 1980s. ... In 2001, the death toll climbed to the thousands. ... The only way death tolls of this scale could be achieved outside of conventional warfare would require the use of nuclear or biological weapons. ([Location 1996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=1996)) ##### WHAT HISTORY SUGGESTS > conflict. It may be even more difficult to anticipate direct cause-and-effect links between the pandemic and terrorism. ([Location 2011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2011)) > 1817 and 1899. Authorities saw both anarchism and “Asiatic cholera,” as it was called then, as menaces coming from the poorer working classes. ([Location 2021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2021)) > poor. A number of the noted revolutionary anarchists had firsthand experience. ([Location 2033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2033)) > As successive cholera epidemics continued during the nineteenth century, the spontaneous anger that erupted in cholera riots and political activism on behalf of an oppressed underclass perpetually beset by poverty, hunger, and disease coalesced into doctrines of revolutionary violence. ([Location 2044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2044)) > Again, cholera epidemics did not cause terrorism; they contributed to the radicalization that created terrorists. ([Location 2050](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2050)) ##### TERRORIST VIOLENCE WILL CONTINUE > The differences in attitudes did not soften as the pandemic surged but instead strengthened over time and were codified in state and local executive orders and legislation. ([Location 2065](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2065)) > The general narrative was that political and class elites were promoting fear and advancing schemes to make society more submissive. ([Location 2093](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2093)) > In August 2021, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned that COVID-19 restrictions and vaccination were being used as a rationale to support calls for violence.[20] ([Location 2102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2102)) > but the virulence of COVID-19 denial and resistance to masks and vaccination has run far beyond what could have been predicted. ([Location 2106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2106)) > While Americans expect government to protect them against new dangers, they are easily enraged by personal inconveniences. ([Location 2108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2108)) > All readily agree that terrorists and their bombs must be kept off of commercial airliners, but security procedures that require passengers to put their hand luggage on conveyor belts to be x-rayed, ([Location 2110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2110)) > Vaccination itself is viewed as evil—the mark of the beast that would prevent salvation.[21] ([Location 2120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2120)) > Admitting the illness would be tantamount to their abandoning God—or being abandoned by God. ([Location 2122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2122)) ##### THE FUTURE TRAJECTORY OF TERRORIST VIOLENCE ##### COVID-19 IN THE CURRENT THREAT MATRIX > Islamic State (IS) propagandists have told their followers that the pandemic is their ally—”one of Allah’s soldiers” sent to punish the infidels. ([Location 2154](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2154)) > Much of the continuing terrorist violence in Africa and Asia falls in the category of being a component of local insurgencies. ([Location 2165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2165)) - Note: Al Quadra > Leon Trotsky reportedly once observed, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”[27] ([Location 2173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2173)) > Fearing infiltration by government agents, right-wing extremists in the United States have generally followed a strategy of “leaderless resistance,” a notion popularized in 1983 by Louis Beam, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.[28] ([Location 2192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2192)) > Anarchism is an ideological movement rather than an organization. Anarchists tend to be organizationally chaotic, almost by definition, with both peaceful and violent factions and frequent ideological disputes. ([Location 2205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2205)) > Seething resentments caused by personal losses or the unequal effects of the pandemic on racial minorities and the poor may not always find space in the existing assemblages of the far left or far right. ([Location 2217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2217)) > Fifty-three percent of the respondents believed that pandemic-related socio-economic and political impacts of the pandemic will increase the threat of violent extremism in the future, ([Location 2221](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2221)) > and 72 percent thought that countering violent extremism had become more challenging as a result of the pandemic.[30] ([Location 2222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2222)) > The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an increase in attacks on Asians, especially in America. ([Location 2229](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2229)) > pandemic and continuing conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America will drive people attempting to escape absolute poverty and wars to migrate at a time when the tolerance for more foreigners is low. ([Location 2230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2230)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > In many ways, the pandemic has increased the potential population of lone extremists. ([Location 2233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2233)) > It has created a psychologically unsettling environment that promotes anxiety and apocalyptic thinking and persuades some people to believe in crazy things, ([Location 2234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2234)) > Deprived of daily routines and personal relationships, many people are disoriented, disillusioned, and isolated—creating a receptive audience for fringe ideas and extremist ideologies. ([Location 2235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2235)) > Isolation also weakens the normal checks on individuals’ radicalization. ([Location 2239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2239)) > Relatives and close friends, not authorities, are the first to notice unhealthy changes in attitudes or behavior and the first to intercede to keep those exhibiting them from spiraling toward extremism. ([Location 2239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2239)) > Isolation reduces that vital human contact and removes the human control rods. ([Location 2241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2241)) > Many of today’s terrorists are self-selecting and organizationally untethered. ([Location 2243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2243)) > It is often difficult to distinguish politically motivated acts of terrorism from crimes motivated by hate or other acts of violence reflecting bizarre beliefs or mental instability. ([Location 2254](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2254)) > At times, there have appeared to be two pandemics: the coronavirus, which immunization can ameliorate, and collective madness, for which there is no vaccine. ([Location 2255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2255)) #### THE PANDEMIC AND BIOTERRORISM > “The Stolen Bacillus,” H. G. Wells describes a plot in which anarchists plan to poison London’s water supply with cholera bacilli.[4] ([Location 2285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2285)) > The theme of chosen survivors who rebuild humanity in a post-apocalyptic world figures in a number of terrorist plots involving weapons of mass destruction. ([Location 2315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2315)) > Robert Jay Lifton noted, “The quest for symbolic immortality is an aspect of being human.”[8] These terrorist fantasies offer survival for the chosen and symbolic immortality for the superior race. ([Location 2317](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2317)) > Al-Qaeda, which dedicates itself to mass murder, also attempted to weaponize biological agents, including anthrax, botulinum toxin, and ricin, and there are reports that it sought or acquired Yersinia pestis (plague) bacteria, the Ebola virus, and Salmonella bacteria.[9] These efforts failed. ([Location 2319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2319)) > All of the bioterrorist plots materialized in the closed universes of cults and mental disorder. ([Location 2330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2330)) > And, apart from the 2001 anthrax letters, most of the plots failed because of the difficulty of weaponizing biological agents and the technical limitations of the perpetrators. ([Location 2334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2334)) > Another factor that may dissuade terrorists from using biological agents is the reality that contagious diseases spread quickly and are indiscriminate in whom they kill. ([Location 2342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2342)) > A poster circulated on the Internet advised followers, “What to Do if You Get Corona 19: Visit your local mosque, visit your local synagogue, spend the day on public transport, spend time in your local diverse neighborhood.” This was more an expression of attitude than a terrorist plot. ([Location 2346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2346)) > However, several right-wing extremists in America were convicted of possessing plague, ricin, or botulinum toxin in the 1990s. ([Location 2348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2348)) > Large-scale biological attacks remain difficult to execute. Hoaxes and low-level attacks are far more likely and, given the anxieties already caused by the pandemic, they could cause great alarm. ([Location 2355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2355)) > possibility exists that, under pressure of sanctions or during war, states or rogue elements within a state apparatus might consider the clandestine launching of a biological attack disguised as a natural outbreak. ([Location 2358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2358)) > Both the United States and the United Kingdom considered the possibility of being attacked by biological weapons during World War II and the Cold War and prepared to respond in kind as a deterrent. ([Location 2361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2361)) > Post-invasion inspections showed that the biological weapons program had indeed been suspended. ([Location 2367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2367)) - Note: Iraq > the pandemic points to the risks that the virus might get out of control and harm the country that initiated an attack. ([Location 2370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2370)) > President Bush declared in 2002 that “the gravest danger to freedom lies at the perilous crossroads of radicalism and technology. When the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons…occurs, even weak states and small groups could attain a catastrophic power.” ([Location 2373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2373)) > The declaration, which became known as the Bush Doctrine, was controversial, for it challenged the idea that military force could be used only in response to aggression, although the idea of preemptive action to prevent terrorists from acquiring or employing weapons of mass destruction had been around for decades. ([Location 2377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2377)) - Note: Israelis have been doing this for decades > Calculations of the greater danger posed by state-sponsored attacks remain the same in a post-pandemic world as they were before the outbreak. Biological weapons are not reliable. They are indiscriminate. Contagious diseases, as opposed to toxins derived from plants or microorganisms, are difficult to control. And they entail high risks of massive retaliation and regime change. ([Location 2384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2384)) - Note: But disease can be top cover for other forms of exploitation during all the chaos. #### LOOKING AHEAD > THE HISTORY OF past pandemics doesn’t tell us exactly what the post-pandemic landscape will look like, simply that things will be different. ([Location 2389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2389)) > some argue that the continuities exceed the disruptions.[1] ([Location 2391](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2391)) > Putting aside cataclysmic change, though, our survey shows that major epidemics have economic, social, psychological, and political effects that may persist for years, even decades. ([Location 2393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2393)) > They carve a trail of lost lives, economic devastation, and personal despair. ([Location 2394](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2394)) > Epidemics expose and exacerbate existing economic inequalities. ([Location 2395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2395)) > Political systems are turned upside down. ([Location 2395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2395)) > New forces emerge. ([Location 2396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2396)) > Epidemics leave legacies of distrust and disorder. ([Location 2396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2396)) > They reveal and reinforce existing problems—poor governance, societal divisions, prejudices, inequality, corruption. Social and political cleavages intensify. ([Location 2396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2396)) > They provoke unrest—anger, protests, civil disobedience, increases in violent crime. ([Location 2398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2398)) > they can provoke social discord and political tensions, which in turn promote political violence. ([Location 2399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2399)) > Many of the observed effects derive from a sort of societal comorbidity—the ([Location 2402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2402)) > the preexisting economic, social, and political conditions of a society. ([Location 2403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2403)) > In the United States, a health emergency has come on top of a toxic political environment. ([Location 2403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2403)) > Fairly or unfairly, political leaders are held responsible for the human suffering caused by the disease. ([Location 2408](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2408)) > Deeply divided constituencies guarantee that there will be political costs whatever course leaders decide on. ([Location 2411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2411)) > Prioritizing commerce and personal choice can be perceived as denying, ignoring, or minimizing the deadly impact of the disease—a callous disregard for life. ([Location 2412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2412)) > But imposing preventive control measures also comes at a political price. ([Location 2413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2413)) > Scapegoating is a common feature of epidemics. ([Location 2415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2415)) > “Others”—whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Roma, Irish, Italians, Mexicans, Asians, and so on—have been blamed for the outbreak or spread of disease. ([Location 2416](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2416)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The economic damage wrought by the pandemic will take years to repair. ([Location 2419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2419)) > Europeans have shown greater sympathy for refugees fleeing Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine than for those seeking to escape poverty and conflict in the Middle East ([Location 2426](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2426)) > Pandemics test the ability of societies to act collectively, either within nations or internationally. ([Location 2429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2429)) > Even countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, which many would consider as rating high on a “social capital” index, have experienced violence in response to COVID-19 restrictions and requirements. ([Location 2433](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2433)) > In the United States, there was little social capital to begin with. ([Location 2438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2438)) > Modern communications—and especially social media—connect everybody but fragment them into quarreling factions. ([Location 2442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2442)) > Social capital is about relationships. ([Location 2449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2449)) > Fanatics, false prophets, and religious cults arise. ([Location 2453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2453)) > In his account of the Black Death, historian Francis Oakley noted that the plague not only spawned religious fanaticism and social unrest but promoted “the profound pessimism that is one of the distinguishing features of the later Middle Ages.”[3] ([Location 2459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2459)) > Rather than marking the “end of history,” the end of the Cold War unleashed centrifugal forces, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, and global terrorist enterprises—a turbulent world in which technologically superior military power possessed by the United States offered fewer advantages. ([Location 2469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2469)) > Johan Huizinga’s description of European society after the Black Death as one in which people were “on edge, quick to violence” has ominous relevance today. ([Location 2476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2476)) > There is a parallel pandemic of random aggression—automobiles deliberately driven into crowds, mass stabbings, acid attacks, people pushed off of subway platforms, fist fights on airlines. Violence against government is more acceptable. ([Location 2478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2478)) > Yet, while many have wallowed in conspiracy theories, modern medicine has saved millions of lives. ([Location 2483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2483)) > There are no medals for those who fight or the many who have died on the front lines in hospitals; ([Location 2485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2485)) > there is no recognition for those who invented the vaccines in record time. ([Location 2485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2485)) > The pandemic has created dramatically more anti-vaxxers and changed their profile. ([Location 2495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2495)) > Before the pandemic, Democrats were almost twice as likely—and Independents were twice as likely—as Republicans to say that vaccines were unsafe ([Location 2502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2502)) > As resistance to vaccination grew during the pandemic, anti-vaxxers became primarily Republicans. ([Location 2505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2505)) > Some members of anti-vaxxer families secretly traveled to other towns to be vaccinated. ([Location 2516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2516)) > the reddest (pro-Trump) tenth suffered six times the ratio of deaths compared to the bluest (pro-Biden) tenth.[12] ([Location 2521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2521)) > Darwinian dismissal of those who make poor choices in life. ([Location 2524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2524)) > Polls conducted even before the pandemic showed that the average anti-vaxxer in America was a middle-aged, low-income, Midwestern male with a high school diploma, who was not necessarily a parent, lived in a rural area, didn’t often go to doctors, and was less concerned about the environment—hardly a right-wing extremist, but far from the popular profile of anti-vaxxers.[15] ([Location 2550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2550)) > The far right is already an assemblage of groups with differing grievances and ideologies. ([Location 2555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2555)) > European countries also saw a coalescence of anti-vaxxers and far-right elements protesting vaccination mandates and passports. ([Location 2558](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2558)) > protest movements tend to transform rather than retire. ([Location 2569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2569)) > Or, the coalition of far right and anti-vaxxers could just be another example of how politics are being carved into thinner and thinner slices of zeal. ([Location 2573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2573)) - Note: The end result of the enlightenment is slicing finer & finer slices,dividing & atomizing. > By the spring of 2022, the world has experienced five waves of COVID-19. ([Location 2589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2589)) > Instead, COVID-19 may become endemic, with successive waves beginning in different parts of the world and quickly spreading, some more severe than others, prolonging uncertainty and hampering economic recovery. This is closer to the historical pattern of the Justinian Plague, the Black Death, and the repeated cholera outbreaks of the nineteenth century. ([Location 2600](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2600)) > reputation for having the will, the resources, and the technical and organizational skills to lead ambitious global efforts. ([Location 2613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2613)) > The United States squandered opportunities and sometimes did harm, but it did have undeniable capacity and capability. ([Location 2618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2618)) > The pandemic reminds us that the world is a dangerous place. ([Location 2630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2630)) > Oceans provide no protection against disease. ([Location 2631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2631)) > no nation can isolate itself from the rest of the planet. We are in it together—survival requires a collaborative effort, perhaps more so now than ever. ([Location 2631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2631)) > We are one nation, despite the efforts of cynical politicians, their media propagandists, and online rabble-rousers to divide us into little warring enclaves. ([Location 2634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2634)) > The pandemic surely has changed every one of us. We can ensure that it is for the better. ([Location 2637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2637)) #### DRAMATIS PESTILENTIAE ##### 430–426 B.C.E. PLAGUE OF ATHENS ##### 165–180 ANTONINE PLAGUE ##### 249–275 PLAGUE OF CYPRIAN ##### 541–549 JUSTINIAN PLAGUE ##### 558–749 SUBSEQUENT WAVES OF THE FIRST PLAGUE PANDEMIC > 6TH CENTURY–1980 SMALLPOX ([Location 2671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2671)) ##### 1347–1351 THE SECOND PLAGUE PANDEMIC, OR BLACK DEATH ##### 1360–1773 SUBSEQUENT WAVES OF THE SECOND PANDEMIC ##### 15TH CENTURY–20TH CENTURY TYPHUS EPIDEMICS ##### 17TH CENTURY–20TH CENTURY YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMICS ##### 1817–1975 THE SEVEN MAJOR CHOLERA PANDEMICS ##### 1817–1824 FIRST CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1829–1837 SECOND CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1846–1860 THIRD CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1863–1875 FOURTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1881–1896 FIFTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1899–1923 SIXTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1961–1975 SEVENTH CHOLERA PANDEMIC ##### 1855–1902 THIRD PLAGUE PANDEMIC ##### 1889–1895 RUSSIAN FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1910–1911 MANCHURIAN PLAGUE ##### 1918–1919 THE 1918 (SO-CALLED “SPANISH”) FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1957–1958 ASIAN FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1968–1970 HONG KONG FLU PANDEMIC ##### 1981–PRESENT HIV/AIDS ##### 2002–2004 SARS (SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME) PANDEMIC ##### 2009–2010 SWINE FLU PANDEMIC ##### 2012–PRESENT MERS (MIDDLE EAST RESPIRATORY SYNDROME) ##### 2014–2016 EBOLA VIRUS PANDEMIC ##### 2019–PRESENT COVID-19 PANDEMIC > ENDNOTES ([Location 2791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=2791)) > Anja Steinbauer, “The Ship of Fools,” Philosophy Now, Issue 101, March/April 2014. ([Location 3579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09WH4FQ58&location=3579))