Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond

by Sonia Shah

would seem that in times of social stress—say, the arrival of a deadly contagion—the appropriately healthful response would be to move even closer together, to clasp hands and stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of the intruder. Instead, epidemics of new disease often set in motion “an inexorable collapse of morals and manners,”

Powerlessness and complicity, he says, are uncomfortable feelings that people naturally seek to expunge or escape, and one way to do that is to project them onto others.

That may be why epidemics caused by novel pathogens so often lead to violent scapegoating.

The word “scapegoat” itself derives from a ritual described in Leviticus in the Old Testament, in which God commands Aaron to sacrifice two goats for the Day of Atonement.

In 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency had used a sham hepatitis B vaccination campaign as a cover to collect information that led to the assassination of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Malaria persists because it has ceased to inspire fear. Malaria is an endemic disease in most places where it occurs. Endemic diseases are arguably much worse than epidemic ones.

Dengue is expected to become endemic in Florida, has emerged in Texas, and will likely spread farther north, too, touching millions. Lyme disease is steadily spreading across the United States and drains the economy of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But once they stop provoking fear, pathogens have secured the golden ticket. They no longer have to mount our defenses because there’s little public interest in putting up defenses. The

It doesn’t seem to matter that we may not actually have these pathogens under control: the existence of a weapon that can be used against them provides the comforting illusion of mastery.

The mismatch between the way epidemics expand and the rollout of even the most well-coordinated containment effort is inevitable: epidemics grow exponentially while our ability to respond proceeds linearly, at best.