Global Pandemics

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the weaknesses in local, national, and global infectious disease preparedness and response efforts. Underneath the virus itself is a story of public health systems underfunded, communities abandoned, and opportunities squandered. In this course we examine the root causes of these failures, the political forces that let to their creation, and the possibilities for change in the face of recurrent and even overlapping pandemics in an era of catastrophic change. Drawing on examples contemporary (e.g. COVID-19, avian influenza) and historical (e.g. yellow fever in the American south, plague in Ming dynasty China), we investigate how political systems respond to epidemics, and how we can survive not just the disease, but each other. Along the way we make use of philosophical and political tools, from Thomas Hobbes to the politics of the Black Panthers.