Epidemics like the coronavirus outbreak are a mirror for humanity, reflecting the moral relationships that people have toward one other, the historian Frank M. Snowden says.
-19 tanked markets around the world, and governments engaged in varying degrees of preparation for even worse to come. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the politics of restricting travel during epidemics, how inhumane responses to sickness have upended governments, and the ways that artists have dealt with mass death.
I had done some preliminary reading and thought this was an issue that raises really deep philosophical, religious, and moral issues. And I think epidemics have shaped history in part because they’ve led human beings inevitably to think about those big questions. The outbreak of the plague, for example, raised the whole question of man’s relationship to God.
Well, that’s a very bleak thought, if I may say so, because I think it’s unlikely we are going to experience that change of mind-set. I believe that this is something that also does bring out the highest qualities. Indeed, novels are also written about these major events. It affects our literature and our culture. I’m thinking of the great plague novel, which is “,” by the Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni. He talks about the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Borromeo, who went into the pest houses and was willing to lay down his life to look after the poorest and most unwell people in his flock.
I think it has always been also seen as part of political oppression. I’m persuaded that the nineteenth century was a terrible time, not only of rebellion but also of political oppression. For example, the slaughter of people after the 1848 revolution in France, in Paris in particular, or after the Paris Commune.
That’s interesting, because earlier you were saying that the World Health Organization, or at least members of it, was calling on people to find their common humanity, but at the same time you’re saying they’re also willing to praise a response that was, at least initially, somewhat inhumane.
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