New Book Review: Epidemics--Hate and Compassion From the Plague of Athens to AIDS https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/11/plagues-of-hate.html

This book is a historical survey of hundreds of epidemics from the 400s BC to the 1990s. What it has to tell us about the way epidemics effect society might surprise you.

Cohn's research program began ten years ago, when the NYT contacted to write a very specific sort of op-ed, one which he was unwilling to write. I summarize:

This prompted Cohn to begin a decade long research program to find out if epidemics usually brought out the best or the worst in humanity. Cohn used computer search tools to isolate references to plague and malady in the classical Latin corpus, hundreds of medieval documents, and

a huge database of newspapers from multiple European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and India. There are *literally* hundreds of case studies included in this 650 page book.

His first finding: the vast majority of epidemics lead not to violent scapegoating (an almost singular occurrence) or to mass panic, but to their opposite: social solidarity and acts of compassion and self-sacrifice crossing traditional class and racial lines.

If you are familiar with disaster sociology this should not surprise you much, as this is in fact the common response to natural disasters, war, terrorist attacks, and other episodes of collective suffering and dislocation. Suffering produces solidarity.

But not always. In particular, Cohn identifies three diseases (cholera, smallpox, and the plague) in one era (the 19th century) were the pattern broke, and disease led to violence.

Why did this happen--and what can it tell us about our own 21st century plague? Read on: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/11/plagues-of-hate.html