When Disaster Strikes - Part 7: Pandemic Politics

The Great Equalizer?

“The coronavirus doesn’t discriminate,” officials declared in early 2020. It was meant to be reassuring—we’re all in this together.

But the virus did discriminate—or rather, society discriminated, and the virus followed the channels that society had carved.

In the United States, Black Americans died at roughly twice the rate of white Americans during the early pandemic. Latino workers in meatpacking plants and farm fields contracted COVID at alarming rates. The elderly in nursing homes died in appalling numbers while those who could work from home stayed relatively safe.

The pattern was not unique to COVID. It repeats throughout pandemic history. Disease finds the vulnerable—those whose living conditions, working conditions, and access to healthcare make them more susceptible.

This is not biology alone. It is political economy, made manifest in who lives and who dies.

Pandemics as Revelation

Every pandemic exposes truths that are normally hidden.

The Geography of Vulnerability

Disease maps social structure. Cholera in 19th-century London followed the paths of poverty and poor sanitation. HIV spread along networks shaped by social exclusion and marginalization. COVID-19 clustered in crowded housing, essential workplaces, and communities with poor healthcare access.

These patterns are not random. They reflect political decisions about housing, labor, and healthcare that concentrate risk among the vulnerable.

John Snow’s famous 1854 cholera map didn’t just identify the Broad Street pump—it revealed how urban poverty shaped disease. The same mapping exercise during COVID would show prisons, meatpacking plants, nursing homes, crowded urban neighborhoods: the infrastructure of inequality made visible in infection rates.

Essential and Expendable

The pandemic introduced a new vocabulary: “essential workers.” The phrase was meant to honor those who couldn’t work from home—healthcare workers, grocery clerks, delivery drivers, meatpackers.

But essential workers were also expendable workers. They faced infection because their jobs couldn’t be done remotely—and because their employers often didn’t provide adequate protection.

The category of “essential” revealed a hierarchy usually implicit: whose work matters, whose presence is required, whose bodies are put at risk for others’ convenience.

This revelation was not comfortable. The people society labeled essential were often those it paid least and protected worst. The pandemic exposed this contradiction but didn’t resolve it.

The Care Economy

COVID exposed the brittleness of care arrangements—childcare, eldercare, health care—that depend on low-wage, often invisible labor.

When schools closed, the care work usually externalized to teachers landed back on parents—disproportionately mothers. When nursing homes became death zones, the inadequacy of eldercare became undeniable. When hospitals were overwhelmed, the costs of underfunding healthcare became visible.

The care economy was revealed as foundational—and precarious. Society depends on care work but undervalues it. The pandemic made this contradiction painfully clear.

Political Responses to Pandemic

How societies respond to pandemics reveals their values and power structures.

Quarantine and Control

Quarantine is inherently political. It restricts movement, limits liberty, and requires enforcement. The question of who gets quarantined—and who gets exempted—reflects power relations.

During 19th-century cholera outbreaks, quarantine often targeted the poor and immigrants while exempting commercial interests. Ships carrying cargo were processed faster than ships carrying steerage passengers. Merchant districts were protected while slums were cordoned off.

COVID quarantine followed similar patterns. Those who could isolate in comfortable homes with remote work did so. Those in crowded housing, with jobs requiring physical presence, faced impossible choices between income and isolation.

Treatment Allocation

When resources are scarce—hospital beds, ventilators, medications—allocation decisions become matters of life and death.

During COVID, rationing protocols were developed: who would receive ventilators if there weren’t enough? These protocols were presented as objective and medical, but they embedded social judgments.

Some protocols used survival probability, which disadvantaged those with chronic conditions. Some used life-years saved, which disadvantaged the elderly. Some considered social value, raising profound questions about whose lives matter more.

These decisions are usually hidden in the bureaucracy of healthcare. Pandemic forces them into the open—and reveals how societies value different lives.

Economic Relief

Pandemic economic relief exposes priorities. Who gets help? How much? On what conditions?

COVID relief varied dramatically across countries. Some provided universal payments with minimal conditions. Others provided targeted relief requiring application, documentation, and navigating bureaucracy. Some prioritized business support over individual relief.

These differences reflected pre-existing political economies. Countries with robust social safety nets extended them. Countries with weak systems improvised poorly.

Within the United States, relief was shaped by political conflict: debates over unemployment benefits, business loans, stimulus payments. Each decision reflected underlying beliefs about markets, government, and individual responsibility—beliefs that became life-and-death matters during pandemic.

Pandemics and Power Shifts

Throughout history, pandemics have catalyzed significant shifts in power relations.

The Black Death: Labor’s Moment

The Black Death of the 14th century killed approximately one-third of Europe’s population. The scale of death was so vast that it fundamentally shifted economic relations.

Before the plague, Europe was overpopulated relative to its agricultural capacity. Labor was cheap; landlords had leverage. Peasants were bound to the land through serfdom or economic necessity.

After the plague, labor was scarce. Survivors could demand higher wages. Landlords competed for workers. Some peasants gained freedom, negotiating better terms or simply leaving for better opportunities.

This shift was not automatic or peaceful. Landlords resisted, passing laws to fix wages and restrict movement. The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was partly a reaction to these restrictions.

But the fundamental shift was irreversible. The labor shortage created by the plague weakened serfdom and initiated changes in labor relations that would transform European society over centuries.

Cholera and Sanitation

The cholera pandemics of the 19th century catalyzed public health reforms that transformed urban governance.

Before cholera, sanitation was a private matter. After repeated epidemics killed rich and poor alike—though disproportionately the poor—the case for public intervention became undeniable.

The London cholera epidemics led to sewer construction, clean water provision, and housing regulations. The state took on new responsibilities for public health that it had previously avoided.

These reforms were not solely altruistic. They were also about protecting the wealthy from diseases breeding in the slums. But whatever the motivation, the result was expanded government capacity and new expectations about public health as a state responsibility.

Spanish Flu and Social Provision

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 50-100 million people worldwide. Its political effects were complex and varied.

In some countries, the pandemic contributed to social reform movements. The demonstrated inadequacy of healthcare systems for ordinary people strengthened calls for public health provisions.

In others, the pandemic’s disruption contributed to political instability. Coming at the end of World War I, it fed the chaos that produced revolutions, counter-revolutions, and the political extremism of the interwar period.

The lesson is that pandemics don’t determine political outcomes—they amplify existing tensions and create openings for change. The direction of change depends on political forces and mobilization.

COVID-19: Reshaping Work

COVID-19 is reshaping work in ways that may prove lasting.

Remote work, previously rare, became normal for millions. This shift has implications for urban geography, commercial real estate, and the boundaries between work and home.

The pandemic also catalyzed discussion of essential work—and the mismatch between society’s dependence on essential workers and their compensation and protection.

Whether these changes will be lasting, and in what direction, remains uncertain. They depend on the political economy of the coming years: whether workers can leverage pandemic-era changes into lasting improvements, or whether employers will reclaim control as crisis fades.

The Politics of Public Health

Health systems are not neutral infrastructure. They embody political choices that shape pandemic outcomes.

Universal vs. Market Systems

Countries with universal healthcare systems generally had better pandemic outcomes than those relying on market-based care.

Universal systems could coordinate pandemic response centrally. They could ensure treatment regardless of ability to pay. They could implement public health measures without worrying that patients would avoid care due to cost.

Market-based systems faced different challenges. In the United States, millions lacked health insurance. Fear of medical bills discouraged testing and treatment. The fragmented system struggled to coordinate response.

The pandemic revealed these differences in stark terms. The death toll was shaped by health system design—which was shaped by decades of political choices about how to organize healthcare.

Public Health Capacity

Public health infrastructure—disease surveillance, testing capacity, contact tracing—requires sustained investment. Such investment is politically difficult because it’s invisible when successful.

Countries that had maintained public health capacity—South Korea, Taiwan, Germany—could implement effective pandemic response. Countries that had neglected it—the United States, United Kingdom—struggled.

This neglect was not accidental. It reflected political choices to prioritize curative medicine over prevention, to fund healthcare rather than public health, to cut budgets during austerity.

Trust and Compliance

Pandemic response requires public compliance with measures like masking, distancing, and vaccination. Compliance depends on trust—trust in government, in health authorities, in information.

Countries with high social trust achieved high compliance. Countries with polarized politics and eroded trust struggled to implement effective measures.

The erosion of trust was itself political—the product of decades of choices about governance, media, and social cohesion. The pandemic revealed the costs of these choices.

Blame and Scapegoating

Pandemics generate fear—and fear often generates scapegoating.

Historical Patterns

Throughout history, disease outbreaks have triggered violence against minorities. The Black Death prompted massacres of Jews, blamed for poisoning wells. Cholera outbreaks targeted immigrants. AIDS stigmatized gay men.

The pattern is consistent: fear seeks explanation, and explanation seeks blame. The blamed are typically already marginal—groups that powerful majorities already view with suspicion.

COVID Scapegoating

COVID-19 triggered anti-Asian violence worldwide, particularly in the United States. The association of the virus with China—reinforced by terms like “China virus” and “kung flu”—enabled violence against Asian communities that had nothing to do with the virus’s origin.

Other scapegoating followed familiar patterns: anti-immigrant rhetoric, conspiracy theories about various groups, violence against healthcare workers accused of exaggerating the threat.

The Politics of Blame

Scapegoating is not random—it is politically useful. Blaming minorities deflects attention from governance failures. It provides simple explanations for complex crises. It reinforces in-group solidarity at the expense of out-groups.

Political leaders who mobilize scapegoating benefit from the deflection. Attention focuses on the blamed minority rather than on the failures of response. The pandemic becomes a story about “them” rather than about “us.”

Understanding this dynamic is essential for preventing pandemic violence. The impulse to blame is predictable. Political leadership determines whether it is channeled toward scapegoating or toward productive response.

Pandemic Futures

COVID-19 is not the last pandemic. Climate change, urbanization, and global connectivity make future pandemics increasingly likely.

How societies prepare—or fail to prepare—is political.

Learning or Forgetting

After every pandemic, there are calls for preparation. Reports are written. Recommendations are made. Reforms are proposed.

Then time passes. Other priorities emerge. Pandemic preparedness is expensive and invisible. Political attention shifts.

The 2002-2003 SARS outbreak prompted warnings about pandemic risk. Some countries heeded them—and responded well to COVID. Others forgot—and paid the price.

The politics of memory are crucial. Will COVID-19 create lasting investment in public health? Or will attention fade as the immediate crisis recedes?

Global Coordination

Pandemics are global problems requiring global coordination. But global coordination is politically difficult.

COVID-19 revealed the limits of global health governance. The WHO was criticized from all sides. Vaccine nationalism constrained global distribution. Information sharing was incomplete.

Future pandemics will require better coordination. But coordination requires political will that may not exist—will to share resources, to accept constraints, to prioritize global over national interests.

Health Security as Security

Pandemics kill more people than most wars. COVID-19’s death toll exceeds many armed conflicts combined.

Yet most countries spend vastly more on military security than health security. The politics of security favor weapons over vaccines, armies over epidemiologists.

Rebalancing security to include health would require fundamental political shifts—changes in how societies understand threats, allocate resources, and organize protection.

The Permanent Emergency

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced emergency powers that may prove difficult to revoke.

Surveillance Expansion

Contact tracing required surveillance of unprecedented scope. Governments tracked movements, monitored contacts, collected health data.

Some of this surveillance was proportionate and temporary. Some has been incorporated into permanent systems. The precedent of pandemic surveillance may enable future surveillance for other purposes.

Emergency Powers

Many governments invoked emergency powers during the pandemic. These powers—to restrict movement, mandate behavior, override normal procedures—were extraordinary.

Emergency powers tend to persist. Powers granted temporarily become normalized. The exceptional becomes normal.

The pandemic’s emergency may leave permanent traces in governance—expanded executive authority, reduced privacy, normalized surveillance.

The Next Crisis

The pandemic established precedents for crisis response. How governments responded to COVID will shape how they respond to future emergencies—whether health crises, climate disasters, or other challenges.

The politics of emergency matter beyond the immediate crisis. They shape the tools, expectations, and power relations that will characterize future governance.

What Pandemics Reveal

Every pandemic strips away illusions. It reveals:

• Who is vulnerable and why
• Who is essential and how they’re valued
• Who is protected and at whose expense
• What systems work and which fail
• What values operate when stakes are highest

These revelations are uncomfortable. They expose gaps between rhetoric and reality, between stated values and actual priorities.

The question is what societies do with these revelations. Do they drive lasting change—investment in public health, reform of labor relations, reduction of inequality? Or do they fade as crisis recedes, leaving structures unchanged until the next pandemic reveals them again?

The answer is political. It depends on whether pandemic revelations are channeled into political mobilization, policy change, and institutional reform—or whether they dissipate as memory fades and attention shifts.

Disease doesn’t discriminate. Societies do. Pandemics make the discrimination visible—but changing it requires political will that survives past the crisis.