Plagues and Their Aftermath: How Societies Recover from Pandemics

Counterterrorism expert Jenkins (The Long Shadow of 9/11) offers a succinct review of the “myriad effects of past pandemics” to forecast how Covid-19 will transform society. Drawing on histories of the Black Death, cholera, the 1918 Spanish flu, AIDS, and more, Jenkins examines the political, economic, social, and national security consequences of epidemics. He estimates that the worldwide death toll from Covid-19 will reach “somewhere between 12 and 24 million, putting [it] at seventh place on the list of modern calamities”; posits that some companies will “re-shore” manufacturing jobs in their native countries, slowing the economic recovery in less-developed parts of the world; cites the 1917 Russian Revolution (which followed a series of cholera outbreaks) and the 1986 ouster of Haiti’s Jean-Claude Chevalier (amid the AIDS crisis) as examples of how epidemics foster political instability; and suggests that the disproportionate impact of cholera on the poor contributed to the radicalization of anarchist revolutionaries in 19th-century Europe. In some cases, Jenkins’s interpretations, including that the Black Death “in the long run actually improved the situation of those lower on the economic scale,” are debatable, and contradict claims he makes elsewhere in the book. Still, this is an accessible and well-informed assessment of what comes next. (Sept.)