Great question. I wanted to write a book that would be a first draft of the history of the long epidemics for the year of covid and beyond but that would speak to an interested reader, not just a specialist in the field. There are lots of specialists in the field and i thought my valueadded might be to translate from specialists in the field to reader who are fascinate by the blizzard of legal issues that werent really on most peoples anda until now. We never thought about pt epidemics but think about them now, particularly what we can learn from them andhat do we know when its going to be over. I want to begin, john, if i can, really at the end of your book, and then ill pivot book at the end of our interview to ask you more but this question. You write, america has two histories, one ugly,he other far more appealing. In the months and years ahead, americans will hold the power between them. Lets hope the make the right choice. Im going to be asking you more but what that right choice is at the end of our interview, but for now, i just want to know what is the ugly part of america and what is the appealing part . A great question. Thats what came out for me in these historical materials, the two histies. Lets start with the ugly part. Get rig to it. The ugly part i a ready dreadful history of discrimination around disease against racial minorities, against sexual minities, against the poor. People without political clout have found themselves on the losing side of lal responses topidemics. You think but the racia disparate effects of covid, the way its affted poor communities and community of color much wor than the white houstons. Bring that histo back. So thats one central piece of the ugly size of the history. I could have written a book that was just but the ugly side. I really found so much material there. I also thoht, though, there was a contestedolitics of disease in our leg history, and that the were junctures where disease has revealed certain inequities that happened in had not been as car before disease rendered evidence just how perty shapes various communities. Throughout the 19th century and the 20th we see various forms of progressive reform designed to lift um people who are the poorest in the community, because their healt matters for everybodylses health and that vision of solidarity holds in it a different kind of politics polia more hopeful legal approach. So both histories are in our past, and i think theyre in our present and im sure both of them will be in our future. Just know the ratio. Thats interesting. Youre right, peoplef color, black americans, American Indian lat teen already toughing from the cases than the whiteopulation so youre right there and in terms of the bigotry, win we have a president now that is calling this the wuhan virus the china virus. How does that play into the bigotry. Theres certainly been moments for demagoguery around disease. Going back. A scapegoating. I think for example, of the fear around bubonic plague at the turn of 20th center San Francisco, producing quarantine orders aimed at the chinese population. I know that. Imrtant case in our history, and reveals some of the ways in which particular populations could be scapegoated in the pcess to advance communities interests and politicians interests. Just out of my curiosity, you are talking but the case in San Francisco where they kinder an area ofan francisco but left out only applied to the chineseamerican population, courts struck it down saying it set an evil eye and unequal hand. That was aocal decision. Hey w seen a president of the United States feed into the bigotry in terms of a pandemic and the kind of intersection between scapegoating countries, peoples, on the one hand, and Public Health on the other . I dont think we have. Its always dangerous for a historian to say there isnt a good precedence, all resonances with the past. This particular feature i dont know we have seen as much. The wilson administration, president woodrow wilson, after world war ii, faced a pandemic, the influenza pandemic of 19181919 and will will son had a state silence on the pandemic. In part helped him mobilize troops and send troops abrood without talking about it. There was a lot of action at the state and local level, and the history is largely a history of state and local officials struggling with Infectious Disease while the federal the feds stay out or have a peripheral role, bordered with guidance and things like that. So this is the first pandemic i think where a president has gotten centrally involved, the first huge pandemic in history. I was on a pel the other day, the were talking but another great epidemic, the aids epidemic, which is a pandemic and stilloing on. Andhis is something who was in the Bush White House and started themergency program f a. I. D. S. Which is a great legy for the out and great u. S. Leadersh in Global Health. But he pnted out something that i thought was really interesting, which is that reagan during aids, lik wilson in the way you are saying, never mentioned aids. Didnt get in the way. He didnt criticize science. Didnt castigate or undermine the Public Health agencies. So for this white house, versus the bush administration, he thought it was really unusual for a president to be so taking a stand against the big Public Health agencies, fda centers for disease cdc, tony fauci. Part is the presidency has changed in American History. So dramatically in the 20th center in the new deal and post world war ii period. The rise of the modern presidency comes in some sense after the first great age of epidemics and pandemics in American History. Thats a wonderful quip in your field, the field of Public Health, that the 19th century was followed by the 20th, was followed by the northeast 19th century again. The emergence of new ones, has put 21st century president s in a 19th century setting and thats a new phenomenon. What a great point. If youre were really fighting at the moment until we get the vaccine and some really good treatment. We are really fighting with 19th tools. Were quarantining, were Contact Tracing, we dont have a vaccine. We are locking down cities, and ill get to lockdowns a bit late are on. Let me start now, to drill down a little bit in your wonderful book. You talk but the Police Powers, and Police Powers sound really quite ominous, conjures up a police state. You point out thats not the case. Is that right . Tell us about that. The police power i think is really a misunderstood piece of American History and there have been some historians, i work for a coue of decades now, trying to tell the real story of the Police Powers. The police power doesnt hav anything to do with anyone in uniform. Its not about the ste troopers on the cops on the beat. Its essentially the basic fundamental power of the collectivity toook out for meers. The authority of local and state governments to make sure that their communitiestay healthy and stay well and to look out for them and help them to prosper. Thats the police power. It the constituent power of collective selfgovernment and its at the heart of political communities like ours. Often times we have lost track of that i think over the course of history, and onef the wonderful things about doing the research for this book was just encount iring in the good into the 1st century but in the 18th and early 19th century, plethora of examples of instances where state governments organized themselves around looking after the health and welfare of people in epidemics. Thats the central selfgovernment at the founding of the country. Its interesting about the Police Powers because you start the book with an epigraph from cicero saying health is the highest law of the land, and that does suggest to me what you said, which is that government has no greater power or duty than to protect the health and security of our citizens in a theory of democracy is that we a lot of things we can do for ourselves but quintessentially we cant stop epidemic diseases. We need a collective to do that. So police power is important. You make another important point about the police power in the United States specifically. You point out who holds that power primarily. Tell us about that because its going to be really important for us americans and the public to understand who is in charge in th pandemic . Ure right. One of the really peculiar feates of american constitutional structure is that the federal government is usually said n to have police power. The fedal government has enumerated powers specifically listed in the u. S. Constitution and t police power lies with the states, and subordinate for them local governments. So one of the reasons we have seen governors and mayors emerge over the last six, seven months as central actors in our pandemic. The police power goes to the states. Its different that make us differen from a lot of other countries around the world. It does if the federal government does have certain limited powers in terms of quarantine at the border, things you talk about in the book, and potentially even to prevent a disease from going from state to state but havent really used that very much. Jump in there. One could easily imagine a federal government much more ambitious than that and trying to use it commerce power or spending power to have a much more contrary to the history approach. We dont have anything like that now, and the neither president ial candidate right now is proposing to do any such thing. The biden needs to get the National Mask mandate and ill get to that. The interesting thing here is theres a lot of discussion, is american federalism partly to blame for what seems to be a fairly catastrophic failure by the out, per capita, where certainly in the top five worst performing countries inauguration inarguably in the top two. People say this is because we have other 5 jurisdictions and hundreds of cities and counties and sheriffs and we cant function that way without a national leadership. Do you think federalism has hurt us or has it been the great brandeis laboratory of the states where we innovate . I thi its hard to say either way. The historians view is to say it has powerful my shaped our response the rope i say its hard to say either way is the federal government has a variety of powers it could demoney very in veriyful ways to help shape the united s states response to the pandemic. It could help solve collective tion problems when states are peculiar poorly situated to responsible. In the acquition of ppe. One could imane the federal governnt taking a role there so the results competition resolv competition month the states. Thats a uful example. In a mont of epidemic or pandemic there wille regional variation so to have the capacity to have reginally differing rules is useful and whether you do that from theop or the botm, i think probably there are pluses and minuses and im not the best to make that judgment. Ppe is a great example because as all of our listenerred will rember re have had states competing for price to buy ppe and ventilars and things like that, and that seemed too be so counterproductive. There are federalist societies around the world that have performed very well, like germany, and some not so well. So, i guess it is an open question, but one of the things thats on the top of a lot of peoples mind, in fact the former fda commissioner recently did an oped where he called for a National Mask mandate, bide him has called for a National Mask mandate. I wrote an article in the journal of american medical association, i said hold on. Does the president have the power to do that . So this leads to a couple of things. Its the president or must it be congress in and secondly even if it was congress, do the commerce powers justify how could we get more uniformity National Family particularly in preventive mechanisms were trying to promote . My sense is the president s biggest capacity is a bully pulpit, the power of the president to set an example to model, to encourage, to exhort thats where the federal executive branch i think may have its largest power. There will be fine questions, nice questions, complicated questions lawyer talk hard questions whether the congress has the authority item pose a mask mandate across the board. My sense already is that some of the proposals are narrow targeted mask mandates, in federal facilities, mandates in interstate transportation, plates where the federal government has obvious authority according to traditional constitutional standards. Wh the i step back and say i think tre are political constraints that will stop a National Mask mandate before we get to legal constraints. I just ono that Congress Wants to b in the business of facting a National Mask mandate when probably that kind of rule can be done pretty effectively at the state level is my own inclination. Federal government should set a good standard and then that could be left to states. Maybe if we had clear and consistent messaging from the top about masks, the bully pulpit as you say, might be just the trike. Have to see because a lot of people have thought if everybody masked up we could save tens of thousands of deaths, whether that will happen in the out i dont know. That kind of brings me to my next set of questions. In the you talk but various traditions in the United States, in our history, from the colonial period, right on through all of the epidemics and now to covid19, and you talk about the kind of. Tug a real fight between individual rights, Civil Liberties on the one hand, and the common good and populationbased health on the other, and this most of us think, as you say in the back and then go on to refute historically, most of us think that america is a place of rugged individualism, and it does seem that way now when we look at how we have responded to covid19 as opposed to, say, Asian Countries or ouran ones. European ones. Is that true and are we rugged dividualists in our history and are we now . Ruses bring out that in fact rugged individualism is a kind of suicide pact. In our history the founders of the country understood that. Really quite powerfully. In the 190s the one in ten resident of philadelphia died o yell know yellow fever. 10 ve of philadelphia die i drew up in a number where the federal governments evacuation place from philadelphia inhe 1790s durin yellow fever so i drew up with this i some sense. Rugged individualism is a terrible w to deal with Infectious Disease, and collecti authority through democratic processes, to help communities flouris the alternative. One way to thi is we have had a myth in theountry that freedom comes from the government staying out. In moments of epidemics, freedom comes from figuring out way to work colleively through the government to give us all the resources, vaccine, and the likethat willelp us flourish, and that tradition runs deep through American History. As the deeper than rugged individualism idea. But i of course you know me, and that speaks to my heart. I totally agree with you. Bu there are others that say that Civil Liberties matter more. I actually wrote an autobiography in the journal of law and society entitle from a civil libertarian to a san tarean san sanitarian. Theres a tensi here. How do we get the balance right . Because you dont wan Public Health to be a lions to trodding on liberty. A license to trod on liberty. How do we know its the right line . A great question. And i think theres a hopeful thre in American Court cases over the course of the 19th and 20th on this honest. We have tradition of courts reviewing publicealth decisions andnsisting they be rational and nondiscriminatory and they proceed with the Democratic Authority of the legislature and that tradition has been a way in whichudges have overseen really vital Public Health measures to prevented epidemics machine almighty the damage without ever letting the supposed individual rights of the rugged individual to interfere wit or block vital puic Health Measures that support to the freedom of all of us and that tradition comes our strongly. One of my favorite cases is a case that you know well, the jacobson case hoping you would mention that case. This is a case that still today stands for the proposition that states can mandate vaccinations in adult members of the american populatn. Whether those adults want to be vaccinated or not. Whether the adults have medical reason for getting o of in the veepr not. And that case was just decided its written by grea justice on u. S. Supremeourt, John Marshal Harlan in 1905. And that case announces our freedom depended on our capacity to liv together a to protect ourselves from diseases. But it dsnt stop there you know this. It doesn stop there it observes there might be some situations where it would be arbitrary or capriciousr especially cruel to administer a vaccine. I understand that as the Supreme Court in and Justice Harlan saying well staynvolved. We are going to overseend police and manage vacne programs in the future, not to block them, not stop them, not to incertain our preferenc over the prefer repses of the city of cambridge or the state of massachusetts, but instead t make sure that rationality and equality are respected. I think thats really glorious and important tradition. Do you think its going to hold up . Iean, in jacobson going to hold up with a 63 conservative majority on the Supreme Court with Justice Barrett on the court . A lot of conservative scholars saying jacobsons deference to Public Health doesnt fly particularly in relation to your religious liberties and Even Economic liberties. Im going to drill down into the religion and economic but just a general sense now, whether or not jacobson is going to be robust in this next decade. You know, i think predicting how nine people will behave is a fools errand. Ill say it this way. Jacobson is a charter of civilization. Its a little bit like authorizing a military draft. States that want to survive dish mean states in the international sense, nation state. If they want to survive they have to do things that are required to respond to emergency, and sometimes military drafts are required and a welldone military draft might have a narrow Conscientious Objector position but judges are in a good position to manage that question and similarly a nation state that wants to survive a pandemic has to take the steps to mandate vaccines. So i think jacobson is indispensable to our survival. I love your term, charter of civilization. I think thats i agree entirely that were going to surve as a civilized, save, healthy nation, we have to as a collective protect each other and the common good and no better example of that is a epidemic response. You have actually separate chapte on each of these in the book but the socalled quarantineist and sanitaryist state. What did you mean by that and if thats a te kind of two ends of a book end . Where are we now . Its great question. The Public Health the history of Public Health is the literature tells the story is by talking about two different traditions. One is lets start with the quarantineist tradition. The tradition of harsh quarantines that manage and police bodies, draw lines and boundaries, restrict sick people behind fences and the like. And that is the quarantineist tradition which runs through all sorts of government responses to epidemics in the past. The alternative tradition, the sanitationist or sanitaryist tradition imagining that disease doesnt come from infolk from people but from environments and managing their environments and improving the environment is a better way than quarantinism, to respond to disease. I use in the book quarantinism and sanitationism or san tearannism is synonymous with and that dichotomy runs through our history, through european history and all over the world. What do you think about lockdowns and in looking at those traditions . We certainly saw particularly in the great influenza pandemic, cities closing off. Can you ever major new york, los angeles, beijing, delhi, london, would be absolutely locked down in relation to a pandemic . Even with all of your experience with yellow fever and smallpox . Does that surprise you or did you think, oh, well, that was going to happen . It took me by surprise. Think many members of my generation. Im born in the year in which thUnited States stopped knock leiting inocuting people for smallpox. Born in february 1972 and i have smallpox inocution swirl but people bn at the end of the year do. No my lifetime until now has been easy to understand my lifetime as a period in which we defeated diseases. Those who were pages hike you know this the same period of the slow emergence or various Infectious Diseases. Maintain of my peers didnt think we would be in lockdown situation. Historically would key have anticipated it. The ited states as aixed tradition. Partly sanitarists and partly quarantinist. We have both threads running through our history, relatively rarely and will never anything like the travel lockdownhat we have had. We never had the kind of Transportation Technology w have now during a moment of epidemic so all these things have converged in this moment. I want to drill down even more to specific Public Health powers within those two traditions. And just get your take on them. Talked about quarantine and we started with the unusual case of quarantine, the mass quarantine, closing down big cities, countries, really something that boggles the imagination but quarantines themselves just simply individuals or groups that have been exposed to disease go back centuries, dont they . Yes, for sure. Quarantine is actually one of the classic powers of government, to control the bodies of people under its jurisdiction in order to maintain the health. Th power comes with huge risks. The power is awesome,nd so delivers the real risk of abuse, even as it is indispensable to our government. The dilemma is power indispensable and incredibly risky which is true of human collective living together is incredibly risky and indispensable. Its what we have. No other choice. So we have to find a way to muddle through. Id like to think that history has some good examples of muddling through and also some terrible ones. Thats great. I love the way you explain that. Basically its quarantine is part as a civilization. We can abuse it and we can but we need it and we need to live together, and in order to live together, we need to keep each other safe. So, quarantine goes back centuries. What about Contact Tracing . Its interesting somebody that has worked in public and Global Health now for many decades that all of a sudden everybody is a Public Health expert and things that we have been talking about for decades, like testing, tracing, these things social separation, these things have been now theyre in the common lexicon, i never thought i would see Contact Tracing goes back in American History with sexually transmitted diseases,ed a aids, tb, what did we learn from previous ctact tracing and what is their risks and benefits. Were at an interesting and important juncture in the history of Contact Tracing and Public Health. For the last half century there is an been idea coming to the fore chills that Civil Liberties and Public Health mht run together. Thankfully maybe the best way to promote Public Health it to lock things down, its to ensure that peoe who get sic know theyll be cared for, allows them to come forward, identify themselves, we can learn about disees, maybe Civil Liberties is good forublic health. T new technologies are coming online, and we aret a juncture that it could be that idea of a synthesis of Civil Liberties and Public Health can be a particular anytime our history, we couldnt track people but now let think but that cellphone, tracin Contact Trace and surveillance technologies we have available to us now, and that means Contact Tracing is new now. Not just a matter of sending out people by foot to figure out who was near whom. Now w can do it through phones, and thateans we have the power to not only collect this information and store it, and i thin well see americans have really complicat reaction to the scary potential of Contact Tracing in its new form its very oldfashioned butth the but the new form has scary features. If was going to get into the electronic tryings idea. Tracing idea. Its interesting the fact that were not doing a lot of electronic tracing. Were still doing 19th century, 20th century shoe and leather, walking around, and were not doing that particularly well. But in the United States, we havent adopted these kind of smartphone location apps the way china, taiwan, south korea, and even in europe, have used, because were worried about privacy, we want to make it voluntary but if its voluntary it wont work. We also have genetic tracing so we can kind of trace based upon genetic features of particular ral strains. So why is america not embraced more the technology of tracing and should we . Well, we have had i think its in part beaut forgetting about the value of the police power. What oldfashioned Contact Tracing is, is about personal power, its about building up the capacity of the state to have the human beings to make the phone calls to do the work, to have the shoe leather costs of going around and finding and tracking and tracing, and that requires people, requires state governments that can bring onboard that kind of state capacity. Im lucky to enough to teach aft Yale University and we brought students back this fall and we have an extraordinarily effective so far can i knock on wood so far successful. Its october 26th. Lets hope this keeps working. But we have had a huge number of Contact Tracers who have been able to connect people to students who when studented have had positive and been extraordinary effort weapon dont have that kind of capacity in our Public Institutions. So one of the things thats pandemic is present thing United States if with the value of state capacity, Public Institutions can do what our richest private institutions have started doing on behalf of their members. So we can it certainly tells us need to have a stronger Public Health infrastructure. Open to the idea how we embrace technology. Very, very quickly because were run out of time. So many more question is want to ask you. Speaking of technology, you talked about how the world has changed and flu and yellow fever with the flu and mobilation and travel. Now we have social media. We have all of these conspiracy theories around covid19, vaccines, a whole range of things, a lot of disinformation om the top of govnment, that sends con fans conspires theories. What do we make of sene how do we deal with science and good Health Education and Health Literacy when we have all of this frankly untruth swirling around us, so that part of mrs. Had to completely different set of facts than another part of america. Theres some historical precedence for this, and so one of the things when looking at cholera era newspapers in new york city, is a conviction by the democrats representing irish immigrants, my an city ancestors in new york persuade that Public Health measures indian immigrant and stirring up democratic voter against republican sponsored Public Health measures in new york city. So, we see that going way back. Of course its also true that Public Health authorities have sometimes lied to people. Thats also part of our history. One of the ugly threads we started the program with was the racism in Public Health and the infamous tuskegee experiments the which africanamerican men were experimented on to see what the course of syphilis would be, asymptomatic syphilis in their bodies. And just to remind viewer, that experiment, they had effective treatments and didnt treat the africanamericans. Just dreadful. Americans kw about that history, and tt makes it all thearder to combat conspiracy theories and lies in the present, and the onl thing, the only substitute i think for random conspiracy theories is trust in government and trust in scientific expertise and wre at a low moment, how the veep rollou happens hopefully in the coming months and trust is going to be indispensable. So we have to figure o how to reestablish the trust. The disease crowell krol did work to establish trusts for decades, became a world respected institution, based in atlanta, and the trust its developed was quite important and vital. Hopefully we can get back to that. I hope so. Just seems to the trust in the cdc andther Public Health agencies is plummeted, and so i really do hope we can get back to that. I think thats if i were going say one thi that separates the countries thats have done well and badly, with covid, is adherence to science and trust in sciencend public heth. The United States has not done well there. We talked about the police power side and we talked about the tradeoffs with privacy and liberty. Let me jus talk a little b get you to talk little bit about specic liberties that i think will be very important with covid, have been very important with covid, and also with the new Supreme Court. T start with religious liberty. The idea that should for for vaccines should religions by exememptioned. Should churches be exempt from having to abide by the rule of congregation and lack of public gatherin. Things that have already come to Supreme Court twice and very narrow 54ecisions with berts siding with Public Health, that mig not happen in the fute. How do we think about the tradeoff between Public Health and religious freedoms . Its a question that is surging t the forne our politi right now. We have not just the two Supreme Court cases but also Circuit Court cases and to federal courts of appeals. This is central. And not just central in covid litigation. Its become central in the regulatory state more generally. Its not a covid problem. Its a regulatory state problem. How to think. Religious freedom and the puzzle here is on the one hand religious discrimination is properly illegal and unconstitutional, and on the other hand rule of general application need be able to apply to all sorts of different spheres of life, religion being one of this fears and viruses dont stop at churchhouse doors and so the challenge for the legal system is to try to strike this balance and i know that some are concern that religious freedom could be a new obstacle to the establishment of really vital publicity Health Measures for the reason that viruses dont care what religion we happen to have, and so its hard to predict. Future historians should never predict the future but this is one of the in the central places for us having this fight, is that yeah, religious pre freedom. Mees member of the american upon dont realize this term in the Supreme Court with Justice Barrett on it, there will be could be revisiting the idea of laws of general an applicability and where they apply in religious context. This is very real and very immediate, and. Intent and important, and urgent. Only have athlete time left. Less than ten minutes. Want to talk put something that i think is about the most important part of your book and the most important part of the covid pandemic, which is equity and equality. You started out with interview talking about disproportionate impact on people of color. We like to sea, always said with tuberculosis and everything else, basely ineffect shoes defense is a social leveler, everybody is in tote. But are stay in some of us, like at yale, have with reality and others, like in a poor inner city neighborhood or with a lot of essential works and people with preexisting conditions, have a very different reality. Whats to the pandemic tell us pout equality and equity and what can we learn from past pandemics and what should we be doing to prepare for more just world Going Forward . Its a really important question. One thing that we see in the pandemic is the inseparate ability of questions pout Public Health and the questions of economic justice. Abeen incredibly clear that acss to healthcare is a vital part of Human Flourishing and freedom and that challenges some of americans traditional con seconds of what free conception of freedom. People define it as keeping the government away but it turns out many ways fining ways to get access to resourc, like healthcare, often times through the government, i is indispensable to letti us be free and thats one thing that this pandemic has made salient. When a vaccine is oine we need to be able to distribute it and shount matter whether people have the abilityo p for the ccine. In fact we all have a stake in getting everyone a veeps. In Public Health qstions we often times all have a stake in mang sure that people have their health looked after. So i guess the thought here is so far a hopeful one ive shared, eve despite the miseries of the pandemic maybe we can see a little better the gling inequities and maybe dress them. Have to address some of them in theourse of the comg weeks and months, and maybe we can do a little better. I sawalways thoughtven before covid that the prevailing narrative in the out and globally, frankly, was a narrative of inequality and inequity, people being left behind, and you mentioned access the affordable healthcare and its the deeper social, economic factors, of income and employment, housing, things like that, have really been quite striking and causing the inequities that we have got now. You also mentioned vaccines. Should, for example, when we roll out vaccines apart from the cost, lets say the cost isnt the barrier but a scarcity of vaccine which we will at the beginning. Should priority be given onhe basis of race. Race exclusively, i i think priority should be based on vulnerable and essential workers and the most vulnerable. Does that include race . I thi it would end up dispro producing a disproportionate racial effect. If we identifiedhe communes i just want to start with the identifying the communities most affected and reverse engineer the triaging rules from that. We know because the statistics that is highly likely in many areas, to produce a Vaccine Program that would target in the good sense communities of color. So, my last question before i get to my really final question ishis. Its really i think significant and meaningful that the two major social upheavals in the last year in 2020 have been covid, but also George Floyd Murder and the protests about raal injustice in the United States. Do you see those as eirely from an historians where point of view and also an observer, intellectual observer, are thieves related or totally separate . And irtheyre related, how . I reference the protests at the vy end. I think theyre connected. We have in the way in which we see terrible inequities becoming more salient than at any moment in my lifetime, through covid. We its a one in a thousand afrinamericans have died because of covid. That kind of statistic is just a stunning statist that helps us see better some o the really terrible inequalityn America Society right now and i hope readers of the book will see that in the book. We can see going back the time and time again disease and our response to disease has exacerbated and highlighted those inequalities and at the same time shown some possible ways forward. That would be better paths. I think wein the middle of a president ial election, and one of the big debating points is whether or not the United States still has structural racism, and how do we get beyond that structure racism so we see a boiling caldron of pandemics where everybodys life is ripped by the microscopic virus, at the same time you have enormous income and social inequality and also have were wreck coming with racial justice. Wreck reckoning with racial justice. Have we seen this before, this kind of racl caldron in the United States. One mht think of the elecon of 1864. Theres smallpox epidemic in 1864 racing through the contraband camps, camps recently freed enslaved people who are hind union detachments. So we have had these kind of con junctures before. One slightly hopeful piece is that in our version of it, more people have voice, and so were able to see protests and hear voices in a way in 1864 we couldnt. Were grappling with things now. People have been able to put issues on the agenda that they couldnt before and thats a good thing. Its a hard thing for a democracy but its a vital thing. Have to do it. One of the things that we have seen a lot of social protests, and we have political rallies, and a lot of discussion has been can you carry on a political rally in an election season or can you protest an injustice in the midst of a pandemic . Is it safe . Is it . Well, i mean i guess you want to talk to a Public Health history, not a historian. There is a long history of con junctures. Political coronavirus and academies, 19181919 cease a human outbreak of influence should and lynchings and we have seen these con junk tours before , social unrest, connected to vice and all sort of complicated ways for bothelps to produce the opportunities for virus and civil wars, world war 1, and then social unrest helps to generates responses. Theres a word historian professor ens great yesterday is epidemics and social structures go together. m getting to my last question. Ill preface it by this. After the great influential pandemic, we had something that people say what happened after that . It one world war 1 because that was going on at the same time. With did have the roaring 20s. People got back, they socialized and then we had the great depression. So, what is our future now . I began this interview and thank you, you have been so eloquent so amazing in so many ways. Ive loved it but we began by saying there were two paths, and then you hope we choose the wise path. What is the path we should choose . And does history teach us anything . Will we become a community knitted together by this or torn asunder. Historians in the future are never a great mix. On the other hand what else do we have torepredict the future than the past . There no choice. There are really inspiring piec of our history. We have crucial members of the founding generation of the early u. S. Supreme court,he greatest legal minds of the 19th 19th century, organizing themselves around the idea that it was indisexpensable that states have theuthority to respond to public halve and Infectious Disease crisis. Infectious disease was epidemic in early amerinot news. He can b inspired by the fact our forerunners did respond to disease and found all sorts of valuable ste power to do so. On the other hand, we can do it better. In the sense that we can lea from their mistakes,nd see the inequiti they built into their responses and i think theres a hopeful path out of this, where we c see the inequities that get illume paymented by human being health cris and address them, too. Thats my hopeful thought. Maybe jus be more temperment al im an optimist, not reflecting on t actual state of the world. There are pretty terrible paths that could easily tive dystopia paths. Lets hope for your opt mick optimistic pant. What wonderful interview, what wonderful book, american contain johns contagions, i were ail trying to figure this out and have member like you reflect on the past, present and fewer, its a pleasure. Thank you so much. Take care. The program is a available at a podcast. Awful after words programs can be viewed on or website, booktv. Org. Tonight in primetime, Georgetown University International Affairs professor charles looks back at American Foreign policy and isolationism. Then its the 7th annual kirkus prize. Also coming up on our Author Interview program, after words, political scientist debra stone argues that numbers arent objective. Adam discusses the 1986 Nuclear Disaster in ukraine and Judith Butler talks put nonviolence, targeting at 7 00 p. M. Eastern and consult your Program Guide for more information or visit booktv. Org. Heres a look at some Publishing Industry news. Former president barack obama released the first of his twopart memoir thats week. The book putted toy a Promised Land totals 768 pages and covers his early critical career, road to the white house and part of his first time. The public pressurer, crunch printed 34000000 copies for north america and an additional 2. 5 million for the international market. Publishers weekly spoke to editors, agents and other publishing executives about a potential president ial memoir by President Trump many suggest he would seek an advance to that rivals the that president obama and first lady received. In other news, New York Times White House Correspondent mage haberman is righting a book on her 20 years of covering President Trump. The book will be wished by Penguin Press and available in early 2022. Also in the news, several of americas largest publishers reported sales gains for the Third Quarter of the year ending september 30th. Simon simon and Schuster Shaw increase and Harper Collins saw a 13 jump in scales and James Patterson was the best selling author of the last decade with 84 million print and ebooks sold. His sales were higher than stephen king, and john gresham combined and were one in ten becomes in the thriller onramps booktv will bring you new programming and publishing news. Wash our past programs at booktv. Org. As soon as, create bid american table Cable Television companies brought by your television provider. Now a couple of programs from at the recent virtual brooklyn book festival in new york. First, at look at the past and future of technology, followed by an author discussion on the potential longterm effects covid19 will have on society. And then a conversation on multiethnic representation in publishing. And then ill begin now on booktv on cspan2
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.