Treating Covid-19 Like Past Pandemics Is Dangerous: Cultural Scripts and Plague Narratives

How can we use evidence, not predetermined cultural scripts based on past pandemics, to evaluate the current Covid-19 crisis? This is the question Dr. Merle Eisenberg raised in his recent Washington Post op-ed. When we talk about coronavirus, we often hear anecdotes from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Why do we focus so strongly on this particular historical example, and what do we miss out on when we ignore earlier histories, such as the Justinianic Plague (550-750 CE), which we will explore in detail in this episode. What are the differences between the way Covid is being handled compared to past pandemics? From the public’s social distancing measures to the rich people’s fleeing from crowded cities, are there any broad trends and patterns of behaviors during pandemics that consistently lasted throughout history? Are pandemics generally inequality-reducing (like how the Black Death ended Feudalism), or inequality-exacerbating (like today’s billionaires getting richer from Covid)? In this long discussion on the history of pandemics, Dr. Eisenberg and Tiger also explore topics on state capacity and resilience. For instance, the Ottoman Empire tested by a series of local droughts, shortages and famines during the 1560s–1580s, but the pre-industrial society was able to “contain the damage by shifting tax burdens from the affected areas, ordering fixed price sales of grain from other provinces, and in some cases arranging direct shipments from local or imperial granaries.” It provides an illustration to how societies throughout history develop anti-fragile political structures. Merle Eisenberg is a late antique, medieval, and environmental historian who investigates how people responded to end of the Roman Empire to shape their communities and create new medieval states. His research projects range from analyzing how rulers issued laws to build frameworks for their states to case studies of how climate change has affected pre-modern localities. He co-hosts the podcast “Infectious Historians” with Lee Mordechai. The podcast aims to provide a flavor of past disease outbreaks while also discussing some pressing present questions. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), Dr. Eisenberg is working on a project entitled “The Making of a Pandemic: Plague, Environment, and the End of Antiquity.” It examines the outbreak of the first great socio-ecological disaster in recorded human history: the first bubonic plague pandemic, commonly known as the Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750 CE).