Description
Book SynopsisThe Making of a Pandemic provides a systematic account of how societal and psychological forces shaped the Covid-19 pandemic. The first part focuses on how biological and societal factors interact to create a pandemic. The second part explores how characteristics of the American economy, the American approach to public health, and domestic and international inequality combined to prolong the pandemic, hamper mitigation efforts, and arouse opposition to cooperation with public health measures. The third part examines the psychological processes that led to resistance to efforts to mitigate the pandemic and linked the resistance to right-wing ideologies. The book concludes by looking at the limits of the technical and medical reforms others have proposed to protect us from repetitions of the Covid-19 disaster and by calling for a “deep confrontation” with the societal and psychological factors that created and shaped the pandemic.
Trade Review“Too many of us come to the topic of the pandemic both weary and entrenched in our views based on how it’s affected us and the people we know. Ehrenreich’s worldview isn’t well-hidden in his telling of events. If you share this view, the book will confirm what you believe, and it is chock full of additional data for your arsenal.” (Andy Slavitt, The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, July 29, 2022)
Table of ContentsChapter 1. INTRODUCTION.- Chapter 2. The Revenge of the Microbes.- Chapter 3. From Outbreak to Pandemic.- Chapter 4. Two Peas in a Pod: Pandemic and Global Warming.- Chapter 5. The Great Tradeoff: Public Health vs. the Economy.- Chapter 6. The Cost of Inequality.- Chapter 7. The Crooked Timber of Humanity.- Chapter 8. The Fourth Horseman.
