Ending an epidemic and the ‘new normal’

Posted by Admin on 23 September 2020

There is no simple return to the way things were in the aftermath of an epidemic: whatever normal is built in the aftermath is a new normal…much of what we accept as everyday reality in the future will only be seen as different to those who look backward to find the subtle scars where the new normal was sutured onto the fabric of social life that came before. –from ‘Ends of Epidemics’

A chapter co-written by a Centre academic and a member of the Centre’s advisory board has been published in a new collection about the coronavirus.

COVID-19 and World Order brings together experts from Johns Hopkins University and from across the world to examine the consequences and order of the post-COVID world. Edited by Hal Brands and Francis J. Gavin, the book contains “a series of essays, [where] international experts in public health and medicine, economics, international security, technology, ethics, democracy, and governance imagine a bold new vision for our future.”¹

Dora Vargha and Jeremy Greene, from the Centre’s Advisory Board, collaborated on the chapter “Ends of Epidemics”, which examines past epidemics to consider the possible endings for the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how we might define when the pandemic ends.

Other chapters in the collection consider bioethics, food security, global climate, economic policy, and Sino-American rivalries to name but a few.

The chapter – like the whole collection – is Open Access and can be found here: Ends of Epidemics.

¹https://muse.jhu.edu/book/77593, accessed 21/9/2020