A pandemic is first of all a public health crisis. But when containing the infection requires a dramatic reduction in social contact, it rapidly becomes a workplace issue. Under normal circumstances, each day millions of people are concentrated in often… Continue Reading
Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train—namely, the human race—to activate the emergency brake. Walter Benjamin, 1940, Notes for “On… Continue Reading
It is tempting to see pandemics as unpredictable, cataclysmic incursions of nature into human society.1 Yet the outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) is anything but a “natural” phenomenon. Epidemics and pandemics happen in a social, political and economic context,… Continue Reading
The National Health Service (NHS) has barely been out of the news in recent months: the publication of the Francis Report on the events at the mid-Staffordshire hospital, which has now been put into administration; the measles outbreak in south… Continue Reading
Over the past 30 years—during all the time we have been told that class is dead—something strange has been happening in the study of health. A generation of epidemiologists who study patterns of death (mortality) and illnesses (morbidity) have been… Continue Reading