At What Price?

The renowned medical historian C. E. Rosenberg describes epidemics as dramas that unfold, with remarkable consistency, in three acts. The first features denial, not so much because of a failure of imagination as because epidemics always represent a threat to our interests. Merchants fear for the loss of trade, politicians fear for their electoral prospects, governors for their capacity to manage, and all of us for our customary ways of living. But this first act inevitably ends with reality intruding, as sickness and death penetrate our reluctance to see. The second act, then, is the negotiation of our private and public responses as we reconcile competing values, interests, and ways of seeing to impose some sort of order on the threats. The final act, when containment has been achieved, often ends with a whimper, though evidence suggests we may be permanently changed.

Beyond immediate health concerns, epidemics may simultaneously make visible and upend the...