New Pandemics, Old Politics w/ Alex De Waal

Alex De Waal joins PTO to talk about his new book, New Pandemics,
Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease. We discussed the
history of pandemic disease control, from the cholera outbreaks of
the 19th century to HIV/AIDS and the Covid19 crisis. We chatted why
the war on disease narrative is so unhelpful, how colonial era
vaccination programmes spread HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and why
the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 is so little discussed and
written about, despite its extraordinary death toll.