The Politics of Epidemics, from Thucydides to Mary Shelley to COVID-19

Abstract

Nineteenth-century English novelist Mary Shelley wrote a dystopian novel about a global pandemic. From her reading about the connections between wars and plagues, and her personal exposure to wars in Europe and the loss of loved ones to infectious diseases, she came to a conclusion shared by other writers, from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides to analysts of the COVID-19 pandemic: politics is a root cause of deadly contagions.