How Do Pandemics End?
Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion
The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”: a story of infection that builds to a climax of widespread illness and woe, and then comes to a definitive end. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has defied this structure, failing to come to a complete stop. But this is not the first time in history that the social and cultural impacts of an epidemic have continued past the time that the state and much of society declare that it is over. Epidemics often …
