Virus on the March?: Military Model and Metaphor in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Abstract:What should a medical historian say when an army general calls, asking for advice on a vaccine rollout during a pandemic? For generations, we have heard warnings of the dangers of facile resort to war metaphors in dealing with epidemic disease. But what if public health originally derived from military models, from martial modes of defence against adversaries? What if militarisation is just business as usual? Increasingly, our response to modern crises, whether bushfires, floods, or pandemics, involves calling in the military. But the military metaphors and models that guide our interventions have varied over time and place. Some have worked better than others. Some have been less coercive than others. Medical historians thus can help counsel a sensitive general in search of the lessons of public health's pasts—even as they reflect critically on how such 'lessons' might themselves frame our thinking on the pandemic.