申論題

According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes. In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease. A Harvard historian said something similar was happening with the current pandemic situation around the world: “As we have seen in the debate about opening the economy, many questions about the so-called end are determined not by medical and public health data but by sociopolitical processes.” Endings “are very, very messy,” said another historian. “Looking back, we have a weak narrative. For whom does the epidemic end, and who gets to say?”