The Politics of Pandemics

It was supposed to be the shot that took over the world. Russia's Sputnik vaccine was registered earlier than almost all other competitors, and Moscow was one of the first cities to have a vaccinatio…

In 2021, Rosstat, the official statistics agency of Russia, announced that the country’s natural population, minus migration, declined by more than a million people. The main reason, unsurprisingly, …

In 1979, a secretive lab in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk accidentally released anthrax into the morning air, killing at least 67 people and countless other animals. The problem is, the Soviet Union …

Smallpox is a horrific disease, we know that. With its high mortality rate, permanent disfigurement, and endemic status in just about every country up to the 20th century, it is no wonder the disease…

The late 19th century brought in dramatic improvements in travel and communication. Now one can hear about news from across the European continent instantly, and travel hundreds of kilometers in a fe…

Trying something different. This is the start of a season where I look at Russia's historical relationship with diseases and outbreaks. Starting with Russia's track record of plague, from the black d…

Something a little different. We look at the fake news and conspiracies that Nigerians may have been inundated with during the pandemic, how distrust in their government breeds fertile ground for con…

When the Delta variant exploded in India in April 2021, many international observers were quick to point the finger at Prime Minister Nahendra Modi and his ruling party the BJP. Part of it is the gen…

They were the images that defined the deadly Delta wave for India in early 2021. Hundreds of funeral pyres, burning nonstop for days and weeks on end. There were so many them, the ashes of those lost…

You may have heard about Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele if you’re very online, because he seems like what happens if a crypto-bro becomes president of a country. He is famous for making Bitcoin le…

Turkmenistan has been compared frequently to North Korea in terms of its lack of press freedom and cult of personality around their leader, President Gurbenguly Berdimukhamedov. He built his reputati…

Thailand was supposed to have 91% of its vaccines manufactured by the company Siam Bioscience, a company owned by the King himself. An opposition leader criticized the company and the government for …

Over 30 million confirmed cases, and over 662 thousand deaths as of April 25, 2022. The cost of the pandemic has been extremely high in Brazil, as we have explored in the past 3 episodes. Today, we c…

Brazil’s relatively successful effort to vaccinate 75% of its population has been achieved largely despite Bolsonaro, not because of it. Not only has he been consistently against all measures against…

President Jair Bolsonaro rode down the thoroughfare on horseback that day, waving to his supporters as they chanted “Mi-to! Mi-to! Mi-to!” Myth, myth, myth. The COVID-19 pandemic is a myth, and accep…

Outside of the American president Trump, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is probably the most famous denialist president during the pandemic. Brash, authoritarian, and misogynist, he treated mitig…

The Philippines has been unlucky with disasters in the past few years, and COVID is no exception. Not only did they have among the worst infectivity and death rates in Southeast Asia, the Philippines…

In the Philippines, a botched vaccine rollout for dengue destroyed confidence in all vaccines when it was suspected that it make dengue worse for some people, not safer. And then, the worldwide measl…

At least 83 children died in Samoa in 2019 as a result of a devastating measles epidemic there. While the reason of the severity of the outbreak can be attributed to a tragic mistake shaking the nati…

This week we finish the story of Robert F Kennedy, connecting his Deadly Immunity Days to when he was comparing the COVID vaccines to a holocaust. In between we continue to discuss the slow buildup o…