2020/11/01 by Howard Phillips · 1 citation
Medicine · Social Sciences · #2019-20 coronavirus outbreak #Biology #Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) #Development economics #Dominance (genetics) #Economics #Environmental ethics #Epistemology #Face (sociological concept) #Faith #Geography #History #Infectious disease (medical specialty) #Influenza pandemic #Medicine #Pandemic #Perspective (graphical) #Philosophy #Religion, Society, and Development #Social science #Sociology #Virology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s1740022820000315
openalex publication_date 2020/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Abstract Recognizing that serious pandemics call forth explanations which go to the heart of beliefs about why natural disasters occur, this article examines three pandemics over the last 200 years (cholera from 1817, Spanish influenza in 1918–19, and COVID-19) to establish whether such explanations have changed significantly over time and, if so, why. What it finds is that this period saw a watershed in which the dominance of traditional religious explanations declined in many parts of the world in the face of the ascent of explanations based on biomedical science. Tracking this momentous change across several faiths and regions globally makes it possible to put into telling historical perspective the stances taken by faith-based communities in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic.