The Prejudice, Politicization, and 'Pariah-tization' Influencing Pandemic Policy and Law: Stereotype as the Driver of Public Health Response

Abstract

As the panic incident to COVID-19 subsides, various responses have come under attack. One was the misfocused targeting of the elderly; a second was ignoring the susceptibility of young. As a result. draconian lockdowns were instituted in nursing homes - a feature that exacerbated deaths in both the old, and youngsters were not monitored/masked/ or vaccinated, thereby increasing transmission and upping the incidence of disease in that group. Hard science did not support these conclusions or responses.
Similarly, legal and public health responses in American to the cholera and yellow fever epidemics of the 1800s was not driven by science, as I show here. Instead, this Article demonstrates that a particular “pariah” was blamed for each of various epidemics in the 1800s. The pariah or “other” of choice was chosen by political expedience (e.g., the desire to control immigration) and prejudice (e.g., antisemitism and anti-Black). Laws, Legislation, and policy ignored science and proven public health practice which demonstrated that poor sewage drove the epidemics. Nevertheless, American policy makers and public health officials implemented quarantine (mistakenly believing the disease was contagious) or ordered disinfection (called sanitation) believing that disease was transmitted by “miasma” or “bad air. The cohort identified as most susceptible and requiring quarantine or disinfection was predicated on stereotypes feeding “misinformed science”: the intemperate, the poor, the Black, the immigrant, and the Jew – all considered dirty or filth breeders.
I suggest that a self-protective (and unconscious) desire by policy makers- generally younger and middle-classed – to artificially cocoon themselves from disease by creating an “other” who is believed to be more susceptible seeded erroneous laws and policies of the 1800s. I suggest that same tendency was at play in “Pariah-tizing” the elderly in COVID. I further suggest that awareness of this tendency by exploring past practices is the best prevention from future missteps.

Note:

Funding Information: I received no funding for this article.

Conflict of Interests: I declare no conflicts of interest.

Keywords: covid, cholera, law, legislation, public health, pandemic, policy, response, pariah-tization, yellow fever, immigration, antisemitism, race

JEL Classification: I10, I14, I18, I12, K32, K37