Plagues and Their Aftermath: How Societies Recover from Pandemics
Brian Michael Jenkins, Melville House, 2022

The wide-ranging impacts of previous pandemics offer a number of clues to understanding the possible consequences of the (at time of press, ongoing) Covid-19 pandemic. What we can expect in the post-Covid world is the subject matter of Brian Michael Jenkins’ latest book, Plagues and Their Aftermath.

“Today’s pandemic will eventually fade – we are not sure how or when that will take place – but the normality we knew before will not return,” he writes. “What the post-pandemic world will look like is far from clear. Uncertainty may be its dominant feature.” That being the case, we should consider carefully the potential shifts in, and shocks to, our economic structures, political landscape, and even mass psychology, he says.

Jenkins is a senior advisor to the president of the RAND Corporation. He served in the US Army’s Special Forces during the war in Vietnam, before joining RAND in 1972. In 1996, President Clinton appointed Jenkins to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. He has also served as advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism. Furthermore, he is a frequent commentator on matters of global security and safety for media outlets including NBC, PBS, NPR and The Washington Post.

Jenkins draws on his vast experience to explore the possible long-term effects of the pandemic by examining the issues through eight lenses (including the human toll, the economic scars, the effects on society, the political repercussions, epidemics and armed conflict, terrorism and bioterrorism) before going on to pull all these themes together to look ahead – “Social capital is about relationships,” he writes. “Pandemics sever them.”

This fascinating analysis of the possible long-term effects of the pandemic will make compelling reading for resilience professionals looking to gain an insight into what the world will look like on the other side of this pandemic – whenever that may be.

---