{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"<iframe src=\"https://embed.acast.com/$/9a03fe9e-1ff0-4dcc-b3f6-50bd1f016ea4/c9ef4773-d70a-4999-906f-daa144eb3435?\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"700\" height=\"250\"></iframe>","title":"Dan Snow on Covid History (and Cummings)","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/6195701f2eacc3a36070252a/619570bccb3c660012e3cf94.jpg?height=200","description":"<p>David and Helen talk to the historian Dan Snow about the parallels for the current crisis.&nbsp;Is it like past pandemics or is it more like a war?&nbsp;What has it exposed about the weak spots in our societies?&nbsp;And what have we learned about the role of political leadership?&nbsp;Plus we explore the value of Churchill comparisons on the 80th anniversary of his great WWII speeches and we dip our toes into the Cummings affair.</p><p><br></p><p>Talking Points:&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>Lockdown, quarantine, social distancing have been borrowed from the past.</p><ul><li>This is not as great a mortality or morbidity event as past pandemics, at least yet.</li><li>But we are not as separate from past human experience as many people would like to believe.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Perhaps the better comparisons are the forgotten ones: 1957 and 1968.</p><ul><li>The other main comparison is the Spanish flu, which was far more lethal.</li><li>Politicians treated these past flus as background events. This crisis is all consuming.</li><li>Most people in 1919 died at home. Health infrastructure changes the conversation.</li><li>The politics of healthcare are central to this—especially because governments decided that protecting health systems would be the priority.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>This event has exacerbated existing faultlines, but also, things that we’ve assumed were facts of life have been completely halted.</p><ul><li>Can things go back to ‘normal’?</li><li>There may be more homeworking, but will there be less air travel?</li><li>Pandemics expose weak spots in societies. Western societies are old and increasingly unhealthy. This is a disease that targets the old and the unhealthy.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Are future historians more likely to see this as an economic crisis than as a health crisis?</p><ul><li>We’ve been in monetary unknown territory since the early 1970s.&nbsp;</li><li>When we look back at the economic narrative, we’re going to be looking at a much longer story about what happens when the world’s central banks allow polities to live with much more debt outside of wartime.&nbsp;</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Are we now health-fiscal states?&nbsp;</p><ul><li>The state, in Hobbesian terms, exists to keep people alive. In the modern world, that means both health and external security.</li><li>We should expect the state to show itself for what it is in both war and health crises.</li><li>The health side becomes more important in aging societies.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Johnson is trapped between what the pandemic looks like it requires with regards to Cummings and his government’s ability to deal with Brexit.</p><ul><li>Johnson does not want to face the next phase of Brexit negotiations without Cummings.</li><li>For Johnson to sacrifice Cummings now would be existential for his government; that’s why he doesn’t want to do it.&nbsp;</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Mentioned in this Episode:</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://www.historyhit.com/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">History Hit</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2020/231-from-cholera-to-coronavirus\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">TP with Richard Evans on cholera</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j2ty\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">John Oxford on the Spanish Flu for BBC</a></li><li><a href=\"https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691169446/democracy-for-realists\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Democracy for Realists</em> by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2020/245-europe-blows-up\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Our most recent conversation with Adam Tooze</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p>Further Learning:&nbsp;</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31201-0/fulltext\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">More on the 1957 and 1968 pandemics</a></li><li><a...","author_name":"David Runciman and Catherine Carr"}