Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words John Fabian Witt American

Do a citizens guide. What did you mean by that . Guest i wanted to write a book that would be a first draft of the history of the law of epidemics with the year of co covid and beyond but that it would speak to an interested reader and not just a specialist in the field. There are lots of specialists, and i thought my value added mighvalueaddedmight be to trane in the field to readers that are just fascinated we never thought about the past epidemics that we are certainly thinking about them now, particularly what can we learn from them and what do we know when its going to be over. But i want to begin if i can at the end of your book and then pivot back at the end of the interview to ask more about this question. You write america has two histories, one far more appealing in the months and years ahead americans will hold the power between them. Lets hold them and hope they make the right choice. Now im going to be asking more about what that choice is but for now, i just want to know what is the ugly part of america and what is the appealing part . Guest thats what came out for me it is a dreadful history of discrimination around the disease against racial minorities and sexual minorities it goes way back it is much worse than in the White Communities and it really brings that history back and thats one central piece of the ugly side of the history. I could have written a book about the ugly side. I found so much material there. I also thought though that there was a contested optics of disease in our legal history and that there were junctures where disease had revealed certain inequities that hadnt been as clear before the disease rendered evident, just how poverty shapes so throughout the 19th century and the 20th, we see various forms of progressive reforms designed to lived up the people that are the poorest in the community in part because their Health Matters for everybody elses health. That holds a different kind of politics and we are hopeful. So those are in our past and i think they are in our present and im sure both of them will be in the future. I just dont know what the ratio will be. Host people of color, black americans, American Indians really suffer four times greater hospitalization and death casedeathcases from covide Nonhispanic White populations, so you are absolutely right. And in terms of the bigotry, we have a president now that is calling this the china virus. How does that play into the bigotry . Guest thats interesting. Theres certainly been moments around disease going back. Scapegoating. Long history of scapegoating. I think for example the fear around the bubonic plague which produced a targeted inoculation and quarantine orders aimed exclusively at the chinese population. Kind of an important case in our history and it reveals some of the ways in which the populations could be scapegoated in the process. They have various Community Interest in policy interest. Host out of my curiosity you are talking about where they quarantined in area but left out the chineseamerican population and the court struck it down. That was a local decision. Have we seen the president of the United States need into the bigotry in terms of the pandemic and kind of intersection and Public Health on the other . Guest i dont think we have. This particular feature the wilson administration, president Woodrow Wilson after world war ii faced a pandemic and wilson is thought to have escaped silence on the pandemic is thatt helped him mobilize troops and send troops abroad and its largely of state and local officials struggling with Infectious Diseases while they have a peripheral role at the border since world war ii guidance and things like that so this is the first pandemic where theyve gotten centrally involved it is a great legacy for the United States integrate u. S. Leadership in global health. But he pointed out something that i thought was interesting which was that reagan like in the way that you were saying never mentioned but he didnt get in the way. He didnt criticize science or undermine his Public Health agencies and so for this white house he thought it was unusual for a president to be so taking a stand against the big Public Health agencies, fda, cdc as we know with Anthony Fauci at the moment. Host guest part of it is the presidency has changed and in particular in the new deal and postworld war ii period so the rise of the modern presidency comes after the first great age of academics and pandemics. There is a wonderful quip in the field of Public Health the 19th century was followed by the 20th century and followed by the 19th century again. So the return of Infectious Diseases when we go back to the vaccines and treatments we are fighting with 19th century tools we all have a vaccine. We are locking down cities and we will get to the lock down later on. But let me start to drill down with it in your wonderful book. You talk about the Police Powers and they sound quite ominous. It conjures up the police state but that is in the case, tell us about that. Guest is a misunderstood of history and thereve been some i worked for a couple of decades now trying to tell the story of the police power. It doesnt have anything to do with anyone in uniform. Its not about the state troopers or the cops on the beat. It is essentially the basic fundamental power of the members. Thats what we are talking about is the authority of the local and State Government to make sure that the communities stay healthy and stay well and to look out for them helping to prosper. That is the police power, the constituent power of the collective selfgovernance and its at the heart of the Political Community is like ours. Often times we lost track of that over the course of history and one of the wonderful things in the research for the book which is encountered you go back to the 17th century but in the 18th and early 19th century a plethora of examples of instances where the State Governments organize themselves around looking after the health and welfare of people and epidemics central to the selfgovernance of the founding of the country. Its interesting about the police power because you start the book with an epigraph from cicero saying that it is the highest law of the land and in fact the government had no greater power than to protect the health of the citizens and theres a lot of things we can do for ourselves but we cant stop epidemic diseases we need a collective to do that. You make another point about this in the United States because you point out who holds the power its going to be important for us the federal government has enumerated powers lived in thlifted in the constid the police power lies with the states. So its one of the reasons we have seen the governors and the mayors emerge over the last six or seven months as the central actors in our pandemic as the police power goes. To make a difference from lots of other countries around the world. The federal government does have certain limited powers in terms of law renting at the border, things you talk about in the book and the eventually even to prevent the disease going from state to state. To easily imagine one and try to use its commerce power and spending power contrary to the history approach we dont have anything like that right now. The interesting thing here is theres a lot of discussion is american federalism partly to blame for what seems to be a fairly catastrophic failure per capita where we are certainly in the top five worst performing and some people have said its because weve got 50 jurisdictions plus hundreds of cities and counties and we cant function that way without the national leadership. Do you think that its hurt us or has it been the great grand of the state where we innovate . Its hard to say either way. The view is its powerfully shaped our response. It has a variety of powers that it could deploy to help shape the United States response and it could help solve collective action so in the acquisition of the ppe, one could imagine the government taking a role to resolve competitions that is a useful example. Having the capacity to have it differing rules ppe is a great example because of all of the listeners will remember competing for price and ventilators and things like that. There are federalist societies around the world that have performed very well like germany, and some not so very well. So, i guess that it is an open question. But through one of the things on a lot of peoples mind in fact the former fda commissioner recently did an oped where he called for the National Mask mandate and biden himself called for mask mandate. Does the president have the power to do that. Even if it was congress how could we get more uniformity nationally with other protective mechanisms that we are trying to promote . The biggest is the bully pulpit. The power of the president to send an example to model and to encourage, to exhort. Thats where the federal branch may have been his its largest power and it will be fine questions, complicated questions whether the congress has the authority across the board. Some of the proposals are narrow targeted and that mandate. With the new constraints i dont know if the Congress Wants to be in the business of enacting the mandate so for the standard it could be less. If we have clear and consistent messaging to the bully pulpit we have to see because if everybody masked up we could save tens of thousands and whether that will happen in the United States, i dont know. That kind of brings me to my next set of questions. We talk about the various traditions in the United States and in the colonial period right on through to all of the epidemics and now we talk about this fight between individual rights, Civil Liberties on the one hand and the common good and populationbased health on the other. Most of us think as you say in the book and go on to refute it historically, most of us think that america is a place of rugged individualism and now we look how we have responded as opposed to asian or European Countries but its are we rugged and are we now. Do they bring out the rugged individualism is a kind of suicide pact. And weve understood that quite powerfully in the 1790s the one in ten residents in philadelphia died of yellow fever. We have. 1 of the u. S. Population the diet of covid in the last six months. 10 of philadelphia died. I grew up in a neighborhood from philadelphia the had yellow fever. The individualism in a terrible way to deal with Infectious Disease and collective authority through the democratic process to help flourish is the alternative. Freedom comes from the government staying out. To give us all the resources, vaccines and the like. Its deeper than the rugged individuals idea. Host of course you know me and i totally agree with you but there are others that say they matter more. I wrote an autobiography in the journal of law and society law y entitled from the civil libertarian because i was the head of the british aclu and sat on the board of the aclu here and here i am pure common good as you seem to be. But there is a tension. How do we get the balance right. We do not want it to be a license for treading on liberty. Where, what can we draw that line on and how do we know that its the right line . Guest that is a great question, and i hope that there is a hopeful thread over the course of the 19th and into the 20th century on this point. We have a tradition of the courts reviewing Public Health decisions and insisting that they be rational, nondiscriminatory and proceed with the Democratic Authority of the legislature. That tradition is the way in which the judges oversee by no Public Health measures without letting the individual interfere with as you know well, the jacobson case, this is a case that still today stands with a preposition that the states can mandate the vaccinations in adult members of the american population. Whether those adults want to be vaccinated or not. Whether they have a medical reason for getting out of the vaccine or not. And that case which is written by a great injustice on the court, John Marshall in 1905. And in that case, the freedom depends on the capacity to live together and protect ourselves. But it doesnt stop there. There might be some situations where it would be arbitrary or especially cruel to administer. I understand that as the Supreme Court and the justice saying if we are going to stay involved, what we are going to oversee in the belief and managing that Vaccine Program in the future, not to block them or stop them or insert our preferences over the preferences of the city of cambridge or massachusetts, but instead to make sure the rationality and that equality are respective that is an important tradition. Host what do you think that its going to hold up. Jacobson had a hold up with a 63 majority on the Supreme Court with the justice on the court. Theres a lot of conservative scholars that have said well, you know, jacobson deference to the Public Health it doesnt fly particularly in relation to the religious liberty and Even Economic liberties. Im going to drill down to the religion and economics, but in the general sense now, whether or not jacobson is going to be robust in the next decades. It is a fools errand. A charter of civilization. Its like authorizing a military draft. States in the international sense if they want to survive they have to be able to do things required to survive and sometimes military drafts are required and similarly it has to be able to take the steps to mandate the vaccine. So, i think that jacobson is indispensable and i hope it will survive. I love your term charter of civilization and i agree entirely that we are going to survive this Healthy Nation that is kind of two ends of the book and. Where are we now . The Public Health, the history of Public Health is the way the literature tells the story is by talking about two different traditions. One is the tradition of the managed draw the line and boundaries behind the fences and the like which runs through all sorts of government responses to the epidemics in the past. The alternative tradition, sanitation, sanitary tradition, that is a tradition that imagines that the disease comes not from infection among people, but from environments. And that managing is a better way than quarantine. In the book i use this as somewhat synonymous with the authoritarian approaches on the one hand. And that runs through our history. What do you think of the lockdown. We saw in the pandemic the cities closing off, but i wonder if you could imagine that new york, los angeles, beijing, new delhi, london would be in absolutely lockdown in relation to the pandemic even with all of your experiences. Does that surprise you or did you think zero well that was going to happen . It took me by surprise and many members of my generation. I am born in the year in which the United States stops inoculating people whose thoughts are smallpox. I was born in february, 1972, so i have a smallpox inoculation and people at the end do not. People in my lifetime have, until now, its been easy to understand my lifetime is the period in which we have defeated disease. Of course those are paid attention like you knew the vaccine period is the period of the slow emergence and new emergence of the infections. So, many of my peers hadnt imagined we would be in this sort of lockdown situation. I guess historically, maybe we could have anticipated it. They it is the United States is a mixture tradition. We are partly sanitarian and partly quarantine. We have both of the threads running through our history. Relatively rarely and never anything like the travel lockdown that weve had. All of these things have converged in this moment. Host i want to drill down even more to the specific Public Health powers within those traditions and get your take on them. We talk a little bit about quarantine. We started with something that really boggles the imagination. But simply themselves of individuals or groups that have been exposed to disease go back centuries, dont they . For sure. It is one of the classic powers of government to control the bodies of people under its jurisdiction and so it delivers the real risk of abuse even dispensable to the self government. That might be our fundamental dilemma is indispensable or risky. That is true with the human collective living together is incredibly risky. We have to find a way to model through and also some terrible ones. I love the way that you explain that as basically as a part of a civilization we can use it but we need to use it and live together and in order to live together we need to keep each other safe. With the global and Public Health now for many decades and all of a sudden everybody is a Public Health expert and things we have been talking about for decades like testing, tracing, social separation, now they are in the common lexicon. So, Contact Tracing does go back in american history. We had aids, tuberculosis so what are the benefits and the risks now . Guest we are in an interesting important juncture in public Contact Tracing in the last halfcentury theres been a idea coming to the floor. It may be the best way among the White Communities<\/a> and it really brings that history back and thats one central piece of the ugly side of the history. I could have written a book about the ugly side. I found so much material there. I also thought though that there was a contested optics of disease in our legal history and that there were junctures where disease had revealed certain inequities that hadnt been as clear before the disease rendered evident, just how poverty shapes so throughout the 19th century and the 20th, we see various forms of progressive reforms designed to lived up the people that are the poorest in the community in part because their Health Matters<\/a> for everybody elses health. That holds a different kind of politics and we are hopeful. So those are in our past and i think they are in our present and im sure both of them will be in the future. I just dont know what the ratio will be. Host people of color, black americans, American Indians<\/a> really suffer four times greater hospitalization and death casedeathcases from covide Nonhispanic White<\/a> populations, so you are absolutely right. And in terms of the bigotry, we have a president now that is calling this the china virus. How does that play into the bigotry . Guest thats interesting. Theres certainly been moments around disease going back. Scapegoating. Long history of scapegoating. I think for example the fear around the bubonic plague which produced a targeted inoculation and quarantine orders aimed exclusively at the chinese population. Kind of an important case in our history and it reveals some of the ways in which the populations could be scapegoated in the process. They have various Community Interest<\/a> in policy interest. Host out of my curiosity you are talking about where they quarantined in area but left out the chineseamerican population and the court struck it down. That was a local decision. Have we seen the president of the United States<\/a> need into the bigotry in terms of the pandemic and kind of intersection and Public Health<\/a> on the other . Guest i dont think we have. This particular feature the wilson administration, president Woodrow Wilson<\/a> after world war ii faced a pandemic and wilson is thought to have escaped silence on the pandemic is thatt helped him mobilize troops and send troops abroad and its largely of state and local officials struggling with Infectious Diseases<\/a> while they have a peripheral role at the border since world war ii guidance and things like that so this is the first pandemic where theyve gotten centrally involved it is a great legacy for the United States<\/a> integrate u. S. Leadership in global health. But he pointed out something that i thought was interesting which was that reagan like in the way that you were saying never mentioned but he didnt get in the way. He didnt criticize science or undermine his Public Health<\/a> agencies and so for this white house he thought it was unusual for a president to be so taking a stand against the big Public Health<\/a> agencies, fda, cdc as we know with Anthony Fauci<\/a> at the moment. Host guest part of it is the presidency has changed and in particular in the new deal and postworld war ii period so the rise of the modern presidency comes after the first great age of academics and pandemics. There is a wonderful quip in the field of Public Health<\/a> the 19th century was followed by the 20th century and followed by the 19th century again. So the return of Infectious Diseases<\/a> when we go back to the vaccines and treatments we are fighting with 19th century tools we all have a vaccine. We are locking down cities and we will get to the lock down later on. But let me start to drill down with it in your wonderful book. You talk about the Police Powers<\/a> and they sound quite ominous. It conjures up the police state but that is in the case, tell us about that. Guest is a misunderstood of history and thereve been some i worked for a couple of decades now trying to tell the story of the police power. It doesnt have anything to do with anyone in uniform. Its not about the state troopers or the cops on the beat. It is essentially the basic fundamental power of the members. Thats what we are talking about is the authority of the local and State Government<\/a> to make sure that the communities stay healthy and stay well and to look out for them helping to prosper. That is the police power, the constituent power of the collective selfgovernance and its at the heart of the Political Community<\/a> is like ours. Often times we lost track of that over the course of history and one of the wonderful things in the research for the book which is encountered you go back to the 17th century but in the 18th and early 19th century a plethora of examples of instances where the State Government<\/a>s organize themselves around looking after the health and welfare of people and epidemics central to the selfgovernance of the founding of the country. Its interesting about the police power because you start the book with an epigraph from cicero saying that it is the highest law of the land and in fact the government had no greater power than to protect the health of the citizens and theres a lot of things we can do for ourselves but we cant stop epidemic diseases we need a collective to do that. You make another point about this in the United States<\/a> because you point out who holds the power its going to be important for us the federal government has enumerated powers lived in thlifted in the constid the police power lies with the states. So its one of the reasons we have seen the governors and the mayors emerge over the last six or seven months as the central actors in our pandemic as the police power goes. To make a difference from lots of other countries around the world. The federal government does have certain limited powers in terms of law renting at the border, things you talk about in the book and the eventually even to prevent the disease going from state to state. To easily imagine one and try to use its commerce power and spending power contrary to the history approach we dont have anything like that right now. The interesting thing here is theres a lot of discussion is american federalism partly to blame for what seems to be a fairly catastrophic failure per capita where we are certainly in the top five worst performing and some people have said its because weve got 50 jurisdictions plus hundreds of cities and counties and we cant function that way without the national leadership. Do you think that its hurt us or has it been the great grand of the state where we innovate . Its hard to say either way. The view is its powerfully shaped our response. It has a variety of powers that it could deploy to help shape the United States<\/a> response and it could help solve collective action so in the acquisition of the ppe, one could imagine the government taking a role to resolve competitions that is a useful example. Having the capacity to have it differing rules ppe is a great example because of all of the listeners will remember competing for price and ventilators and things like that. There are federalist societies around the world that have performed very well like germany, and some not so very well. So, i guess that it is an open question. But through one of the things on a lot of peoples mind in fact the former fda commissioner recently did an oped where he called for the National Mask<\/a> mandate and biden himself called for mask mandate. Does the president have the power to do that. Even if it was congress how could we get more uniformity nationally with other protective mechanisms that we are trying to promote . The biggest is the bully pulpit. The power of the president to send an example to model and to encourage, to exhort. Thats where the federal branch may have been his its largest power and it will be fine questions, complicated questions whether the congress has the authority across the board. Some of the proposals are narrow targeted and that mandate. With the new constraints i dont know if the Congress Wants<\/a> to be in the business of enacting the mandate so for the standard it could be less. If we have clear and consistent messaging to the bully pulpit we have to see because if everybody masked up we could save tens of thousands and whether that will happen in the United States<\/a>, i dont know. That kind of brings me to my next set of questions. We talk about the various traditions in the United States<\/a> and in the colonial period right on through to all of the epidemics and now we talk about this fight between individual rights, Civil Liberties<\/a> on the one hand and the common good and populationbased health on the other. Most of us think as you say in the book and go on to refute it historically, most of us think that america is a place of rugged individualism and now we look how we have responded as opposed to asian or European Countries<\/a> but its are we rugged and are we now. Do they bring out the rugged individualism is a kind of suicide pact. And weve understood that quite powerfully in the 1790s the one in ten residents in philadelphia died of yellow fever. We have. 1 of the u. S. Population the diet of covid in the last six months. 10 of philadelphia died. I grew up in a neighborhood from philadelphia the had yellow fever. The individualism in a terrible way to deal with Infectious Disease<\/a> and collective authority through the democratic process to help flourish is the alternative. Freedom comes from the government staying out. To give us all the resources, vaccines and the like. Its deeper than the rugged individuals idea. Host of course you know me and i totally agree with you but there are others that say they matter more. I wrote an autobiography in the journal of law and society law y entitled from the civil libertarian because i was the head of the british aclu and sat on the board of the aclu here and here i am pure common good as you seem to be. But there is a tension. How do we get the balance right. We do not want it to be a license for treading on liberty. Where, what can we draw that line on and how do we know that its the right line . Guest that is a great question, and i hope that there is a hopeful thread over the course of the 19th and into the 20th century on this point. We have a tradition of the courts reviewing Public Health<\/a> decisions and insisting that they be rational, nondiscriminatory and proceed with the Democratic Authority<\/a> of the legislature. That tradition is the way in which the judges oversee by no Public Health<\/a> measures without letting the individual interfere with as you know well, the jacobson case, this is a case that still today stands with a preposition that the states can mandate the vaccinations in adult members of the american population. Whether those adults want to be vaccinated or not. Whether they have a medical reason for getting out of the vaccine or not. And that case which is written by a great injustice on the court, John Marshall<\/a> in 1905. And in that case, the freedom depends on the capacity to live together and protect ourselves. But it doesnt stop there. There might be some situations where it would be arbitrary or especially cruel to administer. I understand that as the Supreme Court<\/a> and the justice saying if we are going to stay involved, what we are going to oversee in the belief and managing that Vaccine Program<\/a> in the future, not to block them or stop them or insert our preferences over the preferences of the city of cambridge or massachusetts, but instead to make sure the rationality and that equality are respective that is an important tradition. Host what do you think that its going to hold up. Jacobson had a hold up with a 63 majority on the Supreme Court<\/a> with the justice on the court. Theres a lot of conservative scholars that have said well, you know, jacobson deference to the Public Health<\/a> it doesnt fly particularly in relation to the religious liberty and Even Economic<\/a> liberties. Im going to drill down to the religion and economics, but in the general sense now, whether or not jacobson is going to be robust in the next decades. It is a fools errand. A charter of civilization. Its like authorizing a military draft. States in the international sense if they want to survive they have to be able to do things required to survive and sometimes military drafts are required and similarly it has to be able to take the steps to mandate the vaccine. So, i think that jacobson is indispensable and i hope it will survive. I love your term charter of civilization and i agree entirely that we are going to survive this Healthy Nation<\/a> that is kind of two ends of the book and. Where are we now . The Public Health<\/a>, the history of Public Health<\/a> is the way the literature tells the story is by talking about two different traditions. One is the tradition of the managed draw the line and boundaries behind the fences and the like which runs through all sorts of government responses to the epidemics in the past. The alternative tradition, sanitation, sanitary tradition, that is a tradition that imagines that the disease comes not from infection among people, but from environments. And that managing is a better way than quarantine. In the book i use this as somewhat synonymous with the authoritarian approaches on the one hand. And that runs through our history. What do you think of the lockdown. We saw in the pandemic the cities closing off, but i wonder if you could imagine that new york, los angeles, beijing, new delhi, london would be in absolutely lockdown in relation to the pandemic even with all of your experiences. Does that surprise you or did you think zero well that was going to happen . It took me by surprise and many members of my generation. I am born in the year in which the United States<\/a> stops inoculating people whose thoughts are smallpox. I was born in february, 1972, so i have a smallpox inoculation and people at the end do not. People in my lifetime have, until now, its been easy to understand my lifetime is the period in which we have defeated disease. Of course those are paid attention like you knew the vaccine period is the period of the slow emergence and new emergence of the infections. So, many of my peers hadnt imagined we would be in this sort of lockdown situation. I guess historically, maybe we could have anticipated it. They it is the United States<\/a> is a mixture tradition. We are partly sanitarian and partly quarantine. We have both of the threads running through our history. Relatively rarely and never anything like the travel lockdown that weve had. All of these things have converged in this moment. Host i want to drill down even more to the specific Public Health<\/a> powers within those traditions and get your take on them. We talk a little bit about quarantine. We started with something that really boggles the imagination. But simply themselves of individuals or groups that have been exposed to disease go back centuries, dont they . For sure. It is one of the classic powers of government to control the bodies of people under its jurisdiction and so it delivers the real risk of abuse even dispensable to the self government. That might be our fundamental dilemma is indispensable or risky. That is true with the human collective living together is incredibly risky. We have to find a way to model through and also some terrible ones. I love the way that you explain that as basically as a part of a civilization we can use it but we need to use it and live together and in order to live together we need to keep each other safe. With the global and Public Health<\/a> now for many decades and all of a sudden everybody is a Public Health<\/a> expert and things we have been talking about for decades like testing, tracing, social separation, now they are in the common lexicon. So, Contact Tracing<\/a> does go back in american history. We had aids, tuberculosis so what are the benefits and the risks now . Guest we are in an interesting important juncture in public Contact Tracing<\/a> in the last halfcentury theres been a idea coming to the floor. It may be the best way among the Public Health<\/a>. Its to ensure people who get sick know they will be cared for and we can learn about diseases and may be Civil Liberties<\/a> is good for Public Health<\/a>. The technologies are coming online and we are at the juncture they could turn out to be contingent. We couldnt attract people but now lets think about the cell phone and tracing, Contact Tracing<\/a> and surveillance we have available to us now. That means Contact Tracing<\/a> is new now we can do it through phone and that means we have the power to not only collective information but to store it. And i think that we have really complicated reactions to the scary potential of Contact Tracing<\/a>. In some ways it is oldfashioned but it has all sorts of features. I was glad you moved there. I was about to get into the electronic tracing ideas. But before i do that, its interesting the fact we are not doing a lot of electronic tracing. We are still doing 19th century, 20th century shoe leather Walking Around<\/a> and we are not doing that particularly well. But in the United States<\/a>, we havent adopted these kind of smart phone location apps in the way that china, taiwan, south korea, even in europe have used because we are worried about privacy. Why has america not an been raid more the technology of tracing, and should we . I think that its in part about forgetting about the value of the police power the same as old Contract Tracing<\/a> is to make the phone calls and do the work and that requires State Government<\/a>s that can bring on board that kind of state capacity. Weve got an extraordinary. We had a huge number that have been open to connect people to students who have tested positive and have been successful the last two months. We have that capacity in the public institutions, so one of the reasons is the value of the state capacity as they started doing on behalf. It certainly tells us we need a Public Health<\/a> infrastructure and how. Very quickly because we are running out of time and i have so many more questions talking about how the world has changed with all of the globalization and travel and things like that but one of the differences is now we have social media. We have all of these conspiracy theories. A whole range of things from the top of the government that sends conspiracy theories. What do we make of that and how do we deal with science and good Health Education<\/a> and literacy when we have all of this untruth swirling all around us so that part of america has a completely different set of facts than another part of america. There is some historical precedents for this. One of the things looking at the newspapers in new york city is the conviction by the democrats representing immigrants with my ancestors persuaded that Public Health<\/a> measures are stirring up democratic voters against republican sponsored Public Health<\/a> measures in new york city so, we see that going way back and its true thats also part of our history. That experiment they didnt treat. They know about that history and that makes it all the harder and for those theories it is the mistrust in government and in scientific expertise and we are at a really low moment for that to see how the vaccine rollout happens hopefully in the coming months and its going to be indispensable so we have to figure out how to reestablish. They famously did work to reestablish trust for the decade and it became a world respected institution based on atlanta and hopefully we can get back into the window. We have the trust in cbc and other Public Health<\/a> agencies that have plummeted and so i really do hope we can get back to that and if i were going to say one thing that separates the countries that have done well and badly with covid is adherence to science and trust we talk about the police power side let me talk a little bit about specific liberty first would start with religious liberty. The idea to vote for vaccine and religion to be exempted or have an exemption, should churches be exempt or from having to abide by the rules of congregation and lack of public gatherings of. These are things that have already come to the Supreme Court<\/a> twice and very narrow decisions signing with Public Health<\/a>. That might not have been in the future. How do we think about Public Health<\/a> and religious freedoms . It is a question surging to the floor and politics right now. Not just those two Supreme Court<\/a> cases but also Circuit Court<\/a> and federal courts of appeals so this is central not just in covid litigations but in the regulatory state more generally how to think about religious freedoms and i suppose that the puzzle here is properly illegal and unconstitutional and need to be able to apply to all sorts of different spheres of life, religion being one of those and viruses dont stop and so some are concerned. Religious freedom could be a new obstacle to the establishment and the vital Public Health<\/a> measures what religion we have been to have. So its hard to forget the future historians but certainly this is going to be one of the central places and sites. Most members of the public dont realize that this term could be revisiting this idea of the general applicability and whether they apply in the religious context, so its very real. Weve only got a little bit of time left. Less than ten minutes. So, i want to talk about something that i think is perhaps the most important part of your book but also the most important part of the pandemic which is equity and equality so we start out this interview talking about the disproportionate impact on people of color so we might say that it was the tuberculosis and Everything Else<\/a> and the Infectious Disease<\/a> on the social level. Everybody in this together. Some of us like in yale and others like the poor innercity neighborhood or with a lot of essential workers and people with preexisting conditions the inseparability of questions about health on the one hand and Economic Justice<\/a> on the other its becoming clear people also defined freedom as keeping the government away but it turns out that in many ways finding ways to get access to the resource by healthcare and also through the government is indispensable to letting us be free and that is one of the things that this pandemic has made salient all the more. We are going to need to be able to distribute it and to administer it. And it shouldnt matter whether people have the ability to pay for the vaccine. We all have a stake in getting everyone vaccine. We often times all have a stake in making sure people have their health look after. The thought here is so far helpful one. So maybe we can feel a little better at these equities and be able to address. We certainly cant address some of them in the coming weeks and months. Maybe we will be able to do a little better. The prevailing narrative in the United States<\/a> and globally frankly the any quality and an equity people being left behind and you mentioned after the affordable healthcare but its also the deeper social economic factors of income and housing and things like that that have been quite striking. And we also mentioned vaccines. Lets say the cost isnt that very year but we have a scarcity of the vaccines which we will at the beginning. Should the priority be given on the basis of race . It should be given on the basis of the priority and essential workers and the most vulnerable. I think that it would end up with a disproportionate effect to identify the communities. I just want to start with those that have been most affected and reverse engineer the triage thats likely in many areas that produce in the good sense the communities of color. So, my last question before i get to the final question is [inaudible] we see those as the point of view but also the observer, the intellectual observer. I referenced the protest that way we see terrible inequities becoming more salient than any moment in my lifetime. It is a one in a thousand have died because of covid. That kind of statistic is a stunning statistic that helps us see some of the terrible inequalities and i hope that they will see that in the book and we can see going back time and time again it has exacerbated and highlighted those and at the same time shown some possible ways. A. We are in the middle of a president ial election and one of the points is whether or not the United States<\/a> still has Structural Racism<\/a> and how do we get beyond that and see a boiling cauldron of pandemics where everybod everybodys lifes grouped by this virus. At the same time we have an enormous income and social inequalities and we also have we are reckoning with Racial Justice<\/a> in an election year. This kind of cauldron in the United States<\/a> there is a smallpox epidemic racing through the contraband camps so we have these kind of injunctions before one slightly hopeful peace is our version of it of the protests and the voices in a way that before we just couldnt. On the new agenda they couldnt. Its a hard thing but you just have to do it. A lot of discussion has been can you carry on a political rally or protest the pandemic. Theres a long history of conjunction theres a huge outbreak of influenza but also the race riots it is a dreadful year for the africanamerican communities. Weve seen these injunctions before. Social unrest and all sorts of complicated ways it both helps produce the opportunities and civil war, world war and it helps and then generates the response. Professor snowdens great idea is that epidemic could send social structures go together. You have to study is understand them and hes absolutely right. And getting to my last question which is after the great pandemic, we had something people said what happened after that. It wasnt world war i that was going on at the same time but we did have the roaring 20s. Then we had the great depressi depression. I began this interview thanking you and loved it. We began by saying there were two paths and i hope we choose the wise path. What is the one we should choose and does history teach us anything and will we become a Community Together<\/a> . What else do we have to predict the future rather than the past. There is no choice. There are inspiring pieces and be of crucial members of the generation the early Supreme Court<\/a>, the greatest legal minds of the 19th century organized themselves around the idea that it was indispensable the states and local communities have the power to respond rationally to the crisis but it was epidemic in early america. Not new to our history so we could be inspired by the fact that our forerunners did respond and found all sorts of valuable state power to do so. On the other hand, we can do it better in the sense that we can learn from their mistakes and see the inequities they built into their responses and i think that theres a hopeful path we can see the end equities and get them illuminated by the Public Health<\/a> crisis and address them. So thats my hopeful thought. Im telling you as an optimist, not reflecting on the actual state of they were all pretty terrible but lets hope. What a wonderful interview and we are all trying to figure this out. It is the past with the present and the future. Thank you so much. Is a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you. This program is available as a podcast. All after words programs can be viewed on the website at booktv. 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