PLAGUES IN THE NATION

An expert legal review of the American government's response to epidemics through history - with larger conclusions about COVID-19, and reforms needed for the next plague.

A narrative history of America through major outbreaks of contagious disease, from Yellow Fever to the Spanish flu, from HIV/AIDs to Ebola, framed by an account of our missteps with COVID-19. Polly Price examines how law and government affected the outcome of the epidemics that struck America - and how those outbreaks have in turn shaped our government. Using the story of the efforts to contain COVID-19 and looking back on the panic-inducing arrival of Ebola on American soil (both of which the author followed from the front lines), Price presents a fascinating history that has never been fully explored, and draws larger conclusions about the holes in our governmental and legal response procedures. This book examines how our country learned - and failed to learn - how to address the panic and chaos that are the companions of contagion, what policies failed America again and again and begins to lay out what we must do better next time. Polly J. Price, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, is also Professor of Global Health in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. A public health law scholar as well as a legal historian and citizenship and immigration law expert, she has published, lectured, and taught widely about immigration and citizenship, public health law and regulatory policy, federalism, property rights, and the judiciary. In 2017, Price was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a distinction awarded to a small group of scholars, journalists, and authors whose work addresses the most pressing issues of our day and serves to strengthen US democracy. Price's scholarship has been recognized most recently with the 2019 Hughes-Gossett Award from the US Supreme Court Historical Society, and in 2016 she was invited to deliver the Leon Silverman Lecture at the US Supreme Court. Previous awards include a 2013 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for work in public-health law and the Ben F. Johnson Faculty Excellence Award, presented triennially by Emory Law.