Chantal Delsol's new book, "The Universal Twilight", has just been published by Éditions du Cerf (376 p., € 14.99).
LE FIGARO. - Almost three billion human beings are confined. Isn't this crisis we are experiencing the first universal crisis?
Chantal DELSOL. - The first global epidemic, certainly not, but the first that scares us so much. The Asian flu of 1957 had caused 2 million deaths and 15,000 (low estimate) in France. The Hong Kong flu in 1968-69 had caused 1 million deaths worldwide and 30,000 deaths in France, including 25,000 in December 1969 alone, in complete indifference. We should study our perception of the pandemic more than the pandemic itself.
Read also: Covid-19: "This collective test reveals the pre-existing fractures of the French archipelago"
That said, our era does not have the primacy of globalization, nor of diseases; when the plague or cholera struck our ancestors, these plagues came from far away. Diseases passed from Asia to Europe and the opposite with ease, even if it was slower than today.
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