Pascal Perrineau is a university professor at Sciences Po and a researcher at Cevipof
The political life of our democracies can be deeply affected by questions of public health and in particular the methods of managing epidemics.
Read also: "No, France is not going through the biggest health crisis in its history"
Recently, in the 1980s, the tainted blood affair and the fight against the HIV virus responsible for the AIDS epidemic had deeply shaken the state apparatus, the scientific world and the political world. In the 1990s, doctors in charge of blood establishments and a director general of health were sentenced to prison, three ministers were brought before the Court of Justice of the Republic and one was convicted.
At the start of the 20th century, in 1918 and 1919, the Spanish flu caused tens of millions of deaths worldwide (around 250,000 in France). The public health system was not up to the challenge after the war and the treatments were less sophisticated than those of today.
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