Disease has never been merely a biological phenomenon. Instead, all illnesses—including COVID-19—are social problems for humans to solve.

Merlin Chowkwanyun
Merlin Chowkwanyun is a historian of public health and the Donald Gemson Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. He just finished a book entitled “All Health Politics Is Local,” and is working on a second one about health activism in the 1960s and 1970s.