093 - The Plague, by Albert Camus: Relevant As Ever During COVID-19

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

News, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.6 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

A special episode today as Dr. Josh Sharfstein discusses Albert Camus's The Plague with Dr. Mark Christian Thompson, chair of the English department at Johns Hopkins. The Plague, which was written in 1947, is immediately relevant to our experiences with COVID-19 and so much more. Thompson and Sharfstein discuss the book's relevance to current events including racial and social inequality. (Don't worry: You do not have to have read The Plague before listening to the podcast!)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
0:12.7	Our focus is the novel coronavirus.
0:15.2	I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department.
0:21.6	Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's
0:26.9	news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow.
0:30.5	If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhhhue.edu.
0:36.3	That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:42.8	Today, I speak with Professor Mark Christian Thompson, chair of the English department at Johns Hopkins.
0:49.6	Our topic is The Plague by Albert Camus, a book that is more than 50 years old and yet immediately
0:56.6	relevant to our experience with COVID-19 and much more.
1:01.4	In our discussion, I asked Professor Thompson about why this book hit so hard even today.
1:07.2	I also ask him about the role of literature to make sense of what's happening in these times.
1:13.6	Let's listen.
1:14.6	Professor Thompson, thank you so much for joining me. It's tremendous to have a chance to talk to
1:21.6	somebody who really understands and has taught the plague by Albert Camus. This is a story about a epidemic of
1:32.2	bubonic plague in Iran, Algeria, in the 1940s. And it is so relevant to today that the
1:42.2	sales are through the roof. I think it was like a thousand plus
1:47.0	percent increase in sales online of the book. And they're reading it makes so many things
1:54.3	about the coronavirus pandemic make sense to me. And so it's just great to talk to someone who knows us so well. And I just
2:03.6	want to start by asking, is this unusual? Has this book been quiet for a long time? Or do people find relevance in a lot of different things?
2:12.6	First, thank you for having me on. The book has been, has had a steady readership since its appearance in 1947,
2:22.9	spying and flowing, so to speak, with any health outbreak.
	...

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