A digression on pandemic public health policies

Abstract

In modern times, the pan (from the Greek, meaning “all”) demics (from the Greek, meaning “the people”) characteristic of a phenomenon is associated exclusively with the spread, on a global scale, of a (necessarily) infectious disease. In fact, this shows, in the most evident way, that the health status of each individual may (crucially) depends on the one with whom she/he has some kind of contact. This plain evidence that the health status can be seen as a public good cannot be ignored in health policies, which, being public, must, in fact, be for all people, i.e. pandemics. The alleged dilemma, obviously based on too short time horizons, between health and the economy, becomes incomprehensible in a globalized world, in which economic relations are also ‘pandemic’. From this point of view, the nationalisms that (will) characterize some public health policies are incomprehensibly ignorant of the interactions between health and the economy that are, by nature, ‘pandemic’. These are the directions that we took in our digression on health policies, which, being truly public, must themselves assume a ‘pandemic’ characteristic.