{"id":9433,"date":"2020-07-03T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2020-07-03T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/?p=9433"},"modified":"2020-07-03T17:18:41","modified_gmt":"2020-07-03T15:18:41","slug":"this-peculiar-epidemic-is-a-happiness-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/this-peculiar-epidemic-is-a-happiness-disease\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"This Peculiar Epidemic is a Happiness Disease…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a9 Presses universitaires de France<\/p><\/div>\n

In his book <\/span>Les maladies du bonheur<\/span><\/a> [Happiness diseases] published last March, <\/span>Hugues Lagrange<\/span><\/a>, an emeritus CNRS research director at the Observatory of Social Change (OSC) has tried to reflect about modernity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He has chosen to focus on the evolution of mental and behavioral diseases, which he considered to be emblematic of an individualised way of life \u2013 an essential mark of modernity. Written before the appearance of Covid-19, he has announced that <\/span>“future illnesses could once again bear the mark of collective responsibility, and, as a result, encourage a return to activities that are more conducive to psychological balance, if not meaning”<\/span><\/i>. Current events appear to have proven him right, at least in terms of collective responsibilities. Debates about the post-Covid world are only just beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Coronavirus Draws an Inverted Map<\/h4>\n

The dissemination and severity of the epidemic in Western countries is surprising in many ways. Fifty years ago, as antibiotic and vaccine use became widespread, it looked like the battle against mass infections had been won. The world of “Pasteurian” diseases seemed to be a thing of the past for Westerners: Ebola, Zika and Chikungunya were seen as exotic threats, but the current epidemic is reviving the collective terrors of the past \u2013 plague, cholera, typhus. Over the last thirty years, reports from the <\/span>Global Burden of Disease<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a World Health Organisation (WHO) research program that monitors global morbidity trends, have underscored a massive reduction in the load of communicable diseases in emerging countries, identical to that observed in Western countries at the beginning of the 20th century. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Thirty years ago, communicable diseases dominated the <\/span>nosographic <\/span>landscape in emerging countries<\/span>(1)<\/sup><\/a>An infectious disease is a disease caused by a microorganism and thus transferable to new individuals. It may or may not be transmissible. A non-communicable infectious disease can be attributable to toxins from food or the environment, such as tetanus. The GBD program\u2019s “communicable diseases” category includes infectious and parasitic diseases, particularly lower respiratory tract infections, diarrhea, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.<\/span><\/span>