ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the culture of risk in relation to what are rather loosely termed 'pandemics', as well as the idea of security with which both are intertwined. It shows that how the concept of the pandemic became steadily more important in national and international public health. The chapter argues that 'the pandemic' is a relatively recent idea and that it covers an enormous range of possibilities, from potentially cataclysmic mortality on the scale of 1918–19 to a disease like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which claimed fewer than a thousand lives. Risk analyses aim to determine the probability of diseases occurring in certain circumstances and their likely impact if risks are not mitigated. Pandemic disease threatened homeland security, too. The competitive pressures generated by globalization have even induced some states to turn pandemics to their advantage, using them to justify measures that evade international law or compromise civil liberties.
