The Atlantic The historian Kyle Harper on the history of plagues, the rise of anti-vaccination politics, and why measles is back in America. On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with reflections on President Donald Trump’s repeated delays to enforce the congressionally mandated TikTok ban. He explains how Trump’s pattern of ignoring laws, whether by inventing tariffs, bypassing Congress on spending, or granting de facto immunity to allies, erodes the foundation of our constitutional government.
Then Frum is joined by the historian Kyle Harper, author of Plagues Upon the Earth, for a conversation about infectious disease and the politics of vaccination. They trace humanity’s long struggle against killers like smallpox, polio, and measles, and the scientific breakthroughs that transformed life expectancy. Harper explains how mistrust, misinformation, and polarization have fueled a resurgence of measles in the 2020s, even after it had been eradicated in the United States. Harper and Frum also discuss what Rome can teach us about living with plagues, why public trust is essential to public health, and why the next pandemic will find us less prepared than we were for COVID-19.