With the covid pandemic, public health burst onto the scene. Everything that makes societies tick suddenly began to revolve around health issues.
To grasp this experience, the lecture takes a detour, starting with an ordinary, little-known scene, and then, over the course of the lessons, examines the various issues at stake through a series of case studies on three continents. La vérité du chiffre invites us to reflect on the way in which quantification represents social and health facts. Epistemic Frontiers examines the confrontation between lay and scholarly conceptions of disease, based on competing legitimacies. Conspiracy theories reveal reactions of distrust towards authorized knowledge and official powers. Ethical crises reveal mechanisms for violating rights and misappropriating the commons for the benefit of private interests. As for investigations into precarious exile and prison ordeals, they enable us to apprehend, through two categories - migrants and prisoners - the genealogy and sociology of the administration of vulnerable populations.
Each of these issues sheds a unique light on the covid pandemic, enabling us to understand it differently. At the end of these anthropological excursions, public health can be seen simultaneously as a mirror held up to society and a reflection of it.