Fear and panic at the borders: outbreak anxieties in the United States from the colonies to COVID-19

The aim of this chapter is to use the history of infectious disease epidemics in the United States to show both continuities - in the construction of social boundaries between the sick and the not-yet-sick, in the uses of epidemic crises for institutional capacity building -and change. More or less fear and panic are constant companions of epidemic disease, but the meanings attributed to these emotions-rational or irrational, random or the result of bad management, the province of ignorant masses or sensible elites - shift in response to larger contextual factors: the state of scientific knowledge and the infrastructure for disease treatment, control and prevention; how, when, by whom, and with what constraints the public is kept informed as the epidemic plays out; and the authority and legitimacy of the media and of those charged with crisis management by virtue of their public health and/or political positions. As we write in the era of COVID-19, each of these elements is playing out in real time. We offer this chapter in the spirit of George Santayana's immortal words: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.