Locating the Diseased Body

If we consider the last few decades as part of the long twenty-first century, it can easily be termed as the age of pandemics. The twentieth century closed with the AIDS epidemic and the twenty-first began with the SARS virus that was identified in 2003. The AIDS, the northern world decided began in Africa and the first known infections of SARS, it was speculated, appeared in Guangdong Province of China in 2002, so the world heaved a sigh of relief because it could now be logged as the Chinese pandemic. The SARS was followed by the swine-origin H1N1 in 2009, and this time it was Mexico. The world was caught up in H5N1 from Asia and then came H1N1. The trope that pandemics only affect poor countries lived on and the global North again remained under-prepared but happy that such diseases did not touch them. The diseased body was happily located elsewhere. It will not be remiss to say that this hunt for “Patient Zero,” which today is more a metaphor than a real person, has been a recurring phenomenon in the last few hunts for the pandemic. In this paper I seek to address a few questions: (1) In any pandemic in the long 2020 why has finding the diseased body become such a crucial aspect of disease management? Is it more to do with ordering of society or rather fear of social disorder? (2) How did the idea of locating the diseased body come to exert such a strong influence on popular imagination? (3) What are the essential elements in this hunt for a diseased body? And why pandemics always lead to this hunt? (4) Is this a recent phenomenon? If not, then why has it acquired such significance in this present times?