Shortly after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, the United Nations issued an appeal for a pause in hostilities around the world. In this paper, Bruce C. Rashkow discusses how the pandemic has impacted U.N. peacekeeping operations in response to such conflicts and explores the ways in which peacekeeping forces have been, and will likely continue to be, hampered by the pandemic.  

Dina Temple-Raston and Harvey Rishikof’s paper explores how falsehoods and misinformation have affected the public’s response to pandemics—both past and present. It describes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s field manual on epidemiology, and discusses New York’s failure to follow the manual at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper also outlines the broad legal framework federal and state governments can use to communicate or enforce their powers in response to pandemics; and concludes by identifying unaddressed pandemic-related disinformation issues on social media platforms.