Endless infectious diseases. The case of syphilis for thinking about prophylactic mobilization-demobilization (20th-21st centuries)

The first phase of health mobilization in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic consisted of old social hygiene measures, such as travel restrictions, disinfection, and health certificates. These procedures, which play on human behavior, have proven effective against other infectious diseases in the past. Then, in a very short time, concerted and coordinated biomedical research produced vaccines raising a double hope: the rapid supplantation of this restrictive and expensive social hygiene system by a pharmaco-technical shortcut solution, and ultimately victory on the disease. A longer-term look shows us that the discovery of a magic bullet and socio-health demobilization in the face of infectious disease often go hand in hand. Indeed, a vaccine or an antibiotic often leads to the desire to get rid of the constraints of social hygiene. What forms does social demobilization take following the implementation of a pharmaco-technical solution (vaccine, medication or effective medical device), and what effects does it produce? More generally, what should we remember from such demobilization given the general observation of the difficulty of eradicating many infectious diseases, such as syphilis, plague, tuberculosis, measles. Based on the exemplary case of syphilis, this contribution seeks to analyze the determinants, structures and effects of health demobilization at the time of emerging from the crisis of an infectious disease pandemic.