The year 2020 has witnessed the most devastating pandemic in the past 100 years. At the time of writing more than 70 million people globally have been infected; the death toll is over one and a half million. The social, political, and economic impact of the pandemic has been tremendous, and its longer-term consequences are yet uncertain. Local governments and health international organizations dealt with and continue to deal with this unprecedented situation in various ways. Despite national differences in responses, the pandemic exposed in critical ways the intermingling of scientific and diplomatic matters. Moreover, it resulted in widespread criticism of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) handling of the crisis.

The history of science provides a unique perspective to investigate the roots of this inseparable connection between science and diplomacy in international responses to the pandemic. In this video, produced by scholars at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science (MPIWG) and with the support of an ERC Consolidator Grant (grant agreement No770548, HRP-IAEA) at the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, we unfold how diplomacy has become vital for global health, and how the WHO became a key player in health diplomacy.