In this chapter, I discuss the politics of pandemics, from the history of the plague state to the development of the COVID-19 state in 2020. I discuss the rise of various biopolitical methods of population and infection control, before moving on to discuss how various ancient techniques were rediscovered and altered based on technological and organizational development with the COVID-19 pandemic. This also entails covering the politics of COVID-19 in the Nordic context, with a particular focus on the Norwegian and Swedish cases, in order to identify gaps in the literature and clarify the empirical as well as theoretical contribution. The chapter ends by a theory-review, and some introductory theory-building. I explore literature based on Foucault as well as Mann’s Weberian work, so to clarify how state power has been studied, how these literatures complement one another and how I intend to bring these lessons forth.