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We have all heard the phrase, ‘history always repeats itself’. It means that past events will occur again. What makes us so sure it will happen again? Does this phrase actually mean this, or are we taking it at face value? Every generation believes it is going through something unprecedented. Almost none of them are. We call it such because we have forgotten the precedent. Here’s a precedent worth remembering: the first documented case of Influenza Flu widely known as Spanish flu occurred in March 1918. The first action taken by the government then was widespread information suppression and wartime censorship. The earlier deaths of Spanish flu were attributed to ordinary flu. Nearly the same happened during COVID-19. There were country leaders who downplayed the coronavirus, its effect on people and the world. Some went so far as to deny coronavirus or to label it as a “little flu”. Now, it could be said that these steps were taken to not create panic in the public but it is worth pointing out that without proper information provided to the public, the preventive measures required to stop the virus or the pandemic in general from spreading cannot be executed properly.

In the world of the internet, where every piece of information is available with a click, could it actually be possible that people forgot the pandemics that had happened before? The world has seen many pandemics. Let us recount from the 1800s, the first cholera pandemic started in 1817, the 7th still ongoing1, Spanish flu in 1918, Asian flu in 1957, AIDS/HIV from 1980s, swine flu in 2009 and COVID-19 in 2019. Therefore, to assume that we forgot the pandemics or their severity does not seem plausible. So why is it that every time there is an outbreak in the world the same pattern of how we react to it is followed almost all the time?

Philip Strong, the founder of sociological study of epidemic infectious diseases, in his key paper2 in 1990, stated that there are two pandemics at play whenever there is an outbreak, one: the biological outbreak and the other: the psychological one for which he used the term “epidemic psychology”. He reached this outcome by comparing the Black Death across Europe in the 14th century and HIV in the 1980s. The biological outbreak is something we are all familiar with, let’s delve deeper into the psychological outbreak.

He argued that there are two meanings of this term, the first one being how people react to epidemics and the other more interesting claim he made was that the reaction to the outbreak is spread across regions and populations the way a contagion does. He identified three distinct but intersecting psycho-social epidemics. The first one is the epidemic of fear (and suspicion) seen in panic-buying of toilet paper during COVID-19, thinking that bad air (miasma) & cats carried the Black Death plague, believing casual contact transmits AIDS/HIV and so many more have been there during every epidemic. The second is the epidemic of explanation (and moralization), humans are wired to always make sense of something we don’t understand, a justification to what is happening, the explanation to make sense of the situation, which is almost always wrapped in blame rather than a scientific reason. Often that blame is given to a marginalized group, it was gay men during AIDS, Jewish people during Black Death, and the pattern has always followed. The third and final one is the epidemic of action (proposed action), after the first two are done people demand action, and a solution that gives them hope. This comes in rational action such as vaccines or irrational actions such as home remedies.

Every pandemic sees the same reaction, in the same order. Is it because people don’t know any other method to deal with pandemics, or because each time they believe the situation to be different from the last? I don’t know, but I do know that the phrase history always repeats itself doesn’t work here. In pandemics it is us, humans who keep rehearsing the same script and still call it a surprise.

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