Lessons Should Have Been Learned From Previous Pandemics

What have we learned from COVID-19, SARS, and MERS?

By Emma Collins

In December 2024, on the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness, UN-Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated: “The COVID-19 crisis may have passed, but a harsh lesson remains: The world is woefully unprepared for the next pandemic.”

Global pandemics are not a new phenomenon, with one of the first documented being the Black Death in the 1300s and, in more recent history, the Spanish Flu of 1918. So why were we not fully prepared to limit the impact of COVID-19?

Visit Lessons Should Have Been Learned From Previous Pandemics on Psychology Today to find out more about what we should have learnt from pandemics of the past!