ABSTRACT
According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes. In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease. An epidemic of fear can occur even without an epidemic of illness. Bubonic plague has struck several times in the past 2,000 years, killing millions of people and altering the course of history. The medieval pandemic began in 1331 in China. That pandemic ended, but the plague recurred. One of the worst outbreaks began in China in 1855 and spread worldwide, killing more than 12 million in India alone. The 1918 flu is held up today as the example of the ravages of a pandemic and the value of quarantines and social distancing.
