A historical narrative on pandemic Patterns of behavior and belief

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jglobfaul.9.1.0021
• Published date: 30 March 2022
• Date: 30 March 2022
• Pages: 21-32
• Author: Gazala Khan,Sazzad Parwez
• Subject Matter: pandemic,COVID-19 pandemic,historical narratives,literature

Journal of Global Faultlines, 2022

Vol. 9, No. 1, 21–32.

21

A historical narrative on pandemic Patterns of behavior

and belief

Gazala Khan1 and Sazzad Parwez2

Abstract

Given the fractured reality of pandemic, the people’s history needs to be written and

understood. This paper provides a historical narrative on pandemics based on a literature

review and makes inferences from the past and present. This narrative also reflects the

ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the world and India. The narratives provide a novel

perspective to understand public health practices in a global context. It suggests the need

for a more synchronized health response in pandemics while highlighting the uncertainties

and challenges of using historical diseases as comparisons for the COVID-19 pandemic. The

emphasis is on learning from historical evidence and ascertaining how these retrospective

diagnoses help make arguments about health and illness in our present moment.

Keywords: pandemic; COVID-19 pandemic; historical narratives; literature

Introduction

The advent of COVID-19, the first global pandemic with extensive print, electronic and social

media documentation providing both information and misinformation, makes a historical

narrative necessary. With the uncertainty of the pandemic, people struggle to effectively

communicate in lockdown, using artworks, songs, cartoons, and online messages to deal with

the loneliness of isolation. Yuval Noah Harari (2021) points out that social distancing is inevi-

table during the crisis as the virus spreads by exploiting human instincts of socialization and

contact, especially in hard times. The virus is a mindless microbe; we humans can analyze

and change how we behave.

Over the millennia, pandemics/epidemics have been killers on a massive scale. Even

today, nearly half a million people are victims of diseases such as malaria every year (Hoffman

and Richie, 2003). The plague of Justinian struck in the 6th century and killed perhaps half

the global population at that time (Harbeck et al., 2013). The ‘Black Death’ of the 14th cen-

tury may have killed up to 200 million people (Cohn, 2008). Smallpox may have caused the

death of as many as 300 million people in the 20th century alone (Riedel, 2005).

Pestilence, illness, plague, pandemic, malady, sleeping sickness, and disease: all these

terms trace the same path towards a single journey, that is, death. “And Darkness and Decay

and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all” (Poe, 1842). The years 2020 and 2021 in

the Gregorian calendar were marked by catastrophic repercussions of the new coronavirus.

The only universal thing is microbes. In the 21st century, the world where human beings

reigned is taken over by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-COV-2), also known as

coronavirus or COVID-19, claiming thousands of lives every day. The virus does not make any

difference between people of different races, nations, ethnicity, colour, caste, and creed.

In history, the world has known and experienced several maladies that hampered the

whole ecosystem and led to stark differences in varied populations, thus altering the demog-

raphy. In history, whenever a pestilence surfaced in the form of the pandemic, it ravaged the

human world; be it Athens Plague, Justinian Plague, Black Death, the Great Plague, Spanish

influenza, cholera pandemics, or COVID-19, all have altered the demographic ratio.

DOI:10.13169/jglobfaul.9.1.0021