The Pattern Nobody Learns

From the Black Death to COVID-19, pandemics follow a disturbingly predictable cycle: denial, panic, blame, recovery, and forgetting. The 1918 flu taught us about social distancing. We forgot. SARS in 2003 taught us about zoonotic viruses. We forgot.

Each outbreak ends the same way. The crisis fades, attention drifts, and the forgetting begins before the next threat arrives. By the time a new pandemic hits, the people who lived through the last one have often retired or moved on, and the hard-won lessons leave with them.