Past disease outbreaks improved the way we lived. If governments are smart, COVID-19 could do the same.
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Carolyn Whitzman, L?Université d?Ottawa/University of Ottawa
It?s an uncomfortable but inescapable historic fact that great pandemics often bring about social reform.
Historians note that the most fatal iteration of the bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, from 1347 to 1351 resulted in improved working and living conditions for low-income workers of that era, which in turn led to healthier diets and better resistance to later recurrences of the disease.
In 2014, construction workers in London found skeletons suspected to belong to victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century.
AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis
The 1854 cholera epidemic in London allowed pioneering epidemiologist John Snow to establish the link between clean drinking water and the disease, which eventually led to government infrastructure investments in water and sanitation.
The influenza epidemic of 1918-19, like the bubonic plague and cholera, was a ?crowd disease? that fed on social inequalities. People living in overcrowded homes or in the trenches of the First World War who were poorly fed and cold were more susceptible.
In the aftermath of the pandemic 100 years ago, many countries recognized the importance of universal health care and better housing. In the United States, where the male workforce was decimated due to the absence of ?social distancing,? wo...