Lessons from history

Abstract

Approximately 6 months ago, as COVID-19 became the focus of our day-to-day life, it was constantly referred to as unprecedented. In fact, this word has been used to describe almost everything that has subsequently occurred. Unprecedented of course means ‘without previous instance, never before known or experienced’. At the same time the general thrust of many headlines in the media was to cast SARS-CoV-2 as a killer virus wreaking havoc on an undeserving and unsuspecting population.