When the present can help refine interpretations of the past: covid-19 in real time and the historiography of epidemics

These notes address the proliferation of discourses with improvised, uninformed, apocalyptic and voluntarist approaches. They emphasize issues such as the widespread ignorance about the history of epidemics, and the inability to deal with the uncertainties that reign during pandemic times, as well as the announcements that this extraordinary health/sanitary event would produce a profound watershed in all walks of life and in all corners of the world. Finally, these notes seek to point out how the present can illuminate the study of the past – or, more personally, what I think I have learned as a historian in the times of the covid-19 pandemic.