How the psychological effects of the Black Death may foreshadow our futures living with COVID-19

When looking at history through a wide lens, acknowledging pandemics as frequent and unavoidable is not difficult to do. Since the origin of organic life, disease has been a prominent feature. Therefore, it is also not much trouble to imagine that humanity will experience additional pandemics in the future. Knowing this, it is clearly important to investigate past pandemics and modern pandemics in order to garner information that will affect our response to future pandemics: medically, legislatively, socially, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Conveniently, investigating the psychological effects of past and modern pandemics can lead to information on how to cope with future pandemics in all other potential areas of life as well. Psychology dictates the majority of what non-sentient aspects of life cannot, and therefore deserves to be delved into. Through my research, I studied and compared how those living during both the Black Death Pandemic and the COVID-19 Pandemic handled subjects such as quarantines, religious influences, prejudice, scapegoating, economic changes, governmental decisions, and much more. I discovered that 14th century Europeans had much more in common with 21st century Americans and Europeans than one might originally think. For example, both groups of people found quarantine policies and enforcements to have an incredible psychological weight to them. The strain of isolation and changes in daily routine weighed on everyone involved. Another example of similarity between time periods can be seen in terms of workers’ rights movements. The Black Death Pandemic led to an end of serfdom and feudalism just as the COVID-19 Pandemic led to immense demand from employees for higher wages and increased respect. One similarity between the effects of both pandemics that desperately requires changing, however, is preparation for the future. 14th century Europe did little to nothing to truly prepare themselves for the inevitable next pandemic to come, just as the modern United States has done. Most importantly, in order to prepare for our next pandemic we need to increase public knowledge of how mass disease works, and how they can influence the future as to avoid issues society encountered with COVID-19, such as understaffing nearly everywhere, a lack of adequate medical equipment, distrust in leaders and policies, and an ignorance about what a pandemic really entails in all aspects of life.Presented at the annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity while the author was an undergraduate student at Rutgers University-Camden