I often talk about my dissertation subjects as being very self-conscious that they were in an important historical moment. On one level this isn’t saying much, because most of us are aware, to greater or lesser degrees aware that we exist in a specific time. On the other, there is something out of the ordinary in constantly contemplating how, exactly, one’s time is completely new in history and that future historians will think it special. In our current crisis we seem to love announcing to one another that we are living in a historical moment. Perhaps it’s just a turn of phrase to acknowledge the difference in how we live now from how we lived a month ago, but I think it’s more than that.

There is a difference, I think, between thinking historically and thinking about the historical importance of one’s current moment. The former uses the past as a way to view the present, the latter asserts the ahistorical uniqueness of the situation. The latter is useful in as much as it forces us to remember that we are active subjects in the world, that our actions count, and that what we do will be known and recorded, but other than that I see little use in announcing that this crisis is unprecedented, that nothing like this has happened in living memory, that no one has ever experienced something like this. 

First of all, this simply isn’t true. Thinking historically, it’s easy to see that this moment is very much the same as many other moments. The history of epidemics and disease is not a new field of study and even a cursory reading of some of this history makes clear that people and governments act more or less as they did in 1347. Epidemics, pandemics, plagues, massive deaths of any sort, really, all cause governments to reach for more authority and also show the weaknesses in governments. The Yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia literally decimated the city. For context, that would now be 150,000 deaths in Philly alone (the number that is in many current projections for U.S. death tolls). This and other cholera, typhoid, and yellow fever epidemics expanded the authority of city officials to regulate water supplies, clean streets, oversee residential buildings, inspect food, and regulate many other avenues of public health and safety that we now take for granted. 

Epidemics also reflect public trust or lack thereof in government. The last outbreak of smallpox in the U.S. was in 1947 in New York. Within three weeks of the first case, federal and state agencies coordinated to vaccinate over six million people. The outbreak ended with only a dozen cases.  This was after the second world war, a moment in which faith in both science and the U.S. government ran high. 

In other moments, pandemics reveal deep distrust and divisions. Quacks and con artists thrive in moments of desperation. When allopathic medicine could not produce results quickly enough or reliably enough people turned to homeopathy, hydrotherapy, patent medicine, faith healing, and worse. 

Epidemics reveal social inequalities and minority communities and individuals are often targeted and scapegoated. The poor, immigrants, religious minorities, anyone really, who can be blamed will be blamed. Some scholars argue that the persistent belief that polio must be caused by the dirty living conditions of the poor and new immigrants delayed epidemiologists’ ability to understand the disease. The brutalities of capitalism, the deep inadequacies of healthcare systems, the crushing burdens of social and economic oppressions, are all made crystal clear in these moments. 

We see all these features in our current pandemic. Governments either inspire trust or reveal incompetency. They grasp illegitimate power or mobilize to protect citizens. The social elites are spared the worst while those on the bottom suffer. Conspiracy theories abound so that people blame others and grasp at fake cures. 

Yes, this is the first time that I have been told to wear a mask to the store, and yes, this is the first time I have worked from home, but this is not new. Even though for most of us crises like this do not exist in our own memories, we have weathered worse. It is not unprecedented. Telling ourselves that this could not have been predicted, that no one has ever borne something like this, that this has never happened before, that future historians will be obsessed with the novelty of this moment, lets us off the hook. It allows us to claim that there is nothing we can do, no lesson that we could have previously learned.

The one thing that could be unprecedented, that might make this a truly “historic moment,” would be if we changed our reactions to this pandemic. If, instead of telling ourselves that this has never happened before, we asked ourselves why this keeps happening, if we used this to reframe the way we think about money, work, and worth, if we used this to think about why the most essential workers are those who are treated the worst, if we tried to actually remedy, not just patch and paper over, the deep injustices of our world, then this might be a historical moment.