[Fortune] The COVID-19 crisis certainly feels unprecedented, and in most ways it is. Never has the world faced a health crisis that has moved so quickly across continents, overwhelming complex health care systems, and putting entire economies on hold. But this isn’t the first pandemic the globe has faced, and it likely won’t be the last.
Together, humanity has stood on the precipice of many uncertainties caused by different unrelenting viruses. But no matter what the challenge—the Spanish flu in 1918, the flu pandemic in 1957, the HIV/AIDS crisis, West Nile, SARS, swine flu, Ebola—there has been a light at the other side and lessons to be learned.
These various pandemics all pose the same question: What has the past taught us that we can apply to future crises? |