10. Write a thesis statement answering the following question: The people of Medieval Times and people today have both experienced life during epedemics. How were these two times similar and how were they different? Which do you think will have the greatest impact on society and on history?

Intermittent outbreaks of infectious diseases have had profound and lasting effects on societies throughout history. Those events have powerfully shaped the economic, political, and social aspects of human civilization, with their effects often lasting for centuries. Epidemic outbreaks have defined some of the basic tenets of modern medicine, pushing the scientific community to develop principles of epidemiology, prevention, immunization, and antimicrobial treatments. This chapter outlines some of the most notable outbreaks that took place in human history and are relevant for a better understanding of the rest of the material. Starting with religious texts, which heavily reference plagues, this chapter establishes the fundamentals for our understanding of the scope, social, medical, and psychological impact that some pandemics effected on civilization, including the Black Death (a plague outbreak from the fourteenth century), the Spanish Flu of 1918, and the more recent outbreaks in the twenty-first century, including SARS, Ebola, and Zika.

There is a single word that can serve as a fitting point of departure for our brief journey through the history of pandemics – that word is the plague.

As their communities grappled with an invisible enemy, artists have often tried to make sense of the random destruction brought by plagues. Their interpretation of the horrors they witnessed has changed radically over time, but what has remained constant is the artists’ desire to capture the essence of an epidemic. Through these artworks, they have recast the plague as something not quite as amorphous, unknowable, or terrifying.

To conclude this, people in the past have gone through a lot of pandemics and yet survived.

Today,s pandemics are not that hard to live with if you take precautions.