This dissertation contributes to the current and very heated debate on pandemics. It will tackle the thesis that pandemic threats are rapidly fading from our collective memory, and that we, therefore, fail in being adequately prepared for them once they occur. We will test this thesis through a comparative-historical study of the collective memory of three selected pandemics. These are the second bubonic plague pandemic, the influenza pandemic of the early twentieth century, and the AIDS pandemic. We will apply the findings of the study to the current covid-19 pandemic and speculate on the possible future scenarios. Before the study itself, we will outline the theoretical framework through which we will approach the study. We will introduce the phenomenon of collective memory in general, and identify its explicit and implicit social functions. In this context, we will also consider the phenomenon of collective forgetting, which will be central to the thesis. The main aim of this thesis is to illustrate the dangers of forgetting, using the currently highly relevant example of pandemics. The many defeats in dealing with the pandemic of covid-19 have clearly shown that we need to think about pandemics beyond the viewpoint of natural sciences.
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