The Review of Past Pandemics to Predict What to Expect after Covid-19

In: Social Behavior Research & Health: SBRH

Abstract

Several pandemics such as the Spanish flu, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome have come and gone with similar consequences felt after they were contained. It suggests that a critical study of events after past pandemics can help one make an informed guess about what to expect after the current pandemic. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the post-events of past pandemics to predict events after Covid-19. Published articles were collected and reviewed from scholarly literature web search engines and citation databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus. Information gathering for this study was largely done in the second quarter of 2020 on mainly Google Scholar with the final inclusion criteria word search being pandemic, epidemic, plague, disease, crises, infection, viral, and outbreak whiles the final exclusion criteria word search being science, scientific, environment, biology, chemistry, law, and political. Peer-reviewed articles were sorted and reviewed to contribute to understanding and developing perspective in assessing past pandemics and Covid-19. Other authentic non-peer-reviewed online sources were also searched, and their required information was considered. Literature was reviewed on historical pandemics, which killed many people up to percentages of the whole population. Although all of them were deadly, the three recent outbreaks were checked in-depth, namely the 1918 Spanish Flu, Ebola, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. The current pandemic, as declared by the World Health Organization, is Covid-19. This study makes several predictions under the social and psychological, economic, global, and benefits of Covid-19. They are fear and paranoia among people, the psychological need of survivors, stigmatization, growth in religious fanaticism, stock market returns, increment in unemployment, higher cost of doing business, impact to the global financial system, temporary dysfunctional global supply chains, the cost to the world economy, increased interest in infectious disease prevention, stronger bonding between humans and nations, and advancement in clinical research.