What We Forget About Covid Will Shape the Next Pandemic
As the Covid-19 pandemic becomes more distant, people increasingly remember it as less frightening and chaotic than it was at the time. Research shows that memory is reconstructive: people reinterpret past events according to current beliefs and narratives. As a result, some now claim hospitals were never truly overwhelmed or frame measures such as vaccine mandates as coercive rather than emergency responses, despite mortality data and official records showing severe impacts.
Misremembering the pandemic has consequences. Around 400 million people are estimated to live with long Covid, and many survivors of severe illness face long-term heart, lung, or cognitive problems. Disruptions to healthcare during the pandemic also caused lasting damage, while life expectancy fell in several high-income countries. If the pandemic is remembered as exaggerated, these burdens may be ignored, weakening support for disability programs, research funding, and long-term care.
How societies remember Covid will also influence preparedness for future crises. If past responses are seen as overreactions, governments may invest less in surveillance, research, and medical countermeasures, and leaders may hesitate to act early during the next outbreak. Early decisions in public health are often made under uncertainty, with limited data and rapidly evolving situations, but hindsight can make them appear unnecessary or mistaken.
Historical examples show that collective memory often simplifies crises. Later narratives about the 1630 plague in Milan and the early AIDS crisis portrayed the dangers as obvious and early hesitation as failure, even though uncertainty and disagreement were widespread at the time. Societies tend to revise their past in ways that restore a sense of control and reduce discomfort.
Accurate memory requires remembering the conditions in which decisions were made: limited information, fast-spreading disease, and credible risks of health-system collapse. The next pandemic will likely begin with small, uncertain signals and debate over how serious it is. In that moment, collective memory of Covid will shape what actions seem reasonable.
If Covid is mainly remembered for excessive restrictions or exaggerated danger, early warnings in the next crisis may be ignored and vaccination uptake may decline. Preparedness depends on maintaining tools and knowledge developed during the pandemic—such as adaptable vaccine platforms, rapid home diagnostics, wastewater surveillance, and improved understanding of indoor air transmission.
Finally, memory also affects how societies treat those still suffering from the pandemic’s consequences, including people with long Covid, survivors of critical illness, and children affected by educational disruptions.
The biology of future viruses is unpredictable, but how societies respond will depend heavily on how they remember Covid.
