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Hi, everybody.

From Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History.

I'm Patrick Weiman.

Thanks for joining me.

So we had planned to do an interview for today's episode, but as you may be aware, the world

is a little unsettled at the moment.

There's a literal pandemic going around, and it's shaking things up to put it mildly.

I wanted to take a moment here at the beginning to thank you all for continuing to listen

to Tides of History and to wish you health, safety, and sanity in these trying times.

Please, please be kind to yourselves.

Pandemics are a topic that we've discussed a few times over the years here on Tides of History.

We've re-released a couple of these episodes onto the main feed in the last few weeks here

on the Black Death of the 14th century and the 6th century plague of Justinian.

Instead of an interview, I'm going to be talking a little bit more today about pandemics

in history, more generally.

It'll be a little more informal than our usual scripted episodes.

I'll probably wander a bit from topic to topic, follow a line of thinking wherever it

leads, and we'll bear the present-day comparison in mind throughout.

So let's start here.

COVID-19 is not the Black Death.

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