Hello everyone,

With COVID-19 officially declared a pandemic we have noticed a decided uptick in questions related to pandemics and how they have been responded to historically. As we have done a few times in the past for topics that have arrived suddenly, and caused a high number of questions, we decided that creating a Megathread would be useful to provide people interested in the topic with a one-stop thread for it.

As with previous Megathreads, keep in mind that like an AMA, top level posts should be questions in their own right. However, while we do have flairs with specialities related to this topic, we do not have a dedicated panel on this topic, so anyone can answer the questions, as long as that answer meets our standards of course (see here for an explanation of our rules)!

Additionally, this thread is for historical, pre-2000, questions about pandemics, so we ask that discussion or debate about current responses to COVID-19 be directed to a more appropriate sub, as they will be removed from here.