Epidemics and Pandemics: What Lessons from History? While history, of course, is not cyclical, there are surprising similarities in the way societies affected by Covid-19 react to stress. These behavioural processes, which span the centuries, are a common feature of Humanity. For although the history and development of societies are different, the fundamental human reactions often seem to be very similar. This is one of the lines of research of social and cultural anthropology, which tends to reveal, despite human diversity, a "universal humanism" (Lévi-Strauss, 2011).