From Studying Historical Pandemics to Surviving One: Lessons Not Learned

Since my master's thesis (1994) I have studied, not continuously, but constantly, the impact of epidemics on the historical populations of northern Baja California, as well as the novohispanic northwest in the late colonial period, with emphasis on the routes of propagation. All this from a historical perspective with the support of demographic tools and with quantitative rather than qualitative information. It was then that during the Covid 19 pandemic (2020-2022), I was confronted with my object of study, and I was surprised by how much historical epidemics have been studied and how little contemporary information is available about them, and, therefore, lessons not learned have been presented. This collaboration is a reflection of what has been learned or what was supposed to be learned from the history of the epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries, in contrast to the actions undertaken by our society in the face of a pandemic.