Not much has changed in human history between the Castilian Plague of 1596-1601 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-now. Sure, we understand science and data more than our ancestors, but common themes abound between our shared experience today and the lives of those caught-up in the late sixteenth-century Castilian pestilence. Like us, our ancestors had to cope with the trauma of witnessing mortality on a large scale. They also experienced smaller disruptions to their daily lives like quarantines and supply chain failures. But worse, it was collective fear that manifested as scapegoating, misinformation, and profiteering that, exactly like today, served no purpose except to take advantage of the situation and compound collective societal stress.

Outsiders, single women, and the poor became the faces of the 1596 epidemic.[1] Single women were particularly targeted as the most likely to carry the plague.[2] Without any evidence or correlation to plague infection, single women were expelled from towns and left to fend for themselves: “in the aftermath of the plague… San Sebastián expelled all single women who had not been born there.”[3] In the modern pandemic, our Asian and Asian-American communities take the place of single women, outsiders, and the poor where they cope with violence, isolation, and condemnation because society, through the spread of misinformation, needed a scapegoat to carry the blame.

Like today, misinformation abounded during the 1596 Castilian plague. Cities tried to fend-off the “infodemic” by appointing political agents who traveled the countryside for the most updated information. Town criers and lists of plagued towns posted at city gates provided the single source of truth.[1] However, towns often insisted that “their presence on lists was the result of malicious slander by those who wished

them ill.”[1] The unpredictable nature of disease in both the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries makes it challenging to follow the latest information, which provides the perfect conditions for those who look to profit off misinformation.

Today, social media is a breeding ground for those who take advantage of misinformation to profit off the pandemic. Whether it be through ad revenue from sensationalized YouTube videos or the peddling of unproven and harmful treatments, we are not that different from our ancestors. Sixteenth-century doctors often abhorred “pseudo doctors” who traveled the countryside and endangered the lives of patients with unproved and harmful treatments all to turn a profit.[2]

Collective fear and its manifestations like scapegoating, misinformation, and profiteering provides no advantage to ending disease whether it be in the sixteenth-century or the twenty-first. Fear confuses the situation and prolongs the community-transmitted disease by not targeting effective treatments and preventative measures. As the lessons of our ancestors have shown, we are better served by caring for our communities, supporting our neighbors, and centralized messaging. We are all in this together.