” When asked to explain past events, historians are quick to assert the importance of context. If you want to understand how or why something happened, you must attend to local circumstances. But there is something about epidemics that has elicited an opposite reaction from historians: a desire to identify universal truths about how societies respond to contagious disease. ” https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2004361?query=recirc_inIssue_bottom_article
