Historian Frank Snowden’s book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present, based on the author’s lectures at Yale University, provides an excellent opportunity to compare Covid-19 with pandemics across two millennia, and to contextualise the similarities/differences of stakeholders’ responses. In a captivating narrative, Snowden first equips us with a basic understanding of diseases, puts us in a time capsule, and takes us back to visualise the horrors as they unfold ‒ microbes plundering humans, humans plundering humans. Demonstrating how pandemics were not “acts of god”, but a consequence of human action ─“every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities”─ asking probing questions, particularly with respect to 21st century “dress rehearsals” (SARS, Ebola), Snowden uses pandemics as mirrors for humanity