This is the story of the birth, growth and marginalisation of a key discipline in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

On 6^th December 1917 a munitions ship exploded in Halifax sound, Nova Scotia. The blast devastated the surrounding area, killed 1,950 people and injured 9,000. This was the 'big bang' of disaster studies. A talented Anglican curate, Samuel Henry Prince, set about recording the social effects of the catastrophe and the progress of the relief effort. It was not quite his first disaster, as five years previously he had conducted funerals for some of the victims of the Titanic. At Columbia University, Prince wrote his PhD thesis on the Halifax disaster and in 1920 he published it as a book. This was the first modern, systematic, analytical account of the social effects of catastrophe. Other authors quickly followed Prince's lead. Thus we have 100 years of study in the field of disasters.

In 2003, concerted international action stopped the spread of an epidemic form of a sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus which had badly affected East Asia and parts of Canada. This could have been a much more serious outbreak and it stimulated researchers to look into the possible consequences of bigger pandemic. At the same time, interest was growing in the task of reconstructing the history of the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic. Over the period 2003-2009 a number of authors contributed to the scenario. In 2005, urged to action by the SARS outbreak, the World Health Organisation produced a plan for coordinating national efforts to manage a pandemic. It was assumed that the culprit would be influenza of a kind that is more virulent and lethal than the seasonal strains which appear every winter. SARS viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, are not forms of influenza, but they have some similar effects, including potential mass release of cytokines, proteins that modulate the immune system's response to a virus. The so-called 'cytokine storm' can be lethal.

Generally, diseases are not part of the core material that disaster specialists study, but an exception is made for pandemics as so many of the effects are social, psychological and economic.