[Pandemics: Lessons from the past].

Since Antiquity, pandemics periodically strike humanity. Plagues of Athens, galenic, justinianic, and medieval plagues provoked millions of deaths, and subsequent famines and socio-political changes. Smallpox was a scourge affecting the royal courts too. The influenza H1N1 of 1917 brought more deaths than the Great War. The decline of Europe benefited to the USA, dominant power during the XXth century. The present pandemic of coronavirus Covid-19 will have important economic consequences, some of then being unsuspected yet.