https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-shared-memory-has-shaped-the-covid-19-response/

In the aftermath of disasters like 9/11, Katrina and the 2008 financial crisis, Americans had the opportunity to judge the response from the federal government and evaluate how the past had prepared us for 21st-century emergencies. These whole-country hardships presented the United States with fuel for change in public sentiment towards the relatively familiar issues of terrorism, natural disasters and financial meltdowns.

While each of these scenarios was novel and cataclysmic in its own right, U.S. citizens, unfortunately, had a rough idea of how to conceptualize them because the themes addressed were not beyond comprehension, even though the events themselves were. But COVID-19 has presented the nation with a crisis of which there is no broad institutional memory and will surely define our generation and those to come. It is within that agreed-upon definition where future preparedness could live and die—partially predicated on something so delicate as the trust of the people and our shared memory.