[jcranmer]

I can only really think of two times in history where we talk about a major disease outbreak: the Black Death, and the Plague of Justinian, and the latter one is really marginal (unless you're covering Late Antiquity in detail, it's going to be unknown). Other than these two, there's the less specific discussion of disease during the New World colonization epoch.

I suspect that COVID-19 will replace the Spanish Flu as the "pandemic everyone talks about when there's a pandemic concern," but this is the sort of mention that requires explanation because it's not really part of the expected repertoire of history the same way the Black Death is.