How the meningitis B outbreak shows us that COVID isn’t over
Collective memory and the behavioural response to the Men B outbreak
The response to the recent meningitis B (Men B) outbreak in Kent, in the UK, bore a striking resemblance to the early behaviours we saw during Covid. Students stopped going to lectures before guidance required it, mask-wearing reappeared, parents questioned whether their children should attend secondary school, and doctors and pharmacies experienced a surge in people seeking guidance for what seemed like relatively minor symptoms.
These are not responses that medically align with meningitis, a disease that, while serious, spreads through close and prolonged contact and is usually managed through targeted intervention, such as contact tracing, antibiotics, and vaccination, rather than widespread behavioural change. The pattern of response, therefore, seems, in many ways, out of step with the nature of the disease.
It is tempting to interpret these behaviours as disproportionate or as evidence of sensitivity and anxiety in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. However, what we saw in Kent is not simply a reaction to meningitis, but an interpretation of meningitis as something that resembles, however partially, the early stages of a situation that previously escalated in ways that were both unexpected and disruptive.
To understand this, it is necessary to move beyond what is arguably a narrow focus on risk perception and instead consider the role of ‘collective memory’ in shaping behaviour. The key issue is not whether people understand the nature of meningitis as a disease, but how they make sense of an unfolding situation under uncertainty. In these conditions we will draw on available information to make sense of the situation, and we would argue, among the most powerful of these is our collective experience.
Collective memory as a framework for anticipation
Conventional approaches to memory often treat it as a system of storage and retrieval, whereby individuals access previously encoded information in response to relevant cues. While this perspective remains influential, it is insufficient for explaining behaviour in situations such as the Kent outbreak. A longer tradition in psychology and sociology suggests that memory is not a passive repository but an active, reconstructive process. Frederic Bartlett demonstrated that recollection is shaped by existing schemas, with individuals transforming past events in order to render them coherent within familiar frameworks. Maurice Halbwachs extended this insight to the collective level, arguing that memory is socially organised and embedded within shared narratives.
Building on this tradition, social psychologist Cristian Tileagă sets out the way that collective memory is not only about remembering the past, but about anticipating the future. It acts as a resource through which individuals, but also groups, anticipate possible futures. Using what has been called ‘mnemonic imagination’, elements of past experience are reactivated and recombined in order to interpret the present and project forward.
This perspective seems very relevant in ambiguous situations, where information is incomplete, and people do not simply wait for clarity but instead draw on existing narratives to make sense of what is happening and to anticipate what might follow. Behaviour, on this basis, is determined not only by what is known, but by what is considered possible based on prior experience.
COVID as a dominant narrative template
Arguably COVID has provided a powerful template for this process as it unfolded as a recognisable sequence: initial uncertainty, followed by the accumulation of evidence, delayed recognition of scale, and eventual widespread disruption. This temporal-based structure has likely become embedded in public consciousness, not necessarily as an explicit spoken model, but as a tacit framework through which we assess new events.
In the case of the Kent outbreak, early reports of meningitis cases were not interpreted solely in terms of their immediate clinical significance related to meningitis B. Instead, they were situated within a broader (COVID) narrative of potential escalation. The initial ambiguity surrounding the outbreak – the inevitable fragmented information, uncertainty about transmission, and the presence of severe outcomes- all seemed congruent with the early stages of the pandemic. As a result, people may have begun to interpret the situation not only in terms of what it was, but in terms of what it might become.
This shift from present-oriented to future-oriented interpretation is important as behaviour was not simply a response to the current state of knowledge, but to the anticipated trajectory of the situation. The question implicitly guiding action was not limited to ‘what is meningitis?’, but extended to ‘where could this lead?’. In this way, behaviour is better seen as anticipatory rather than reactive.
Importantly, this does mean that people are confused. Rather, it reflects the application of a familiar narrative template to a new situation. The present is being understood through recognition of a pattern, even if that pattern is only partially applicable.
From anticipation to collective behaviour
The anticipatory interpretation of the outbreak is closely linked to the social nature of behaviour. Research on behaviour in emergencies, particularly by Stephen Reicher and colleagues, suggests that the public’s responses to crisis are typically structured by shared identity rather than individual panic. By this, he means we act in relation to others, we align our behaviour with perceived norms and expectations.
This was likely evident in Kent. Behaviour such as withdrawing from lectures or seeking reassurance is unlikely to have been formed in isolation, but instead emerged within a shared social environment in which information and concern were circulating. In this sense, responses may reflect not only individual judgement but the influence of others’ perceptions and actions, consistent with research on the social organisation of behaviour in uncertain contexts
And COVID reinforced this collective orientation. It showed us that behaviour in response to uncertainty is not merely a matter of our own independent judgement, but of shared interpretation. For instance, mask-wearing emerged and spread before formal mandates were introduced, as we took cues from the behaviour of others and from shifting social norms, rather than acting purely on official guidance. Once a particular narrative begins to take hold, such as the possibility of escalation, then behaviour can change rapidly as people align themselves with that emerging understanding.
This has very practical consequences. The increased demand for primary care services reflects not only individual concern but also how responses build collectively. Behaviour, in this way, becomes a system-level rather than an individual phenomenon.
Blurring distinctions and shifting expectations
The application of a COVID narrative template also contributes to a blurring of different types of health threat. From a biomedical perspective, the differences between meningitis and COVID are clear. But for most people, these differences may be less significant than shared features such as uncertainty, severity, and the potential for rapid deterioration.
In this context, the categorical boundaries between conditions become less stable. Distinctions between a localised outbreak and a systemic crisis may not be so clear, not because individuals lack knowledge, but because they are operating through narrative forms that prioritise what something looks and feels like, over technical differentiation. As Tileagă suggests, past experience is drawn upon to interpret present uncertainty, resulting in these different phenomena of meningitis B and COVID being understood through a similar lens.
This coming together is reinforced by the still unresolved status of COVID: its consequences remain visible in ongoing policy debates, public inquiries, and continued uncertainty around issues such as long COVID and healthcare pressure. Its meaning continues to be negotiated across institutions, media, and in everyday conversation. As a result, it has a high degree of salience as a reference point, which also shapes expectations of the response it merits.
One of the most direct examples of this is how, during the pandemic, the scale and visibility of measures were unprecedented. Governments implemented wide-ranging measures, and public health became a central feature of everyday life. So it is not a leap to suggest that this experience has altered the baseline against which subsequent responses are evaluated.
In the context of the meningitis B outbreak, where interventions are more targeted and proportionate, this can give rise to a perceived mismatch, as there is an expectation that disease threats warrant large-scale responses. When this is absent, it can be interpreted as insufficient action, even though it reflects an appropriate assessment of the situation.
At the same time, not all behavioural responses shaped by COVID-era memory are misaligned with the underlying risk. In some cases, the same anticipatory logic appears to generate actions that are more directly relevant to disease control. For example, reports from across the UK suggest a sharp increase in demand for the MenB vaccine following the outbreak, with some pharmacies struggling to meet requests. While this surge in demand may exceed current public health recommendations, it nonetheless perhaps reflects a form of precautionary behaviour that aligns more closely with the mechanisms through which meningitis risk is mitigated.
In this sense, the influence of collective memory is not uniformly distorting; it can also channel behaviour in ways that are directionally appropriate, even if not always proportionate.
Implications for communication in a post-pandemic context
These dynamics are a significant challenge for public health communication. Traditional approaches assume that providing accurate, context-specific information will lead to proportionate behavioural responses. However, this assumption rests on the idea that individuals interpret information in relation to the present situation alone.
In reality, interpretation is mediated by collective memory, where information is filtered through a narrative shaped by COVID. As a result, communication is not simply about conveying facts, but about engaging with the ‘interpretative context’ in which those facts are received.
This requires a more explicit approach to differentiating between Meningitis B and COVID. It is not enough to set out that meningitis is less transmissible than COVID; instead, communication must actively reposition the present situation in relation to the past, making clear how the underlying dynamics differ. At the same time, it is necessary to acknowledge the legitimacy of concern, given the severity of outcomes associated with meningitis.
In addition, communication needs to address expectations of response. The pandemic has altered perceptions of what constitutes appropriate intervention. Public health messaging must therefore articulate not only what actions are being taken, but why those actions are proportionate to the nature of the threat. Without this, there is a risk that targeted responses are perceived as inadequate.
Finally, we suggest that communication must engage with the social nature of behaviour. Responses to risk are shaped through interaction and shared interpretation, meaning that effective communication must extend beyond individual messaging to consider the networks through which understanding is formed and reinforced.
Collective memory is a useful means by which we can articulate how we navigate our relationship among past, present, and future. The implications of this for a post-pandemic context are writ large with the meningitis B outbreak, setting out the implications for public health. This must address not only the biological characteristics of the disease, but also the collective memory landscape that determines how the disease is understood.