1 Processing Traumatic Memories of COVID-19 Pandemic as Cultural Trauma Fitrilya Anjarsari “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” -George Santayana- The current global pandemic situation does, indeed, bring a lot of chaos in various sectors of human’s life. It also makes a significant crack in the integrity of our social structure. This is not a surprising situation since pandemic is a major crisis that stops the normal rotation of our daily life. I am thinking that this situation is like we are all in a vehicle that suddenly falls into a puddle and get stuck, so the journey must stop. We are told that the only way to overcome this unwanted situation is by working together to push the vehicle out of the puddle to get back on its wheels. However, each passenger has a different character and not all of them want to give a push for various reasons. This will certainly hinder the effort to fix the problem as soon as possible, not to mention that it might also lead to bun fight. The same thing happens with our current pandemic situation, even though the World Health Organization has advocated quarantine as a best solution, there are still many citizens and even elites who have refused to do so until now. 1 COVID-19 is a disease with a very high transmission rate. Although some experts in statistics said that the disease has lower mortality rate compared to other pandemic in the history. However, if the number of patients is significantly increased outnumbered the medical personnel could handle with limited health support facilities then it could turn be the deadliest pandemic in history. With this horrendous possibility, we need to sacrifice our normal life for quarantine. Schools and offices are closed and all activities are done at home. We can no longer commute to see parents who live different countries or other families. The economic situation is uncertain and many have lost their jobs and need to struggle for life without any income. There is no congregation since the places of worship must be closed and everything went online. Some people refuse to live this abnormal life and carry out protests to express their anti-quarantine belief just like what we saw in Michigan and any other areas. It then seems like following or not following the quarantine protocols becomes personal’s decisions that are entirely decided on the basic of individual awareness. Having seen the crisis and conflict of interest in the time of pandemic like this makes me wonder about what happened during the other pandemics in the past. Were the people from that time also acting difficult to set aside their selfishness when it comes to quarantine? As we already know that quarantine is not something new in the history, people in different times of pandemics were also experiencing this kind of protocols to stay home. I then read an article written by Abigail Brenner published on March 29, 2020 for Psychology Today with the title 1 It passed three months since the World Health Organization announced COVID-19 as global pandemic to the day I wrote this article.