 People have long built monuments to plagues and pandemics, and the COVID-19 pandemic may have them as well, says Emily Godby, professor of art and visual culture at Iowa State University. In general, plague monuments are not always as grandiose as those dedicated to wars and more visible tragedies. The bubonic plague spurred a flurry of monuments and paintings to persuade the heavens to spare lives. Churches were raised as thanks to God for lifting the plague as in Venice's Redentore. Cleganford, Austria installed an impressive plague column in front of a church. In 1835, Sheffield in the UK erected a monument adjacent to the burial pits in which cholera victims were hastily buried during the outbreak there. The devastating 1918 influenza pandemic has very few monuments, perhaps because it was overshadowed by the tragedy of World War One small cross marks the burial of 200 victims in Wales, Alaska, for example. Perhaps the most unusual monument to disease victims is the sole consoling rock at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. It's dedicated to the research animals who were sacrificed in the lab during the SARS epidemic. Hong Kong has one to commemorate frontline workers. Memorializing victims of disease outbreaks can be more complicated than with wars, says Godby. The victims do not die heroic deaths and the numbers of victims may be elusive. And historically, the true cause of the pandemic has not always been easy to pinpoint.