Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power, could have done it [stopped the plague].  The contagion despised all medicine; death raged in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few more weeks would have cleared the town of all, and everything that had a soul.  Men everywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls, and the terrors of death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people.
--Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (Penguin, first published in 1722).

Defoe was only five years old in the plague year of 1665; A Journal of the Plague Year is perhaps the first "non-fiction novel," written in the first person and based on detailed research, with caveats when Defoe is unable to exactly prove various anecdotes of deaths of particular households.  When an infected member of a household exhibits symptoms the whole house is shut up and a watcher is assigned to make sure no one escapes.  It was a less than perfect system because watchers could be bribed and people found ingenious ways to escape.  There was also the problem of those who had what Defoe calls "the distemper" but had no symptoms and were still able to spread the disease.

There are many parallels to the current pandemic, as rich people were able to flee London while the poor were crowded together and unable to leave, as many of the poor had no choice but to continue to work while worried about contacting the disease and visiting it on their families.  Approximately 100,00 people died in the plague year, about a quarter of London's population, and it was followed in 1666 by the Great Fire of London.

One may feel better or worse after reading this beautifully written novel without chapter divisions.  It can give one a useful historical perspective that one can learn from and take comfort that medicine has considerably improved in last 350 years or, one can become depressed at the similarities between London's pandemic and our current one, with all the frustrations therein.