The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented suffering throughout the world, as well as economic challenges. The everyday life of humans is based on the social character of our species, which is especially evident in the student community. The COVID-19 pandemic has also created new challenges for nursing and medical rescue students. On the one hand, they observe the appreciation of the professions they will soon be doing, and on the other hand, they observe the unpreparedness of the health sector to fight the pandemic. So far, these groups of students have been presented with medicine as a vast resource of knowledge to be used rather than a search incubator. The catastrophic nature of the pandemic results, inter alia, from its unpredictability, which is perfectly illustrated by literary visions of a raging plague. The objective of this paper is to take a look at fictional stories with the motive of catastrophic bacterial or viral infections. London’s “The Scarlet Plague” is worth reading again since COVID-19 can be considered our plague. Selected literature works for a guided discussion, in general, may help to restore balance, and make us all, academics and our students, wiser, better persons.

Key words: nursing students, literature works, catastrophic epidemic theme, COVID-19 pandemic.