Revisiting ‘The Plague’ by Camus: Shaping the ‘social absurdity’ of the COVID-19 Pandemic

•COVID-19 has emerged as a global health threat.•The surprised and catastrophic human response to pandemics have been termed as ‘social absurdity’.•The article draws parallelism between the current outbreak and Camus’s La Peste (The Plague), 1947 in terms of ‘social absurdity’.•Existential and positive psychology principles are proposed to re-shape the psychosocial chaos. COVID-19 has emerged as a global health threat. The catastrophic reaction to a pandemic in spite of knowing the deadly outcomes, has been referred to as the 'social absurdity’. Such reaction creates a negativistic outlook with regard to the infection, thus contributing to chaos and preventing containment. In this article, the current pandemic of COVID-19 is revisited through the lens of Camus' ‘La Peste, 1947′. The philosophical roots of social ‘absurdity’ during a pandemic are critically discussed in the context of death anxiety. Subsequently, ways of reshaping it are highlighted, borrowing from the theories of existentialism and positive psychology.