Pathocenosis and COVID-19. Enviromental and cultural contexts of the pandemic in Poland In the paper the socially significant issue of the relationship between the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and the discourses about the disease was addressed, their infl uence on social attitudes towards pandemic and how in the spoken debates the patocenotic thinking (Mirko Grmek paradigm on relation between pathogens and pandemics and other dependencies e.g. social, economic, cultural) is presented. The analysis covered three main fields of discourses: 1) scientific-expert (reports of Polish Academy of Sciences, articles of polish medical society), 2) patient-expert (medical advice portals), 3) bottom-up and non-expert discourses (social media). The determinations were made on the errors in both public communication and expert discourse, functioning of technicized and medialized medical advice portals, emotional dimension of discourses in social media, as well as polarization of all those fields.