In some ways I hate to keep writing about the Corona virus, but in other ways it is such an historic time we’re in these days that it seems a shame NOT to write about it. I hope you feel the same way when it comes to reading about it.
Corona isn’t the first health crisis to confront humankind. During the middle ages the plague descended on Europe, via 12 boats arriving at the Sicilian port of Messina from their travel through The Black Sea. The ships were ordered out of the harbor once local officials noticed that most of the crew members were dead or dying. That lapse in social distancing at the docks eventually ended up with 20 million people — a third of Europe — dying. Think of two people you know. Either you, or one of them, died.
The “Black Death” as it was called, was highly contagious, not unlike COVID19. It spread through the air, from touching clothing, from rats, and much more. Unfortunately, cats had fallen into disfavor for their perceived association with evil, so the rat population had exploded. It is said that some people went to bed at night feeling perfectly healthy, and yet were dead by morning.
How did it end? Well, since rats lived on ships, sailors were at high risk for getting The Plague. And, since ships were traveling from place to place, they spread it as they did. The disease started to die out when authorities insisted that sailors stay on ships for 40 days when they got to a port. That’s where the term “quarantine” originated. (From the Italian quaranta giorni, literally, “space of forty days.”)
Our current health crisis is serious enough. That being said, in order to have a comparable cost in human life as The Plague inflicted, we’d have to experience more than 100 million deaths in our country. Even the worst-case scenarios for Corona don’t suggest that will happen. But, it will certainly be a candidate for the history books, as was the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
What makes this pandemic really interesting is that a great majority of people won’t get the disease, and many who do get it won’t even know they have it. Others will experience a medical emergency, and some of those people will die. Irrespective of the above, the economic consequences of this pandemic are also devastating – except for people who are arbitrarily considered essential, and as such are still able to work and be paid.
This being the 2020 version of our modern times, we are hopeful for treatments that are 100% successful and a vaccine that is effective and risk-free. If those things are possible, they will allow us to put this episode behind us. The people we’ve lost, of course, are gone forever, and the people who have lost everything will be hard-pressed to gain back the ground they’ve lost.
So, I guess people will be writing, and reading about Corona for some time to come.
Peter Wallace Writes 