Quarantine

Looks like another occasion where what might otherwise be writer’s block is rescued by some huge problem which merits some discussion.   The COVID19/corona virus shitstorm has resulted in a quarantine here in the US.   Ideally, stay home.  If you do go out, try minimizing such excursions and stay at least 6 feet away from everyone.  Then go home and catch up on whatever it is you could do at home were it not for having to be out 40 hours a week working.

My own job is an attorney, in a firm by myself, an office manager (Vietnamese woman old enough to have met Japanese officers as a little girl during WWII), and a secretary who is as difficult and headstrong as she is attractive (actually, considerably more so).   Part of my practice is personal injury, meaning I can call insurance adjusters from home and try to settle cases.   Ultimately, many of my cases require some form of court appearance, whether be a status hearing to set a case for trial, a one-and-done traffic or misdemeanor case, a one-and-done 341 hearing on a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, or a simple uncontested hearing on a divorce.  The local courts have removed most cases from the docket for the time being, subject to being rescheduled later. 

As of yet, I don’t feel any aches, pains, fevers, chills or any other illness.  Just the last week I went to the ER for a tongue infection, though I was discharged that day with a prescription.   That issue is healed.  I live alone, in a huge condo building.   My mom is in an assisted living building 30 minutes northwest (Herndon), and that building is taking the sensible precaution of prohibiting visitors, so I call my Mom and talk to her on the phone.   My brother lives not too far away, in Centreville, with a wife and three kids.  They are all stuck in the house together.   Last time I visited, though, I found the local parks and trails within walking distance of his house.

Despite the obvious temptation to bring up the ever-popular plague, there are huge differences.  First off, corona-virus is…a virus (!) whereas the plague is caused by bacteria.  As such the latter can be treated with anti-biotics.  It’s usually caused by rats and fleas, which means in normal First World environments the sanitation system is inhospitable for the plague and we rarely see it.  Back in the Middle Ages, when sewer systems weren’t always around, and anti-biotics were nonexistent, the plague would have been a much bigger problem.

Even so, “quarantine” still applied.  A map of Europe in the mid 1300s appears to show that Poland was relatively little affected, allegedly because the king, Casimir the Great, quarantined Poland from the rest of Europe.  In practice, this seems to be an oversimplification and difficult to verify.   The truth is that Poland did suffer the plague, but less than surrounding countries, and we really don’t know why.   However, with 3 of my 4 grandparents originating from Poland, to the extent that the plague was not as serious there as elsewhere, to the extent 3 of my ancestors survived a disease which might otherwise have killed them, making my own existence impossible, I have to thank God that this was in fact the case, to the extent it was and for whatever reason.

As of April 2020, I am staying home most of the time, wearing a mask when I do go out, and catching up on Rick & Morty (season 4) and Ozark (finished season 1).  As yet I know of no one I know personally who has contracted the virus, but I would hope and expect that the geniuses are at work on a vaccine which will address the issue.  

I’m still unclear as to what anyone is doing about keeping these viruses to spring forth from the Wuhan market in China, which seems to breed these viruses from the exotic animals kept in close proximity.  The experts agree that the virus was not man-made, but to the extent the PRC is a totalitarian dictatorship which could summarily shut down the market if it cared to do so, I’d say the Chinese government’s willful inaction amounts to de facto germ warfare, by default, against the rest of the planet.  

Likewise, I won't blame our own Orange Fuhrer for having developed this disease himself.   But you would think that he would at least have consulted with experts and managed the crisis here a little better:  giving us accurate information about the threat the virus poses and what we should do about it.  Firing the team, ignoring his own experts, and dismissing the whole thing as a hoax was criminally stupid.  I'm not particularly impressed by the Democratic challengers in 2020, but even the dumbest of them (most likely Biden) would have enough brain cells to manage this whole thing more competently than the current yahoo.  He can Make America Great Again by resigning, effective immediately, as even Pence can tie his shoelaces better than his own boss.  

The Black Plague

And here I was, wondering what I was going to come up with for a topic for this Friday’s blog, when Yahoo News gave me my inspiration: a story about a girl in Colorado who survived the bubonic plague.  Yes, the same plague which wiped out millions in Europe in the Middle Ages.  It’s also known as the Black Death or Black Plague.

 Spread.  According to the story, it came on ships from China (the disease itself originating in Yunnan Province) in the early fouteenth century and quickly spread through Europe, even England.  Oddly, Poland was spared.  Rats & fleas were the means by which the disease initially spread, then from human to human.  To the extent that a secular, scientific or biological cause was considered (as opposed to some “scourge from God”), the diagnosis was “bad air”, but how that related to rats, fleas, and humans was nowhere close to understood.  Science was in its infancy and the Ptolemaic solar system – the Earth at the center, with the Sun yet another “planet” – still reigned.  The Renaissance was centuries down the road.

 Symptoms.  The main symptoms were high fever, delirium, vomiting blood, and “buboes” (large, nasty bulges) in the groin and armpits.  There was no known cure, though almost everything – including drinking urine – was attempted.  Death was all but certain within 2-7 days.  The disease spread rapidly; efforts at quarantine started in Dubrovnik in 1377.   In addition to the bubonic plague, there is also pneumonic plague and septicemic plague as well, which have far higher mortality rates than the bubonic variety.  However, such a high rate also limits the ability of the plague to spread, as it kills the victims before they can spread the disease to others. 

 1349.  The peak in Europe was 1349, although subsequent outbreaks occurred into the 19^th century, and continue even today on very limited occasions (e.g. the isolated case of the girl in Colorado recently). 

 Dance of Death.  Pictures from the period show victims dancing until they died, or dancing with skeletons – somewhat macabre.  With no cure and no escape, the plague drove many to insanity.  The “flagellants” whipped themselves in remorse to atone for whatever grievous sins much have brought this heinous scourge upon them.  Others went to the other extreme, wallowing in depravity and promiscuousness as the end was near. 

            Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, had a further theory.  He argued that the idiosyncrasies of the deficient medieval diet encouraged madness and hallucination.  Possible ergot fungus poisoning, and the delirium caused by high fevers, no doubt also fueled the fires of insanity among these poor lost souls. 

            I wrote earlier about nightmares and delirium.  How much worse must it have been for these people.  Even without the plague, their life expectancy was 30+.  Their church hammered them about Satan and Hell constantly.  They had terrible doctors who couldn’t cure anything.  Now this horrible disease struck them and they had nowhere to go.  The worst possible nightmare, come to life.  Hell on earth – no wonder those Bosch and Brueghel paintings were so weird.

 Plague Doctors.  As if the plague itself wasn’t weird enough, leave it to the medieval mind to make it even stranger: the “plague doctor”, who claimed to specialize in curing the disease (difficult without suitable hygiene or antibiotics) wore long frock coats, a wide brimmed hat, and a long-beaked bird mask.

 “The Seventh Seal”.  The 1957 black & white film with Max von Sydow (still making movies, by the way!) as a Crusader returning to Sweden and finding it in the throes of the Black Death.  The typical fixation people have with this film is the knight (MvS) playing chess with “Death”, but I find the madness of the locals faced with imminent death from the Plague to be a more compelling element of the film.  I also found it intriguing that Death either cannot or will not tell the Knight what form, if any, the afterlife will take.

 Prevention vs. Cure.   Because the plague is caused by bacteria, really the cure is antibiotics, which are a fairly recent invention, e.g. penicillin.  However, since the plague is spread by rats and fleas, the general improvement in personal and urban hygiene tended to reduce the occurrence of the disease.   Typically modern outbreaks tended to coincide with breakdowns in hygiene.  Theoretically an antibiotic-resistant strain could mutate and give us 1349 all over again, but this is thankfully very unlikely.