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Discussion » Questions » Death and Dying » COVID19. I wonder if there are parallels between today and how people reacted to The Black Plague? ~

COVID19. I wonder if there are parallels between today and how people reacted to The Black Plague? ~


This was partially inspired by another member’s similar question: https://answermug.com/forums/topic/102779/i-wonder-if-this-is-how-the-people-felt-at-passover


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Posted - April 25, 2020

Responses


  • 10449
    People don't change, only the names do.   While we have more knowledge now compared to then (we know its a virus and even what it looks like), there are still many who don't believe the threat from this virus is real. I'm sure there were people back then who didn't think it was a real threat.  Many didn't heed warnings about it (practice good hygiene) and so it stayed active on and off for 400 years!  In fact, the vaccine for it didn't come around until 1897.  Even so, it still exists, with the last "major" outbreak of it occurring in 2017.  (and some people think this virus will be gone by 2021.
      April 25, 2020 2:15 PM MDT
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  • 14795
    Well, one  thing is for sure still, most people are dying to get away from them still...and don't like lying  around in the dead of night and just becoming sick ow waiting:( 
      April 25, 2020 4:41 PM MDT
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  • 5391

    I think any parallels would be few.

    Yes, its a pandemic, but COVID-19 is not nearly as lethal, the symptoms not as severe, and there was simply no medical knowledge to speak of seven hundred years ago. PPE was rare and primitive, hygiene was virtually unknown, and social distancing wasn’t a practice. People were told that plague was caused by sin and spread by demons. 

    A notable difference in these two events is that during the Black Plague, the masses were implored to huddle into the churches to pray for their souls, which they did in droves (ironically driving up the death toll), whereas now churches all remain empty by public decree. 

      April 25, 2020 10:50 PM MDT
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  • 537
    I remember learning in school social history lessons about the "plague village" of Eyam, which is about 35 miles from where I grew up.

    During the Great Plague of London in 1665-6, the village had the misfortune to be exposed to the disease through a flea-infested bundle of cloth that a tailor had ordered from London. The villagers quarantined themselves - nobody would leave the village under any circumstances. They had food and other essential supplies brought to them by inhabitants of neighbouring villages and would leave coins in vinegar-filled holes in the local boundary stone as payment. They practised social distancing, to the extent of holding church services outdoors at a natural amphitheatre known as Cucklet Delph instead of in the church. About a third to a quarter of the village died but the quarantine prevented the plague from spreading to neighbouring towns.

    Just now, I discovered this "revisionist" article which suggests that perhaps Eyam's reputation for heroic self-sacrifice is unearned, in that it is just as likely that the quarantine was imposed by the local authorities rather than undertaken voluntarily at the behest of the parish priest, as the legend has it. But just the same it's a reminder than no matter how bad things get, our ancestors made much bigger sacrifices than us:

    https://www.1843magazine.com/features/rewind/eyam-revisited-lessons-from-a-plague-village
      April 28, 2020 12:31 PM MDT
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