Status Updates From Diario del año de la peste

people who appear well spreading disease
soixantine

The river boat stories are interesting but have the smack of something Defoe is recounting rather than saw first-hand.

The Infection generally came into the Houses of the Citizens, by the Means of their Servants, who, they were obliged to send up and down the Streets for Necessaries

This is a fascinating book to be reading now. The biggest surprise so far is that people in the 1600's dealt with plague pretty much the way we are dealing with it now - there were quarantines, the rich left town, everyone else had to decide whether to risk getting sick by running businesses, the city kept tallies of deaths and assigned physicians to help the poor, and doctors risked their lives treating people.

Still a mite repetitious.

how many of them were afterwards carried away in the Dead-Carts, and thrown into the common Graves of every Parish, with these hellish Charms and Trumpery hanging about their Necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along.

I know it is an obvious point, but the similarities with our current predicament are just astonishing (though, of course, we have thankfully not got to the stage of 1000 deaths a day in London and mass burial pits!). Fascinating to see Defoe arguing for asymptomatic spread and, therefore, that quarantine after symptoms is not sufficient.

Still beset with repetition, but a grim and pertinent tale for the time.

As a Londoner at a time of plague, it seemed fitting to finally get round to reading this

I’m actually listening to a free Librivox podcast of this, which is great, though some of the place names are pronounced incorrectly! That said, it is very prescient, how much of human nature has not changed in the last 350 years. Back then there were wizards, today we have epidemiologists, back then people were locked into their homes, and so it is today in some countries.

I coul tell here dismal Stories of living infants being found sucking the breass of their Mothers, or Nurses, after they have been dead of the Plague.

Picked this book from the dusty shelf because PANDEMIC! (And also because I'll probably appreciate Molecular Biology from it better.)

Reading about all the plague victims busting outta quarantine while watching all my neighbors congregate in their driveways and running wild on their golf carts during corona 🤦‍♀️

Reading about all the plague victims busting outta quarantine while watching all my neighbors congregate in their driveways and running wild on their golf carts during corona 🤦‍♀️

This has got to be the the most horrific thing I have ever read.

I’m afraid to touch anything or venture outside 👍 nice

Lol why am I reading this during corona😅pray for me

“It must be confest, that tho’ the Plague was chiefly among the Poor; yet, were the Poor the most Venturous and Fearless of it, and went about their Employment, with a Sort of brutal Courage; I must call it so, for it was founded neither on Religion or Prudence; scarce did they use any Caution, but run into any Business, which they could get Employment in, tho’ it was the most hazardous”

It's positively eerie how closely Defoe's narrative of the 1665 Plague of London tracks the current pandemic. All of the social measures and consequences are identical, from massive job loss to social distancing to the charitable efforts of volunteer organisations being a lifeline the most vulnerable. Reading this book is like reading a prediction of the future.

“It was not the least of our misfortunes that with our infection, when it ceased, there did not cease the spirit of strife and contention, slander and reproach, which was really the great troubler of the nation's peace before.”

'Their Story has a Moral in every Part of it... if there was no other End in recording it, I think this a very just one, whether my Account be exactly according to Fact or no.'

“... the infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected or who they were infected by.”

‘The court removed early...to Oxford, the distemper did not so much as touch them..they showed [no] great tokens of thankfulness...though they did not want being told that their crying vices might..be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible judgement upon the whole nation.’

“...there was a seeming propensity or a wicked inclination in those that were infected to infect others.”

Este libro me está causando sensaciones un poco desagradables 🤢🤮

“...let any man consider what must be the miserable condition of this town if, on a sudden, they should be all turned out of employment, that labour should cease, and wages for work be no more.”

“...to perish not by the infection itself but by the consequence of it; indeed, namely, by hunger and distress and the want of all things: being without lodging, without money, without friends, without means to get their bread, or without anyone to give it them...”

"Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of mirth and diversions.”

We havent come to this stage yet.. not yet!!

“This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations.”

On point.

“How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead-carts and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along.”