Covid 19 - Thoughts and feelings

[Yastreb]

Yesterday, the global death toll passed six million.

In Australia, more than 100 have died in the past two days, and that hasn't been reported.

[Kevin_Redcrow]

By my reckoning, the U.S. will reach one million deaths in the next 11 days.

[Róisín]

I think people are no longer paying attention to deaths so much, it is just becoming status quo. Meanwhile the rest of the medical system is becoming even more neglected, with more deaths while patients are being ramped in ambulances.

[RanVor]

There's only so much distress something can cause you before you become numb to it. It's a defense mechanism.

[lwise]

When I was a child -- maybe eight or nine -- I read a book called "The Plague and the Fire" about the Black Death in London in 1665 and the Great Fire the next year.  One story that made a huge impression on me was about families being locked in their homes if someone was found to be infected.  Locked in with dead or dying family members, with no food or water, people got desperate.  They'd try to sneak out, or bribe the guard if they could, or, if they couldn't come up with a bribe, they'd try to kill the guard.  The book had a reproduction of a woodcut showing the prisoners dropping a noose on the guard and strangling him so they could escape.

I hadn't thought of that in many years, but it came back to me when I was reading about the people locked in their homes in Shanghai because of Covid.  The Chinese government doesn't have the infrastructure to feed twenty-five million prisoners; no one does.  And I wonder how long it will be before the desperate and starving prisoners start trying to kill the guards.

[Róisín]

A milder version was starting to happen during Melbourne’s early lockdown. One of the inner suburbs has several huge tower blocks which are their version of community housing. Mostly the elderly poor, the disabled, unemployed families with young children, migrant families and the displaced young waiting for an individual rental they can afford. Thousands of people. These blocks were suddenly locked down, giving the  people who lived there no chance to stock up on baby food, medicine, basic provisions or stuff their kids needed. In some of the taller blocks the lifts were turned off.
Fortunately outside sympathisers were able to make enough fuss that the government started making food, access to medical care and medicine a bit more accessible. But it was pretty clear that if nobody had made a fuss the poor might just have been left locked in for the duration.

[lwise]

"The Plague and the Fire" is available on Kindle, so I'm rereading it.  I came across something funny:

"[T]he Bills of Mortality had already recorded three cases of death by 'Pestilence', one of them in the out-parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields during December.  This caused little concern, for London was rarely entirely free from plague, and an occasional case among the thousand of deaths from other diseases set out in the Bills could pass almost unnoticed.  It was no more remarkable than a case of diphtheria would be today."

Wait, what?  I've never even heard of a case of diphtheria.  So I checked Wikipedia (reliable for something like this) and learned:

"In the United States, 57 cases were reported between 1980 and 2004."

So, just over two cases per year in the entire country, and that's just cases, not deaths.  A case of diphtheria would definitely be remarkable!

"The Plague and the Fire" was first published in 1962, so diphtheria was common then, but disappeared within the next eighteen years.  Modern medicine is quite amazing.

[Róisín]

I’m old enough and have lived in odd places enough to have seen diphtheria epidemics, one in Tasmania. Terrifying disease.

[JoB]

So, just over two cases per year in the entire country, and that's just cases, not deaths.  A case of diphtheria would definitely be remarkable!
"The Plague and the Fire" was first published in 1962, so diphtheria was common then, but disappeared within the next eighteen years.  Modern medicine is quite amazing.

I’m old enough and have lived in odd places enough to have seen diphtheria epidemics

It's still very much present, the fall of the Soviet Union caused the vaccination rate to drop far enough (70-some percent) for a bout of 48k cases in 1994. In Germany, cases (27 in 2018) are subject to compulsory registration.

[lwise]

It's still very much present, the fall of the Soviet Union caused the vaccination rate to drop far enough (70-some percent) for a bout of 48k cases in 1994. In Germany, cases (27 in 2018) are subject to compulsory registration.

True, but even so, 27 cases in all of Germany isn't so common as to be unremarkable.

I went back and checked on rates of bubonic plague in America (it's in the populations of ground-dwelling mammals).  Quoth the CDC: "In recent decades, an average of seven human plague cases have been reported each year".  So in America today, a case of diphtheria would be *more* remarkable than a case of plague!

[JoB]

True, but even so, 27 cases in all of Germany isn't so common as to be unremarkable.

Sure. The places where it really still is a rather common sight are in Asia and Africa - where the vaccination rates can't be held as high as necessary to prevent regional epidemics.

[lwise]

Sure. The places where it really still is a rather common sight are in Asia and Africa - where the vaccination rates can't be held as high as necessary to prevent regional epidemics.

Right and of course it will come back here if vaccination rates fall too low.

I was only commenting on the difference in experience with disease between the author and a modern reader.  Another example is with Dickens' "Bleak House".  One of the characters, Esther, gets sick, has a fever, and when she wakes up, finds herself alone in the house.  She looks around and finds no mirrors.  That was obviously sufficient for Dickens' audience to understand what had happened; my first reaction was, "she's a vampire?"  I did work out that she must have had something like smallpox, but it was not my first thought because smallpox is just not part of my experience.

Adding: vampires aren't part of my experience either, but I've read about them a lot more than I've read about smallpox.

[JoB]

I did work out that she must have had something like smallpox, but it was not my first thought because smallpox is just not part of my experience.
Adding: vampires aren't part of my experience either, but I've read about them a lot more than I've read about smallpox.

Well, to be fair, Dickens et.al. had no reason to think that their readers would ever not have good knowledge of smallpox; that's the disease that Jenner - no, not this Jenner - started the whole "vaccination" (literally: cow-ification) business with.