The Great Plague Of London 1665 and its similarities to current events.

originally posted by: Tulpa
a reply to: Raggedyman

I'm not trying to cause an argument but ,just for balance, it was the Vicar of Eyam that realised what was happening and called the villagers to isolate.

I would love to see a reference, not denying what you said, just be good to reference it in future
I once heard that the Jews isolated themselves, kept Kosha and didn’t suffer as severely from the plague, reportedly people copied them and the plague subsided.
Can’t find much in the way of proof outside of this below


“Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe After the Black Death (2000), Page 146: "There were several reasons for this, including, it has been suggested, the observance of laws of hygiene tied to ritual practices and a lower incidence of alcoholism and venereal disease"

Seems a bit vague


Make no mistake, people can be sucked into dogma and silly superstition, even westerners in this modern age

a reply to: Raggedyman

Sorry, just from memory and what the lady on the radio was saying.

Also crappy phone and general technological ignorance.

Eyam is a very small village so a huge contrast to what was going on in London. I mentioned it more for OP to include for his kid to look into.

During that time isolation provided to be fatal for a group of villagers whose pastor abandoned them on a hill Fort, this legend is local to my county

www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk..." target="_blank" class="postlink">www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk...a reply to: Freeborn

a reply to: sophD

Oh dear. I'm wrong again.

They didn't mention that part on the radio.
I did say they lost an awful lot of people

Cheers for the info.

a reply to: Tulpa

Nope, no stress, appreciate the information, have a look myself
Good to know these things

a reply to: Raggedyman

See above .

Lookslike I spoke too soon.

a reply to: sophD

A similar story to that of Eyam as previously mentioned.
The big difference being that the local Vicar in your story is the villain and deserted his fellow villagers whereas the local Vicar in Eyam provided support for his congregation and implemented measures that reduced infections in the village and minimised its spread to surrounding areas.

Hero's and cowards have also been a constant throughout human history.

a reply to: Tulpa

www.theguardian.com...

During the bubonic plague outbreak of 1665-6, the inhabitants of Eyam quarantined themselves, in a famous act of self-sacrifice, to prevent the spread of the plague. Villagers would come to place money in six holes drilled into the top of the boundary stone to pay for food and medicine left by their anxious neighbours.

By the end of the outbreak, more than a quarter of the village’s population of almost 1,000 were dead. The plague, however, was contained.

You were spot on

I feel like, unless/until science can produce and distribute a reliable vaccine, this only goes one way.

Everyone will be exposed to the virus eventually. From that viewpoint, the virus itself kills as many as it does, either way.

The big difference is the people who would have survived, if they could have gotten a ventilator for a few weeks (2-8) when their bodies could not breathe alone.

My area is calculated to reach peak acuity in about 10 days. My own graphs indicate ( only a few days' trend) that the onslaught of new cases may be slowing. Slowing the rate of increase, but still increasing day by day.

Most people today talk about "The Black Plague" as if it were a singular event. It actually hit Europe initially around 1340. But then it had "echo effects" that reverberated around the world for 300 years. Fifty years after the initial outbreak, the population in Europe had declined by 75%

I know there were reports last week that people in wuhan that got sick in January and were later declared test-negative are getting sick all over again. I haven't seen any follow-up stories, but this is what id expect from a recombinant virus like the coronavirus family

a reply to: Graysen

The difference between now and then is that science has advanced incredibly since The Black Death and The Great Plague.
As a result there are incredible resources being directed towards finding a vaccine and then producing it in the vast numbers that will be required.
Obviously people in the Middle Ages were unable to develop any effective vaccines and relied on things like scents and posies etc. It wasn't until about 1890 I think that any sort of effective vaccine for The Plague was developed.

I'm not saying that COVID-19 will not mutate or even re-infect, just that we have far more understanding of the chemistry/biology etc involved, an infinitely greater ability to develop a vaccine and any follow up one's and the wherewithal to manufacture and distribute the vaccine.

In the mean time people will react and behave the same way they always have done.

Yes, human behavior is quite predictable. Irrational, but predictable.

a reply to: Dumbass

You see the economic downfall of this is just reinforcing my belief that world economies were already screwed.

If we can't handle a few months of a global lockdown then I'm genuinely unsure if we've deserved the 50+ good years after WWII. That or the economy is a play thing and needs fundamental change.

On a personal note I'd rather give everything I have to keep my humanity. It's not like I'm taking anything with me. Save lives not money.

a reply to: Salander

Irrational, but predictable.

Very true.

I don't think most of us spent much time studying human behaviour during other pandemics. I know I just read about the details without really considering the various ways people acted and responded to such outbreaks and how they are similar regardless of time and place of the plagues/epidemics etc.

a reply to: RAY1990

We are a hardy species and the people from these islands have a particularly steely resolve.....just one that hasn't been tapped in to for a while and one that those that seek to control and manipulate us have tried to beat and breed out of us.

We desperately need(ed) some sort of full system reboot, maybe this is it?
Or at least an opportunity to force some positive change.

Of course that's little comfort to the people who die and their families or those who lose their livelihoods and I genuinely feel an enormous amount of sympathy for them.

I for one don't want to go back to more of same old same old when this is over and done with.

a reply to: Freeborn

Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a classic even if it dates from the 19th century. I think he is the one that coined the term "moral panic" to describe crowd behavior in response to a threat that the authorities cannot seem to mitigate.

You are right about science changing the game, basically reducing the population's response time to months (currently) as opposed to generations, by developing a vaccine instead of passively waiting for herd immunity to provide protection.

To use an analogy from that other great aggregator of public sentiment (the marketplace), The time it takes for a market collapse has not changed since the south-sea bubble in England in the 1720s. Which makes me think that the markets are driven by group sentiment instead of actual economic imbalances. Charles Dow (creator of the Dow industrial average) used to say that

"The market is a three legged stool. The names of those legs are greed, hope, and fear."

I think something similar is at work in the public sentiment as regard the virus.

originally posted by: Freeborn

But how many millions would have died if we had just gone about our daily business as normal?

Perhaps not that dissimilar to daily business as normal because they would have a different cause of death on the death certificate that doesn't say "Covid-19".

Perhaps.

a reply to: nerbot

Semantics and smoke in mirrors.

Bit like someone living during The Black Death saying that millions of people died of pneumonia and not Pneumonic plague.

AN interesting addition to all this:

During the Great Mortality the causes came back every few years, and the totality of the deaths were caused from a number of causes. Some of it came from Anthrax poisoning, some it came from Plague bacteria, and some came from some kind of respiratory illness. So even back then the main cause might have been a respiratory illness, but the people who mostly died had other underlying health issues.

The weird thing is that even back then, the lead up to the Great Mortality was very paralleled to the lead up to the corona virus outbreak. I would say that if there was a big difference between the two is that there is evidence that this outbreak we're all living through today might have been helped along (much like how the Mongols tossed diseased bodies at their enemies)

a reply to: Guyfriday

I'm not sure about 'this outbreak....being helped along' but there's definitely some evidence that suggests the outbreak may indeed be due to human incompetence and the virus itself as a direct result of humans interfering with nature, nothing surprising there then.

a reply to: Freeborn

"human incompetence" is what I mean by helped along (I'll stay away from the other thing people suspect until more evidence comes out). How many people should have self isolated, but decided to hangout with friends and families instead. Hell, in America we had a guy gladly explain how he ignored quarantine, and fled to several countries so that he could come into the US without being held for examination. This doesn't even take into account the idiots that have gone around licking elevator button, coughing on food at stores, and doing that "corona challenge" for internet fame.

Sure during the Great Mortality there were idiotic people too, but at least those people thought they were trying to have a positive outcome for their community. These days people just want an outcome (good, bad, whatever) so that they can claim fame for a briefest of moments.