Media vita in morte sumus.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
So here we are in December having moved to Lockdown Lite in England. Or not so lite if you are in Bristol, the North and Midlands or Kent! News on the vaccine is promising but I think those hoping for a return to a more ‘normal’ world early in 2021 will need to be patient.
I keep a daily journal. It will be of no surprise that over recent months the virus has featured often in its pages. Well, there isn’t much else to write about at times.
Out of interest, I decided to look back to see when my first mention of the virus might be and of what did I write.
It was Saturday the 25 January, and that first mention is a footnote to the day’s entry. It reads
“In the wider world, a virus has struck China. It’s a form of flu believed to have originated in a market. Selling, for consumption, live ‘exotic’ animals. The spread of the virus seems rapid in China. And a few cases also reported on the continent of Europe and in the USA. None yet in the UK. China also reported eighty deaths to date, so not surprisingly, the virus is beginning to attract some attention”.
After that ‘relaxed’ entry, I make a few more mentions over the next three weeks or so but by no means daily. They also remain more of a footnote, though do reflect the growing spread of the virus. Then comes mid-February when the virus becomes the first entry of the day, and from then until now, there are only a few days when I make no mention of it in some form or another. My journal of the past 6 months taking on the tone of Samuel Pepys diary on the plague’s progress across London in 1665.
As with my first mention of COVID, his first entry on the plague is of it in foreign lands (Holland). Unlike me, he expresses fear that it will spread and devastate England. Interestingly from that first mention, some 18 months were to pass before the plague reached London. It was not such a ‘global’ world back then.
Once plague did strike, Pepys description of London reads like a description of any modern town during the first Lockdown,
“nobody but poor wretches in the streets”… “no boats upon the river”… “little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells”
The authorities introduced quarantine and self-isolation to help combat the plague. They did not mess about. Any family with an infected person kept shut up in their home for 40 days. A red cross marked the house and guards posted outside.
Although interestingly, after the initial fears, and in contrast to today, the authorities allowed much of ordinary life to continue back in 1665. People could travel, go to work, hold weddings, visit the alehouses to drink (with or without food) etc. Indeed, Pepys writes about the desensitisation of people, including himself, to the number of dead, “I am come almost to think nothing of it” and the entry on the last day of 1665 remarks, “I have never lived so merrily … as I have done this plague-time”
Those remarks demonstrate the different view of death some 350 years ago. It was a much more matter of fact event than it is today. Although, and this may be just me, I sense that people are now becoming COVID-weary. The days when we stood to applaud front line workers or listened to daily press conferences in which ministers express sorrow on the number of deaths are now memories. Instead, MPs push for cost-benefit analysis on the impact of Lockdowns. People want to travel, drink to all hours in the pub, have crowds return to sporting events, have Christmas parties and the like. We may feel ourselves a more sophisticated society than that of 1665. I wonder are we all that different?
Media vita in morte sumus.
Stay safe, and best not to dwell on what happened in London the year after the plague!
