I’ve been watching “The Black Death” on Amazon Prime Video this week. It is a series of lectures on the history of the plague when it hit medieval Europe in the around 1348.
It’s a fascinating history lesson on feudal life, politics, and pandemic. I won’t rehash it here – you should watch it if interested. Instead I want to hit on a few salient lessons I learned that I am applying to the current Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the globe.
Lesson One – It Won’t Happen Here
In the beginning, nobody believed it would hit their community. Stories of people suddenly dropping dead in place far away would trickle into cities, towns and villages. But for a long time, people thought, “It won’t happen here.”
Some places were spared initially due to geographic isolation or for not being on trade routes or port cities. In some cities, the plague spared them entirely for months, years or decades. But eventually it hit everywhere.
My takeaway: New Zealand may be Covid free today. Germany may have reduced its cases to near zero. Parts of the US have very few cases. But we’re all going to get hit eventually – city, suburbs and rural areas.
Lesson Two – I’m Different.
People thought they’d be spared because of their religion, their piety, their job, their feudal position, their wealth, their physical constitution and for many other reasons.
None of these made any impact on who got the disease and died vs. who didn’t.
My takeaway: We are all humans who are susceptible to Covid-19. Generally speaking, we’re no different than anyone else in the world. So we’re going to get sick or not and live or die just like people all over the world are.
Lesson Three – We Can Stop This.
The Vatican was a political powerhouse. Religion was a center of society. Politicians and religious leaders spoke of preventing or curing the disease through their religious or government solutions. None worked.
My takeaway: In the US, the lockdowns delayed an initial surge like what was seen in hot spots like New York City and Italy. Our attempts at social distancing, wearing cloth face masks, and washing our hands will have little impact on the long term course of the disease.
Lesson Four – An Incurable Disease Sets Its Own Course
Nothing that was done to quarantine, isolate, treat and protect people worked. The plague would “burn itself out” in a region and then move on after it had infected and killed a large number of people. It then returned in subsequent waves months or years or decades later. As long as it was incurable, people could do little to control it.
My takeaway: Barring an effective vaccine or treatments, this pandemic will spread whenever and however it does despite any of our attempts to mitigate it. It will last in a region until it burns itself out and none of our behavioral modifications will change that.
It’s Going To Get Worse
We’ve seen just the tip of the iceberg in terms of infections, hospitalizations and death. As of yet, I still only know one person who has had Covid-19. I know nobody personally who has died from it.
That’s going to change.
If any of the estimates and data are remotely accurate, only 5% of the US population have been infected. Once the rest of us get exposed and infected, we will all know friends, family and neighbors who get sick and die.
Does this suck? Absolutely. I wish this pandemic never happened.
But that’s just TUF. As with all things that are TUF, I find the best way to deal with it is to accept the facts, take action if possible and accept the consequences.
The alternative is to fight the inevitable and suffer more.
I’ll pass on that.