Air travel in the US was shut down, but if you wanted to travel from Tokyo to New Delhi, Sydney to Amsterdam, or Lagos to Buenos Aires you certainly could.
Well, never? The Black Death was rather more traumatic, and might well have been the most important “event” in recorded history. I mean, I’m going pretty far back, but “never” is a big word.
It’s certainly unprecedented as far as global impact over the short term. Before the Age of Exploration epidemics were never pandemics the way this one is. The Black Death mainly affected Europe (although other plagues affected other parts of Eurasia at other times). Old World diseases devastated the Americas after 1492, but took place over centuries.
If we are going as far back as The Black Death I would point out that “The Year without Summer” volcanic winter after 1815 Mount Tambora eruption disrupted weather patterns and caused famines all over the Northern Hemisphere. I not sure how much it affected the Southern Hemisphere though.
There have been other devasting volcanic winter events as well.
Because a lot of people worked very hard to make sure it was nothing.
I was 8 years old in 1957 and 19 years old in 1968 and I don’t remember anything about flu being particularly serious, on the west coast of the US. No school closings, no particular precautions, no sense of danger.
Nothing in my lifetime has been as disruptive to normal social and economic functioning of the general population as this will probably be. Lots of events had long-term consequences, such as the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 60’s as examples. But while they were going on, so was regular life for most people.
Yes, thousands die every year from flu; if regular flu was as deadly as this virus, that could have been in the millions. Also, for all their limited effectiveness, there are flu shots. So it is a big deal, potentially.
The difference between this and all the others is that this one is occurring in a connected, globalized world with widely distributed supply chains. We have no point of reference for what might happen if those supply chains shut down.
Another difference is social media. We have never had a global pandemic where large chunks of the world were able to watch it happen in other countries in real time. That could be a good thing, or a bad thing depending on how we react. Social media could help us self-isolate while remaining productive and informed, but it could also drive panic, lies, and xenophobia. Again, we are in uncharted territory.
What strikes me as unique about this epidemic is that we saw it coming, prepared (to different extents depending on where you are, but pretty much everybody did something), and even now as we hunker down indoors we’re mostly freaking out about what is coming. Italy is hit hard, but the US is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This sort of response wouldn’t have been possible even thirty years ago. Without the internet, many more people would have had to go to work and go shopping. Today, large fractions of people can work remotely and order supplies from Amazon. I know the complaints here in the US have been “too little too late”, but I’m pretty shocked at how much people have come together. Millions of lives might be saved from this pandemic because we saw it coming and did something about it. That’s what’s unprecedented, not the disease itself.
Sure, in the U.S. and the other more affluent countries. But in all 200+ nations of the world? All of those ‘shithole countries’?
Not one major problem in all those places made the news in January 2000. Not one. And not all of them had a ton of money to pay an army of programmers to throw at the problem.
But either not a single thing of significance fell through the cracks anywhere around the world from Albania to Zanzibar, which is almost infinitely improbable, or the whole thing was overblown.
I actually agree with you that The Black Death had a more traumatic effect on Western Civilization than the current crisis.
You have to remember The Black Death occurred before anyone knew about viruses and bacteria… So they had no idea why it was occurring and it lead to people seeing it as being punishment from God which led to persecutions of Jews, Romani, and other groups. And it made major impact of art and literature if the period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death_in_medieval_culture
‘might’.
For the next few weeks, we’ll still be feeling the impact of all those people on the Florida beaches this week, and all those people in bars last weekend. It may take a month before we know whether the rest of us did enough to keep this thing from exploding.
Pretty much, yes. The shithole countries you mention didn’t really have significant homegrown computer systems that would have been affected by Y2K bugs. If they used off the shelf components they would have had patches supplied by the manufacturers. We worked on the problem for 4+ years, and people had plenty of time to take action.
There would have been serious problems (not planes falling out of the sky, but serious) had no action taken place.
Great combination of user name and post content, if I may say so.
Earth has shuttered. All are now redundant. Apply at the desk for exit tickets. Don’t let the door etc…
The second part of Kafka’s Zürau Aphorism 109 seems to recommend self-isolation, reading in translation “It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.”
I was in New York City, and after a few days things were relatively normal.
I do not in any way mean to downplay the cost in lives and suffering of that day. I do mean to say city services were back to normal pretty much right away. Businesses were open as usual. There was no instantaneous mass unemployment.
I was in New York City, and after a few days things were relatively normal.
I do not in any way mean to downplay the cost in lives and suffering of that day. I do mean to say city services were back to normal pretty much right away. Businesses were open as usual. There was no instantaneous mass unemployment.
I find myself wondering to what extent this pandemic is like the Black Death,
In both cases, people want to self isolate, and maintain distance. Because even people then, as now, understood the concept of contagion – avoid contact with … the whatever. Some work has to get done but, without enough people a functional office can’t be staffed, as surely as a medieval field can’t be harvested by only a few people. Some commerce had to continue, and some people had to eat something – but who’s going to do it, and provide it, is as unknown now as then.
I recall a story from high school, during the Black Death, someone found a purse of money abandoned. They wanted the money, but were afraid of the contagion, so they grabbed it with red-hot tongs and dunked it in water. I asked, “Did they think that would work?” Because that seems – unscientific. I mean to say, if that worked all the time, then the Black Death could have been slowed. It didn’t, they knew it didn’t and should have … scientifically, or maybe logically is a better word, decide not to do that at all. Yet now we’re all fighting for hand sanitizer and aquarium medication.
Crikey - things must be bad if you are reading Kafka.
"Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.”
I wonder if part of the explanation of why this pandemic is unique is due to this is the first time a pandemic that can/has been modeled in advance. This is the first time I have heard of “flattening the curve” or Hammer and Dance. In previous pandemics, including the 1918 pandemic, we simply didn’t have the predictive capability to even attempt to control or respond to the pandemic. Certainly in 1918 many communities took more or less effective action but that was the exception not the rule. Even in the middle ages people tended to self-isolate during plagues by getting out of the cities (those that could). But for the first time we can actually show what is going to happen and what measures would be effective.
I credit/blame the aftermath of 9/11. For the last 19 years nations all over the world have been spending money analyzing the outcome of various attacks-including bioattacks. As a result our ability to describe and predict the pandemic is far greater than it has ever been. This is a unique event to the world. But it certainly won’t stay unique (unfortunately).