Author: jenna.gulamani.20

Among the many historical and modern definitions of the word ‘crisis’, its original ancient Greek definition remains relevant today, as a turning-point where the community must come together to decide what to do next (1). We have seen plenty of that during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in its early days, and because of its ability to affect anyone, especially the elderly, society responded to it on a massive scale. People came together to make masks, provide food for children, and generally embody the neighbourly sense of codependence that we have apparently been losing. However, it was specifically its ability to affect everyone that caused such a large-scale mobilization of resources and regulations. Other crises that disproportionately affect minorities and powerless groups have the tendency to be disregarded, and as a result, exclusion within crisis situations means that the egalitarian feeling of citizens banding together to defeat a joint problem is perhaps over-exaggerated.

(2)(description: nurses wearing volunteer-made fabric masks due to PPE shortage)

Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of a Plague Year” is an intriguing piece of fiction.  Its accounts of all the different individuals who would have passed through Defoe’s corner of London give a varied and exciting depiction of the hustle and bustle within one of Europe’s most important cities. The narrator, HF, mentions the rich (himself included) having the option to flee to their houses in the countryside to escape the plague, while the poor would perish along the roads after being denied entry to every town they came upon, and when infected with the plague, were too weak to drag themselves to find food. Some benefactors would leave bread in fields at a safe distance, but even still, thousands perished out there. They were also targeted by con-men promising expensive cures and talismans to cure the sickness or keep it away altogether; perhaps they knew that if their customers died, they wouldn’t be held accountable anyway. The religious convinced themselves that the plague was God’s wrath, and would endure periods of extended fasting to protect themselves (3).

The variety calls attention to the role of class privilege within crisis. The poor could not feed themselves and often found themselves at the mercy of those looking to make a quick buck, while the middle-class had the privilege of choosing not to eat as a preventative measure. As expected, the rich simply left. In a universal crisis such as one caused by disease, yes, “we’re all in the same boat,” but poverty adds a completely separate layer to the struggle of survival. Exclusion of those without economic privilege in modern crisis narratives is a privilege in and of itself, because a stay-at-home order might be frustrating for all of us, but having to balance it with also being unable to pay rent invalidates the sentiment of a communal struggle that so many corporations and celebrities have enjoyed propagating.

It gets worse when the crisis in question doesn’t affect everyone. The 1980’s HIV crisis’s struggle for widespread acknowledgement seemed to come down to two primary factors, the first being general homophobia (4). The general public’s designation of gay people (especially men) as deviants, meant that a disease more common in gay men at the time wasn’t overly successful in garnering sympathy from the wider population (5). While that stigma still exists today, it is greatly diminished, especially in Western nations with more liberal ideologies. Additionally, ongoing HIV/AIDS education campaigns about transmission and harm reduction have been successful over the years, and information is now included in most science-based adolescent sex education (6).

The other factor is the minority status of the group most affected. Being openly “out” was less common than it is today, which was understandable given the increased risk of experiencing hate crimes and professional discrimination (5). A small population of activists may have been working to demonstrate HIV’s risks to everyone, including through asexual transmission, but strength in numbers was lacking. To many, HIV still did not affect them to a significant degree, and thus the HIV crisis was excluded from the same level of urgency afforded to problems affecting a larger population. 

This ties into the question of public health: how do we approach it with limited resources? There is an ongoing debate about whether it should be dealt with from an individual point of view or by looking at the benefits to the wider population, but regardless of institutional organisation, under no circumstance should care be based on whether the individual is part of an accepted group (7). In that case, it ceases to be a concern of allocation of rights, or obligation to provide rights, and instead becomes a direct attack on individual freedom and equality.

The issue of exclusion extends even deeper when an issue affects a non-minority group but is still unrecognized as being widespread, the most evident example of this being sex discrimination. We have progressed in leaps and bounds since the days of erasure and inaccurate canons of the female role in art, science, and politics, but as demonstrated by Caroline Criado-Perez’s Invisible Women, there remains a multitude of barriers around the world that prevent women, both directly and indirectly, from enjoying the same benefits that society has to offer men (8).

We still have overtly misogynistic behaviour: FGM, femicide, lack of access to birth control/abortion services, and the prevalent dichotomy of female slut-shaming versus the acceptance and even celebration of male sexual prowess (9). It’s the hidden barriers, however, that Invisible Women seeks to deconstruct. It’s the things that are unintentional results of a world where male-centric behaviours are so normalized that the insinuation of inequality sounds radical and disruptive, that walk the fine line between being brave feminism and a whiny “feminazism” (a term popularized  in 1992 by conservative radio host Riush Limbaugh) (10). The notion that women should be allowed to work, vote, and own property is no longer so controversial in the West, but proposing the allocation of money to research male-centric public transport infrastructure? Not so easy. The bias is undoubtedly there when you look at the numbers, but 1) a lot of people don’t have the training to understand the data (thankfully Criado-Perez is an excellent explainer), 2) it’s hard to genuinely portray the issue in an clickbait headline, and 3) in many cases, the data simply doesn’t exist, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s easier to omit gender-segregated data, but without it, there’s no proof that unintentional discrimination is occuring. The field of city planning is beginning to acknowledge it, but the revamp of said infrastructure is unlikely to be a quick process (8). 

While crisis can be adequately, and even universally, defined, there is no universal way to solve it, because the range of situations that crisis encompasses is broad to the point that it has been argued that the entirety of human existence has had a crisis of some sort occurring. However, drawing attention to the exclusion of underprivileged or underrepresented groups is essential in order to fully embody one of the only positive aspects of a crisis: communal and democratic effort. Crises should not be praised for having the silver lining of bringing everyone together if not everyone is brought together. We have seen incredible feats of teamwork and compassion across the world in the last year, but as long as inequality exists in the absence of a crisis, it will persist within crisis situations as well.

References

1. Koselleck R. Kritik und Krise. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta;.
2. Collins J. Volunteers rally to produce homemade face masks for coronavirus medical workers – Orange County Register [Internet]. Ocregister.com. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/25/volunteers-rally-to-produce-homemade-face-masks-for-coronavirus-medical-workers/
3. De Foe D. A journal of the plague year. London: E. Nutt; 1722.
4. Morris B. History of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Social Movements [Internet]. https://www.apa.org. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/history
5. Anthony A. ‘We were so scared’: Four people who faced the horror of Aids in the 80s [Internet]. the Guardian. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/31/we-were-so-scared-four-people-who-faced-the-horror-of-aids-in-the-80s
6. History of HIV and AIDS overview [Internet]. Avert. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview
7. O’NEILL O. The dark side of human rights. International Affairs [Internet]. 2005;81(2):427-439. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3568897?seq=1
8. Criado-Perez C. Invisible women. London: Chatto and Windus; 2019.
9. Endendijk J, van Baar A, Deković M. He is a Stud, She is a Slut! A Meta-Analysis on the Continued Existence of Sexual Double Standards. Personality and Social Psychology Review [Internet]. 2019 [cited 25 March 2021];24(2):163-190. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7153231/
10. Hesse M. Rush Limbaugh had a lot to say about feminism. Women learned how to not care. [Internet]. Washington Post. 2021 [cited 25 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rush-limbaugh-feminism-feminazis/2021/02/19/3a00f852-7202-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

“Canon” is a weird concept. It’s primary issue is obvious: it excludes the historical women who accomplished things as great as any man living at the time, thereby giving the impression that there just weren’t women doing anything important at the time due to strict gender gender roles. However, it goes deeper than just their erasure from official records. Their accomplishments may have rivaled that of their male counterparts, but the effort that they would have had to put in to get to that point, and the glass (or perhaps concrete) ceilings they would have faced in centuries gone by make their achievements arguably more impressive than the men doing the same things.

Thankfully we have progressed in leaps and bounds to get to where we are today, but as demonstrated by Caroline Criado-Perez’s Invisible Women, there remains a multitude of barriers around the world that prevent women, both directly and indirectly, from enjoying the same benefits that society has to offer men (1).

We have, of course, overtly misogynistic behaviour: FGM, femicide, lack of access to birth control/abortion services, and the prevalent dichotomy of female slut-shaming versus the acceptance and even celebration of male sexual prowess (3). Though these things can quite easily be explained as unfair to anyone who agrees that men and women are and should be equal, they persist. 

It’s the hidden barriers, however, that Invisible Women surprised me most with. The things that aren’t intentional, but merely a result of a world where male-centric behaviours are so normalized that the insinuation of inequality sounds radical and disruptive (1). I kind of understand it, because the data around the sexism of Swedish snow-clearing needs an explanation, so much so that Criado-Perez dedicated an entire chapter to it.

There’s a fine line to walk between being branded as a brave feminist and an irritating “feminazi” (a term popularized  in 1992 by conservative radio host Riush Limbaugh) (4). Arguing that women should be allowed to work, and vote, and own property? In the West, these aren’t controversial views, even among those with conservative leanings. You’d have to get reasonably deep into the world of the right-wing to find people who really think women holding jobs should be illegal, at least to the point they’d be willing to admit. However, propose allocating money to remove the misogyny from something as unbiased and objective as housing, or public transport, or any sort of physical infrastructure? Not so easy. The bias is undoubtedly there when you look at the numbers, but 1) a lot of people don’t look at the data because they don’t have the training to understand it (I certainly don’t but thankfully Criado-Perez is an excellent explainer), 2) it’s hard to encompass that scale of the issue in an attention-grabbing headline, but much easier to do so with a headline bashing liberals, and 3) in too many cases, the data simply doesn’t exist, which leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy (2). It’s easier to omit gender-segregated data, but without it, there’s no proof that (unintentional discrimination is occuring (1). Understanding is growing and eventually being taken into account by city planners, but the time it will take to convince everyone that sexist infrastructure is real, combined with the eventual re-vamp of said infrastructure is unlikely to be a quick process. 

References

1. Criado-Perez C. Invisible women. London: Chatto and Windus; 2019.
2. Chen Y, Conroy N, Rubin V. Misleading Online Content. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM on Workshop on Multimodal Deception Detection [Internet]. 2015 [cited 25 March 2021];:15-19. Available from: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2823465.2823467
3. Endendijk J, van Baar A, Deković M. He is a Stud, She is a Slut! A Meta-Analysis on the Continued Existence of Sexual Double Standards. Personality and Social Psychology Review [Internet]. 2019 [cited 25 March 2021];24(2):163-190. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7153231/
4. Hesse M. Rush Limbaugh had a lot to say about feminism. Women learned how to not care. [Internet]. Washington Post. 2021 [cited 25 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rush-limbaugh-feminism-feminazis/2021/02/19/3a00f852-7202-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

Researchers are learning to grow personalized organs in labs. They’re tapping into the skulls of spinal cord injury patients and giving them back control of their bodies with direct brain stimulation. They developed an entire COVID vaccine (multiple, in fact) in a year.

So why are there still kids in less-developed nations who don’t have access to routine childhood vaccinations that cost a few dollars each? And why are there people in highly-developed nations who are choosing to Uber to the hospital if they break a leg because they can’t afford an ambulance? (Yes USA, I’m talking about you.)

At this level, it seems to come down to an unequal distribution of wealth and resources, combined with a not-insignificant level of political corruption. We have NGOs in place to help redistribute aid where needed, but most of them have developed from a need for extra hands, because states were ill-equipped to provide their citizens with adequate care. This is not always the fault of the state; natural disasters, war, and exploitation by more powerful entities may play a part in the suffering incurred by the people, but a lack of clarity in international treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, means that confusion or state avoidance of responsibility can further complicate matters (2).

Dr James Wilson’s lecture explored the relationship between rights and obligations, and while the relationship is relatively clear in a theoretical context, execution is obviously a little more tricky. How do we make sure every plays their part in a system with so many individual players? Healthcare by nature is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and trying to paint it as such leads to situations like Soobramoney in South Africa and certain Brazilian legal cases (1). While the systems for allocating healthcare stand on polar opposites of the spectrum of treatment for a critically ill individual versus the greatest good for an entire population, we can plainly see the issue of finding a balance.

The balance should be easier to correct in wealthier nations: in the US, sky-high healthcare prices arise not from a lack of resources, but from unfettered corporate greed. The US requires not a change in the approach to human rights in the sense mentioned in the lectures , but a change in the overall political system to make better use of the billions of dollars of medications, supplies, hospital beds, and cutting-edge treatments that people fly from all over the world to receive.

Poorer nations are at the disadvantage set out by all of the treaties and declarations; as long as there is insufficient access to medical care, some individuals will find themselves left to die. The ideal, and certainly idealistic, solution, would be a layered approach, where communities take care of their own. What they can’t handle is dealt with by the state, and what the state can’t afford is aided by the international community. This comes back to a fundamental question of how to allocate obligations, and putting it into practice has proved to be almost impossible. With a growing global population and a rapidly advancing technological sphere, what seems to be holding the process of equitable access to rights is politics and power struggles, which show few signs of ever going away.

References

1. Soobramoney v Minister of Health. [1997] ZACC 17. 1997.
2. United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Paris: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; 1748.

They say time flies when you’re having fun.

I don’t know who “they” are, but let’s assume they’re right, and the opposite is true. Time DOESN’T fly when you’re not having fun. In a general sense, the pandemic has been anything but fun for most of us, with all of the cancelled plans and overall feeling of isolation. So why is it that March 2020 simultaneously feels like it just happened, and like it happened 20 years ago? (This interpretation is based both on my own experience and the consensus of the other UCL students I’m sitting next to right now.) Interestingly enough, research from John Moores University seems to agree: perception of time has been changing for most people during COVID, but the stretching versus compressing seems to occur on an individual basis (3).

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” deals with time in a layered way (1). There are three clear indicators: the half-hour it takes to die of the disease that the rich are hiding from, the several months of siege that they undergo before they face their fates, and most importantly, the hourly chiming of the ebony clock. To me, it seems like they undergo several states of time that correspond to each symbol. The first five or six months of partying are glossed over. They find fun things to do, presumably, but everything blurs together and in hindsight, the time spent was forgettable. The thirty minutes are reconciled at the end, where the death sweeps the partygoers quickly and effectively, leaving no alternative but to succumb. The hours of the party, marked by the clock, are the reality that they feel in the moment, where every time they take a step towards timelessness, they are jarred sharply back to the hour that they exist in. It is arguably a sort of countdown, maybe not explicitly acknowledged as such, but the discomfort and pauses that follow each chime suggest some sort of awareness of the sheer weirdness of the situation.

I think much of the same could be said for the situation we find ourselves in, though perhaps not universally. The months are pretty obvious, that run into each other but are, at the same time filled with so many discrete events because of 2020’s propensity for world-altering events. I’m not sure how much I can speak for the half-hour time limit on the disease, because luckily, I don’t know anyone who has died of COVID, but reflecting on the soaring numbers of worldwide death, then space of time in which they happened is relatively small.

The hourly chimes are the most personally relatable aspect of the piece. Each time someone forgets the day or the month, which has become more common than ever in the climate of work/study from home, we get a little reality check, which is a far cry from the constant string of events and commitments most of us had to deal with before. It seems like the boredom stretches the time we perceive, interspersed with the miniscule recognitions of where we are in our temporal spaces (2). The time’s individual events that we remember, however, are compressed because there is some much monotonous sameness, and it seems like the only remedy is the escape from our crisis-insulated bubble, either by overcoming the virus, or by succumbing to it in an “incident of half an hour.”

References

1. Poe E. Masque Of The Red Death, The. South Bend: Infomotions, Inc.; 2000.
2. Lindberg S. Perception of Time Has Shifted During COVID-19, New Survey Reports [Internet]. Verywell Mind. 2021 [cited 12 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.verywellmind.com/why-time-is-passing-so-strangely-during-covid-5075438
3. Pardes A. The Coronavirus Has Warped All Sense of Time [Internet]. Wired. 2021 [cited 12 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-time-warp-what-day-is-it/

As soon as we found ourselves in a near-worldwide lockdown when COVID hit, I don’t think there was any doubt in most people’s minds that the virus was a crisis. Because of its ability to affect anyone, especially the elderly, society responded to it on a massive scale. Even the conspiracy theorists saw it as a crisis, though one of freedom rather than epidemiology.

The HIV crisis of the 1980’s moved through a very different series of events in its efforts to be recognised as the destructive disease that it is. The struggle for acknowledgement ultimately seemed to come down to two primary factors, the first being general homophobia (4). The general public’s designation of gay people (especially men) as deviants, meant that a disease that was more common in gay men at the time wasn’t exactly the most effective in garnering sympathy from the wider population (3). While that stigma still exists today, it is greatly diminished, especially in Western nations with more liberal ideologies. Additionally, ongoing education campaigns about the transmission of HIV and its corresponding harm reduction strategies have been incredibly successful over the years, and HIV/AIDS education is now included in most science-based sex education for adolescents (2).

The other factor is the minority status of the group that was considered to be most affected. Being openly “out” was less common than it is today, understandable given the increased risk of falling victim to hate crimes, professional discrimination, and public shame (3). The smaller population of activists may have been working to demonstrate the risks of HIV to everyone, including non-sex-related transmission, but the strength in numbers was lacking. In many people’s minds, it was a problem that did not affect them to a significant degree, and as a result, the HIV-positive community was, in many ways, excluded from the same level of urgency afforded problems that affect a larger population. 

I’m writing this blog post several weeks late, but I feel like it ties into an aspect of the most recent week’s topic: how do we approach public health when there are limited resources? The withholding of life-saving drugs and results by pharmaceutical companies that we see in 120 BPM seems not to be a problem of resources, but rather of corporate greed, but what about in cases where resources are scarce and the affected party does not hold much sway, socially and/or size-wise (1)? It seems like that would vary from a state to state basis and how they interpret their personal commitments to the health of their population. This is an ongoing debate, about whether it should be approached from an individual point of view, or by looking primarily at the benefits to the wider problem. However, regardless of institutional organisation, under no circumstance should access to care be based on whether the individual is part of an accepted group or not, because then it ceases to be a concern of allocation, or obligation, and instead becomes a direct attack on individual freedom and equality.

References

1. Campillo R. 120 BPM. France: Memento Films; 2021.
2. History of HIV and AIDS overview [Internet]. Avert. 2021 [cited 12 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview
3. Anthony A. ‘We were so scared’: Four people who faced the horror of Aids in the 80s [Internet]. the Guardian. 2021 [cited 12 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/31/we-were-so-scared-four-people-who-faced-the-horror-of-aids-in-the-80s
4. Morris B. History of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Social Movements [Internet]. https://www.apa.org. 2021 [cited 12 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/history

In the words of the seemingly unkillable Meredith Grey of the long-running hit medical drama ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ “There is no other day. Every day is like this. Every day there’s a crisis. There’s no time. (1)” Arguably, Dr Grey’s life is more chaotic than your average real-life human (in this episode, she is getting married to her boss while Friend #1 battles metastatic cancer and Friend #2 joins the military and is subsequently hit by a bus), but hey, life imitates art.

My point is, the natural evolution of the term “crisis” into mainstream English, in conjunction with popular media having far greater access to an arsenal of attention-grabbing tools than it did in the 17th century, means that there is plenty of debate over what constitutes a crisis. Koselleck specifically mentions the legal/political, medical, and theological definitions of the word. The legal/political positioning refers to a major decision or event that affects the community, in line with the original Greek “krisis,” while the medical term generally encompasses a turning-point between life or death in an illness. The theological definition furthers the turning-point idea to invoke the Last Judgement for a sprinkling of added drama (2). 

As of 6:10 PM on the 19th of February, 2021, this is what Google shows me when I search the word “crisis” under the News tab. I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure how Google’s tracking policy works, or whether the results are influenced by my search history, but regardless, that’s a solid variety of topics and platforms that the term appears on. 

This begs the question of whether there is a need for such a specific definition of the word. This is not an argument for it to be allowed to lose all meaning, but Dr. Uta Staiger pointed out that language changes and moves over time, and unlike crisis’ medical definition as a clear turning-point with a before and an after, language can shift gradually. It may be slow, but it is not static, and for a term so deeply entrenched in almost every area of society that involves any sort of problem at all, even while we try to define its immediate meaning, it continues to shift before our eyes. Additionally, because it is already so part of common English and no longer used as a technical term, maybe the process of determining its significance at this point in time can only be carried out by examining our present day in hindsight, as a point of historical exploration.

References:

1. Rhimes S. Grey’s Anatomy, Season 5, Episode 24, Timestamp 31:50. Los Angeles: ABC Studios; 2021.
2. Koselleck R, Richter M. Crisis. Journal of the History of Ideas [Internet]. 2006 [cited 19 February 2021];67(2):357-400. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30141882?seq=1

Globalization was the most striking theme for me within this week’s readings and discussions. Two parts in particular stuck out, the first being the letters from John Paige to William Clarke, British merchants (1). Paige’s letters underscore many of the market stresses created as a result of disrupted trade. Both government regulations and personal fears changed economic patterns within the wine industry, and several of his letters include detailed monetary happenings and predictions to be sent to one of his Clarke. The highly developed network of trade combined with the precision with which such conjecture was made demonstrates early globalization, even in a context where neither party was directly involved in the outbreak of plague in Malaga itself (2). This plays into the calm, matter-of-fact tone of Paige’s letters, though part of it may also simply stem from the status of the letters as business correspondence. Either way, the deaths of other known merchants mentioned in some of the later letters lack emotion in their reporting.

During the Week 4 seminar, somebody suggested that a contributing factor to the tone of the communication could have simply been how commonplace death was during the 17th century. Plague, other diseases, starvation, unsafe working conditions, war, and high infant mortality rates all contributed to shorter human lifespans, and given that there were apparently only three years of European peace during the 17th century, perhaps it is human nature to become used to a continuous stream of misfortunes (3). During the Q+A portion of the seminar, Fred Carnegy suggested that while those living through such an outbreak may not have fully understood the big picture of climate change, they certainly would have seen the general disruption of the era and understood it as such. It is interesting to consider the psychological perspectives of how people adapted to continuous crises.

The second instance of globalization that stood out to me was the account of the eruption of Mount Villarica in Chile, where it was apparently heard in the Philippines and Cambodia (4). I’m not sure how significant it is from a historical perspective, but I just thought it was really interesting how instead of ships and goods and wars being the points of connection between humans living so far apart, it was a natural disaster that was cumulatively experienced. Excluding anyone harmed by the event, of course, it’s kind of beautiful that both the rich and the poor experienced it, rather than only the lucky few traveling before modern globalization, and even if it didn’t really affect their lives in any way, shape, or form past, it was still a moment of mass human connection.

References

1. Paige J. Letters: 1649 | British History Online [Internet]. British-history.ac.uk. 2021 [cited 9 February 2021]. Available from: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol21/pp1-8
2. A Quick Guide to the World History of Globalization [Internet]. Sas.upenn.edu. 2021 [cited 9 February 2021]. Available from: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/global1.htm
3. Parker G. Global crisis – war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth cent. 1st ed. Yale University Press; 2013. 
4. Parker G. Global crisis – war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth cent. 1st ed. Yale University Press; 2013.

 

 

Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of a Plague Year” is an intriguing piece of fiction for several reasons. To start, while it was published in 1722 and therefore counts as a historical source for us, it was also a piece of historical fiction when it was published, given that the event chronicled occurred half a century before (1). According to Professor John Mullan, its existence marked the beginning of the genre of “novel,” but the religious slant we see throughout the work is the closest we come to seeing a non-factual bias from Defoe. It was published under a pseudonym as a genuine account of the plague outbreak that killed tens, even hundreds, of thousands in London and the surrounding areas, and Defoe pulls his authenticity from the use of the very real and jarringly objective Bills of Mortality, which he cites throughout the work as the narrator HF watches his corner of the city crumble before his eyes (2).

(3)

The Bills of Mortality themselves are an impressive feat. Realistically, collecting the information would not have been overly difficult, but compared to the Medieval period, with its vague and heavenly artwork, the official data collection from every parish coupled with printing and copying capability was a significant and helpful shift in human advancement. However, medical knowledge continued to trail behind, giving rise to similar mentalities that spurred the rise of the Bianchi. Self-flagellation may have been out of style in the 17th century, but HF notes that several of the more religious families observed periods of fasting to appease the heavens. For the masses, rather than dramatic processions, con-men rose out of the shadows, promising expensive cures and talismen to cure the sickness or keep it away altogether. Perhaps they knew that if their customers died, they wouldn’t be held accountable anyway. Regardless, the desperation after seeing so many drop dead forced people to try what they could in hopes of avoiding acquaintance their local mass grave.

The mass graves were certainly real, though Defoe’s exact account of it must have been fictional. His commitment to the factuality of the year, and the interviews and research he must have done to construct such novel are truly impressive. Though accounts of specific people may have been embellished or created, like the one of a man watching the bodies of his whole family be tossed into a mass grave, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that events transpired similarly in real life. His pride in London certainly seems to be real, with the quote “it was never to be said of London, that the living were not able to bury the Dead. (4)” This is quite a broad statement that is not plague-specific, but maybe more humanity-specific. After so many pages of death and horror, it re-sensitizes the reader to mortality and a continued sense of community in the city.

The process of writing an accurate fictional work about a real event removes the bias of a single real person experiencing it, instead replacing it with the observations of many. Defoe’s foray into a new form of literature is appropriately marked by choosing a topic as significant as London’s plague.

References

1. Kavanagh D. Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year [Internet]. London Fictions. 2020 [cited 1 February 2021]. Available from: https://www.londonfictions.com/daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year.html#
2. Jordison S. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is our reading group book for May [Internet]. the Guardian. 2020 [cited 1 February 2021]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/apr/28/a-journal-of-the-plague-year-by-daniel-defoe-is-our-reading-group-book-for-may
3. Company of Parish-Clerks of London, 1665. Bills of Mortality. London.
4. Defoe D. A Journal of the Plague Year. 1st ed. New York: E. Nutt; 1722.

 

The plague is a fixture of medieval history, and conjures up images of doctors in beaked masks and X-marked front doors. The horror of living the reality was likely far greater than anything we can imagine; today’s pandemic, while admittedly mismanaged in many cases, is up against thousands of scientists and advanced healthcare protocols, which removes much (but not all) of its uncertainty and danger.

In 14th century Italy, germ theory was still a couple hundred years away, and microscopy another century after that (1). There were theories as to how it spread, through the air and bad vapors, but the real culprit, rodents, had not yet been identified. As a result, there was a spike in religious fervor, especially in Italy, as penance for the sins that had supposedly brought the disease down on humanity. Self-flagellation and religious parades became common, public ways to express devotion, leading to a variety of new social dynamics. In some cases, they were an opportunity for disputes to be settled and for solidarity to be shown (2). In others, they became destructive, violent, and headed by ambitious laymen instead of the traditional religious leaders. Today mimics it, in a way. The urgency of COVID has revealed the extremes of human existence, bringing about beautiful shows of compassion as much as acts of selfish desperation (3).

On a different note, it’s interesting to wonder what would have happened had the plague really been airborne. Would people have realized and locked themselves away in their homes? It is difficult to put ourselves into that frame of thinking, since our generation has been raised from birth with at least a very rudimentary knowledge of what a germ is, and that washing our hands and covering our mouths to cough stops us from getting sick. However, many of the strategies used in the 14th century are reasonably similar to those that make up preventative care today; exercising, eating healthy, unspoiled food, and maintaining a routine (4). These things do not necessarily require explicit scientific knowledge to understand, and the historical integration of prayer and religion would perhaps have helped solidify the average person’s routine.

The literature and art left behind explain and depict the actions carried out in order to ward off the plague, but there are always limitations. Texts were primarily written from a highly educated point of view, which was not representative of the majority of the population in the medieval era. Art was created heavily featuring symbolism, with images of angels in processions or similarities to Jesus Christ in works concerning self-flagellation (see below).

(5) (image description: mural on a 15th century Italian church depicting an angel mediating and argument or blessing two individuals from a crowd of followers)

As a result, many pieces of art were an idealized version of what the religious acts were supposed to embody, making them a somewhat unrealistic source of information on the events of the time (5). Ultimately, however, these depictions serve to emphasize the role of religion in dealing with the plague, especially in conjunction with society’s relative helplessness to combat it from a scientific perspective.

References

1. The history of germ theory in the College collections | Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh [Internet]. Rcpe.ac.uk. 2021 [cited 27 January 2021]. Available from: https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/heritage/history-germ-theory-college-collections
2. Horrox R. The Black death. Manchester: Manchester University Press; 1994. 
3. Meyersohn N. Cops in the toilet paper aisle: Grocery stores add extra security [Internet]. CNN. 2021 [cited 27 January 2021]. Available from: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/23/business/grocery-stores-coronavirus-security/index.html
4. DURAN-REYNALS M, WINSLOW C. REGIMENT DE PRESERV ACIO A EPIDIMIA O PESTILENCIA E MORTALDATS. Bulletin of the History of Medicine [Internet]. 1949;23(1):57-89. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44443424
5. di Camerino C. Vallo di Nera: Church of Santa Maria; 1401.

 

COVID-19 turned the world upside down in the span of only a couple months, though responses differed based on country, economic capacity, and individual responsibility. In many cases, the virus has acted as a trigger, bringing previously hidden shortcomings to light in the moments that crucial services were the most needed.

The global shortage of PPE has been largely forgotten in recent months, but the circulation of images of healthcare workers reusing flimsy disposable masks was a major talking point until supply chains eventually readjusted. Perhaps a pandemic of this exact scale was an unexpected event, but reports that various Western governments (notably the UK and the US) ignored expert warnings that stockpiles were insufficient highlights a lack of preparedness that left essential personnel vulnerable through no fault of their own (1). This is an instance where the many members of the wider community came together to support each other, make masks at home, and shame those in charge for their inaction or incompetence.

(2) (image description: medical professionals wearing patient gowns and improvised PPE due to equipment shortages)

Here we see a return to the etymological origin of “crisis”, the Greek “krisis,” where the people themselves act in difficult circumstances to collaboratively make decisions as needed. As McLoughlin points out, we have seen the same occur in various modern social movements, fighting environmental and racial issues, among others (cannot figure out how to cite McLoughlin). We appear to have gone full circle, and perhaps some of that comes down to the same media that shared those stories of nurses and doctors with red marks crossing their faces after long shifts in COVID wards. It is easier to become an activist these days, and as a result it is easier to become involved in change. 

However, media is not always a force for good, as has been readily apparent for at least the last half decade at least. While Caduff cites a lack of hard data surrounding fatality rate and transmission pattern as a chief concern in outlining strategy to deal with COVID-19, the opposite is simultaneously true (3). There already exists a wealth of information and research on areas of society that will inevitably feel the effects of the measures put into place, but deliberate misinformation, unfounded accusations, and skewed statistics mixed in with the reputable sources has created ‘alternative’ groups, including those who consider the pandemic to be an elaborate hoax. Perhaps some of it is a manifestation of existing xenophobia or commitment to personal freedom (to an arguably dangerous extent), but in some cases, the sheer volume of information at our fingertips, difficult to parse through even from a professional research standpoint, must be even more daunting to the average person who simply wants to know what is going on.

COVID-19 has served to widen some of the social cracks we already saw appearing, but have also demonstrated new areas that require improvement. The course of action may not be clear, but at least we know where we should be looking.

References

1. BBC. Coronavirus: UK failed to stockpile crucial PPE [Internet]. BBC News. 2020 [cited 25 January 2021]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-52440641

2. O’Kane C. Exhausted doctors and nurses post images of their bruised faces after long shifts wearing protective gear [Internet]. Cbsnews.com. 2020 [cited 25 January 2021]. Available from: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-health-care-bruised-faces-masks-ppe-hospitals-doctors-nurses-italy-new-york/

3. Caduff C. What Went Wrong: Corona and the World after the Full Stop [Internet]. Anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com. 2020 [cited 25 January 2021]. Available from: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maq.12599