1665 Great Plague-Tonight

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At 9.00pm tonight on Channel 5, after The Yorkshire Vet, is a documentary about the Great Plague of 1665. I think it's in three parts if I've read the write-up correctly.It was actually filmed during this current Covid pandemic.
 
That’ll be interesting thank you. I’ve been reading diaries from the time. It’s very telling our handling of pandemics hasn’t really changed since then
 
boyfalldown said:
That’ll be interesting thank you. I’ve been reading diaries from the time. It’s very telling our handling of pandemics hasn’t really changed since then
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Hopefully, a better heads-up than my last one re Spitting Image on Trump. I think what we’ll learn will really make us appreciate that we’re in 2020 with this Covid as bad as it is.
 
boyfalldown said:
That’ll be interesting thank you. I’ve been reading diaries from the time. It’s very telling our handling of pandemics hasn’t really changed since then
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Except the plague was spread by lice and fleas not airbourne, well according to the programme last night
 
Gremlin said:
Except the plague was spread by lice and fleas not airbourne, well according to the programme last night
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That’s by the by. Our response (masks, lockdowns etc) isn’t that different. It certainly doesn’t show nearly 400 years of progress
 
Gremlin said:
Except the plague was spread by lice and fleas not airbourne, well according to the programme last night
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I've seen a previous programme expounding that theory. What I found more interesting is that the "authorities" at the time (the local churches) appear to have kept proper records and to have implemented an effective track and trace programme, both of which seem to beyond our own government.
 
Leaving aside the incompetence of the current government, the enormous difference between the Black Plague in the 17th century and the current epidemic lies in the death toll: the Plague killed at least 30% of the European population and possibly as much as 60%. The current death rate is running at a fraction of 1%.

Hence we have an awful lot to show for 400 years of progress.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Leaving aside the incompetence of the current government, the enormous difference between the Black Plague in the 17th century and the current epidemic lies in the death toll: the Plague killed at least 30% of the European population and possibly as much as 60%. The current death rate is running at a fraction of 1%.

Hence we have an awful lot to show for 400 years of progress.
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The current death rate is much lower, partly because of improvements to medical science and the availability of treatment but mainly because the black plague kills a very high percentage of its victims, whereas Covid-19 is generally not lethal to young, healthy people. We need to compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges. . .

What we should look at is the similarities, not the differences. In both cases
1. The disease spreads much more quickly and affects far more people who are living in poverty and in crowded housing.
2. The rapid spread is largely due to selfish people who think that it's OK to endanger others by travelling to other areas necessarily and to ignore sensible rules about both hygiene and social contact.
 
boyfalldown said:
That’s by the by. Our response (masks, lockdowns etc) isn’t that different. It certainly doesn’t show nearly 400 years of progress
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I'm pretty sure mask don't offer any protection against fleas and lice :thinking:

The biggest prevention of it spreading so fast was the lack of travel by the masses. so there
is a lesson to be learnt,
 
Gremlin said:
I'm pretty sure mask don't offer any protection against fleas and lice :thinking:

The biggest prevention of it spreading so fast was the lack of travel by the masses. so there
is a lesson to be learnt,
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my point, which you seem to have missed was how little our responses to pandemics has changed over time.

for the record they still wore masks a lot (though for a lack of understanding of how things were spread(. Nowhere did I say they offered any protection
 
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Garry Edwards said:
whereas Covid-19 is generally not lethal to young, healthy people.
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Given that the average life expectancy of a medieval European was 33 years and infant mortality in the first year was 25%, I think that is irrelevant. Admittedly, though, Covid might have been a sought after disease, given the (many) interesting alternatives on offer.
 
Gremlin said:
Except the plague was spread by lice and fleas not airbourne, well according to the programme last night
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Pneumonic plague can be spread by airborne transmission, but bubonic plague - which involves the same bacterium - is not. The theory that lice and fleas living on human hosts, and on other mammals, were the main transmission vectors has been around for a while. I think researchers started looking at this because they were puzzled by the lack of evidence for mass die offs of black rats, and how quickly the disease spread over considerable distances, suggesting that something other than rodent fleas was involved.
 
Garry Edwards said:
I've seen a previous programme expounding that theory. What I found more interesting is that the "authorities" at the time (the local churches) appear to have kept proper records and to have implemented an effective track and trace programme, both of which seem to beyond our own government.
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Perhaps keeping a track on people (and written records of that) was a bit easier in those days when most people stayed and worked within a few hundred yards of where they lived, and there were only a few hundred people living within a few hundreds of yards of each other (who probably mostly all knew each other by name or family name) at the time?

Compare that to today, where within a day you can be almost half-way round the world in a pressurised flying tube with a couple of hundred complete strangers, or, if travelling by car or train, at the opposite end of the UK within 8 hours, alone or with numerous friends. Also, if you live in a town or city these days, do you know the names (including surname) of your neighbours five doors away, or the names and addresses of their relatives if you needed to contact them?

Perhaps sometimes the human race can be too 'clever' for it's own good?
 
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Interesting last night and highlighted a few things
People did attempt isolating victims and social distancing, can you see people allowing themselves
to be locked in their houses now?
But there was no welfare state so they had to earn money to support themselves and their families
Many only had one or possibly two sets of clothes so personal hygiene was a problem , lice/fleas lived in the clothes
they wore daily and easily passed on if you brushed against someone
So yes there were lessons learnt but it was very different times and a different virus spread in a
different way
 
Gremlin said:
So why are you comparing the preventions etc. with a present day virus
which spreads in a different way ?
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As I said in my very first post

boyfalldown said:
I’ve been reading diaries from the time. It’s very telling our handling of pandemics hasn’t really changed since then
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Which is, as you can see, an observation about the way we as a society deal with pandemics.
 
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