They Walk Among Us

I was doing the shopping yesterday and got some strange looks when I came round the corner of one aisle and started laughing when I saw that the toilet paper aisle was empty. How exactly is buying loads of toilet paper going to help against Covid19 ? Are these people going to wrap it round their heads like a mummy?

Two questions…

1/ Do the media actually want Covid19 to turn into the new Black Death?

2/ Are there more morons these days or are they just more visible?

There have been numerous pandemics that have caused all sorts of problems in human history…

* Between 165 and 180AD, the Antonine Plague killed up to a quarter of the population in parts of the Roman Empire, devastated the army and killed the co-emperor Lucius Verus.

* The Cyprian Plague in the mid 200s nearly led to the collapse of the Roman Empire during the Crisis of the Third Centruy.

* In the sixth century, the Plague of Justinian killed somewhere between 13 and 26% of the world’s population at the time and may have been the deadliest pandemic in history.

* The (in)famous Black Death that reached the British Isles in 1348, killed up to 200,000,000 people worldwide and up to 60% of the European population. In England, more than 500 villages were completely wiped out.

As I write write these words (6/3/20) there have been approximately 3000 deaths from Covid19 and the death rate is about 3.5%. Time to get a sense of perspective.

To address my second question, Don’t Go On Twitter! If you do then not only will you believe that there are more morons today but that they have taken over the world.

After nearly three decades as a history teacher, I am used to kids asking me why people in the past were ‘so stupid.’ And to a young person with limited experience of the world, the idea of telling the future by watching chickens eat (the Romans) or carving out someone’s heart to make sure the sun comes up (the Aztecs) seems pretty bizarre. But what will future students of history make of a society that responds to a virus by bulk-buying toilet paper and accusing people of racism after a hysterical media have suggested everyone from China is potential plague-carrier? Christ only knows what they will make of po-faced discussions about whether it is transphobic not to want to sleep with a woman with a penis.

Wibble.*