Plague

The people of Wuhan were the first to feel it. They were walled in, but the virus was not. It spread across the globe, sometimes, as in South Korea, apparently mildly, others, seemingly at random, Iran, Lombardy, Catalonia, NYC, flaring into catastrophe.

We are all watching the drama unfold. We are all players in it, even cloistered in our houses. The economy as we know it has ground to a halt. Grim politicians scramble to stop the bleeding. The problem is complex, we have been spoiled by plenty, and aren’t used to the new decisions. Their, and our, bread and butter is paying lip service to imaginary problems designed to make them look good. ‘We must be carbon neutral in 2050. Someone used a word clumsily.’ Now what.

We’ve been training to run the wrong race. A stupid and frivolous race, a race of luxury. Now we are faced with an ironman of ironmans, in which the finish line is not even clear, but the stakes are life or death.

We’ve been here before, but we’ve forgotten. People in the third world, wracked by disease, don’t need the reminder, but we do. We had the ahistorical luxury of never knowing the fear of the plague, until now.

Our ancestors, to a man, lived with the vagaries of plague. They reacted as we do now. They fled to the country, they fought, they hid, they told each other stories, they tried quack cures, they prayed, they got drunk, they lashed themselves in penance. They lived and died, their nations rose and fell before invisible swords.

We need to remember. I hope that there is still in us all, that ancient strength, that got people through plagues and famines, through wars and ice ages. A strength that we have not cultivated, lying dormant.

The immediate challenge is clear, survival, individual, family, city, nation, and that should be our focus. Beyond that, the next challenge, for that deep, enduring, aspiring strength that I hope has not gone out. Another Renaissance, another imperial collapse, another Plague?

(Painting, El Bosco)