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Started by bacardiandlime, January 30, 2020, 03:20:28 PM

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science.expat

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on March 09, 2020, 03:14:06 PM
Quote from: apl68 on March 09, 2020, 01:36:56 PM

Defoe gives examples of this as well.  Really, A Journal of the Plague Year gives a LOT of food for thought about epidemic and pandemic situations.  It's not only a vivid historical novel portrayal of a devastating epidemic, it's also the grandaddy of modern epidemic disaster stories.  You can even see the distant ancestors of all those zombie apocalypse stories of recent years in Defoe's descriptions of people fleeing from shambling, delirious plague victims.


Ooooh, thanks for the tip! I look forward to reading this!



For my part, it's weird to compare (what looks like) the panic south of the border to the mostly calm take up here. All the American conferences and things are in the process of being cancelled, including well into the summer; so far, it looks like ours aren't. (I'm involved in organizing an American conference in April which isn't yet cancelled, which is also an interesting experience. Not sure we'll make our room numbers, but COVID-19 seems like a good excuse for it.)

FWIW, the chief health officer in NSW (Australia) recommended that people avoid international travel to all destinations other than Canada and New Zealand. I live in Aus and am currently on a research trip to NZ :)

ergative

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on March 09, 2020, 03:14:06 PM
Quote from: apl68 on March 09, 2020, 01:36:56 PM

Defoe gives examples of this as well.  Really, A Journal of the Plague Year gives a LOT of food for thought about epidemic and pandemic situations.  It's not only a vivid historical novel portrayal of a devastating epidemic, it's also the grandaddy of modern epidemic disaster stories.  You can even see the distant ancestors of all those zombie apocalypse stories of recent years in Defoe's descriptions of people fleeing from shambling, delirious plague victims.


Ooooh, thanks for the tip! I look forward to reading this!


I was utterly fascinated by this book. The discussion about possible vectors of transmission, rates of infection, psychology of crowds, social and economic ramifications, and so on were really sophisticated. For example, he has a rather ruthless discussion about the quarantine measures: People whose houses were infected were involuntarily shut up, sometimes even with the doors nailed shut, with guards posted to ensure no one got out. He doubts that this prevented the spread of the disease very much (people had all sorts of clever ways of sneaking out), and he thinks it was incredibly cruel to the rest of the household who were quarantined with the sick person, but he grants that it had two advantages: First, that it prevented sick people from rampaging through the streets in delirium, which would have been distressing to the city (not because of the risk of contagion, which was unstoppable with or without rampaging zombies, but because rampaging zombies are bad in general); and second, by setting watchmen to enforce the quarantine provided employment to poor people who would otherwise have starved because all trade stopped during the outbreak. Also, he makes the cruel but accurate point that it was only the fact that so many people died that prevented the poor from starving, since only by reducing their population did it become feasible to feed them; and the reason people were willing to take jobs like collecting and burying the dead--jobs with hideous risks of infection--was because they would starve otherwise, so they were facing death of one sort or another whatever they did.

There are also tons of discussions that preface modern medical knowledge about the spread of diseases: transmission vectors, incubation periods, innaccurate recording keeping (e.g., the death records showed an odd increase in death from regular 'spotted fever' about the time people were worried as to whether there was a plague outbreak; suggesting that early plague deaths were being misrecorded as spotted fever) and how to diagnose it. I was particularly fascinated by the following claim, which Defoe presents with the same skepticism as the claims that the breath of an invisibly infected person will instantly kill a chicken: Some have proposed that such persons should breathe hard upon warm water, and that they should leave an unusual scum upon it, or upon several other things, especially such as are of a glutinous substance and are apt to receive a scum and support it. Is this just more bosh, invented by desperate people who don't understand bacterial infection? Or is this an instance of a pioneering scientist who genuinely observed that it was possible to culture bacteria sampled from the breath of infected people on particular substances (like proto-agar)?

The books is great, but  I'm not fully sure how accurate the claims are. Defoe is rightly skeptical of a great deal of the claims that he reports (good journalism there: it's probably wrong, dear reader, but here's what people were saying and doing), but in other cases he makes rather sweeping claims that don't necessarily hold water: For example, at one point Defoe claims that an ongoing war with the Dutch starting going better for the British, because the Dutch got all shy about taking potentially infected boats. However, Stephen Porter's modern text about that outbreak in 1665 suggests that, in fact, no such thing happened. So perhaps the actual history may not be accurate, but certainly the constructed history shows a deeply intelligent man considering extremely plausible sequences of events, many of which probably happened.

So, yes: read this book! it's great! Especially now!

writingprof

So, I was sitting around rewatching the scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in which Brad Pitt beats the @#$% out of Bruce Lee when I saw on Twitter that the name "coronavirus" is now racist ("racist"). Forumites, is this a thing? Have I been living under a rock?

I'd appreciate it if someone on this thread would advise me. Until then, to be safe, I'll stop calling it "coronavirus" and go with "Xi Jinping Disease" instead.

apostrophe

Quote from: Anselm on March 09, 2020, 01:07:51 PM
Quote from: Cheerful on March 09, 2020, 08:09:06 AM
Quote from: AmLitHist on March 09, 2020, 07:38:53 AM
Once again, the rules and common sense apparently only apply to some of us.

A similar thing happened in New Hampshire, a man violated advice to self-quarantine.

How exactly does one do this?  Do you just stay in the house and have others deliver food to you?

Yes, but you can only accept delivery outside your door. I'm in a place where many people are in quarantine but not one where there are shelf-emptying consumer behaviors. Knowing that quarantine might be extended, many of us have been gradually adding to our supplies.

AvidReader

Quote from: writingprof on March 10, 2020, 05:30:01 AM
So, I was sitting around rewatching the scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in which Brad Pitt beats the @#$% out of Bruce Lee when I saw on Twitter that the name "coronavirus" is now racist ("racist"). Forumites, is this a thing? Have I been living under a rock?

I'd appreciate it if someone on this thread would advise me. Until then, to be safe, I'll stop calling it "coronavirus" and go with "Xi Jinping Disease" instead.

If it's the same thing I saw shared this morning, I don't think the problem is "coronavirus," but the adjective preceding it. It took me a minute to see it also.

AR.

apl68

Quote from: mamselle on March 09, 2020, 02:40:18 PM
Quote from: apl68 on March 09, 2020, 01:36:56 PM
Quote from: wwwdotcom on March 09, 2020, 01:12:33 PM
Quote from: Anselm on March 09, 2020, 01:07:51 PM
Quote from: Cheerful on March 09, 2020, 08:09:06 AM
Quote from: AmLitHist on March 09, 2020, 07:38:53 AM
Once again, the rules and common sense apparently only apply to some of us.

A similar thing happened in New Hampshire, a man violated advice to self-quarantine.

How exactly does one do this?  Do you just stay in the house and have others deliver food to you?

Or eat the food you have in your house.

Defoe gives examples of this as well.  Really, A Journal of the Plague Year gives a LOT of food for thought about epidemic and pandemic situations.  It's not only a vivid historical novel portrayal of a devastating epidemic, it's also the grandaddy of modern epidemic disaster stories.  You can even see the distant ancestors of all those zombie apocalypse stories of recent years in Defoe's descriptions of people fleeing from shambling, delirious plague victims.

Yes.

And then there's the Decameron...

M.

Yes, I suppose I'm not giving Boccaccio his due.  But his descriptions of a plague, vivid though they are, aren't modern in a way Defoe's are.  Ergative sums it up pretty well. 

To ergative's discussion I would only add that A Journal of the Plague Year includes an extended sequence in which a group of plague refugees from London camp out in an uninfected village and have to deal with the fears of the locals.  The locals are afraid that the refugees might be bringing the plague, or might be ne'er-do-wells who threaten them in other ways.  It looks for a time like there might even be violence.  Fortunately everything is resolved peacefully.  There's a very believable account of how the two groups work out an accommodation so that the refugees can stay until the epidemic is over.  It's enough to make one wonder whether Defoe based this sequence on actual events, and if so, how much dramatic license did he use.
All we like sheep have gone astray
We have each turned to his own way
And the Lord has laid upon him the guilt of us all

fourhats

I heard this morning that a lot of our students are planning to take advantage of low fares (from airlines who've lost bookings) to start traveling to all sorts of tourist destinations. Also that those brought back from affected areas and ordered to self-quarantine at home have instead come to campus to attend parties and events.

Caracal

Quote from: fourhats on March 10, 2020, 08:49:09 AM
I heard this morning that a lot of our students are planning to take advantage of low fares (from airlines who've lost bookings) to start traveling to all sorts of tourist destinations. Also that those brought back from affected areas and ordered to self-quarantine at home have instead come to campus to attend parties and events.

I'm not sure it makes sense to spend time worrying about this when it might be just as bad for students to be traveling to New York or Washington or various other places in the US.

fourhats

But what about returning to campus from affected areas, and going to parties when ordered to stay home and not potentially expose other students to the virus?

Caracal

Quote from: fourhats on March 10, 2020, 09:19:27 AM
But what about returning to campus from affected areas, and going to parties when ordered to stay home and not potentially expose other students to the virus?

If that is really happening that is obviously not good, although it sounds like a rumor which might or might not be true.

fourhats

It isn't a rumor, and the administration has had to get involved to stop the students.

Other students are booking cruises over spring break because the prices are low.

Caracal

Quote from: fourhats on March 10, 2020, 09:32:16 AM
It isn't a rumor, and the administration has had to get involved to stop the students.

Other students are booking cruises over spring break because the prices are low.

I'm just saying that campuses are hotbeds for various rumors that might have only a grain of truth in them. One students mentions to a professor that maybe they should go on a cruise now since prices are so low and suddenly this is a trend. Perhaps one student wasn't responsible about quarantine and somebody in the administration had to deal with it and mentioned it to someone.

fourhats

I work closely with residential life, faculty in residence, and the administration. I can assure you that it's true. In addition, students who are supposed to be self-quarantined at home (out of town) have been seen at campus events and parties.

evil_physics_witchcraft

Rumor has it that one of the Science grad. students has it...

no1capybara

Our classes just got suspended until Monday to give us time to move to an online environment.

Until March 27th: Residence and dining halls remaining open.  Sports events still going on without spectators.

Interesting times!