What to do During a Global Infection: Part 3

Just three years ago, Laura Spinney's Pale Rider:  The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World was published.  Was it a best seller?  Did anyone read the book reviews?

Seems odd to quote the reviewers, but people were warned:

"Spinney's detailed discussions includes the why and how, the human devastation, and the effects on institutions and world affairs.  Now nearly 100 years removed from the Spanish flue, Spinney wonders what lessons it has imparted that might help us prepare and deal with the next, inevitable influenza pandemic."  Booklist

"Spinney evokes a world that seems farther from us than a mere century, and also uncomfortably close ... if we can;t reconstruct our memories of the Spanish flu quickly enough, millions more will die in the next pandemic."  The Tyee

"For all the tragedies and upheavals the book portrays, Pale Rider actually paints an oddly hopeful picture of a populations more sensitized to early warnings and largely more willing to heed them."  The National (not)

Spinney notes that a pandemic is a social phenomenon as much as it is a biological one; it cannot be separated from its historic, geographical and cultural context (I would add its economic and political context as well).

Spinney introduces her book with a recap of how viruses move from animal hosts to human; she then points out that historic pandemics, for example, the Plague of Justinian, a pandemic bubonic plague that killed approximately 25 million people in the sixth century AD and led to vast tracts of farmland being abandoned and forests growing back which led to the earth cooling because reforestation captured so much carbon dioxide, the opposite of today's greenhouse effect.

One of the themes she explores is the need of humans to know where the flu came from.  Is this an urge to know whom to blame?  And today's political sensibilities:  not to call it the China flu and China's attempts to prevent the rest of the world to know of its outbreak.  Even in 1918, the wondrous WHO issued guidelines stipulating that disease names should not make reference to specific places or people.  Glad to know they have a long, long history of political correctness

Other vignettes echo current impressions:  A satirical magazine in Brazil expressed fears that the authorities would exaggerate the danger posed to old people to justify a scientific dictatorship violating people's civil rights.  She cites football (soccer) being played to empty stands and all night life ceasing.

Another thought provoking insight she has is:  "Since disease is broadly defined as the absence of health, whether or not you recognize a set of symptoms as a disease depends on your expectations of health."  Align this thought against the evidence of COVID impacting more the "seriously ill with pre-existing conditions and minority communities."  What degree of "health" do both populations have?

A mere 76 pages into her book, Spinney recounts how people suspected that the Spanish flu arose from a secret program of biowarfare conceived by one of the participants in WW1.  (How about that lab in Hunan?)

She explains the bell curve of the disease, social distancing, the relative "effectiveness of masks and disinfectants, the notable immunity of school-age children.  She cites Alfred Crosby who argued that democracy was unhelpful in a pandemic:  the demands of national security, a thriving economy and public health are rarely aligned and elective representative defending the first two undermine the third. She posits that as the media began to censor itself (or display bias) compliance drops off even further.

By chapter 14, Spinney had reprised all the H1N1 strains and mutations, called the next pandemic inevitable and concluded that "since the method of virus reconstruction in on the Net, its production by rogue scientists is a real possibility.

And there are post-flu effects:  chronic fatigue syndrome, possible famine, painful readjustment, demoralization, and lawlessness.  On the other side of the coin, she points out that the higher the death rate, the higher the growth in per capita income in the 1920s that was not new wealth but the indication of society's capacity to bounce back after a violent shock.  The Spanish flu influenced art, literature and politics.

Her final section cites the US National Academy of Medicine that estimated there to be a 20% chance of four or more pandemics over the net 100 years.  "The only questions are when, how big, and what can we do to prepare ourselves?"  She cites unusual external factors to consider in predicting events:  El Nino, bird migrations, burning fossil fuels,  Her quote should be the basis of fall politics:  "Experience has shown that people have a low tolerance for mandatory health measures, and that such measures are most effective when they are voluntary, when they respect and depend on individual choice, and when the avoid the use of police powers."  Let that be an opening premise on the upcoming debates.

She also reminds us that the ones who bore the brunt of the Spanish flu were those living in ghettoes or at the rim and such victims find a way to express themselves in strikes, protest and revolution.

What to do During a Global Infection: Part 2 -- "Officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic"

Then I read The Plague by Camus.  As fiction, this story was much more introspective, contemplative and interpretive.  What it shows, more than Defoe, is the effective global disease has on individual lives.

"Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow, we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky;  There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally be surprise."

"... in other words they were humanists:  they disbelieved in pestilences.  A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore, we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.  But it doesn't pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions."

As Camus describes the actions taken by government, he is free to interpret the rational and likely effects:  "... measures enjoined were far from Draconian and one had the feeling the feeling that many concessions had been made to a desire not to alarm the public."

"The notice outlined the general program that the authorities had drawn up.  It included a systematic extermination of the rat population by injecting poison gas into sewers,  and a strict supervision of the water supply.  The townspeople were advised to practice extreme cleanliness, and any who found fleas on their person were directed to call at municipal dispensaries.  Also heads of households were ordered to promptly report any fever case diagnosed by their doctor and to permit the isolation of sick members of their families in special wards at the hospital."  A few pages later:  "That the regulations now in force were inadequate was lamentably clear.'

When Defoe writes at length about death counts and mass burials, Camus speaks eloquently on the personal effects.  "... the plague forced inactivity on them, limiting their movements to the same dull round .. and showing them day after day on the illusive solace of their memories ... the feeling of exile ... irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time."

"... they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.  Even the past, of which they thought incessantly, had a savor only of regret ... with the man or woman whose return they now awaited .. they kept vainly trying to include the absent one ... and thus there was always something missing in their lives .  Hostile to the past, impatient with the present and cheated of the future."

"...the fact that they had been sentenced .. to an indeterminate period of punishment.  And while a good many people adapted themselves to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives, there were others who rebelled and whose one idea was to break loose for the prison house ... this feeling of being locked in like criminals prompted them sometimes to foolhardy acts."

Continuing to write of the disease long-term impact on individuals, Camus notes "the furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation .. a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence ... citizens had fallen into line, adapted to the situation because there was no way of doing otherwise ... listless, indifferent, and looking so bored ..."

Adding Camus to the recommended reading list for governmental policymakers might prove more difficult because he delves deeply into the impact the disease has on being separated from loved ones, finding new friends, trying to do one's job under adverse circumstances.  Maybe today, people are exposing these emotions more openly/anonymously on the Internet.  When considering whether to reopen schools, child psychologist are discussing the mental impacts of not learning socially; others report increases in domestic violence and adult depression.  Camus told you so.

What to do During a Global Infection: Part 1

It's not that I haven't been reading.  I have ... I just haven't been writing.

First, some general observations on COVID's impact on me personally.

1.  I prefer not to go to the grocery store because I don't like to wear masks that make the air I inhale hot and fog up my glasses.  (I met a man at a local garden store and when I gave these reason he replied, now you know why operating rooms are so cold.)  The unintended consequence of not shopping is I really don't want to cook any more.  I make the menu that is quickest to cook and can be made with whatever spices etc that are already in the frig or on the shelves.

2.  At first, I missed "window" shopping but now I could care less whether all the malls closed.  The world now belongs to Amazon (which I can actually remember when it only sold books), eBay, and ETSY.  What I might be giving up in style, I am gaining in variety of choices.

3.  Previously I thought that the neighborhood was finally investing in property improvement when the economy was going bust, but know I think many are just hiring handymen just to have a new face to see.  I fall readily into this category:  having the side lawn replaced; getting the garage repainted; and ordering the final facade of replacement windows.  The painter has three project going within two blocks and a different firm started on the house across the street yesterday.  The window salesman had a valise full of orders from earlier in the day.

But on to the numerous reviews.

What else to read now but Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe; The Plague by Albert Camus; and Pale Rider by Laura Spinney.

Defoe's history of London in 1664 clearly shows humanity has not changed for the wiser in 300+ years.  Governmental actions were exactly the same:  banning travel, imposing sheltering; closing shops and banning plays, casinos, music halls and dancing rooms; however, government officials moved the seat of power out of the city.  The responses of the populations were the same:  the rich leaving town for less infected areas; people not wanting to touch meat from the butchers and the butches not wanting to touch money payment; still gathering in taverns and churches.  Others acted impetuously, assembling carelessly, being foolhardy and obstinate.  The economy suffered as all manufacturing and merchandising stopped and trade died as others feared getting sick from exported goods.  As a corollary, Londoners tried to track what other nation had imported the disease to England.

"Surely never city, at least of this bulk and magnitude, was taken in a condition so perfectly unprepared for such a dreadful visitation, whether I am to speak of civil preparations or religious."  "... all trade, except such as related to immediate subsistence, was, as it were, at a full stop."

And as the plague eased up, "the morals of the people declined ...were more wicked and more stupid, more bold and hardened."  "... the distress of the poor was more now a great deal than it was before, because all the sluices of general charity were now shut."  "It was not the least of our misfortunes that with our infection, when it ceased, there did not cease the spirit of strife and contention, slander and reproach ..."

One of my most pronounced change from COVID is the recognition that being a nation of specialists, there are very few multi-disciplined or Renaissance people:  the public health experts seem to have never read history beyond science; politicians are doubly cursed, having neither studied biology nor historical literature.  Had someone assigned these three books as required reading before anyone tweeted or held a press conference, they could see history repeating itself, have a better understanding of how people would react, and what positive and negative effects all their decisions would have.  Or as Defoe stated this:

" I often reflected upon the unprovided condition that the whole body of the people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them, and how it was for want ot timely entering into measures and managements, as well public as private, that all the confusions that followed ... which, if proper steps had been taken, might have been avoided."

When I worked at NYSDOH, I would attend multi-agency meetings to draft State disaster plans ... they all need to be revised again, like they were after Hurricane Sandy.

A Breviary? A Contemplative Devotion? A Horror Story?

This book spurs confessions:  If I have any faith left at all, it is still steeped in pre-Vatican II incense.  I met my first Jesuit teaching comparative religion in a Sacred Heart college.  An authority, like all Jebbies, in pre-revolutionary New England based protestant religions, I enrolled in the course probably more to have a male lecturing before the mob of girls than the typical nun.  He certainly did provoke respect for his erudition and as a byproduct, awe of the Order.

Now decades later, Jebbies have re-entered my daily life:  my older son teaches at a fabulous preparatory high school where he teaches Latin and Greek, and hopefully makes male teenagers a tad more cultured.  My step-son teaches accounting at a Jesuit university.  Ah, there's the late 20th century tension investigated in this book:  the Jesuits:  The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church by Malachi Martin (himself an eminent theologian and ex-Jesuit).

My daughter-in-law loves to read the lives of the saints, and this book taught me all about Ignatius Loyola, his piety, his understanding of his own motives and the needs of the Church during the dawn of the Renaissance.  His approach to a changing world was to personalize the need for a group of pious, intelligent and some-what militant men to battle in the eternal wars between the force of good, God as embodied in Christ, and Evil, the fallen archangel Lucifer, in order to help mankind enter the Kingdom.

After such lofty inspirations, Malachi tracks the erosion of this purpose, whereby Jesuits became social workers to the people of the church, in fact chose to become socialists whose main purpose was to battle capitalism as the main oppressor of the masses.  Jesuit theologians rather than fighting the changes brought on by humanism and the theory that heaven on earth was meeting the material needs of the poor rather than providing spiritual elucidation.  He arrays several events as contributing to this corruption of Ignatius' organization:  Vatican 2, several Jesuit convocations, the personalities and weaknesses of Popes and heads of the Society

All is lost:  vocations and actual numbers of Jesuit priests have plummeted, papal disobedience is taken for granted, the voices and opinions of everyone is of equal validity.

I wish this book made me more hopeful and more religious; instead it made my chronically nostalgic.
I talk often to friends about the wholesale abolition of the good old days:  Latin masses (when asked for one for my mother's funeral mass, one of my priest classmates from high school said his bishop would not permit it) to be defiant, my son did the readings in not only Latin but Greek and we did get old Latin hymns worked in.  the diminution of the ceremony to folk song jamborees, the absurdity of the congregation shaking hands to extend peace to a pew-mate.

I should have stopped reading after the sections on Ignatius.  Maybe I found find more consolation in reading the lives of the saints.  By not holding up ideals of behavior and faith, the flood of current political and psychological theories prevail to the ultimate loss of souls, respect, and tradition.

A Couple of Books About NYC, Not in Chronological Order

With the local library closed, I have resorted to buying paperbacks on line.  As usual, I try to stick with nonfiction and history and ordered two books about NYC.  In reverse chronological order, let me write my impressions of Damnation Island:  Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th Century New York by Stacy Horn.

To "alleviate" the crowded conditions at Bellevue, which served not only as a hospital but also was the location of the City's penitentiary, lunatic asylum, almshouse, workhouse and prison for people convicted of minor crimes, construction was begun on Blackwell Island, a two mile long island in the East River, of new buildings.  Beginning in 1832, with a hospital for the poor and a second building, the penitentiary, and expanding in 1839 with a lunatic asylum, and again in 1848 with an almshouse and in 1852 with a workhouse.  All were horrible:  understaffed, abusive to patients and inmates alike, medical "treatment" typical of early 19th century "practices" and care of insane more barbaric than caring.  Patients were used as nurses, inmates as workers.

The book cites practices off the island as well, in privately owned as orphanages, social trends of immigration and poverty as direct causes of ending up on the Island, incompetent and even cruel facility directors.  It all brought back my six months of working in the Department of Mental Health (prior to its more correct new name).  Six months was barely enough to introduce me to the problems still rampant in the 20th century and to conclude that there still was very little effective treatments.  Then came deinstitutionalization.

All I conclude from this book is that the problems go back centuries and the treatments are still ineffective.  Under the guise of philanthropy, people and organization capitalized on the problem to overcharge families and the State for meager services.

I left OMH, realizing that my assignment was quietly being performed as well several floors below our office, just as eternally and ineffectually.  Too bad this book brought back all these memories.

OK A Book About Criminals: The Gangs of New York

Never saw the movie ... surprised to see that Herbert Asbury wrote the book in 1927!


The author begins the book in the early 1800s, emphasizing the Five Points tenements and gangs as the cradle of NYC violence.  While it doesn't finish with West Side Story, it does document gangs and their leaders through the wars in Chinatown and especially the Civil War draft riots.

While my motive to reading about criminals was to find a commonality and individual flaws that predict violence, this book leads one to believe that all of the following contribute to crime:  poverty, tenements, lack of education, lack of opportunity and no urge to climb the social ladder; numbers of people in similar situations; corrupt politicians and police.

I really didn't read this to figure out how individual men and women chose a life of crime, but rather to see how New York City dealt with and weathered the curse of violence.

As I mentioned earlier, I cannot get enthused about someone's choice to be violent and disregard not only the law, but most of the standards of human decency.  As Darwin's book summarizes, certain human propensities are of course universal and to contrast that premise with Fox's, who is to say that there is a universal urge to correct this, as there are always the poor, uneducated, and people desiring money and fame.

How to minimize if not curtail mass violence?  Asbury to identify contributing factors:  crooked cops, politicians who used strong arm gang members to get out the vote; corporate leaders who paid thugs to break up unionization; judges who were paid to dismiss charges.  Human weeds will grow; we need better gardeners.

Literary Luddites

The other book I bought in Texas was "Against the Machine" by Nicols Fox.  I was reading this on the plane and many people commented on how interesting the book looked.

Sort of like Darwin's view of world interaction and the interplay between culture and economy as expressed in After Tamerlane, Fox overlays the anti-industrialization movement on to English romantic literature.  As an English major, a couple of lectures on the "times" might have given some periodic base to the settings and stories.

Fox points out that the essence of Luddism is not violence, but a philosophy that respects tradition, intuition, spirituality, the senses, human relationships, the work of hands, and the disorderly and unpredictable nature of reality.  It questions the domination of science and the elevation of efficiency to a superior value.

Fox advocates that, at the very least, the consequences of introducing a technology should be thoroughly understood so that trade-offs can be consciously considered.

The book progresses to align Blake, Paine, Pitt, and the romantic poets with the Industrial Revolution in England, concluding that they chafed against the confines of eighteenth century ways of thinking -- especially the preoccupation with order and form that was characteristic of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, where the world was being sorted, ordered, prioritized and planned in a way that began to define progress but was really about control

Fox concludes that man finds himself enticed by progress, automation, industrialization within a perpetual pull of opposites.  Caution tugs at curiosity as impulse teases aversion.  Fear taunts courage; willpower struggles with appetite.  But for all the stimulation of the new, there remains the powerful comfort and security of the known; finally stating "one impulse in particular seems to have weak competition or none at all:  the appeal of ease or the less-taxing option is unquestioned.  He parallels this nostalgia with the lure of profit,

It was a good time for me to reopen this book before I pass it on to the used book barrel.  COV-19 has in a sense pulled the plug on convenience.  While we still get more news from the television rather than a newspaper editorial or a book, time has slowed ... surroundings have more appeal now that our exploration is curtailed by the distance we can walk or bike,  Conveniences are lost as store shelves stock out; leisure options are not pre-presented by theaters, concert halls, even spas.  Somewhat more alone with our surroundings now, we are vesting simple pleasures with their historic place.  Raking leaves, planting bulbs, walking dogs, writing to friends have reemerged as worthwhile time fillers.

I used to refer to myself as a Luddite whenever I had to rely on a younger person to show me how to work a computer spreadsheet or process a paperless transaction across organizations.  I still have no desire to learn all the functionalities of my new phone or even my old computer.  Maybe I'm just old.  Hope there are younger Luddites out there.

Finally, this book is fun to contrast against Darwin's After Tamerlane.  Globalizationalists are Luddites.