In the middle of the 1980s, I took my first solo trip at the tender age of 18 to London.
I was there for a college theatre course and found myself with some time to kill so I strolled around the city and ducked into a touristy spot in Piccadilly Circus. There was a film playing that told the history of London. My mind remembers it as being an experiential-type film with heat being pumped in during a fire, etc., but since this memory has fermented for nearly three decades, that might not be the case and is irrelevant to the story.
At one point, the small theatre space went pitch black and silent. Then, a voice cut through that silence calling: “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” I broke out in laughter. The more knowledgeable readers among you are probably shaking your head right now. A faux pas born of ignorance is still a faux pas and realizing you made a faux pas about death makes you wish you yourself were not only dead but already cremated and forgotten in someone’s attic, tucked between a stack of aging Playboy magazines and a Ronco Veg-O-Matic. I thought this portion of the film was about Monty Python and one of my favorite bits, but instead it was about the Bubonic Plague.
That moment of learning the body collector was a reality has come to mind often over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have heard our current plight referred to as “unprecedented times” over and over again. A good deal of that comes from the media’s twisted love affair with sensationalism, but you couldn’t even take your masked face to a theme park without hearing it. If you mean that this specific thing has not happened before, the phrase is true; but unique things that haven’t happened before are actually occurring millisecond by millisecond. Even while you are reading this, my unprecedented column.
The Bubonic Plague, also known as Black Death, killed more than 200 million people worldwide in the mid-1300s. Victims would develop one or more painful lymph nodes swollen to the size of a chicken egg, which were followed by an outbreak of black spots all over the body. The disease was transmitted by flea bites. In Europe, the bodies were literally piling up. Body collectors would remove the dead from homes and the streets, and transport them to mass graves. They apparently made a nice paycheck from this, but it was risky work – the bulging lymph nodes, or buboes, could rupture leaking pus. If the disease had attacked the lungs, the body would likely be covered with coughed up blood.
We’ve lost nearly 3.5 million to COVID-19. While we’re not out of the woods yet, it seems safe to say we won’t reach the numbers of the Bubonic Plague — the body collectors might take exception to calling current events unprecedented times. We have the advantage of time on the folk of the 1300s, during which we’ve made advances in technology and medicine. For that we should be thankful.
Still I read stories of the plague and I wonder if modern humans would have survived the Black Death. Over the past year, we have collectively lost our damn minds in more ways than any statistician could count, if such a thing were possible. We are still suffering from this condition and I’m afraid we might be dealing with it for a long while.
To be fair, whether the times are unprecedented or not aside, it has been a weird world. We spent far too much time connecting with people through laptop screens and done a home/work mashup that taught many of us the work-from-home life ain’t for us. Strong leadership was a rare thing and knowing who to listen to was often difficult. Even as we were learning who this unseen enemy was, some couldn’t resist using COVID to perpetuate the political divide. We romanticized about working together to defeat this thing, yet simply having a piece of material over the mouth and nose to protect a fellow human was too much to ask for many.
Is it a wonder we’ve struggled mentally and emotionally? But now we are in a phase that to me is the most puzzling.
Thanks to our politicians, for many people, science has become a belief; something you either ascribe to or not, akin to heaven. Science is ripe for doubters. Scientists are comfortable with the fact that science is an ever changing thing and what we “know for certain” changes as we learn more and as the world changes. That fluidity spawns distrust in some and that distrust is an opening politicians can exploit. “How can we believe them? They said something different last year?!”
Guidelines from the CDC ruled the day with those not abiding by them sticking out like a sore thumb. Largely there weren’t consequences for not following them other than the cashier at the 7-11 screaming at you. Then recently the CDC guidelines changed: if you’re vaccinated no need for a mask or distancing. So many who followed the CDC’s rule to the letter now questioned them, reluctant to ditch the mask or a piece of magic plexi-glass at the register.
A recent New York Times article told of one man who double masks and wears goggles when he grocery shops and he plans to do so for the next five years. We may have aggravated neuroses we didn’t know we had and we’ll need to become aware of them and their effect on others.
It is, of course, concerning that reaching herd immunity is a struggle with anti-vaxxers and selfish or lazy people not getting the shot, but we will get there. Breathe. Keep calm and listen to science. Imagine the uncertainty the body collectors faced. Humanity made it through that horrific time in the 1300s which must have seemed like the end of times, we can make it through this.
Scottie Campbell is an LGBTQ activist and longtime contributor to Watermark. His work has resulted in a thriving community in the Lake Ivanhoe region.
