Preceding Planetary Pandemics

THE YIN AND THE YANG OF PRECEDING PLANETARY PANDEMICS.

Today, my dear Covey, no doubt because of what is transpiring around us, my mind is drawn towards the number of pandemics, plagues and pestilences that preceded our existence on this planet.

There’s a tremendous amount of hope and optimism, when you consider that in order for me to be alive and writing this joyous but rather mundane blog, my genes (and yours) have survived ALL of the most gruesome and devastating plaques that the world has suffered.
No doubt, prior to A.D. there have been many diseases that have wiped out populations but the first one I learned about in school was the Black Death or Bubonic Plaque. This nasty little pandemic was said to have been a little gift that arrived on Britain’s shores in 1348 via a travelling seaman.
Now, whether our Covey were residents of Blighty at that time, only LB the genealogical master would know, but I’m presuming we were. That pandemic like any other yin and yang caused a lot of changes in its wake. It ended a hundred-year war, the shortage of labour raised wages and ended serfdom in England. Hence, our forebears who had survived, no longer had to do all that wartime fighting, their standard of living rose and their offspring went on to a bigger and better life.
However, due no doubt, to a lack of hand washing and no observance of physical distancing after it wiped out half the population, it came back for a few more, less-severe population cutbacks throughout the centuries until the Great Plaque of London 1665-1666.

Carting off the dead from London streets

Not that I’m implying any direct connection here, but it’s interesting to note another bit of yin and yang to show that it is possible to achieve great things when in isolation: During this plague, Isaac Newton was a student at Cambridge University when the University closed down as a precautionary measure. So, Newton did a bit of social and physical distancing at home while he figured out the Law of Gravity and developed a few theories on calculus and optics. Can’t say he wasted his time! 

So then, to jump many hundreds of years we should consider our grandparents, or great-grandparents for some, and the Spanish Flu of 1918. This terrible influenza lasted for two years and killed MILLIONS of people worldwide. Many people, our mother and father and grandparents all lived through and survived that terrible period, yet I don’t recall anyone ever speaking about it.  So perhaps I shouldn't be!

Nevertheless . . .

They survived and so shall we. It’s in our genes.