Of course, our ancestors were reliant on word of mouth and local announcements for information, they had precious little science and very little information to go on. The rich abandoned their London homes for the country, and left the poor to deal with the piles of bodies.
I hadn't realized the impact of the most recent "plague", the 1918 flu pandemic, until very recently. An article by the Smithsonian Institute about the impact of what was called the Spanish Flu (because the Spanish were the only country freely reporting its impact on their population) showed that people were in such fear of it that they dared not attend to the needs of children whose parents had died.
That flu hit the young hardest, where this flu is hitting the elderly and sick. Spokespeople for the world health organization (WHO) and various governmental ministers around the world have left the impression that the main part of the population need not panic so much as the main fatalities were already old and sick. Not very comforting for those of us who have high blood pressure, diabetes, or are over the age of 65.
What is most bizarre for me is having contact with people all over the world in the virtual world, and seeing that locally people have no idea what is about to hit us. Despite the internet, despite the reports on television, despite the anecdotal reports of ICUs so overwhelmed with patients that triage leaves those who are elderly or with significant health problems to die without intervention beyond some oxygen, people around me are so *not* panicking that life goes on as normal. Except for a lack of loo paper supplies.
I try not to panic, but I do try to be prepared, and so I have listened to the accounts of those around me in the virtual world, and have read the newspaper reports and scholarly articles about combatting flu in the hope that I can come up with more than "wash your hands".
People *don't* wash their hands properly, something which is demonstrated on Twitter by someone with gloves and ink, and although people on Twitter immediately respond with "medical staff do", I'd say that having spent a considerable amount of time with family in hospital, surgeons may, but most doctors and nurses are no better at washing their hands than the general public. Even if they are about to perform a so-called sterile procedure.
In the current crisis, people seem to be content to follow the advice of the government, even though there has been a chaotic mismanagement of the advice from the dial-in NHS service in the UK, and pretty poor advice from government health bodies in other countries. It is natural that people don't panic until it is clear there is something to panic about. I know the boiling frog analogy has been found to be false - frogs will jump out of pans of water once it gets too hot, they don't just sit there - it seems we are more or less the same, because we wait to see what everyone else will do, before we panic.
This is why it is far, far better for your health if you are going to have a collapse and drop to the ground, if you do it next to one first aider rather than a large crowd of people. One person on their own will respond immediately. A group of people will wait to see what everyone else does... and if no one rushed to help you, if they think you are drunk for example, instead of diabetic or having a stroke, they may just step over you and leave you on the ground.
I am acutely aware of the danger, having an estranged husband who is 70 and in poor health, and a son who is immune suppressed. I have prepared as far as possible for what is to come with stocks of food and a lot of elderberry syrup. But I fear that we are going to be as shocked as the Italians by the exponential growth of the virus. As shown by this vlogger who usually reports on the markets, but has switched to Coronavirus for now.
