Impact of the Black Death on Society and Culture

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[gleeaikin]

I am currently reading A Distant Mirror, and read Journal of the Plague Years a decade ago. They estimate the initial death toll from the 1347 plague arrival was about 1/3rd of Europe although there were cities, towns, and villages where it was 80 to 100%. By the 1360s about 60% had died, and at the end of the century Europe had only 1/2 the population it had at the beginning of the century.

[gleeaikin]

See my Comment #4, and the second link about Puerto Rico which once had a thriving pharmaceuticals sector.

[Zhang Fei]

[Saw that Italy is not identifying the dead as Chinese to prevent prejudice. ]

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I’m not sure why they’re so sensitive about it - it’s a given that the source of the original bug is ultimately Chinese even if Patient Zero is allegedly a German national. But whatever the medium of transmission, the origin obviously lies somewhere in China.

If they’re obscuring it to deceive Italians into thinking that the vast majority of the victims are ethnic Chinese, thereby sparking sympathy instead of anger at that community, word of mouth alone should give the lie to that attempt at myth-making. Then there are the vastly expanded obituary sections in Italian language Italian newspapers:

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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/coronavirus-obituaries-pages-italian-newspaper-21696391
[”This is the daily newspaper of Bergamo, one of the epidemic hotspot in Italy,” a Twitter caption to the footage read.

“On Febrary 9th, obituaries occupied 1.5 pages.

“On March 13th, the paper printed 10 (!!) pages of obituaries.]

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Obituaries are basically classified ads paid for by the relatives of the dead. That’s why they’re usually cloying in tone even for people with no redeeming social value, like mobsters (not to mention lawyers and politicians). Unless you think it’s plausible that relatives of transient Chinese sweatshop workers are paying for obituaries in Italian language newspapers in Italy, I’m gonna guess that the vast majority of deaths from this pathogen are Italian Italians.

Each page had an average of 8 columns and 8 names per column. That’s 64 per page. 10 pages would be 640 names. Before the catastrophe, obituaries were 1-1/2 pages. That’s 96 names. So the increase in daily deaths comes to over 500, which is higher than the daily coronavirus death toll so far. These are obviously rough guesses, but they lead me to wonder whether there are coronavirus deaths that remain unrecorded as pathogen-related. At any rate, my guess is that based on the vast expansion in the obituaries section, the vast majority (perhaps 99%) of coronavirus deaths in Italy are ethnic Italian.

A footnote - not everyone has living relatives willing to pony up for an obituary. And of those who do pay up, presumably not everyone does so in that particular daily. So the obituary expansion in this particular Italian paper is probably not all-inclusive of the extraordinary death toll from this virus.

2nd footnote - if this bug is just the flu, the question is why the obituaries went from 1.5 pages to 10. We’d have to assume that survivors of the coronavirus dead are much more into paying for obituaries than the relatives of people who died from the flu.

[trebb]

Perhaps a topic more relevant for when the current mindless panic is over...then they had something truly fearful happening to a (by today's technological/medical standards) ignorant populace. The more apt psychological questions would be looking into what allows mass hysteria/panic to be induced into such a large segment of society... Logically, if they want all these lockdowns/quarantines, they should also close public highways until driving is much safer: Over 40,000 fatal car accidents per year in the U.S. Each day, more than 90 Americans die in car accidents. On average, 2 million drivers experience a permanent injury every year. “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” ― William Pitt the Younger Kind of ironic - we know that the Deep State and others use fear as a way to steer and control the people - we had the commie/nuke war threat until the Berlin Wall came down then it wasn’t viable anymore and up pops Globull Warming, which has many in fear that we’re gonna destroy the Earth even as we do less harm than past generations and none of the data actually supports anything but the earth’s climate and Mother Nature do not now, and never did have a “balance” and even if they did, we have no idea of how to maintain one or ‘fix’ things...all our efforts end up causing more harm....the coronavirus scare is no different - the panic-induced knee-jerking will cause more harm than the virus. Folks who would be up in arms if the government decided to tell them they could not move freely are now begging that same government to lock them, and everyone else, down....I’d wager if, after doing that, the story ‘evolved” they would also go meekly to barb-wire surrounded camps/tent cities because the “latest info” said that’s the only way to stop it. Even though we know that they use fear to guide and control us, so many can’t see it through the red haze of insane panic....they not only welcome the government controls, they beg for them... And the fear mongers will try to leverage it... Reminds me of a saying that many FReepers, who are now acting insane, used to showcase: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Ben Franklin

[gleeaikin]

Below is a link tracking the growth in deaths and confirmed cases by country 3/16. First there are a number of paragraphs explaining their methodology and explaining the difference between linear growth and exponential growth. There are links to some of the major information established health information sources. Lists of countries at the bottom include little charts which enable you to see how quickly deaths and confirmed cases are changing in each listed country. I was surprised at how many countries now have confirmed cases.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Regarding using obituaries in Italy to track nationality of the dead. I pointed out in another post that the cases in US Chinatown in NY were probably low because this long established Chinese community had family here, and many did not have to go home (China) to celebrate the holidays. If the Chinese workers in the Milan leather trades are new, then a lot of them would have gone to China for the holidays, and without family in Italy their obituaries would not have been submitted.