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What the Black Death and COVID Have in Common
American Thinker ^ | 09/03/2021 | Jeffrey Folks

Posted on 09/03/2021 8:47:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Having killed as many as 200 million people in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, the Black Death began to lift in the years 1348–49.  Europe had lost between a third and half of its people.  In many cases, entire villages stood empty, having lost their entire population.

The Black Death changed life forever in Western Europe.  With so few inhabitants, the value of labor exploded, and wages shot up.  For those who survived, the following half-century was a period of affluence and technological development, with increasing productivity and advances in printing, weaponry, navigation, and manufacturing.  The optimism of the late 14th century is reflected in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a work filled with relish for life and adventure.

The recent coronavirus pandemic does not compare with the Black Death in scale — not yet, at least — but a number of similarities do exist.  Scarcity of labor, resulting from government blundering as well as deaths due to disease, has caused huge wage inflation.  Hourly workers find themselves in a much better position, and it is unlikely they will accept lower wages when life returns to normal.  At the same time, with demand returning and more money in circulation, May's prices rose at the fastest rate in thirteen years.  The CPI continued to rise in June and July at 17.75% and 17.36% year-over-year for June and July, respectively.  Those are enormous increases.  The only response from the Biden administration is a mad plan to spend more money, causing even greater inflation.

With 600,000 dead in America alone, most of them elderly, estates have passed sooner than expected to younger persons, and the young have been spared the cost of caring for their elders.


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; History; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: blackdeath; covid; godsgravesglyphs; middleages; renaissance
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To: MNJohnnie

A guy I work with tried to compare Covid to the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic. A comparison just as stupid.


21 posted on 09/04/2021 1:03:09 AM PDT by rxh4n1
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To: SeekAndFind

The Black Death was a natural phenomenom. The Covid death rate is government induced. They sent dieased people into nursing homes in NYS. They also didn’t allow treament anywhere but hospitals. Places that didn’t do that didn’t see anywhere like the same result.
The author is trying to see the up side to murder. There’s no need for that but there is a huge problem. The American people have massively deluded themselves about transfer payments to seniors, and the disabled and the poor, and the unemployed etc. etc. etc.
It’s easy to see why socialism leads to mass murder.


22 posted on 09/04/2021 4:21:45 AM PDT by Varda
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To: mass55th

Pandemic Death Toll by % of Population Year of Population Estimate
Black Death 51.0% 1300
Plague of Justinian 19.1% 500
Smallpox 12.1% 1500
Antonine Plague 2.6% 200
Spanish Flu 2.5% 1919
The Third Plague 1.0% 1850
HIV/AIDS 0.7% 1981
COVID-19 0.03% 2021 (as of March 15)

CDC Covid-19 Survival Rates as of 10/2020
Age 0-19 — 99.997%
Age 20-49 — 99.98%
Age 50-69 — 99.5%
Age 70+ — 94.6%

80%+ of the deaths are people 65 and older.
About 12% 55-64


23 posted on 09/04/2021 11:15:45 AM PDT by minnesota_bound (I need more money. )
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To: SeekAndFind; null and void; All

You are probably right about Social Security savings. On the other hand do we have developed statistics about the average medical costs for a Covid death or how many don’t die but spend weeks or even a month or more in a hospital? Drug companies an medical service companies are raking in the money. Many young people have lost people they loved who had a positive effect on their lives, ended up loosing chunks from their estate as bills had to be paid, and paying for mental health help and addiction treatment.


24 posted on 09/04/2021 7:07:11 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: MNJohnnie; Openurmind; rxh4n1; SeekAndFind; null and void; Varda; All

First of all check out my Comment 24. Also, I am currently reading Barbara Tuckman’s, A Distant Mirror. It covers the 1300s which suffered so from the Black Death. The social Dislocation was horrible, and all segments of society were fighting each other thru thet Century. To some degree I see that happening currently.


25 posted on 09/04/2021 7:27:26 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: gleeaikin
Im not sure what to call this. Perhaps romanticism?

There seems to be need to try and create a resonance between a person current life and some terrible event of the past.

I read a 60s “anti-war protester” who wanted to claim the Vietnam War was a destructive to their generation as World War 1 was that generation

It wans’t

Covid-19 is no where near in significance to either the Black Death or the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic

I understand why people think that since the “reporting” on it has been pure garbage.

26 posted on 09/04/2021 7:34:17 PM PDT by MNJohnnie (They would have abandon leftism to achieve sanity. Freeper Olog-hai)
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To: SeekAndFind

“no decent person would wish to see anyone suffer and die”

It’s precisely that sort of BS that has robbed Americans of the will to fight the left.


27 posted on 09/06/2021 2:09:08 PM PDT by dsc (Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.)
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