Posts
THE ABSURD TIMES
The
Decameron by Boccaio. I hope I’m not violating
anyone's copyright privileges. If I am,
sue me. Actually, the stories in the
book (I assume you've at least heard of it) are written during the great plague
of the 14th Century but which lasted, more or less, until the 18th
(and the virus still exists) in England (see Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the
Plague Year) and which Nostradamus managed to help contain. It is a collection of stories that
supposedly were told by a group of well off citizens who shut themselves off
from the city at large (we adroitly call this “social distancing" when it
is really physical distancing) and told one another stories to pass the
time. In the Monty Python movie you
hear the chant “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD, BRING OUT YOUR DEAD". Well, That was part of the same plague. We had a more recent one called the “Spanish
Flu" which killed 2 million back in 1919, but that one started in our
Midwest at some army base (Kansas or Nebraska, I think). The difference then was a lack of mass
communication. It did take place after
the first Chicago Cubs World Series win, but still even before radio. Well, on with the show!
Some
Cures and Viruses
By
Czar
Donic
Before
I start: some of this was put together before the so-called “Memorial Day”
(during which nobody remembered anything) vacation, so I have to make it clear
that none of it is to justify the hormone-driven, hyper-orgiastic, communal
bathing and air-sharing activities that took place, things performed by morons
with no idea of what contagion means. I
seriously doubt that such moronic fools even read this, so this is done simply
to absolve myself of any association with any of these low-life morons.
Damn
it, it’s a matter of being pro-or anti-Trump whether or not you wear a mask?
Come off it. I’m not playing that game.
Back
when we had one of our profitable wars, I went back and buried myself in
reading, starting from the Norman invasion (1060). Even memorized the Lords
prayer in one of the dialects of the period, but it never came up in
conversation. Now I think I’ll go back to Bach and work myself up. That does get on the dance floor much these
days either, but who cares?
All these riots take me back to Chicago 68. Lot of
the cops were friend/gang members I got along with. One asked me “Whose side
youse on?"
Since he had to slip into his vernacular, I went
into mine: "Man, like whadya think? I’m gonna wear a uniform like you and
you wanna see me carry a stick? You seen me with a bat. Wanna give me a small
bat? You nuts. “Sides, the chick over here look a lot better than your hairy
friends. Wanna talk logarithms, base ten, make it easy?"
No problem, he says and I had my own bodyguards
then. I also did him a favor, told him “Now stay away from the hairy guys with
the tear gas 'cause it's coming right back at cha.”
Then I had to talk to one of the
organizers and try to find one of them who could listen to logic. Tom Hayden
was the most likely, but he laid back most of the time. Everyone knew Abbie,
but who was he going to be at any particular time? No way to tell. A could of
Northwestern Grad Students, but they were out of the city – Evanston. Finally,
I get someone and let him know that first make sure you have some thick gloves
because those things are hot and second, it’s best to try to throw it like a
discus, but if you have time to handle it like a baseball, go ahead.
So, am I stuck in the old days? Seems not as we got
MN right now and the Orange man fighting it out with Twitter. A real macho guy,
eh? Well, MN is not Chicago, but you have the same things going on – only
difference is that the MN mayor fired the cops and Daley ordered them to “shoot
to main or kill.” We had the same right
wing asses saying "Looting brings firepower," as if he was real
macho. We got the same old shit. Only
thing was we had a division of labor.
See, in order to cover everything, we
got together and all decided that the civil rights were the black peoples fight
and Viet Name was for the White Boys to fight. We all knew what happened to any
black leader who spoke up about foreign policy, so we went along.
Today things are different. Over 40
cities are seeing demonstrations and there is nobody to speak out. There is no
JFK to speak about "when peaceful change is stopped, violent change is
inevitable” (words to that effect). No MLK to say "Riots are the language
of the unheard". When MLK was
assassinated, Bobby Kennedy spoke to his campaign rally in Indianapolis and it
was the only city that didn’t go up in flames.
Even Bill Clinton spoke well about listening and calmed a national
crowd. Forget about finding an FDR. We
have a Donald Trump telling Governors not to be so weak and then placed in a
bunker (where he should have been kept).
When we talk about and see the violence,
we don’t see the white nationalists or white neo-nazis, but they are there, and
are armed with spray cans Showing
their historical and literary good taste one faction calls itself “The Boogaloo
Boys,” kind of a Charles Manson agenda.
What do we get from Billy Barr? Easy, go after Antifa. Some progressives
claim their lives were saved by such a group, but there are only individuals
who act on an intermittent basis.
Anyway, much is going on, and the
longer I’m doing this, the further behind I get. So I’m uploading it now:
In Minneapolis, the curfew started
well. There were no police to be seen and it seemed as though Mayor Frey had
settled things in a very smooth way. As soon as the murder took place, he fired
all four cops that were involved and eventually murder charges were filed
against the main cop who had his knee of the handcuffed guy’s neck for almost
10 minutes, and for the last three minutes the guy was already dead! It took
awhile for these charges to be filed, however, and some were disappointed to
find they were only 3rd degree.
Well, you have to look at what you need to prove for
a charge to stick and 2nd and 1st degree involves convincing a jury
of what was going on in the cops hard, if anything. Even proving that thought
was a part of it would be tricky. Still, he was in charge of training,
TRAINING, for field operations. Maybe he thought, THOUGHT, that some sort of
immunity applied to him?
Well, things got going in other
cities. This was NOT Grant Park. This was the entire United States with, in a
favorite phrase, chickens come home to roost, although I never personally
witnessed that particular phenomenon.
Because of the ranting of the neo-fascist Trump, this was to spread.
Now, this Trump guy, leader of the MAGA party, opened his ugly mouth and
shouted “MAGA LOVES AFRICAN AMERICAN AND BLACK PEOPLE,” COME HOME TO US! Well, he has 3% approval there and his
followers march around with confederate and Nazi flags, carrying guns, and
storm trooping the capital of the Governor of Michigan. Why is he kidding?
Of course, New York had to be
included, as well as Pennsylvania, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, and dozens of
places around the country. His lawyer, Billy Barr, decided it was a left wing
anarchist group and inspired by Putin. Whatever you want to say about Putin, he
is NOT capable of organizing riots in all of those cities. CNN was attacked in
Atlanta, a town mainly black in the middle with a ring of whitish suburbs
around it. The mayor talked about being a mother and the first thing she did
was call her son and ask him where he was because it was no place for a black
child to be, no way. All the cops were white as far as we could see. She
mentioned the great Ted Turner as well, and why not? Trump chose to go after
CNN and a CNN reported was arrested live on CNN in Minneapolis just that
morning, of course with a first name like Jose, what do you expect?
When they talk about “outside
agitators," it sounds suspicious, but almost all of those arrested were
from out of state. They were also pretty stupid. First, they started looting
stores in the ‘hood, and second, even the Dollar Store! If you want to be a
thief, do some thinking first.
So, this is not all about George
Floyd, the guy what who was slowly and methodically murdered. That was just the
spark that set it off. No, he was like the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand of Austria
who was assassinated in 1914. And in that case, it was probably an excuse for something waiting
to happen. Well, George Floyd’s
execution, all 10 minutes of it, was recorded and appeared on television set
across the United States. If it was a
mass rebellion against anything, it was against racist neo-fascism.
And mass is the right word for it. One
network put up a map of the U.S. where such demonstrations took place and the
map was spotted, north and south, east and west, and there was no time to even
start counting. Will this get anything done? All we know is that warm weather
is in the country now and will be for some time, certainly until the election.
Many people, maybe 40 million, are “laid off" and fired and many supposed
to work from home. Right now, things do not look good for Republicans, but
there is serious uncertainty about structural, let alone cultural, change – and
this applies to all involved. It is a great deal to expect in a matter of six
or seven months, and we should all know it.
Well,
back to the other virus:
Now,
Vietnam was bad, but Trump managed to kill as many as Vietnam and Korea
combined in 3 months. I really didn’t think we could get more fucked up than we
already were, but we underestimated his incompetence, and incontinence.
You
know why the blond chick from New York went after Franken, don’t you? It’s
because of the way Franken deconstructed Zuckerberg at the Senate hearing. Check
it out at You tube.
As
a sample, D.C., Brooklyn, rest of New York, Louisville (birth of Hunter
Thompson and Mohammed Ali), Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, LA, Oakland all went
up. That's a hell of a lot of "outside agitators” for Putin to muster and organize.
Putin doesn't care about American Cops – he’s just glad to have a free hand on
his continent.
Yes,
we are getting tired of it. Maybe there are some things that would help.
Donald
Trump says he has never taken a mind-altering drug in his life. Well, maybe he
should start. It might be just the thing he needs to help put things right.
Slip him a large dose of acid and send him on a trip. He’s been on trips
before, so why not? Maybe being without an ego for 12 hours or so will help
clear things up for him. Once he puts himself back together, if he can figure
out how to do it, maybe he will make sense?
This is honestly getting ridiculous, so I’ll just leave
one further bit of information. It
really isn't anything new, and it will probably go nowhere since it is
difficult to capitalize on. You know
how ever so often a network or wire service will release a bit of information
and then suppress it forever? It just
slipped though, that’s all.
Well,
the last one came from a cable news outlet concerning New York’s subway
system. To disinfect the damn thing,
they've installed some lights that flash some ultraviolet light on the whole
train while it is empty. Kills every germ
and virus exposed. Now, people have
known this a long time. At one time, long ago, I would sometimes get something
on my left arm, curious in itself, that the Dr. said was growing. Shit! Something growing on my left arm? What is this world coming to? I want out.
Where’s the next planet?
He
told me not to worry. He took out a lamp he had used for years, ultraviolet,
and placed a piece of paper on my arm, but with a hole in it so only that
growing stuff on my arm was exposed, and zapped it for a minute or so. The
stuff just died. Later on, some company
found some sort of cream that would kill the same stuff and they could charge
for it and that was the end of the lamp.
I never had the problem again either. It must have had something to do
with Lake Michigan, but never mind.
Later
on I came across a remark in some forward or afterward by Bernard Shaw written
in the late 19th or early 20th century. He mentioned that
rivers usually were much cleaner downstream, even from filthy cities like
London; say 20 or 30 miles downstream.
The reason, of course, even in England which is not know as the land of
sunshine, did have sunny days and the sun, with its ultraviolet light, would
kill and disinfect the river along the way.
Surely, we can figure out a way to get into the sun? Or maybe flood areas with ultraviolet light
every so often?
I’ve
noticed now that doctors are talking about how this stuff doesn’t stay around
as long as they have been saying. I
wonder if there is some connection?
Anyway,
Memorial Day comes wherein we supposedly honor and remember all those we
induced to die shooting and bombing one another for the mutual benefit of the
tycoons of all countries involved. And
then it goes. And everyone returns to
work, resolved to despise any members of some other readily identifiable
group.
See,
it doesn’t matter as long as we can get people to hate other people rather than
figure out that corporations and big money are screwing them.
So
long for now.
* *
*
We
add the history of epidemics. It has
some facts you may find surprising and useful.
This is one program that still reports what’s going on. At one time, a group of corporations tried
to take over the show, in fact the entire Pacifica Network. Well, enough
people got together and stopped it from happening, but it was close. 9/11 came along and other opportunities
presented themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: This
is Democracy Now! Democracynow.org, The
Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Forty-eight states are at least
partially reopening this week, even as more than a dozen states are seeing an
uptick in cases, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns the
U.S. death toll will pass 100,000 by the beginning of June. Last week, ousted
U.S. vaccine chief Rick Bright testified that if the U.S. fails to improve its
response to the virus, COVID-19 could resurge after
summer and lead to the “darkest winter in modern history.” Coronavirus hot
spots Italy and United Kingdom are both also slowly reopening businesses.
This
comes as the World Health Organization will meet virtually today with all 194
member states, and the global coronavirus death count passes 315,000 with more
than 4.7 million confirmed infections. This is Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the World
Health Organization’s Emergencies Programme, speaking at a recent briefing.
DR. MICHAEL RYAN: To
put this on the table, this virus may become just another endemic virus in our
communities. And this virus may never go away. HIV has
not gone away, but we’ve come to terms with the virus.
AMY GOODMAN: Well,
as global leaders prepare to discuss what to expect in the months and years to
come, we’re going to look back today at the history of pandemics and how they
end, with the renowned historian Frank Snowden. He’s a professor emeritus of
the history of medicine at Yale University and author of the new book, Epidemics
and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. Professor Snowden is
joining us from Rome, Italy, where he traveled for research before the
coronavirus outbreak and has remained under quarantine since. He has recently
recovered from COVID-19 himself. He also lived
through a cholera outbreak in Rome while conducting research there almost half
a century ago.
In
his book, Professor Snowden writes, quote, “Epidemic diseases are not random
events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning. On the contrary,
every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities. To study them is to
understand that society’s structure, its standard of living, and its political
priorities.”
Professor
Frank Snowden, it’s wonderful to have you with us, albeit from Rome, where you’re
under lockdown. What an amazing history yourself, as you are an expert in
pandemics. In Italy, you survived the cholera outbreak half a century ago, and
now, though getting COVID-19, you have survived
this coronavirus pandemic. Can you talk about those two experiences?
FRANK SNOWDEN: Oh,
certainly. Thank you. I’m delighted to be with you.
And
the cholera outbreak was in 1973. It’s one of the reasons that I was — I took
up an interest in the field, because the sorts of events that I was witnessing
as a young man were quite extraordinary. They included such things as — Naples
was the epicenter. Rome was nonetheless affected, but Naples was the center.
And cars with Naples license plates were being stoned in the center of Rome.
And there are open-air markets in Rome, and the vendors there were having their
stalls overturned, and they were being attacked by crowds as being guilty of
spreading the disease.
At
the same time, Italy, at this time, let’s remember, was the seventh industrial
power in the world, in the 1970s. And the minister of health of this power went
on television. And what he did was to say that the microbe that causes the
cholera is exquisitely sensitive to acid, so all you need to do is to take a
lemon and squeeze just a bit of it on your raw muscles, and then you’ll be
perfectly safe. And, of course, if you believe that, you’re likely to believe
just about anything. And so, it was this sort of event that caught my
attention.
And
later on, when I was studying something else entirely, there was a cholera
outbreak in Italy, and I began thinking, in my studies, that actually this
showed more conclusively what values were in Italy, in Italian society, what
living standards were, and so on, than any other kind of work that I might do.
And so I moved into studying the history of epidemic diseases, and I’ve been
doing that alongside an interest in modern Italian history, those two things
ever since. So, that’s the cholera story.
With
the coronavirus story is that I finished a book, my book that you mentioned,
kindly, in October. It was published then. And I had been quite concerned about
the possibility of a major pandemic disease — not just myself, but many
people were — and I wrote that in the book. And so, I was stunned, though.
I didn’t know when it was likely to happen; I thought one day in the future.
And so I was stunned that in December the epidemic started.
And
then, by the time I came to Italy in January, it really began to ramp up. And
very soon, I was living in the epicenter of the coronavirus at that time. So,
that was a very important experience for me. I was not able to do the research
I came to do, and I’ve devoted myself ever since to doing that. And I guess you
might say that I had a little bit too much enthusiasm for my work and caught
the disease myself — fortunately, a mild case, and I’m here to tell the tale,
and so I was lucky in that regard. But I certainly have had a close look at
this event, this series of events, in Italy, and I’ve been reading intensively
about it and talking to people about it around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: And
our condolences on the death of your sister just a few weeks ago.
FRANK SNOWDEN: Oh,
aren’t you kind? Yes, that was not a result of coronavirus, but, yes, and I
wasn’t able to go back. And that’s, you know, another part of the times we’re
living in. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: I
mean, your family history is so fascinating, your father the first African
American envoy to Italy in the 1950s. He goes on to write Blacks in
Antiquity and Before Color Prejudice. And your
connection, all of these years, to studying Italy, until now — you are
locked down there for months. Can you talk about the comparison of the lockdown
there and what you’re viewing, your country here, the United States? You joked
about — not really joked, but talked about lemon as a cure. Do you see
comparisons to the president of the United States, President Trump, telling
people to inject themselves with disinfectants?
FRANK SNOWDEN: I’m
glad you asked that question. And I would say that what I’ve observed here,
I’ve heard a lot of discussion across — in the States, about Italy’s terrible
response to the coronavirus. And I find that surprising, because it seems to me
quite the opposite.
First
thing has to do with compliance. And there, I think a lot has to do with the
messaging. That is to say that in this country, you have a single health
authority, and it acted — it acted quickly and responsibly, and it imposed
social distancing. And as it did so, there wasn’t a cacophony of noise from a
president speaking differently from his advisers, differently from the
governments of 50 states, from local school boards, local mayors, different
members of Congress. No, there was one policy. It was announced. It was
explained very clearly to the population that until we have a vaccine, that we
have exactly one weapon to deal with this emergency, and that’s social
distancing. And therefore, if we — Italians were told, if we Italians want
to save our country, we have to do it together. We’re all in the same boat. This
is the only means available to save the country, to save our families, to
protect our communities, to protect ourselves.
And
as a result, there’s been — and I’ve observed this even in the
neighborhood where I’m living, that the compliance has been extraordinary.
There haven’t been protests against it as in the States. And I would say that
it’s interesting that the local newspaper — it’s called Il
Messaggero, which means “The Messenger” — had an article in which it
said this is the first time in 3,000 years of Rome’s history that the
population of Romans has ever been obedient. And I think that’s because people
were — the government was very clear. Vans went through the neighborhoods.
There were posters everywhere. The regulations were explained to everyone. They
were very severe, more severe than in the States. But people were justifiably
afraid. The government explained why this was a danger, and people were afraid,
and they wanted to do something.
I
myself heard the kinds of conversations that people had when they were waiting
outside grocery stores, were wearing their masks, and they were conversing with
each other and saying things like “I wonder if this was like the way it was
during World War II. Is this maybe the way it was during the Blitz in London,
that everyone is in this together, it’s a terrible sacrifice, but this is what
we have to do?” This was the attitude that I observed.
And
now that I’m able to go outside again the last few days, I’ve observed on the
streets again that this compliance is continuing. People have been well
educated in the dangers of the coronavirus. And quite frankly, no one wants it
to surge up again. I would say that’s the basis of it.
The
opposite is happening and has happened in the United States, where we had, as I
said, this cacophony of fragmented authorities all saying different things in
an extraordinarily confusing way, and our great CDC,
the world sort of model, the gold standard for emergency response, being
underfunded and almost invisible throughout this crisis. So, it’s been
staggering, a country that has extraordinary medical centers, has this
extraordinary CDC, wonderful doctors, an
extraordinary tradition of scientific research in universities, national labs
like the NIH, and yet — and yet, when this virus approaches,
it has been unable to respond — unwilling to respond, in a scientific, coherent
way with a single message to the American public. And so the public is
confused.
AMY GOODMAN: And
you have the president also defunding the World Health Organization, an
organization you have studied for years. You quote Bruce Aylward of the World
Health Organization upon his return from China. Can you tell us what he said,
Professor Snowden?
FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes.
He said that the world — China has had a model response, and the world will
soon realize that it owes China a debt of gratitude for the long window of
opportunity it provided by delaying the further onset of this virus, which gave
the world a chance to prepare to meet it. That’s essentially what he said on return.
AMY GOODMAN: Did
he also talk about people having to change their hearts and minds to deal with
this global catastrophe?
FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes.
That was the second thing he said, that he said we must be prepared. And people
said, “Well, how do we prepare?” And he said, “The first thing that happens is
that we need to change our hearts and minds, because that’s the premise for
everything else that we need to do.”
AMY GOODMAN: Professor
Frank Snowden, you have long studied epidemics, and I was wondering if, in the
brief time we have together, though we do have the whole show — if you can go
back in time to the bubonic plague and very briefly talk about the Black Death,
caused by a bacteria, then move on to smallpox, how it wiped out Indigenous
people, from Haiti to the United States, and its connection to — this caused by
a virus — its connection to colonization, to colonialism. Start with the Black
Death.
FRANK SNOWDEN: Oh,
absolutely. The Black Death reached Western Europe in 1347. It broke out first
in the city of Messina in Sicily and spread through the whole continent. And it
lasted until, in Western Europe — the story to the east is rather different,
but in Western Europe, the last case was once again in Messina in 1734. So,
that makes, unless I have my math wrong, 400 years in which it ravaged Europe
and killed extraordinary numbers of people.
Now,
this is a disease that’s spread by fleas, also by — and they’re carried by
rats. It also can be spread through the air in a pulmonary form. And it’s
extraordinarily lethal. It’s something like 50% of those who get the disease
from being bitten by fleas perish. Nowadays we have antibiotics, but at the
time of the Black Death, we didn’t, of course, and so 50% of those afflicted
died. And the pneumonic version of the disease is 100% lethal. Even today, it’s
almost 100% lethal.
And
so, this is an extraordinarily dangerous disease. Its symptoms are also
extremely powerful, painful and dehumanizing, and patients die in agony. And
this can — it strikes very quickly, and so people can also be struck down
in public. And so this becomes a terrifying public spectacle as people collapse
in the streets. So, this —
AMY GOODMAN: Professor
Snowden, the people suffered from what? Buboes, these massive inflammations of
the lymph nodes?
FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes.
That’s as the disease spreads from the flea bite to the lymph node. There’s a
massive inflammation, and you have a swelling, let us say, in your thigh or
under your armpit or in your neck, that’s maybe the size of an orange, a large
navel orange, under your skin. And it was said to be so painful that people
even jumped into the — in London, into the Thames, into the Arno in
Florence, to escape from the agony of this terrible pain they were suffering.
But
there were other symptoms, as well: terrible fevers and also hallucinations, as
people — it has neurological effects. That’s part of the dehumanizing side of
it. There are these skin discolorations. There are many symptoms, and it’s an
entirely dreadful and horrible disease.
It
still exists, by the way. There are people who think that it’s just a medieval
disease. No, there are something like 3,000 people around the world who die of
bubonic plague every year, and some — a trickle in the United States, in
the Southwest in particular, where there is a reservoir of it. So, it’s still
there.
AMY GOODMAN: You
knew a woman in Arizona who had bubonic plague?
FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes,
I knew someone in Arizona who got the bubonic plague, because they’re a disease
— endemic disease of prairie dogs in the Southwest of the United States.
And if pet dogs are taken out into areas where the prairie dogs live, they can
have an exchange of fleas, and the fleas can be brought back to a hotel or
motel. And that’s what happened to my friend. There were contaminated fleas in
the room where she slept, and therefore she became a — she survived but
was a victim of bubonic plague in the 21st century. So, we could be —
AMY GOODMAN: Professor
Snowden, you talk about the bubonic plague, the responses to it, being quarantined,
the sanitary cordons, mass surveillance and other forms of state power. And I
also want to follow that through with these pandemics, is you have — you also
are a scholar of fascism and the direction countries can go when such a crisis
happens.
FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes.
Well, one of the things, I think, if a 15th century Florentine were to come
back in a time machine today to look at what we as a society are doing, he or
she would find it a rather familiar landscape. That is to say, the things that
you’re saying were adopted and devised as self-protection by the Italian
city-states that were at the center of the trade in the Mediterranean, and so
were repeatedly scourged.
So,
yes, there was this terrible disease, and they dealt with it by creating health
magistrates — we call them boards of health — by creating the first forms of
personal protective equipment, PPE, the masks, the
long gowns, social distancing, hospital systems for dealing with this one
single disease, the measure of quarantine — “quarantine” even being an Italian
word, ”quaranta,” for 40 days, because people were locked down for 40
days before they were released. It had sanitary cordons. All of this was part
of the defensive measures that we see today and that were also present during
the Spanish influenza.
Public
health was a legacy of the bubonic plague. So, while we look at these terrible
events, we also need to remember that human beings are inventive and that there
have been silver linings. The development of public health, the development of
science and scientific medicine are also gifts of these terrible events. And
indeed, I would say that the modern state is also part of — it was molded in
part by the need for a centralized authority as part of our life protective
system. So, yes, the bubonic plague does that, and it affected every area of
society.
It’s
not true to say that pandemics all do the same things. There are some things
that have been repeated again and again. During the bubonic plague, the Black
Death, the first years of it, there was this horrible surge of anti-Semitism
across Europe, in France, in the Rhineland, in northern Italy, elsewhere. And
this was, in a way, the first Holocaust, when Jews were persecuted and put to
death, not just in spontaneous ways by crowds, but the bureaucratic apparatuses
of political authorities were used to torture Jews into submission, to
confessing crimes that of course they had never committed, and then they were
judged and burned. The Holy Roman Empire did this, and local authorities and
leaders of city-states. So this was a systematic purging and killing of Jews,
who were thought to have — or so the case against them was that they were
trying to put an end to Christendom and were poisoning the wells of Christians.
And so, you have Jews tortured, broken on the wheel, burned alive, run through
by the sword, and so on.
So,
this xenophobia is — this blame, scapegoating, we see that today with the
coronavirus. It’s something that can happen, has repeatedly happened, with the
idea that this is a Chinese disease. It’s a foreign disease, we’re told, and
therefore shutting borders against “Chinamen.” And we see that Chinese
Americans, children being attacked in schools, Chinese Americans afraid to ride
alone on the New York subway and arranging to travel in groups so they won’t do
that. This is part of a long-term legacy of these diseases. And we see it in
Europe, as well. Chinatowns were deserted long before the coronavirus actually
arrived. And the right-wing nationalist politicians of Europe have been using
that, saying it’s been imported by immigrants. So, that’s one of the false
stories that’s followed in the wake of this. So that’s another really terrible
recurring feature of these pandemic diseases.
They
don’t always lead to — you were asking about does this always increase
state power. Well, certainly, the Black Death in Eastern Europe, there were
authoritarian countries, and they used these draconian, violent measures. Yes,
it was part of their assertion of power. Indeed, this is one reason that these
draconian measures appealed, because rulers, not knowing what to do, this gave
the impression that they did: They knew what they were doing, and they were
taking decisive measures. And so, it was thought that these sorts of measures
would possibly be effective, and would certainly be a display of power and
resolution. So, we do see that happening.
But
let’s take the Spanish influenza of 1918, when, again, it’s a good comparison
to today, because it was the time — it’s a respiratory disease. It was terribly
much more contagious than this and deadly. Something like 100 million people
are thought to have died around the world as a result of the Spanish influenza.
And people practiced social distancing. Assemblies were banned. The wearing of
masks was compulsory. Spitting in public, which was very popular at the time,
was forbidden, and there were heavy fines in places like New York City for
doing so. But it doesn’t result — measures were taken, but they were revoked at
the end of the emergency, and one doesn’t find this leading, as it may in some
countries, to a long-term reassertion of draconian power by political
authorities.
With COVID-19, I think the message is mixed. And remember,
anything anyone says about it, we have to remember that this is very early in
this pandemic, and so we’ll have to wait and see what the final results will
be. But we know already that Hungary and Poland have witnessed rulers who
use COVID-19 as a cover for ulterior motives of
becoming prime minister for life, with the capacity to rule by decree, to
censor and shut down the press, to put their political enemies under arrest and
so on. And those aren’t public health measures. So, I would say, yes, it has
this potential, but it’s not necessarily something that we’ll see around the globe,
although there is that danger, and we’ve seen those two countries where it
clearly is leading to exactly those results.
AMY GOODMAN: Frank
Snowden, we have to break. Then we’re going to come back, and I want to ask you
about smallpox, about Haiti, the island of Hispaniola, and about Native
Americans. Frank Snowden, professor emeritus of history of medicine at Yale
University, author of the new book, Epidemics and Society: From the
Black Death to the Present. He is speaking to us from the lockdown in Rome,
Italy. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Killing
Me Softly with His Song,” performed by Marcella Bella. This is Democracy
Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. We’re
spending the hour with professor Frank Snowden, professor emeritus of history
of medicine at Yale University, author of the book Epidemics and
Society: From the Black Death to the Present. He has devoted his life to
looking at epidemics and teaching thousands of students. He is now in Rome,
Italy, where he has been for months, coincidentally went there for another
project but got caught in the lockdown, got COVID-19,
has recovered from that, and we are lucky enough to have him as our guest for
the hour.
Professor
Snowden, take us to Hispaniola in 1492, a different version of history that we
learn about Hernán Cortés and Pizarro, from the Incas in Peru to the Aztecs of
Mexico, what happened in Haiti and in the United States when it came to
smallpox.
FRANK SNOWDEN: Yes.
Well, Columbus landed at Hispaniola, the first place. His idea — the Arawaks
were the Native population, and there were a couple of million inhabiting the
island when he arrived. His idea was that he would be able to reduce them to
slavery. He wrote about how friendly the Arawaks were and how welcoming to him,
his ships and his men. But I’m afraid that the hospitality wasn’t reciprocal.
And Columbus’s view was this was a money-making expedition, and here it would
be wonderful to have the Native population as mines in slaves, and mines to
cultivate the fields.
The
problem was that there was a differential mortality. This has come to be called
the Columbian exchange. That is to say that Native populations in the New World
didn’t have the same history of exposure to various diseases, and therefore not
the same herd immunity to them. The most dramatic example is smallpox. Measles
was another. That is to say that Native Americans had never experienced those
diseases. Columbus and his men, on the other hand, had, because it was rife in
Europe. And so, unintentionally, for the most part, the Arawaks simply died off
as they were exposed to these new diseases, smallpox and measles, and by 15, 20
years later, there were just a couple thousand left.
And
it was at this time that in Hispaniola there was the beginning — this is one of
the reasons for the beginning of the African slave trade. The Native population
of the United States died from these diseases, and so the Europeans turned
instead to importing people from Africa, because they shared many of the same
bacterial histories, and therefore immunities, and could survive being enslaved
in the Caribbean and then in the New World, on North America and also in South
America. So, we get the beginning of the slave trade in part as a result to
this differential immunity.
This,
then, on the wider scale of the New World, this was something that was
— devastated the Native population. When the Spaniards, the British, the
French came, the Native population contracted their diseases and just was
destroyed. This destroyed the Inca and Aztec empires. In fact, they were so
devastated, that they lost their religion. They thought the White man had much
more powerful gods than they did, and so this drove the missionary and
conversion experience, as well, and cleared the land for European settlers across
the whole of the continent. This was a tremendous impact of smallpox disease.
It’s called a virgin soil disease because they were so — the population had
never experienced it and had no herd immunity.
There’s
an irony that we can see. Let’s go back to Hispaniola, that is now the island
divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And let’s talk about Haiti.
It was Saint-Domingue at the time, by the 18th century certainly. And let’s
remember that the French — this is now an island that had become, extraordinarily
enough to think, the wealthiest colony in the world, the jewel of the French
Empire. And that is because of its sugar plantations. And the sugar was
exported to Europe and was the foundation of French wealth in this period. And
slaves are continuing to be imported throughout the 18th century at breakneck
speed to cultivate the fields of sugarcane.
During
the French Revolution, French power was neutralized. The attitude of the French
revolutionaries toward slavery was entirely different. And you got this upsurge
of the slaves with the greatest slave revolt in history, led by the Haitian
Spartacus, Toussaint Louverture. And the colony was functionally operating
under Toussaint Louverture’s control and was independent of France. Napoleon —
there was regime change, however, by 1799, and Napoleon comes to power. And by
1803, he’s thinking that he wishes to put an end to this rebellion, to restore
the Haitian rebels, to reenslave them and to restore the colony to being this
economic warehouse for France. So he sends a tremendous armada, led by a
general who was married to his sister Pauline. And it was something like 60,000
troops and sailors who were sent to the former Hispaniola, now Saint-Domingue,
to crush the revolt.
Once
again, we see a difference in immunity to disease that proved decisive. That is
to say that yellow fever was something to which the African slaves had a
differential immunity, whereas Europeans had no immunity. They had no history
of experience with yellow fever. And so, what happens is that the French
soldiers in Saint-Domingue begin to die at a rapid rate of a terrible epidemic
of yellow fever that sweeps through the Caribbean and especially through
Saint-Domingue. And what happens, by — Toussaint Louverture was very aware
of this and took advantage of it, luring the French troops, not fighting them
in pitched battles but only small guerrilla campaigns, waiting for the summer
months to come, and an upsurge of the disease, which happens. And pretty soon
the French commander writes to Paris to say —
AMY GOODMAN: Professor
Snowden, I’m only interrupting because we only have a minute. Of course, Haiti
becomes the first country born of a slave rebellion, as you are so graphically
describing with an alternative view of history, that many may not have
understood, with the role of disease. But in this last minute we have, I wanted
to ask you about how pandemics end and what you think will happen now.
FRANK SNOWDEN: I
think there’s not one answer to that. Pandemics are all different, and they end
in different ways. Some die out because of sanitary measures that people take
against them, so that we’re not vulnerable in the industrial world to cholera
or typhoid fever, that are spread through the oral-fecal group, because we have
sewers and clean, safe drinking water. And other diseases end, like smallpox,
because of vaccination, the development of a scientific tool. So it really
depends. Some diseases are not very good candidates for vaccines.
And
I would say that COVID-19, I’m sure that we will
develop a vaccine, but I also fear that it may not be the — it won’t be
the magic bullet that people believe, that it will put this behind us, because
the sort of features you want are, for an ideal candidate, like smallpox, a
vaccine that doesn’t have an animal reservoir so it can’t return to us. A
vaccine is an ideal candidate if in nature it produces a robust immunity in the
human body, so people, having once had it, are totally immune for life. That
doesn’t seem to be the case with COVID-19. So I
expect it to become long-term with us. We’re going to have to learn to live
with this disease. It’s probably going to become an endemic disease, and so
we’re going to have to adjust to —
AMY GOODMAN: We’re
going to have to leave it there. And I want to thank you so much, Professor
Frank Snowden, professor emeritus of history of medicine at Yale University,
author of the new book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to
the Present. I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No
Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal
copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program
incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or
additional permissions, contact us.
