So, how was economic situation during the 1665 plague in London. Eerily similar to ours. Here's Daniel Defoe account on it from A Journal of the Plague Year:
At the beginning of the plague, when there was now no more hope, but that the whole city would be visited when, as I have said, all that had friends or estates in the country, retired with their families ; and when, indeed, one would have thought the very city itself was running out of the gates, and that there would be nobody left behind; you may be sure from that hour all trade, except such as related to immediate subsistence, was, as it were, at full stop.
And, therefore, I descend to the several arrangements or classes of people, who fell into immediate distress upon this occasion. For example:
1. All master workmen in manufactories: especially such as belonged to ornament, and the less necessary parts of the people's dress, clothes, and furniture for houses; such as riband weavers, and other weavers; gold and silver lace makers, and gold and silver wire drawers, sempstresses, milliners, shoe-makers, hat-makers, and glove-makers; also, upholsterers, joiners, cabinet-makers, looking-glass-makers, and innumerable trades which depended upon such as these; I say the master workmen in such stopped their work, dismissed their journeymen and workmen, and all their dependents.
2. As merchandizing was at a full stop, for very few ships ventured to come up the river, and none at all went out; so all the extraordinary officers of the customs, like-wise the watermen, carmen, porters, and all the poor, whose labor depended upon the merchants, were at once dismissed, and put out of business.
3. All the tradesmen usually employed in building or repairing of houses, were at a full stop, for the people were far from wanting to build houses, when so many thousand houses were at once stripped of their inhabitants; so that this one article turned all the ordinary workmen of that kind out of business; such as bricklayers, masons, carpenters, joiners, plasterers, painters, glaziers, smiths, plumbers ; and all the laborers depending on such.
4. As navigation was at a stop, our ships neither coming in nor going out as before, so the seamen were all out of employment, and many of them in the last and lowest degree of distress; and with the seamen, were all the several tradesmen and workmen belonging to and depending upon the building and fitting out of ships; such as ship-carpenters, calkers, rope-makers, dry-coopers, sail-makers, anchor-smiths, and other smiths ; block-makers, gun-smiths, shiphandlers, ship-carvers, and the like. The masters of those, perhaps, might live upon their substance; but the traders were universally at a stop, and consequently all their workmen discharged. Add to these, that the river was in a manner without boats, and all or most part of the watermen, lightermen, boat-builders, and lighter-builders, in like manner idle, and laid by.
5. All families retrenched their living as much as possible, as well those that fled, as those that stayed; so that an inumerable multitude of footmen, serving-men, shopkeepers, journeymen, merchants' book-keepers, and such sort of people, and especially poor maid-servants, were turned off, and left friendless and helpless, without employment, and without habitation; and this was really dismal article.
I might be more particular as to this part, but it may suffice to mention in general, that all trades being stopped, employment ceased: the labor, and by that the bread, of the poor was cut off ; and at first, indeed, the cries of the poor were most lamentable to hear, though, by the distribution of charity, their misery that way was greatly abated. Many, indeed, fled into the country; but thousands of them having stayed in London, till nothing but desperation sent them away, death overtook them on the road, and they served for no better than the messengers of death ; indeed, others carrying the infection along with them, spread it very unhappily into the remotest parts of the kingdom.
Many of these were the miserable objects of despair, which I have mentioned before, and were removed by the destruction which followed. These might be said to perish, not by the infection itself, but by the consequence namely, by hunger and distress, and the want of all things; being without lodging, without money, without friends, without means to get their bread, and without any one to give it them, for many of them were without what we call legal settlements, and so could not claim of the parishes;
Let anyone who is acquainted with what multitudes of people get their daily bread in this city by their labor, whether artificers or mere workmen; — I say, let any man consider what must be the miserable condition of this town, if, on a sudden, they should be all turned out of employment, that labor should cease, and wages for work be no more.
This was the case with us at that time ; and had not the sums of money, contributed in charity by well-disposed people of every kind, as well abroad as at home, been prodigiously great, it had not been in the power of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs to have kept the public peace : nor were they without apprehensions as it was, that desperation should push the people upon tumults, and cause them to rifle the houses of rich men, and plunder the markets of provisions : in which case, the country people, who brought provisions very freely and boldly to town, would have been terrified from coming any more, and the town would have sunk under an un-avoidable famine.
But the prudence of my Lord Mayor, and the court of Aldermen within the City, and of the Justices of peace in the out-parts was such, and they were supported with money from all parts so well, that the poor people were kept quiet, and their wants every where relieved, as far as was possible to be done.
Two things, besides this, contributed to prevent the mob doing any mischief: one was, that really the rich themselves had not laid up stores of provisions in their houses, as, indeed, they ought to have done, and which, if they had been wise enough to have done, and locked themselves entirely up, as some few did, they had perhaps escaped the disease better; but as it appeared they had not, so the mob had no notion of finding stores of provisions there, if they had broken in, as it is plain they were sometimes very near doing, and which, if they had, they had finished the ruin of the whole city, for there were no regular troops to have withstood them; nor could the trained bands have been brought together to defend the city, no men being to be found to bear arms.
But the vigilance of the Lord Mayor, and such magistrates as could be had, for some, even of the Aldermen, were dead, and some absent, prevented this; and they did it by the most kind and gentle methods they could lo think of, as particularly by relieving the most desperate with money, and putting others into business, and particularly that employment of watching houses that were infected and shut up ; and as the number of these was very great, for, it was said, there was at one time ten thousand houses shut up, and every house had two watchmen to guard it, viz., one by night, and the other by day; gave opportunity to employ a very great number of poor men at a time.
The women and servants that were turned off from their places, were likewise employed as nurses to tend the sick in all places; and this took off a very great number of them.
Well, this last part slightly differs from the current plague. Tending sick is way too risky. I think I saw a headline a few days ago saying that new onlyfans accounts are also rising exponentially.
Here are some caps of a couple of working girls,
Daphne Wellens and
Isis Cabolet, from new Dutch series, Keizersvrouwen, which follows a woman who manages a group of successful high-end escorts in the world of big money. You can check out the clips at
Mr. Skin
You might have noticed that I included
Bill Gates appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show among Celebs on talk shows. I occasionally add names of interest to me, as a reminder to check the interview later. So, a few random thoughts after watching it.
The comments are turned off, well that sucks. Like/dislike ratio 53% aye vs 47% nay out of some 20K votes at time of writing this. Ellen seems to be the worst interviewer ever, not one coherent question, so
Portia de Rossi had to chime in at the end... to ask what was just asked a second earlier… and a film from Chernobyl started rolling in my head. “What was the exposure to the virus? 3.6 mol, sir! “3.6 mol, not great, not terrible”.
I had some other random thoughts. Like when Gates said that his organization donated $100 million to fight this epidemic. I know from the news that governments around the world are handing out “free money” to prevent the total economic collapse. But a private organization? I think it’s called an investment in normal world.
In the end what I got out of it is that things won't go back to normal until we get a vaccine or a therapeutic that is 95% effective, but we have to assume that that will be at least 18 months from now.
So, my ever-sceptical inner voice, apparently called anima, wondered what a vaccine would look like if a guy with software development background would be involved in manufacturing and selling such a thing.
I think the shadow took over from anima there and came up with a few potential scenarios:
October 2021, CV19 vaccine released
- CV19 cumulative update, November 2021
-updates an issue with constant headaches, tiredness, fever and muscle aches
- CV19 cumulative update, January 2022
-Fixes swelling, itching or a hard lump at the injection site
Known issues in this update
Symptom: headaches when exposed to sun for a longer period of time
Workaround: #workathome
- CV19 hotfix, March 2022 (affects at least 1 in 10,000 people)
second part of XX chromosome would be partially erased X->Y;
solution: special hormone therapy or gender reassignment therapy needed to rectify the situation.
- CV19 2.0 pre-release build available for testing, April 2020
-upgrade from solution based to microchip-based administration of the vaccine
-experimental geo-tracking available
-fixed out of memory problems in some patients with pre-conditions
-fixed black out issue (black screen of death) in some patients with certain pre-conditions
-fixed loss of smell issue when exposed to virus for prolonged time
- June 2022, CV20 vaccine release
-mainstream support for CV19 vaccine ends as it is no longer effective against 2022-nCoV virus.
-switched from health insurance coverage to personal yearly subscription model which includes all vaccine updates as long as membership is paid for
Full disclosure, I am not an anti-vaxer, been vaccinated against everything... except stupidity maybe. More
Portia at Mr. Skin.
A guy loading up a cart with dead bodies during a plague and yelling “
Bring out your dead!” is one of the scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail that always got me laughing. I think know where they got the inspiration for the scene. Terry Jones, who was also a respected medieval historian, probably got the idea for the sketch after reading Daniel Defoe’s book, A Journal of the Plague Year.
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out, and said, with an angry quick tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, " What d'ye want, that ye make such a knocking?" He answered, "I am the watchman, how do you do? What is the matter?" The person answered, " What is that to you? Stop the dead-cart." This, it seems, was about one o'clock ; soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered; he continued knocking, and the bellman called out several times. "Bring out your dead"; but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart being called to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away.
There's no nudity in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I found one in The Meaning of Life, here's
Patricia Quinn from the movie. You can check out the clip at
Mr. Skin.
I am about one third through Daniel Defoe’s book, A Journal of the Plague Year. Reading it, it feels like, we, humans, managed to change the world around ourselves in the last four hundred years significantly. Better infrastructure, great advances in science, medicine, longer life expectancy…, but on the whole, how people behave, hasn’t changed much. Still afraid when things are about to change, gullible, relying on advice from people with no credibility. I look at my facebook feed and see recommendations for vitamin C, zinc, CBD oil, hell, even read a story about a guy poisoning himself after taking chloroquine phosphate, an additive used to clean fish tanks, in hopes to prevent getting infected with coronavirus.
Here are some some excerpts from the book on conjurers of cheap tricks during the plague in London
The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times, in which, I think, the people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies, and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales, than ever they were before or since.
Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it, that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications, I know not ; but certain it is, books frighten them terribly;
Next to these public things were the dreams of old men; or, I should say, the interpretation of old women other people's dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits.
Others saw apparitions in the air; and I must be allowed to say of both I hope without breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never appeared; but the imagination of
the people was really turned wayward and possessed; and no wonder if they who were poring continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representations and appearances, which had nothing in them but air and vapor.
I could fill this account with the strange relations such people gave every day of what they had seen ; and every one was so positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that there was no contradicting them without breach of friendship, or being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, and profane and impenetrable on the other.
They ran to conjurers and witches and all sorts of deceivers, to know what should become of them, who fed their fears and kept them always alarmed and awake, on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets. So, they were as mad upon running after quacks and mountebanks, and every practising old woman, for medicines and remedies, storing themselves with such multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as they were called, that they not only spent their money but even poisoned themselves beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection, and prepared their bodies for the plague instead of preserving them against it.
Some ads from dubious doctors of the time
Infallible preventive pills against the plague, — Never-failing preservatives against the infection, — Sovereign cordials against the corruption of air, — Exact regulations for the conduct of the body in case of an infection, — Antipestilential pills, — Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before, — An Universal remedy for the plague, — The ONLY true plague-water, — The royal antidote against all kinds of infection : and such a number more that I cannot reckon up, and if I could, it would fill a book of themselves to set them down.
All this reminded me of scene with
Priscilla Barnes from Mallrats. A fortune teller whose credibility relied on the third nipple which… turned out to be fake. You can probably find some more examples at
Mr. Skin.