"Never confuse movement with action."
- Ernest Hemingway[1]


'Tis the season of the flu, just like every year. But this year, there's something different. How different, you ask? Well, let's take a look at Ukraine:

“Ukraine is in the midst of what some might call swine-flu hysteria. The country is in virtual lockdown mode, with the government closing schools, universities and movie theaters and banning all public gatherings until the end of November. Pharmacies have run out of protective masks; those who missed the rush are improvising with scarves or homemade facsimiles. And rumors are running rampant, much as they did during Soviet times when the authorities tried to cover up disasters like the Chernobyl nuclear-plant meltdown. "We are worried that the swine flu has mutated and is killing scores of people," says Nina Sokolovska as she stands in line at a pharmacy."

A flu that seems as deadly as an out-of-control nuclear reactor? The whole story seems hushed up by the government? Rumours spreading faster than the disease itself? Public gatherings are banned and schools, universities and the likes are closed? Let's look at this from the beginning.

Influenza and “Swine Flu”

Everyone knows the “usual”, seasonal influenza, but this year there's also the virus strain of H1N1, popularly called “Swine Flu”. Just like SARS and the “Avian Influenza” (the H5N1 strain, emerging in 2003 and still in the wild), it is a zoonosis, an infectious disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans (or vice versa). And just like the “Avian Flu” in 2005 and 2006 made for sensationalist coverage in the media, precipitous actions by various governments and hysterical discussions in the public debate, so is the “Swine Flu” firing everyone's imagination.

FARNSWORTH
Dear Lord, they're back!

AMY
We're doomed!

HERMES
Dooomed!

[Bender takes a breath.]
BENDER
Doooo...!

Even though the run-of-the-mill variation of the influenza, the yearly seasonal flu “result[s] in about three to five million cases of severe illness, and about 250 000 to 500 000 deaths“ worldwide, whereas the "Swine Flu“ has, to date, taken less than 6300 lives worldwide, less than 700> of those in Europe (this disconnect between victim numbers and media hype is a topic for another day). Funnily enough, very few politicians are recommending to be vaccinated (German former Minister of the Interior, now Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has publicly stated that he hasn't decided yet whether or not to get the vaccine).

Populism and the search for a scapegoat

In the aforementioned case of the Ukraine, the hysteria and fear is coupled with populism: It seems like politicians are adding fuel to the flame in order to score political points ahead of the January elections. Schools and universities are closing, public gatherings have been banned (just days after the big launch of current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's election campaign), medication was flown in and the landing plane greeted in a George W. Bush-style photo-op by Tymoshenko – a move so blatantly populist that the local newspapers seem to agree with the political opponent Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who calls this a distraction from the real problems the country is facing. Oh, and on top of all these sweeping measures, Tymoshenko publicly stated that she will not get vaccinated – draw your own conclusions from that.

An even more exaggerated reaction could be witnessed in Egypt, where – prior to any reported (much less confirmed) cases of “Swine Flu” - about 250 000 (!) pigs were needlessly slaughtered. Here, the pigs – and, in a case of guilty-by-association, their Coptic Christian owners - were presented as a scapegoat. This measure sparked not only riots and the (further) impoverishment of the Coptics11, but also a massive garbage-disposal problem: The Pigs, traditionally used to clean the streets of tons of organic waste are now dearly missed, making the authorities' initial reaction to international criticism during this spring's mass killings even more ironic:

When health officials worldwide said that the virus was not being passed by pigs, the Egyptian government said that the cull was no longer about the flu, but was about cleaning up the zabaleen’s crowded, filthy, neighborhood.

Historical Parallels

Now, that was a mighty long build-up for a post in the history section of this site, wasn't it?
But reading about all this reminded me of a certain historical topic. Which one? Society's reaction to a truly devastating epidemic of a zoonosis. More specifically: Medieval Europe's reaction to the catastrophe of the Bubonic Plague 1347 – 1351, commonly refered to as the “Black Death”.

The Plague, commonly seen as one of the quintessential events in the history of Europe, comparable in its impact to the Migration Period of the Germanic and Slavic peoples or the First and Second World War, has influenced European society in fields as diverse as politics, economy, arts and – of special importance here – mentality[2]. Some scholars even go so far to call the Plague Years with their estimated 20 - 30 million dead[3] (i.e. about a third (!) of Europe's inhabitants) the beginning of the end of the Middle Ages[4].

"sterben [...] von eime ende der welte untz an das ander" - "death […] from one end of the world unto the other"[5]

The literal reaction to these few years can still be witnessed, stemming from the originals of Boccaccio (sometimes called the Italian Shakespeare) and Petrarch to more modern writers, like Camus. Even in modern times there are plenty of idioms that can be traced back to this deadly disease: The British and Germans alike may try to "avoid something like the plague" (German: "meiden wie die Pest"), the Germans say they "have the choice between plague and cholera" ("die Wahl zwischen Pest und Cholera") where the English are caught between a rock and a hard place.

So how did the contemporaries react, and where can we draw parallels to our own times?

Patterns of Interpretation

Without going into the details of the medieval concepts of health and disease, let's take a look at the dominant patterns of interpretation of the Plague:

The people of the 1300's saw a holistic connection between man and environment, microcosm and macrocosm, everyday life and religion, earthly and spiritual life. Therefore, the main topos found in contemporary literature is the "tribunal"[6] or "God's righteous wrath"[7]. The inexplicable infection mechanism, the rapid and so often fatal progress of the Plague as well as its more general effect on the society at large brought about a plethora of religious phenomena. First and foremost, the flaggelants spring to mind (even though there are instances of earlier flaggelation-movements), often accompanied by antisemitism (although both were mostly limited to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation), the later here functioning as a sort of valve for built-up frustration, as well as serving as a scapegoat (although there were many contributing factors that played out to the Jews' disadvantage and the social elites that instigated these anti-Jewish riots often stood to gain financially from the Jews' demise)[8]. Less extreme religious tendencies can be witnessed in the increase in pilgrimages as well as the often held services of intercession.

But there is a paradox here: Even though the Plague was seen both as sent from God and as righteous punishment for society's sins, the medieval populace still tried to escape the disease by flight, penance and dozens of other actions. Some historians even go so far as to postulate a "scepticism about God's justness"[9], as is evident in some chronicles:

Oh Genoa, what crime did you commit in these days! Do tell, Sicily, and all you rich islands of the sea, of God's tribunal! Do explain, Venice, Tuscany, and the whole of Italy, how did you conduct yourselves! We from Genoa and Venice try hard to unravel God's resolution! Oh pain! When we sent our fleets against [foreign] towns, we turned on our own homes![10]

de Mussis cannot explain what, exactly, brought about the Plague's torment, God's tribunal, what is the deed that needs to be paid for. Petrarca even goes so far to ask a question that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago:

Or should it be true, what some great thinkers already suspected, that God does not care for the earthly world [any more]?[11]

Measures taken against the Plague

When talking about the provisions taken against this unprecedented disease, we have to distinguish between the institutions that enacted them: Local authorities, the Catholic Church, and the people themselves. Any ideas that were to be put into practise were not only hampered by the lacking understanding of the Plague itself, but also suffered heavily from the strain the epidemic put on the institutions: Personnel was lacking, civil unrest was spreading and there was little time to react once the first people become infected – and let's not speak of the unreliability of the rule of law even during the best of times in the middle ages.

The most strain was put on the social networks of the days, the family and the lower clergy. Both were the basic unit of care for the socially weak and ailing, and both suffered horrendously under the Plague: Friends and family did not dare to care for the sick any more, out of fear for their own lives. The lower clergy had even higher casualties than the medical professionals, because they not only supplied basic medical care but also had to administer the last rites[12].

Prophylaxis

While the first organised quarantine likely stems from 1377, even during the Black Death some rudimentary isolation mechanism can be witnessed. On a more basic level, no one wanted to have contact to the fleeing refugees from the already infected neighbouring towns, although the speed of the disease itself makes it seem unlikely that this was a complete or even good isolation: Especially friends and family will likely have breached this informal quarantine.

Some towns instituted a health check at the gates and refused entry for every sick person – sadly, because of the latent period of the Plague is significantly shorter than the incubation period; since another vector was the flea, this measure usually amounted to nothing. Similarly, the idea of improving municipal hygiene was doomed from the start: All efforts to clean up streets that were not paved, consisted mostly of compacted mud and refuse, were swarming with wild dogs and other animals and literally had streams of shit flowing through it were futile[13].

Counteractive Measures

That the bodies of those who had died of the Plague were highly infectious, was apparent to most contemporaries. This was evident in the extremely high death rate of the gravediggers and undertakers[14]. The quick removal of those corpses was often accompanied by an – again, informal – isolation of the deceased's belongings, as simply no one wanted to come into contact with them.

The burial procedures were shortened and handled less strictly, simply because of the shortage of qualified clergy, but also because fewer people wanted to attend out of fear of infection. Mass graves beyond the city gates were dug, against considerably protest of the local populace who did not approve of the constrains this put on the cult of the death. Sometimes, a maximum number of mourners was set, an obvious but half-hearted parallel to today's banning of public gatherings.

These measures were usually accompanied by a host of moral laws, banning gambling, Sunday work or swearing in public; increased pilgrimage and mass could be seen, too. And, most interestingly in my mind, is the medieval equivalent to the modern gagging order of the press: The death knell, used to announce a funeral, was often curbed or banned outright, in order to not agitate the populace any further[15].

The Bottom Line

As we have seen, these hysterias are not something that we can point and laugh at in other, supposedly “less educated” or “backwards” countries and times. In Germany, some local school boards have decided to implement a daily head-count of the attending children as a precaution against the “Swine Flu”, some school districts even completely close down whole schools with hundreds of pupils, if just one case of infection is confirmed; some parents refuse to send their kids to schools (German) that aren't closed if there is a “Swine Flu” case. And the media is to blame, as well: Germany's biggest tabloid newspaper, “Bild“, had the Swine flu (or the vaccination-controversy) as a lead story 12 times in 27 days (German); let's just say that serious information probably wasn't the primary concern here.

As we have seen, the kind of behaviour witnessed today can be traced back to the medieval times and is, apparently, anchored deep in the human psyche. These kinds of fear – when you worry about your own health as well as about your family – are hard to control by education.

Don't get me wrong: Get vaccinated, if possible against both seasonal as well as “Swine Flu”. Just don't buy into hype (of any kind) and scrutinise the actions taken and the arguments given for them. Otherwise, imagine what kind of panic the future might bring if this thing actually does get dangerous for the whole of society – for there are historical precedents.

=====

Footnotes

[1] cf. A.E. Hotchner: Papa Hemmingway, 1966.
[2] cf. Uwe Walter: Der "Schwarze Tod“ und seine Sippe – Versuch einer Bilanz, in: Mischa Meier (ed.): Pest. Die Geschichte eines Menschheitstraumas, 2005, p. 370f. (German).
[3] cf. Karl-Heinz Leven: Art. Pest B., in: LexMA Bd.6, 1993, Cls. 1920f. (German).
[4] cf. František Graus: Pest – Geissler – Judenmorde. Das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit, 1987, pp. 535 - 550 (German).
[5] Jakob Twinger von Königshofen: Deutsche Chronik, ca. 1400 (Middle High German).
[6] Gabriele de Mussis: Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 22 (German).
[7] Giovanni Boccaccio: Il Decamerone, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, Heidelberg 1989, p. 39 (German).
[8] cf. František Graus: Pest – Geissler – Judenmorde. Das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit, 1987 (German).
[9] Bergdolt, Klaus: Die Pest. Geschichte des Schwarzen Todes, 2006, p. 10 (German).
[10] Gabriele de Mussis Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 23 (German).
[11] Francesco Petrarco: Brief Francesco Petrarcas an seinen Bruder Gherardo, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, Heidelberg 1989, p. 141f. (German).
[12] cf. Gabriele de Mussis Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 28 (German).
[13] cf. Kay Peter Jankrift: Brände, Stürme, Hungersnöte. Katastrophen in der mittelalterlichen Lebenswelt, 2003, pp. 147 - 180 (German).
[14] cf. Gabriele de Mussis Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 28 (German).
[15] Klaus Bergdolt: Der Schwarze Tod im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Kaldewei, Gerhard (Hrsg.): Pest, Plagen und Polykarpus 1454 / 2004. 550 Jahre St.-Polykarpus-Gilde zu Delmenhorst. Begleitveröffentlichung zur Ausstellung „Pest, Plagen und Polykarpus 1454 / 2004“ vom 13.6. - 5.9.2004 in den Museen der Stadt Delmenhorst auf der Nordwolle, 2004, p.
77 (German).