Contrary to what I expected, my online course is proving to be a lot of fun. Since students get to express themselves a lot more, they come up with all sorts of interesting stuff. This is a question one of the students came up with:
Reading about the epidemic of the Bubonic plague that killed about 1/3 of all people in Europe within just a few years in 1300s made me wonder: what would happen if our society experienced something like that? Would we also react with growing religious intolerance, fear, hatred, pogroms, etc.? We like to see ourselves as better than the Medieval people. Would we act any differently in case of this kind of tragedy?
What do you think?
Clarissa's Blog 
I think your student is very insightful!
I also think that people’s responses to considerably more mild pandemics, like the swine flu, offer a picture of what may happen at the very beginning: Talking heads in the media would do everything to whip up panic, people would take stupid and ineffective tinfoil hat methods of protecting themselves, like random pills or vitamins, because opiates are the new religion of the masses, fake cures would circulate the internet, and easy scapegoats (“Foreigners bringing in filthy foreign germs!”) would abound.
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I think there would be major differences because of the much greater availability of newspapers and much information via the internet. The population was mostly illiterate in the fourteenth century. I am not sure at all whether this would make things better or worse, however.
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There would be a great panic, fueled by media (which would kindly remind everybody that 1/3 of European population died last time Black Death came).
I wouldn’t be surprised if entire cities would be cut off/quarantined; also, the spread would be much quicker because of faster means of transportation: some areas of Europe were not affected as much, but they wouldn’t be so lucky this time.
Also, I think the people’s reaction would depend how competent a government would be/number of casualties: when you hear that half of New York is infected then you freak out and FLEE to the countryside/ as far away as you can !
Man, just a thought of a plague killing a third of a continent…. worse than Second World War…
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//Would we also react with growing religious intolerance, fear, hatred, pogroms, etc.?
I think that if better than only a little better.
Look at what happened after 9/11, the only time (I know about) that Americans became afraid in recent times. Of course, there is a big difference, but still.
Another example – AIDS in US. And how even nowadays (under current president too?) US aid wasn’t for advocating for condoms in Africa because of “morality”.
Imagine you live in a village and probably infected NY citizens try to enter it. Will you let them? I bet on NO.
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Ah, found it. An article from August 2005, which shows how “logical” & “advanced” many US people are about diseases:
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“In 2003, President Bush declared he would spend $15bn on his emergency plan for Aids relief, but receiving aid under the programme has moral strings attached.
Recipient countries have to emphasise abstinence over condoms, and – under a congressional amendment – they must condemn prostitution.”
– A crazy orangutan that guy is. What else can I say?
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//A crazy orangutan that guy is. What else can I say?
It’s not “that guy”. It’s big parts of society, that’s why the policies were implemented and it’s relevant to this discussion of how far we’re from the Middle Ages.
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Fundamentalists like Bush only constitute about 11% of population in the US. In Western Europe, it’s a lot less.
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Government already has quarantine plans in place. We had a training video about it at work.
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