EDITORIAL - Stranger than fiction
The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century; until then streets were commonly filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding, facilitating the spread of transmissible disease. One early medical advance as a result of the Black Death was the establishment of the idea of quarantine in the city-state of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia) in 1377 after continuing outbreaks. – Sehdev PS “The Origin of Quarantine” in (2002) 35 Clinical Infectious Diseases 1071-2
When, eventually and hopefully soon, the current troubling circumstances are published as historical data, it will be written that the COVID-19 pandemic began in the mid-winter of 2019 in a city in a central province of China and rapidly spread thereafter to all the countries of the world without fear or favour and without regard to age, race, class, office or station.
It will be noted further that as it spread its tentacles globally, it served substantially to curtail human interaction by effecting the official imposition of lockdowns and curfews, an emphasis on remaining at home, avoiding public contact wherever possible,and the development of the practice of social or physical distancing, among other strategies; all in an effort to promote the avoidance of contagion.
In those days of COVID-19, there was the cancellation of the 2020 Olympics and of many other significant international sporting events, the virtual prohibition of global travel as airlines parked their craft, as all but a few ports of entry were slammed shut and as first, non-essential and, subsequently, all travel was generally discouraged.
Work and economies ground to a halt globally for more than a few peoples as only those services deemed to be essential were permitted to operate, and to do so merely for a limited daily duration, while universities, churches and schools likewise closed their doors.
It was an eldritch time as reports were communicated daily of the steadily rising casualties at home, regionally and globally; both of the number of contracted infections and of deaths from the disease. Never absent in that regard were the informed prognoses of the likely number deaths before the pandemic had run its course.
Even in that context, and most terrible to contemplate, one got the distinct impression that most projections as to the likely period of contagion amounted to little more than hopeful conjecture as evidenced by the continual revision of the timelines for its end.
Hopefully, these annals will end with a report of the disappearance of the virus from earth as sudden as that of its origin and tales of the lessons of selflessness, goodwill and charity that mankind learnt from the terrible experience it underwent in those dark days, despite the imperative of physical distance.
Like you, dear reader, we too hope for this halcyon ending, but we should not merely content ourselves with vain reverie. Rather, we should apply our native common sense to the situation. This will entail us taking the steps necessary to avoid becoming infected or so as to infect others. These are not complex or esoteric. Indeed, they have been drilled into our consciousness over rather past few weeks. Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly; practise physical distancing; cough and sneeze if you must in the counselled fashion and please stay at home as much as is humanly possible for your sake and that of others.