The year was 2019 and world leaders had plenty of warning
They’d had warnings for many years but two leaders who had sold themselves as anti-science and anti-intellectual, refused to listen to experts or learn lessons from the past. Their negligence led to the UK having the most plague deaths in Europe and the USA having the most deaths of any nation on Earth.
This history will explore the science of the plague and the three waves of death that spanned the years 2019 — 2021. But primarily we will study Boris Johnson’s and Donald Trump’s leadership that brought the human race to the brink of extinction.
And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
Boris Johnson, February 3, 2020
We do not wish to clog up these pages with what has become known as “Trumpian nonsense”, but here is one quote from early on in the plague.
If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better.
Donald Trump, First week of March, 2020
The real purpose of this post
The above is fun speculation I’ve played with during quarantine but I want to focus on these questions.
- How will history perceive our times? Can we ensure truthful journals are preserved?
- What will historians call this plague? Can we name our time rather than leave it to history?
The truth depends so much on November because the winners do write history and for this diary, I’m assuming that we, the good guys win.
“The Great Plague” is called The Black Death or, wait I’ll let Dr. Wheeler explain
Q: Does it have other names?
A: Today, it's best known as the Black Death or the bubonic plague. Medieval people called it "the blue sickness," La pest ("the Pestilence"), and "the Great Mortality." The name bubonic comes from the medieval Latin word bubo via Italian bilbo--meaning a pustule, growth, or swelling. In Mongolia, the first outbreaks were called ko-ta-wen (literally, "sore-sore,") and in southern China, the term was ta-wun, from which we get the Arabic term ta'un.
Dr. L Kip Wheeler — Carson-Newman University
I chose to name it The Red Death because I want the Red GOP to own this plague throughout history. Trump’s Plague or Republican Pestilence are a little too singular for historical purposes.
I am not hung on the name. Please discuss others. I just want us to decide on a name before some historian like Doris Kearns Goodwin names it for us, or worse, a future 2100 historian in some backwater college writing for his/her PhD.
Once a name is chosen, I myself will refer to the current plague as “the red death” or whatever, in order to get it embedded into the public psych. Of course hashtags etc. would reference Covid-19 and it’s other scientific names.
Thanks for listening
We have one chance to define our times rather than leave it to history. I want tRump and his Red party to own it for all time
@NewHampster May 2020