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I guess I'd also be careful about the accuracy of the reports from that era. For example, now, in Ireland, with extra ordinarily good infrastructure / health care / centralized records and so on, we are certainly undercounting the covid numbers. Plus if someone dies, is it attributed to covid, or a (even vaguely) related illness? I'd guess even something as dramatic as stroke, it's hard to tell what or when the initial upstream triggering event was.
Back then medical professionals were... I mean, a bit dubious. There were fuck all records to speak of when it came to unwashed masses, people were digging trenches and horsing entire families in there. There might have been shame associated with getting sick, there would have been fear, and so on.
I can remember reading stuff along the lines of random little flare-ups that would demolish entire villages, or families, that went for for years. The country itself was a bit in turmoil I'd guess, and when whole groups are vanished like that with only a few stragglers who'd probably want to leave that memory behind them, it's easy to have that lost to history.
yeah, that's probably a good point. I reckon there was a fair amount of shame / hiding going on though. Cancer was considered shameful within my lifetime FFS.to be fair, the symptoms of bubonic plague were/are pretty distinctive. while it wouldn't be very granular in terms of exact numbers or timing the records that do exist would be accurate in impact and location.
an interesting coda in ireland, is that the anglo-norman settlements were much harder hit than the gaelic areas (which while not exactly pastoral were much less congregated) . Combined with the Bruce invasions, and the lack of manpower in England it led to the erosion of control over much of ireland outside what became the pale, rise of semi independent kingpins like the butlers, desmonds etc.
All of the above really - the average Norman punter was more likely to live in towns/villages(large non-ecclesiastical settlements not really being a feature of Gaelic Ireland at the time) , probably had a different diet, farmed differently etc.Like, I remember reading... maybe one paper that questioned rats as the vector for Y pestis, but let's say rat fleas are the vector, I wonder if what you are saying there could just be a function of there not being much of a rat population within these native Irish type areas?
Just, not as much food, not the same population density, not as many opportunities, fewer / no rat population => very little transmission to humans.
Or is that stating the bleeding obvious, and I'm being slow.
Thumped - if you’ve a tangent we’ve a half informed nerd with some random infothumped: come for your daily dose of present-day pandemic misery, stay for the sparkling non-ecclesiastical settlements chitchat
Thumped - if you’ve a tangent we’ve a half informed nerd with some random info
That would be an ecumenical matterwhat are non-fungible tokens if not non-ecclesiastical settlements persevering
It takes a special sort of sad bastard to have this on the bookshelfThumped - if you’ve a tangent we’ve a half informed nerd with some random info
i'm 90% certain we have a copy of that too.It takes a special sort of sad bastard to have this on the bookshelf
to my unscientific mind eradicating smallpox is the greatest human achievement in science.although, if you look at Smallpox's mechanisms of infection and how Variola works, it's amazing that humans were able to eradicate it, ever.
Take it to the snipers thread.You never talk about the White Death though, you bunch of racists
ah cool. OK. Huh.that doc i saw suggested the reason it spread so quickly is that it went from being bubonic - and spread by rats - to pneumonic, and spread in a similar way to covid.
to my unscientific mind eradicating smallpox is the greatest human achievement in science.
after Cortez got to Mexico in 1519 within a few years many millions of people living in the area had died from diseases - smallpox was mostly responsible.
the worst anti vaccine conspiracy I ever heard of linked the eradication of smallpox to the spread of HIV.
that makes me so annoyed.
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