Sending 2020 out in social distancing and quaranta giorni style

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Riley Convertible Belt Bag • Coach • $250
Sun + Stone Eleanor Tall Lace-Up Boots, Created for Macy's Women's Shoes • Sun + Stone • $99.50
Women's Short Sleeve Crewneck Pullover Sweater - Universal ThreadTM • Universal Thread • $20
ASOS DESIGN sequin pleated midi skirt in silver • $56
Asos Tall ASOS DESIGN Tall sequin pleated midi skirt in silver • $56
Carney Lace-Up Boot • Sam Edelman • $169.95
2020 is almost done.so lets send 2020 off in style . 2020 has sucked so much.Covid has made it hard to do anything this year. nothing has gone the way any of us expected. The upside was an election that gets rid of the orange nightmare amd electing our first black and FEMALE vice president! Still even ith thatthe news has been filled with nothing but death tolls and unconcerned politicians who would rather help big business than the American people who are suffering financially right now with this pandemic. i freaking hate Mitch! 2020 saw me complete my real estate courses amd also fail the state exam . twice. I want the year over.

I only have one goal for 2021.pass my state license exam. Really that is it. But aside from all of that I thought it would be fun ok not fun but hear me out to talk about another pandemic.As if that is really what you want to read right now. A blog post about a pandemic.. but this one happened centuries ago. 

Picture it, it is the year 1347 And you are living your normal life going to church and the market. And then it happens 

You start running a fever. The aches and chills kick in and so to the vomiting as well as joint pain as well as malaise. And that is when your loved ones see it, the buboes under your arms.  The fever gets worse and  and then the blood, yes you start puking blood. Your death rate is almost certain. You have the Black Death, the bubonic plague. 

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The Black Death which was from1346/47 to 1352 is responsible for the deaths of about 75  million to around 200 million people. COVID has claimed around 1.8 million lives in this short period of time. It (Black Death) was one of the most deadly pandemics in recorded history. It’s origins , though widely disputed, may have been around Asia or Central Asia and migrated via fleas on black rats on ships along trade routes. From there it spread like wildfire consuming everything and everyone in it’s path. And it did not discriminate amongst the rich or the poor. Although t note the poor suffered most, due to lack of medical care, poor hygiene and lack of food and supplies. 

The first truest appearance was in Crimea in 1347, where it made it’s way through out by way of those rats and the fleas they carried with them via Genoese merchant ships. This plague 

It had cases throughout Central Asia, parts of Northern Africa, and Europe. 

So now, in some time in October 1347 , people were greeted  in The Sicilian port of 

Messina by 12 ships. However, to their horror the stench of death was evident as the majority of the sailors were dead. Those who were still clinging to life were gravely ill. Covered in what was said to be black boils oozing with blood. Sicilian authorities ordered the death ships out of their ports .However, it was little too late, as the plague was now in their homes and over the next 5 years  the death toll would climb and climb. 

The symptoms as I have said before are characterized by the bouboles or boils. They would be found mostly on the arm pits, neck and goin.  Italian poet Giovanni  Boccaccio would write of the disease “in men and women alike at the beginning of the malady , certain swellings, either on the groin or under the arm pits.....waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others the size of an egg, some more and some less,and these the vulgar named plague-boils”

Yuck, right?,

Blood and puss would sleep out of these boils which would come along with the other symptoms that I stated previously. You know the fever, the chills, the vomiting, the vomiting blood. Oh and there was diarrhea 

And massive body aches, then death.

The bubonic plague attacks the lymphatic system and is caused by the bacteria called yersina  pestis. And as Boccaccio would say that it was passed by a mere”touching of clothes , appeared to itself to communicate the malady to the toucher .” 

This illness was so proficient a healthy person could be fine in the morning and the knocking on deaths door by the next morning. Today the illness can be taken care of by simple antibiotics, but back then there was no such thing. 

Scientists now know it wasn’t just the fleas and touching but also spread through the air.and by 1348it was in France and England. And while as you know we have antibiotics and stuff, back the the treatments are very crude by today’s standards.A commonly treatment for many illnesses were blood letting and they would also lance the boils. Also people felt that smell was a major thing and so they would burn aromatic herbs and oils and bathe patients in rose water and etc..

And it is a time to say that it also affected the livestock as well. There was a shortage of wool because sheep were dying. People were abandoning their family. Shutting themselves in for quarantine. Doctors refusing patients, priests refusing last rites.and more. Ports would turn ships away it was a massive financial slap. Then the religious explanations would come into play . Many viewed the plague as a punishment from god. So they turned to the Jews and blamed them for the plague they massacred thousands of Jews from 1348 to 1349.And then the flaggelants came. These were men who punished themselves in public, they would go town to town basically beating themselves and whipping themselves for  about 30 days with heavy whips with metal, they would do this three times a day! Like who in the hell thought that would fix things? I guess when there is a lack of science the people just blame something, and god was their scapegoat. 

it is important to note by the way to mention the mass amount of death, as stated earlier the death toll was massive. so bad that bodies were piling up, the smell must have been attrocious. They couldnt dig up enough graves in such short times and to keep up with demands and plus the priests and clergy wouldnt do last rights and funerals due tothe pandemic. sound familiar? So mass graves were used. I mean they had to. I can not even imagine how the families must have felt .

via GIPHY

So did the virus end?not really. It wained and then came back years later. It was a very long running plague. And they were able to Curb the spread by quarantine the ships coming into ports for 40 days, and this is a process still in use today.  And then antibiotics were invented in  1928 and that would change everything.  That is until 1918..but that is a different story. what are your thoughts on the black death? how do you think it compares to today and what wevare going through?

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