FIRST THINGS FIRST. HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOUSTON MARSHALL.
Houston has been a great friend for over 30 years, a man who keeps me right on my protestations on this page each week, I always learn something from him in his balanced and fair minded way. Houston is a man of the theatre, as all the world is a stage, his theatre is life in general. He’s been most things but remembered here for his designs for plays mainly in the Arts Theatre although other theatres have enjoyed his work, especially in Scotland.
The last few years have been difficult as Houston has experienced many ailments and serious illness but he’s the last to complain, there is always hope in his heart and thank goodness that, hope is infectious and many a time he’s lifted my spirits and those of his many friends and admirers.
Have a lovely sun filled day Houston and many more happy birthdays. Hold onto your chips!
ANOTHER ANGLE ON CORONAVIRUS
Travelling in the Sudan with Concern Worldwide we stopped at a small village . Trees had been planted, watered and tended and were thriving but as we stood chatting there was a commotion, workers began running round waving their arms but to no avail, a swarm of locusts descended and began decimating the precious young shoots and the saplings were left denuded.
It was devastating and I thought of the plagues foretold in the Bible – the Book of Chronicles talks of God holding back the rain and sending locusts to eat up the crops or sending an epidemic when communities forget Godly ways. Sadly so often it’s the innocent who are caught up in such punishments, witness what is happening in the world today.
Apparently the term plague is found around 100 times in the Bible with boils, frogs and pestilence amongst them. Many people are pointing towards the Covid-19 as a modern plague but can it be compared to other plagues especially the dreadful year of 1347 and the first appearance of the Black Death, also known as The Plague?
Dr. Geoffrey Todd, a local consultant chest physician, has made a study of this aspect of disease.
“The Black Death erupted in Western Europe for the first time, to be followed by intermittent deadly outbreaks over the next 300 years. Death visited major European cities as never before and the populations of cities such as Florence and London were reduced by more than 50%.
The Plague
“Although they did not know it then, The Plague was caused by a bacterium known as “Yersinia Pestis”, normally an infection of rodents but which jumped species to humans via carrier fleas or lice. It was highly infectious, lethal and spread rapidly. Death, often agonising, could occur within 24 hours, ’they died by heaps and were buried by heaps’. Over 300 plague pits, containing thousands of corpses were dug in London alone.”
Here, In the 1800s, we had epidemics of cholera, dysentery and smallpox killing thousands, many bodies were burned to prevent the spread of infection, others buried in a large deep hole in Frier’s Bush Cemetery in Stranmillis. Here the ‘plaguey pit’ lies to this day, undisturbed for fear that interfering with it would release contamination and so the road narrows at the Museum to accommodate the bones in the pit.
Although no-one had any idea what caused The Black Death they soon realised it could be passed on from one person to the next and quarantine was widely practised; quarantine derives from the Italian for forty, the number of days ships due to dock at Venice had to remain anchored off the coast to prove that they were plague free.
“Like the plague, Covid-19 jumped species from non-human to human. It’s highly infectious therefore quarantine or social isolating is very important as humans have no inbuilt immunity so death can happen.”
But there the resemblance ends.
“There were various types of plague – bubonic affecting the glands, pneumonic affecting the lungs with mortality rates accounting for 500 to 900 in every 1000 sufferers. However Covid-19 average mortality is probably around 0.1 to 0.3% meaning that out of every 1000 people who catch the disease 10-30 will die.
“The other major difference is that The Plague affected all ages. In contrast, according to the government statistician Professor Sir David Speiglehalter, Covid- 19 is a disease of the over 75s with the young having an extremely low risk of death.
“Thus Covid-19 does not really bear comparison with The Plague,” he told me, “and actually, in the league table of lethal infections that have afflicted humanity from time to time, it ranks very low. ‘Premier league’ pandemics include smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, diphtheria, even today worldwide 1.5 million people die every year from tuberculosis the most lethal of infectious diseases.”
According to Dr Todd we are not faced with some new horrific decimating plague. Our reaction to this latest pandemic is not shaped by its mortality rate but instead by our changed attitude today to life and death.
“In medieval times life was short, nasty and brutal and expectations were low but today the medical mantra often appears to be “no one must ever die”. In the elderly, every abnormality is often exhaustively investigated and age is no bar to major surgery. The measures that are being taken to prevent the spread of the pandemic ie. ‘the lockdown’ are drastic and there may be a big price to pay. If it continues or is renewed we could be facing economic melt-down, mass unemployment, levels of poverty and hunger not seen for centuries and possibly even societal collapse. Although the young are very much less likely to contract this disease, they will ultimately pay the biggest price in terms of debt, unemployment, poverty and mental disease all of which can cause large increases in deaths.”
Geoffrey Todd reports that it’s estimated that the 2008/9 financial crisis resulted in a million people of working age contracting chronic health problems both physical and mental.
“Deaths from unemployment and poverty are often viewed as just a statistic. ‘Unemployment’ or ‘Poverty’ will never appear on any death certificate nor are photographs of such victims likely to appear in newspapers or on the 6 o’clock news but surely they are nonetheless equally important.” This makes for disturbing reading although it was fascinating to talk to him.
“Although every death from Covid-19 is indeed tragic,” he concludes, “this pandemic is not exceptional in comparison to the great pandemics of the past except perhaps in one respect – if we do not get the right balance of preventative strategy versus economic consequences there’s a possibility that it may be the first pandemic where the measures that are taken have a worse outcome than the disease.”
UP UP AND AWAY
I received an email this morning with a link to’ Joni Table Talk’ on You Tube. It was titled’ 90 Minutes in Heaven’ and the guest was Pastor Don Piper. I ended up watching this American religious programme for almost 30 minutes and it was fascinating. Don Piper was killed instantly in a car crash in Texas 30 years ago. His body experienced massive trauma and wounds and he was pronounced dead at the scene, still trapped in his car. As the wreckage was being cleared from the road another Pastor arrived and asked if he could pray for Don and talked his way into the car as best he could and began to pray which he continued until the gear arrived to cut the body out. After an hour the pastor pleaded with the paramedics to take Don’s body to hospital, they said no point, so he sat on the road and prevented the empty ambulance moving away. Eventually the body was put on board and on the way to hospital they detected a weak pulse in his neck. Don Piper was in hospital for over a year and in therapy for two years, he has written books and a film was made entitled ’90 Minutes In Heaven’. While he was ‘dead’ he had an extraordinary experience, the heaven experience he calls it, where his senses were tighten, vivid colours, music and all the people he met at heaven’s gate.
He tells his story well, it’s not Bible thumping, just a fit and healthy man telling his out of body story, as he says we are all just one breath away from death and it sounds like he will be delighted to get over this again and get back to heaven. If you’re interested you can tune into Joni Lamb’s Table Talk and the subject is Don Piper.
Thank you Irene for sending this to me.
Now that ‘lock down’ is relaxing a little bit, hand washing is more important than ever so do it and do it often. Plenty of hand sanitiser available again as are face masks. Don’t be fooled into thinking we can jettison these important rules, better be safe than sorry. Hopefully these dreadful protest marches will stop soon where people are herded together, the sincerity of those who truly wish to show their feelings for Black Lives Matter are being infiltrated by evilness – I once heard that the devil would take over the world in the year 2000 if God hadn’t turned us all into good people! I don’t subscribe to these things but just look back over the last 20 years – not good and getting worse.