A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

2020
by e.j.ward

(In Homage to Daniel Defoe whose Original Version was published in 1722)

(SPOILER ALERT: It is written by cats)

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 CHAPTER ONE

The Goddess
Thursday 19th March 2020

France in shutdown and this is the sound of Silence. No cars, no aeroplanes, no tractors

even. This is primordial - more Utopia than Dystopia - except that there is no birdsong

either. For we have killed all the songbirds with our chemicals. The Silence of Guilt then.

“My Mother is a Goddess and a High-Class Whore

“With the Soul of a Pirate of this I am sure
“From the look in her eyes and the set of her jaw”

We found this scrawled on the shed door. And after that we all called her The Goddess.

For the words were an endorsement - a testament to her power - her mystery - her

unfathomable sweetness and love.

We were captivated, enslaved, spell-bound, but WARY. For we had seen her in action. It was

non-negotiable. She would countenance no flicker, no questioning of her absolute power.

Witnessing her encounters with the gentlemen callers who lined up at the door we had fled

in terror. For this was our world. A female world of grace, of delicacy, of fastidious daily

grooming and toilet rituals. No place for the crying heart-broken creatures who left their

DNA on the doorstep. We were inviolate. And the archetype of prettiness.

It is a small village - a tiny cluster of four-hundred-year-old stone cottages set deep in the

heart of the ancient forest, silent, a silence full of wind, soft and ruminative, a constant

gentle roaring, the heart-beat of the trees. A foreign country in the aftermath of war,

strangulated branches deformed by winter gales and frosts hang, lurch and tumble at

vertiginous angles, throttled by swinging vines of ivy. The earth is sleeping; a thick soggy

mattress of dead leaves generations deep disintegrates, sliding, slipping, rotting beneath
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our feet. A vast, dark, wet, ticking clock, it betrays the passage of millennia, exposing the

centuries as they ripen into black slimy bristles of burst chestnut cases, fallen acorn-cups,

tight parcels of budding leaves and sweetest greenest cushions of soft moss, all evidence

of dead years not yet buried. In this ancient place that belongs to no man, only to itself, we

trespass but are allowed to stay. The woodpecker startles at our coming and rocks the

swinging branches, roe-deer crash in fright sending magpies leapfrogging, squawking,

through the trees, and birds fly in terror for we are the enemy, sweet and silent on our

velvet feet.

CHAPTER TWO

Danger

Sat 14th March

Watch out! Watch out! Serenading at the door - but not the usual suspect. The smell! Oh

my God the smell! This gentleman has not been treated! It is not just the helpless weeping,

it is the jungle potency of his odour screaming “SEX! SEX! COME OUT NOW AND GET IT YOU

SWEET BITCHES - I WANT YOU SO MUCH!”

The Goddess is out like a flash shrieking and hissing “PISS OFF YOU DEGENERATE THUG! I

KNOW YOUR SORT! YOU LEAD A GIRL ON THEN LEAVE HER IN THE LURCH TO BRING UP

YOUR FAMILY. GET YOURSELF SEEN TO BEFORE YOU CONTAMINATE US ALL YOU BEAST!”

He stops suddenly: “Is that you Darling? I didn’t know you lived here now. Come out for a

stroll just for old time’s sake. You are still so beautiful!”

And then we notice the resemblance: his multicoloured outfit, though wretchedly unkempt

and bedraggled, suggests a striking family likeness. Could he be Rupert, the long-lost

brother of our celestial Queen, thought to be living in a nearby village?

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And in a flash of grey silk Cutie-Pie has fled through the door racing into the forest before

he sees her. She is making for Uncle Tom I know, the huge oak tree that is her refuge.

Uh-oh! What has she been up to? Thank God she has seen the doctor. But Rupert is still

hovering round the Goddess, who now turns her back on him in contempt to re-enter the

house: “Just don’t leave your disgusting odour on our nice clean doormat.”

And that, we think, is that.

SUN 15th March

But no, would you believe it, it happens again! And this time TWO doppelgangers! TWO

replicas of Cutie-Pie dressed in soft grey silk, and one of them - an unsavoury lurking thug

- looks old enough to be her FATHER! But the other, indistinguishable from Cutie-Pie may

even be her SISTER! Panic reigns. By now we are all fixated on the front door, helplessly

awaiting the outcome, frozen by the recollection of last year’s violence when two

screaming gentlemen entered the conservatory unseen to fight it out on the hearth-rug.

We are all paranoid!

Mon 16th March

They’re at it AGAIN and the two Cutie-Pie lookalikes are back. Her exact replica has

followed her into the forest, and her Daddy(?), is languishing heartbroken at the feet of the

Goddess, gazing longingly with half-closed eyes and sighing piteously. He is VERY faithful,

but the Goddess knows her stuff and will not give way.

I met Cutie-Pie’s Daddy this morning wandering in the woods, weeping piteously. He

wanted to talk about it, but The Goddess arrived and he was ashamed. He is not very

handsome it must be admitted - a bit thuggish with spindly legs - but he suffers so much.

It’s happened again! It’s all their fault - the ladies had gone out to enjoy the sunshine and

frolic in the woods, unaware of unseen admirers hiding in the undergrowth. Then there

was a huge crash as the front door was burst open by Cutie-Pie whizzing upstairs to
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escape Basil, a sadly deformed Man in a White Suit, followed soon after by the Goddess

with Cutie-Pie’s Daddy in hot pursuit. It’s a #Me-Too moment of course, and they should

know better in view of Weinstein’s imminent incarceration. But they are SO PRETTY and

love sunbathing after all this winter rain. What to do? One can only hope that the current

spirit of lockdown here will somehow curb their joie-de-vivre. (I read this morning that the

Nazi invasion of Paris was blamed by Marshall Pétain on the French “gaiety Parisien”; they

were simply unable to take the war seriously. Hence the need to impose order now with the

Police and Army patrolling the streets.)

Daffodil Fete in our village March 2020

Friday 20th March

The Spring Equinox - Hallelujah! Someone left a gift on the doormat in the night. It was

rather unsavoury, though probably meant to be edible - the less said the better. (At least it

was dead!) But we are all rather rattled and when the Goddess suddenly woke up and

crashed down from the Highland Fastness where she sleeps, we got a terrible fright.

Cutie-Pie fled in terror to hide under my bed shaking and traumatised. She is VERY nervous

and highly-strung poor darling and had a dreadful childhood. (More of that anon.)

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The first Briton has been arrested on the Isle of Man for refusing to self-isolate from the

Corona-virus, while my neighbour has gallantly left for the Supermarket to collect my

Online Shopping, as I am not allowed to leave the house at my age. I hope he is not stopped

by the Army or Police, and have furnished him with a downloaded certificate to prove he is

acting on behalf of an elderly, handicapped and probably deranged old lady who is at risk

of contamination. I’ve also suggested he sneak through the forest by a back lane to escape

detection, but Spring Fever and the aforementioned French Joie-de-Vivre may prompt him

to do otherwise. In fact I am unlikely to be contaminated as I have already had the virus. It

lasted a month from Christmas Day to mid January and it was distinctly unpleasant,

reminding me of the pneumonia I’d had as a child. Realising it was unusually nasty I kept

everyone at bay saying I was contagious, but as nobody had yet identified the

Corona-Virus I recovered without undue attention thanks to HUGE quantities of Vitamin C

and LARGE amounts of Honey to soothe the symptoms. (I hesitate to mention that I boost

my immune system by taking a cold bath every morning. This frightens people, unnerves

them and makes them wary. But I have been doing this since I went to a rather eccentric

boarding school at the age of 11, and have thus survived an unusually eventful life, filled

with danger and surgical accidents that twice involved near-death experiences. So I am

here to tell you that you have nothing to fear from The Virus, because the Big D is an

agreeable experience and you don’t want to come back. (I was sent back each time with the

instructions that I had more to do and had better jolly well get on with it as time was

running out.)

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 CHAPTER THREE

People behaving badly

Saturday 21st March

The first day of Spring is the beginning of the Easter Holidays and everywhere we have

booked tickets, hotels and travelling companions to celebrate the return of the sun.

This is a primordial festival, deeply ingrained in the human psyche, so when we are told

that holiday destinations, bars, clubs, theatres, restaurants, pubs, race-tracks, sporting

arenas and even beaches are closed down due to the plague, things do not go well. Huge

numbers of us, ignoring this punishment, have gathered in our thousands to queue up,

jostle and shove, elbow to elbow in overcrowded airports, waiting-rooms, football grounds

and seaside resorts to welcome the annual homecoming of our greatest God, Apollo, who

gave us Life and gives it still. And who, let’s face it, foots the bill for all the crowd-pleasing

investments we have made to secure us financially in the months to come. We depend on

the instinctive human carnival spirit to survive.

All this in direct contravention of the Virus Protection Laws to stay separate 1.5 metres

apart, never to touch or shake hands, share drinks or food, clasp the same handrail or

punch the same keys for fear of imminent infection or death. World-Leaders stare at their

TV screens open-mouthed as libidinous hordes gather on hot sandy beaches or dance in

clubs and pubs, oblivious in drink, singing and even sharing mutual hugs and collective

embraces, obeying a mightier law than theirs - the celebrated return of the Life-Giving Sun.

These people are threatened with HUGE fines of course, and even months of imprisonment.

Here it is even worse, for our gentleman callers have run amok. One sadly deformed white

-suited thug, has been driven to lift the door mat of my holiday cottage next door and

urinate on the doorstep in a desperate attempt to claim territorial rights. Others, Cutie

-Pie’s Daddy for example, have refused to go away and hang around complaining softly,

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waiting for a response. (It may have worked, because Cutie-Pie has not been seen since,

though he may be sadly disappointed when he discovers she has seen the doctor.)

What will be the outcome of this mass rebellion in terms of virus infection rates no-one

knows of course, but the medical profession, now running short of all personal protective

clothing and basic therapeutic equipment, are sending out desperate pleas for support

from the community at large. Politicians are helpless, losing face as thousands die. No

amount of bluffing and posturing is going to save them from their obvious lack of

forethought and common sense. Certain Asian countries, especially Singapore, seem to

have understood the problem and grasped the nettle, while most “Democracies” in the

West flounder hopelessly, ill-equipped in every sense to handle these elemental chickens

that have come home to roost.

Sunday 22nd March

New York announces 10,000 cases of the virus, 5% of the world total, and France now has

more with 10,995. As a result many city-dwellers under restraint orders with bars, theatres,

restaurants and parks closed, are making for their second homes to holiday in country

villages and the rural countryside. Roads, local supermarkets and parking lots are

congested, with mile-long queues outside wholesalers as crowds inside fight to stock up

on household items and groceries. Famous beauty-spots in Cumbria, Cornwall and even

the Highlands and Islands of Scotland are closing their gates against the raging horde of

middle-class urban housewives invading village shops to push, jostle and shout, clearing

out the produce like Viking Raiders. Churches are closed, celebrated Choirs can no longer

meet and Vicars attempt to deliver Sunday sermons over the internet. All hell has broken

loose and the locals are furious. (See Daniel Defoe’s account of parallel behaviour in his

“Journal of the Plague Year” in London 1665.)

On the bright side many rural communities are organising home deliveries and support of

the elderly and infirm. Huge Football Clubs, when their World-Class Games were cancelled

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on Saturday, donated their leftover Hospitality Provisions to Food-banks or the Homeless

and are giving large sums of money to local Charities. Even the EU has finally rescinded its

famous requirement that Member States restrict their Budget Deficit to under 3% of GDP.

Are cracks beginning to show in Global Capitalism at last?

Here at home The Goddess eventually recovered from the traumatic doorstep-peeing

incident when she saw me sloshing water over it and applying a mysterious solution of

pepper spray, ammonia and disinfectant. Eventually she and Cutie-Pie re-emerged from

their hideaways to toy disdainfully with a Blanquette de Volaille I had prepared for our

supper. Cutie-Pie later sicked this up on my bed. (She is a highly-strung little girl.)

Monday 23rd March

I have put the ladies on a diet. I think the Blanquette de Volaille may have been too rich for

for their delicate little tummies and they have become horribly spoilt. So this morning it

was back to basics - good plain dry food without any trimmings. They looked surprised at

first and waited for the haute cuisine they were accustomed to. But I said nothing and went

into the bathroom to bathe and get dressed, and when I emerged the large plate I’d left for

them was half empty. People say pampered young ladies cannot be taught good behaviour

- well, we shall see.

I have been reading the original “Journal of a Plague Year” started by Daniel Defoe in 1665

and published in 1722, nearly three hundred years ago. It is a startling precursor of the

events we are witnessing today. Most people will know Defoe as the author of “Robinson

Crusoe”, also an account of a real-life event - a shipwrecked mariner marooned on a desert

island. But what makes his writing so accessible is his verisimilitude: he has the heart-

wrenching knack of placing you directly in the situation so you experience it yourself. It is

straight-forward, honest gut-wrenching prose, no frills or hyperbole, the language of a

war-correspondent. As a Londoner Merchant Trader, Dissenter, Pamphleteer and

Journalist he was the first to speak of “that heterogeneous thing - an Englishman”.

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 “I lived without Galatea, about midway between Aldgate Church and Whitechappel Bars, on the left hand
or north side of the street; and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the city, our neighbourhood
continued very easy. But at the other end of the town their consternation was very great: and the richer sort
of people, especially the nobility and gentry from the west part of the city, thronged out of town with their
families and servants in an unusual manner; and this was more particularly seen in Whitechappel; that is to
say, the Broad Street where I lived; indeed, nothing was to be seen but waggons and carts, with goods,
women, servants, children, &c.; coaches filled with people of the better sort and horsemen attending them,
and all hurrying away; then empty waggons and carts appeared, and spare horses with servants, who, it was
apparent, were returning or sent from the countries to fetch more people; besides innumerable numbers of
men on horseback, some alone, others with servants, and, generally speaking, all loaded with baggage and
fitted out for travelling, as anyone might perceive by their appearance.
This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it was a sight which I could not but look on
from morning to night (for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it filled me with very
serious thoughts of the misery that was coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that would
be left in it.
This hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was no getting at the Lord Mayor's door
without exceeding difficulty; there were such pressing and crowding there to get passes and certificates of
health for such as travelled abroad, for without these there was no being admitted to pass through the towns
upon the road, or to lodge in any inn. Now, as there had none died in the city for all this time, my Lord
Mayor gave certificates of health without any difficulty to all those who lived in the ninety-seven parishes,
and to those within the liberties too for a while.
This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the month of May and June, and the more
because it was rumoured that an order of the Government was to be issued out to place turnpikes and
barriers on the road to prevent people travelling, and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from
London to pass for fear of bringing the infection along with them, though neither of these rumours had any
foundation but in the imagination, especially at-first.” A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe 1665

Sadly I have just learned that The British Library Reading Room has been closed due to the

Plague, but you can read it online in Gutenberg Press.

As of today there are now 340,000 cases of Coronavirus worldwide, with 15,000 deaths

and 100,000 recovered. Can this be a Paradigm Shift? From my South Africa correspondent

in Cape Town I hear that they now provide soap and water in public places and homeless

shelters so people can wash their hands regularly. My Hamburg correspondent tells me

that their local bookshop has closed just as German children are sent home for an
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indefinite period, whereas in England a Rugby bookshop offers an extended grocery

delivery service for isolated customers without cars. Everywhere Police are struggling to

enforce “social distancing” - clearly a no-brainer, for how can you stop human beings

socialising and enjoying themselves outdoors in the Spring sunshine. Are you going to

penalise mating behaviour, the most basic survival instinct of the human race? But huge

fines and even prison sentences are being imposed all over the world. And the OECD has

warned that there is no way you can economise in this situation.

Tuesday 24th March

I found The Goddess at home when I opened up the Healing Chalet to let in the sun this

morning. She’d been missing for two days and was so nervous after trapping her hand in

the door that I feared she no longer felt safe there. But her bed was warm so that’s good.

Healing Chalet in the Woods

The French Air-force were patrolling overhead at 10am, filming delinquent householders I

suppose, and they left the skies flooded with deafening silence once more. Only a few

transcendent wood pigeons are cooing and throbbing from all points of the forest - the

softest sound in the world, mother of all comforts.

The UK has now closed down all famous Natural Beauty Spots: Snowdonia, The Lake

District, The Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and the Cornish beaches, but they have

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achieved what Hitler never could do, and have lost the war: I don’t know what Wordsworth

would say about this:

The rainbow comes and goes

And lovely is the rose

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair:

The sunshine is a glorious birth:

But yet I know where’er I go

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

(from “Intimations of Immortality” by Wordsworth)

If they really want to keep human animals two metres apart they will have to close down all

public transport. And what happens when Man can no longer touch his fellow creatures?

CHAPTER FOUR

“Down There”

Thursday 26th March

This Spring Equinox the sun has returned with a huge crash-bang-wallop of heat and light

to turn the world on its head. Trees and blossoms explode into life six weeks early and tiny

leaves are peeking out amid the blossoms, wondering where they are, for nothing has

prepared them for this early wake-up call. Nature is laughing at us. For what are we doing?

Why, we are locked up in our stale and foetid winter hideouts, weak, anxious and afraid of

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being arrested, fined 4,000 euros or imprisoned for our evil acts. You couldn’t make it up.

It is way past dystopia now and degenerating into farce.

Bravely reiterating the News Editor’s scandalous account of riotous assemblies in London

Parks, a charming young lady explains on television how frightfully congested these places

are, while unfortunately the camera reveals a TOTALLY EMPTY space with one lone jogger

disappearing into the distance. “SATIRE AT LAST” I think. But no, she is simply revealing

“alternative facts”, which we the unenlightened are unable to conjure up for ourselves.

Meanwhile the bog-roll drama escalates, with armed gangs holding up lorry-loads of

toilet- paper at knife-point and desperate housewives worldwide driven to violent

confrontations in supermarkets, screaming, yelling and punching each other like hooligans.

Something meaningful is happening at last and the human race is defining what really

matters to us. Loo-paper! Of course! Why didn’t we see that coming? No really, why?

Because it is women who buy toilet paper? Who have changed nappies all their lives and

know what goes in must come out? The unspeakable, unmentionable by-products of the

family digestive system, so lovingly catered to with daily meals crafted to keep their loved

ones “regular”?

Women are realists. They know the end-product must be dealt with matter-of-factly and

prosaically, realistically budgeted for and brought to the family home with discretion and

circumspection. Because women are also LADIES! And Ladies know instinctively that what

goes on “down there” is unmentionable, discreet to the point of invisibility, never alluded

to but subtly dealt with so that no-one ever questions the harmonious well-oiled machine

that magically provides the necessary hygienic requirements.

And if you throw a spanner in the works? If you threaten to expose this sacred area of

unseen service so that OTHER WOMEN challenge your right to invisibility as LADIES? You

are trespassing on areas of immortal privilege, challenging the right of the GODDESS to

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implement the system, keep the ball rolling and maintain the delicate balance of harmony

and discretion in the family without ever alluding to the needs of “DOWN THERE”.

And so it is in our household, which you will have realised by now is run by the Goddess on

matriarchal principles. She it is who assures our intimate personal hygiene DOWN THERE

by seeing to it lovingly and personally, as an act of sacred maternal devotion. And the more

she loves us, the more she feels privileged to enact this service, to cleanse and purify us

with selfless love and devotion.

But what if you don’t want anyone messing about with you Down There? Supposing you

feel grown up enough to manage your own personal hygiene and find it a humiliating

invasion of privacy to be treated like a baby? Supposing you are Cutie-Pie, a complicated

hyper-sensitive little person who has been aware since babyhood of a violent dangerous

world where her siblings died of starvation and she alone had to carry the huge burden of

the Goddess’s passionate devotion? And the terrible hurt and grief in those great golden

eyes when you reject her and say “No Mother, I’m a big girl now and can clean myself down

there”? Knowing she will turn her beautiful head away and silently weep in despair?

Saturday 28th March

Thanks to the plague there are no more homeless on the streets of London says my

correspondent. To protect them from spreading the virus all have been housed in hostel

and hotel rooms. And gang warfare has ceased due to the policy of social distancing; for

young people no longer gather on the street for fear of imprisonment or unlimited fines.

Covid 19 has achieved what several governments failed to do for the last ten years.

And a really useful one-stop shop for advice from reliable sources is:

coronavirus-support-group.co.uk

Because our correspondent Jane in New York sent this message 4 days ago:

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History will record the biggest tragedy as the ineptitude of our federal government. Trump refuses to
have companies manufacture what we need and distribute them so states are all competing for limited
stuff and the governors have no power to coerce companies to manufacture what is needed. Our governor
and mayor, however, are doing a great job. Many people refuse to stay home; no way to enforce it unless
we put the army on the streets. I have neighbours who go out every day; I refuse to see them. This
morning there was a line many blocks long of people who just wanted to get into a Queens hospital for
treatment. Makeshift morgues popping up. New Orleans has a rapidly increasing COVID crisis probably
triggered by the fact that the governor allowed Mardi Gras to take place and thousands attended for days
and the streets were packed.

Meanwhile things are deteriorating swiftly in Europe and the UK as ill-equipped front-line Health Workers
struggle to cope with rapidly increasing numbers of plague victims, including the Prime Minister, who is
self-isolating and running the country from his office in Downing Street.

Sunday 29th March

From the Director of Ecology at Melbourne University:

“DON’T MIND/DON’T WANT TO”
As we grapple, perhaps we should give some consideration to our free will.
We organise ourselves into two groups, those who are ok with contracting the virus and those who do not
want to get it. We shuffle around into different areas/suburbs/towns and live in each other houses
accordingly. That will be fun itself! I would be able to marvel at how someone survives without interesting
books, or how they begin to care about Hollywood and sport. And the folks in my place will wonder how to
survive without tissues and toilet paper, until they discover my bum-washer as an epiphany of
liberation…from toilet paper forever!
People are generally quite good at looking after themselves so the Vulnerable people (older people and
those with other syndromes that will compromise their survival chances, fear itself of course being one of
them) will generally join the ‘don’t want’ group. The ‘don’t mind’ group, will include many young people
and those with a high opinion of themselves, but also many optimistic gamblers and those who don’t fear
death. It will also include a few older vulnerable people who don’t want to miss a party!
It will be a fascinating division of society, a brand new social experiment and the groups will be all mixed
up, populated across the divisions that have always fractured us like rich and poor, black and white, and
beautiful and ugly. However, the ‘don’t want’ group will likely be much older than the ‘don’t mind’ group.
I’ll miss them.
The places for the ‘don’t want’ group will have very strict quarantine for a while, but also lovely parks and
open spaces and good hospitals and shops with everyone wearing masks and gloves. They will be very
good at isolating and not touching one another because they really don’t want to get this sneaky little virus.
The good thing is they wont be exposed to the rough and ready ones in the other area who break the rules
of hygiene. Testing should be focussed on ensuring the infected are not admitted to the ‘don’t want’ areas.
Hopefully strict quarantine will work for the ‘don’t want’ folk, because they will be especially vulnerable if

15
infected. There is some reason for optimism because lessons from China and South Korea are that really
strict quarantine can save most people’s lives, even the vulnerable.
The ‘don’t mind’ group will have plenty of facilities to party and the restaurants and bars will be busier than
ever. Invading personal space will be encouraged and shy people will feel liberated. Kissing will come back
into vogue and the waiters and musicians will be back at work. If you don’t want to socialise you can be
inoculated. The faster the ‘don’t mind’ group are exposed to the virus the shorter the time that the virus
can have a chance to sneak into the ‘don’t want’ areas, and also the faster it will fizzle out and they will be
able to visit their friends and loved ones in the ‘don’t want’ areas. Of course some people in this group will
get pretty sick but they can be cared for by people who don’t need to wear face masks, have already been
exposed and need not have any fear. We don’t really know the morbidity rate at the moment because we
don’t know how many people have the virus without or with only mild symptoms. However, the country
with the highest rate of testing in the world is Iceland (still only 2% tested) and the morbidity rate there is
currently less than 1 death per 473 people who have tested positive. Incidentally that single death was an
Australian guy and was probably not COVID but something else. The 473 positive cases in Iceland includes
the old and the vulnerable, and remember in our new temporary world they are mostly in the ‘don’t want’
areas. So in the ‘don’t mind’ areas it seems likely that the number of people who get really sick and die may
actually be very low as a proportion, but still a tragically large number. The overall level of infection may
actually be lower than mixing up the ‘don’t wants’ with the ‘don’t cares’ because their behaviour is
self-reinforcing.
Once the infection has rampaged through the promiscuous, party-going ‘don’t mind’ group and hopefully
follows the trend of other corona viruses to give a level of immunity we can all come back together, wipe
our brows, look after each other and try and remember what is really important in this world. It would all
be over sooner rather than later, and we might avoid the psychological costs of fear and uncertainty over
the coming months. We need each other and need to find each other sooner rather than later and the
children need to play!
And this is already operating in Washington:
Pro-Trump far-right Evangelicals are Virus-Deniers who put saving the economy above saving
human life and refuse to close businesses for social distancing. They are concerned with making
money and are prepared to let Grandma die in the process.(COVEFE = COVID-FEVER?)
Whereas Biden, (now abreast of Trump in the polls), the Democrats and the rest of the world want
to beat the Coronavirus by strict policing of all healthy normal outdoor activity and quarantining the
world's greatest beauty spots, preventing all normal human intercourse.
Go to nbcnews.com/think for analysis: TRUMP's pivots on the coronavirus are no longer just
dizzying; now they are dangerous.
(You will be relieved to hear the The Goddess is self-isolating inside a lined container on top of the
wardrobe. You can just see her lovely little head popping out of the bag.)

Wednesday 1st April

Brilliant sunshine brought us out on the terrace for breakfast and gentleman callers have been
weeping softly in the garden to see the ladies sunbathing. Everyone is now circulating funnies by
email as well as musical contributions to entertain their neighbours. Hurray!

AND unexpected progress - my long-lost gardener has reappeared and I may be able to circulate
again without danger to life and limb as the grass was very long. (Did not want to mention this but I
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am quite severely disabled now and cannot use a wheelchair as my forest terrain has a forty-five
degree slope. Also recent medical studies reveal that the brain only shrinks in the elderly if you give
in, take it easy and do nothing. If you confront daily problems, even life-threatening dilemmas, it
seems that the brain enjoys this and rises to the challenge by INCREASING IN SIZE! So you may
even achieve great things as you ripen and prepare fall off the vine. I don’t know if 84 counts as
“old” these days, but am giving it a go so bear with me if I seem to unravel a bit.

From “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe published 1722

“I now began to consider seriously with myself concerning my own case, and how I should dispose of
myself; that is to say, whether I should resolve to stay in London or shut up my house and flee, as many of
my neighbours did. I have set this particular down so fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to
those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress, and to the same manner of making
their choice; and therefore I desire this account may pass with them rather for a direction to themselves to
act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may not be of one farthing value to them to note what became
of me.
I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on my business and shop, which was
considerable, and in which was embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the preservation of
my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole city, and which, however
great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people's, represented to be much greater than it could be.
The first consideration was of great moment to me; my trade was a saddler, and as my dealings were
chiefly not by a shop or chance trade, but among the merchants trading to the English colonies in America,
so my effects lay very much in the hands of such. I was a single man, 'tis true, but I had a family of servants
whom I kept at my business; had a house, shop, and warehouses filled with goods; and, in short, to leave
them all as things in such a case must be left (that is to say, without any overseer or person fit to be trusted
with them), had been to hazard the loss not only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I had in the
world.
I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not many years before come over from Portugal:
and advising with him, his answer was in three words, the same that was given in another case quite
different, viz., 'Master, save thyself.' In a word, he was for my retiring into the country, as he resolved to do
himself with his family; telling me what he had, it seems, heard abroad, that the best preparation for the
plague was to run away from it. As to my argument of losing my trade, my goods, or debts, he quite
confuted me. He told me the same thing which I argued for my staying, viz., that I would trust God with my
safety and health, was the strongest repulse to my pretensions of losing my trade and my goods; 'for', says he,
'is it not as reasonable that you should trust God with the chance or risk of losing your trade, as that you
should stay in so eminent a point of danger, and trust Him with your life?'

17
 I could not argue that I was in any strait as to a place where to go, having several friends and relations in
Northamptonshire, whence our family first came from; and particularly, I had an only sister in Lincolnshire,
very willing to receive and entertain me.
My brother, who had already sent his wife and two children into Bedfordshire, and resolved to follow
them, pressed my going very earnestly; and I had once resolved to comply with his desires, but at that time
could get no horse; for though it is true all the people did not go out of the city of London, yet I may venture
to say that in a manner all the horses did; for there was hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city
for some weeks. Once I resolved to travel on foot with one servant, and, as many did, lie at no inn, but carry
a soldier's tent with us, and so lie in the fields, the weather being very warm, and no danger from taking cold.
I say, as many did, because several did so at last, especially those who had been in the armies in the war
which had not been many years past; and I must needs say that, speaking of second causes, had most of the
people that travelled done so, the plague had not been carried into so many country towns and houses as it
was, to the great damage, and indeed to the ruin, of abundance of people.
But then my servant, whom I had intended to take down with me, deceived me; and being frighted at the
increase of the distemper, and not knowing when I should go, he took other measures, and left me, so I was
put off for that time; and, one way or other, I always found that to appoint to go away was always crossed by
some accident or other, so as to disappoint and put it off again; and this brings in a story which otherwise
might be thought a needless digression, viz., about these disappointments being from Heaven.
I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any person to take in such a case, especially if he
be one that makes conscience of his duty, and would be directed what to do in it, namely, that he should
keep his eye upon the particular providences which occur at that time, and look upon them complexly, as
they regard one another, and as all together regard the question before him: and then, I think, he may safely
take them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestioned duty to do in such a case; I mean as to
going away from or staying in the place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious distemper.
It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on this particular thing, that as nothing
attended us without the direction or permission of Divine Power, so these disappointments must have
something in them extraordinary; and I ought to consider whether it did not evidently point out, or intimate
to me, that it was the will of Heaven I should not go. It immediately followed in my thoughts, that if it really
was from God that I should stay, He was able effectually to preserve me in the midst of all the death and
danger that would surround me; and that if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my habitation, and
acted contrary to these intimations, which I believe to be Divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that
He could cause His justice to overtake me when and where He thought fit.
These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I came to discourse with my brother again I
told him that I inclined to stay and take my lot in that station in which God had placed me, and that it
seemed to be made more especially my duty, on the account of what I have said.

18
 My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I had suggested about its being an
intimation from Heaven, and told me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them, as I was;
that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been any way disabled by distempers or
diseases, and that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the direction of Him, who, having been
my Maker, had an undisputed right of sovereignty in disposing of me, and that then there had been no
difficulty to determine which was the call of His providence and which was not; but that I should take it as
an intimation from Heaven that I should not go out of town, only because I could not hire a horse to go, or
my fellow was run away that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the time I had my health and limbs,
and other servants, and might with ease travel a day or two on foot, and having a good certificate of being in
perfect health, might either hire a horse or take post on the road, as I thought fit.
Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences which attended the presumption of the
Turks and Mahometans in Asia and in other places where he had been (for my brother, being a merchant,
was a few years before, as I have already observed, returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and
how, presuming upon their professed predestinating notions, and of every man's end being predetermined
and unalterably beforehand decreed, they would go unconcerned into infected places and converse with
infected persons, by which means they died at the rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week, whereas the
Europeans or Christian merchants, who kept themselves retired and reserved, generally escaped the
contagion.
Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions again, and I began to resolve to go, and
accordingly made all things ready; for, in short, the infection increased round me, and the bills were risen to
almost seven hundred a week, and my brother told me he would venture to stay no longer. I desired him to
let me consider of it but till the next day, and I would resolve: and as I had already prepared everything as
well as I could as to MY business, and whom to entrust my affairs with, I had little to do but to resolve.
I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind, irresolute, and not knowing what to do. I had set
the evening wholly—apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone; for already people had, as it
were by a general consent, taken up the custom of not going out of doors after sunset; the reasons I shall
have occasion to say more of by-and-by.”
In the retirement of this evening I endeavoured to resolve, first, what was my duty to do, and I stated the
arguments with which my brother had pressed me to go into the country, and I set, against them the strong
impressions which I had on my mind for staying; the visible call I seemed to have from the particular
circumstance of my calling, and the care due from me for the preservation of my effects, which were, as I
might say, my estate; also the intimations which I thought I had from Heaven, that to me signified a kind of
direction to venture; and it occurred to me that if I had what I might call a direction to stay, I ought to
suppose it contained a promise of being preserved if I obeyed.
This lay close to me, and my mind seemed more and more encouraged to stay than ever, and supported
with a secret satisfaction that I should be kept. Add to this, that, turning over the Bible which lay before me,
19
and while my thoughts were more than ordinarily serious upon the question, I cried out, 'Well, I know not
what to do; Lord, direct me !' and the like; and at that juncture I happened to stop turning over the book at
the ninety-first Psalm, and casting my eye on the second verse, I read on to the seventh verse exclusive, and
after that included the tenth, as follows: 'I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God, in
Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and
buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the
pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at
thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou
behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the
most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,'
I scarce need tell the reader that from that moment I resolved that I would stay in the town, and casting
myself entirely upon the goodness and protection of the Almighty, would not seek any other shelter
whatever; and that, as my times were in His hands, He was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in
a time of health; and if He did not think fit to deliver me, still I was in His hands, and it was meet He should
do with me as should seem good to Him.
With this resolution I went to bed; and I was further confirmed in it the next day by the woman being
taken ill with whom I had intended to entrust my house and all my affairs. But I had a further obligation laid
on me on the same side, for the next day I found myself very much out of order also, so that if I would have
gone away, I could not, and I continued ill three or four days, and this entirely determined my stay; so I took
my leave of my brother, who went away to Bedfordshire, to a retreat he had found out there for his family.”

With all this virus drama we have rather forgotten about Brexit and the imminent crisis brewing in a
European Union struggling to maintain the vision of unity, friendship and co-operation when so
many thousands are dying due to inadequate provision for the underprivileged, the sick, the elderly
and impoverished. The poor and homeless were already dying of starvation in the streets before
the corona virus exposed the horrifying reality of “One plague for the rich; one plague for the poor”.
Those who had done their homework were already aware of the unspeakable corruption and
self-interest of the Brussels/Strasbourg Utopia and the price we all paid at a daily level for the
straight banana. Are the chickens coming home to roost at last? Or will politicians discover a way to
cover their tracks and conceal the overt tactics of the mob? War-torn Europe was an open wound.
Could Mankind do no better than bomb itself into extinction? There must be another way. How
about “Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Men”? Of course! Why didn’t we think of that?

It was like a board-game: everyone put their pennies into the pot and we all collaborated to create a
market of like-minded citizens from all over Europe, attuned to the same ideals of good-fellowship,
mutual welfare, protected health-care, round tomatoes, a wine lake and a butter mountain. Rather
20
like the Hanseatic League in fact. Except that global capitalism demands that everyone get a return
on their investment. What investment? Why huge new government buildings of course, to reflect
the immensity of this noble idea.

And why not two capitals instead of one, to adequately represent European needs and values? And
a fortnightly mass migration between the two citadels, with thousands of office-workers, secretaries,
translators, legal representatives, welfare officers, housing directors, health and safety advisers,
insurance agents, IT Technicians, Human Resources Managers, Environmental Health Officers,
Security and Protection services, First Aid and Medical staff, private valets, drivers and chauffeurs
to ferry you to specially commissioned planes, trains, buses and official limousines that will repeat
the same journey in reverse two weeks later? This great investment is hard work, deserving weeks
of highly paid holidays and a large retirement pension. How dare they talk of snouts in the trough?

The horse-shoe design of the United Nations parliament was also suggested to Churchill after the
House of Commons was destroyed in the blitz. But he was an old War Horse favouring Adversarial
Politics with two hostile Parties confronting each other over the despatch box. Of course this suited
his declamatory style of Leadership and his famous speeches were devoured every morning in The
Times and quoted extensively thereafter. His love of an audience may even have influenced USA
Politics as the careful Separation of Powers embedded in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers
began to drift slowly towards a two-party system of brawling Republicans and Democrats more
interested in point-scoring than law-making. And this is the shoe that so painfully pinches today,
when a dysfunctional Government is unable to organise a country with 216,000 people infected and
5,200 dying of the Plague.

After a fortnight’s lockdown I realised I would have to sneak out to the ATM machine at my bank to
collect some cash for my unexpected gardener. This was dicey as I was classified as “at risk” and
had already been fined 100 euros by the French Police a year earlier for crossing the white line and
had my licence endorsed. I had downloaded the official document I needed to justify leaving the
house and filled it in, but waited until evening to drive through the mysterious back lanes of the
forest to the village of Rumengol, with its Mediaeval Church and Well famous for its Miraculous
Healing Powers. (You dip your baby’s bottom in and it is cured of all ailments.)

21
Brittany is a fiercely Pagan/Catholic country with a proud heritage of wayside crucifixes at many
crossroads, and the unhappy gentleman suspended at the local one had already flown away three
times since my arrival 25 years ago. I don’t know how they found him each time, but I suppose they
knew the ropes and gave him a good talking to when they replaced him, because I was glad to see
he was back. I might have need of him.

The streets were silent and almost empty. I waved to one woman as I passed and she waved back.
No Police, no Army. I returned to the forest with my envelope of euros and was glad to be home.
The ladies were hungry and it was time for supper. Mission accomplished. Whew!

CHAPTER FIVE

Chickens come home to roost

Thursday 2nd April

Meanwhile in London the shambles is even worse. A month ago in a press conference The Prime
Minister chose to follow the advice of mathematicians, strategical analysts and economists who
came up with the theory of herd immunity: You do not attempt to control the plague but let it run its
22
natural course until the population achieves “herd immunity” at which point you hospitalise the ill but
still treatable and bury the rest. You cannot assess these figures in advance.

From Paul Waugh HUFFPOST 03/03/2020

“Sober, reassuring, nuanced. When the chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser flanked Boris
Johnson at Number 10 today, they did an impressive job of calmly and professionally setting out the factual
framework behind the government’s coronavirus strategy.

The 26-page “action plan” was caveated and cautious throughout, just like the two experts themselves, and
provided a welcome contrast to the overheated rhetoric that often passes for much political debate in
parliament. When asked to give simple answers they replied with complexity, trying to be as transparent as
possible while stressing the uncertainty of some aspects of dealing with Covid-19.
Facts were laid out: children are least likely to fall ill, pregnant women were so far not seen as more at risk
than others, those over 80 and with underlying health conditions are most at risk. But projections of the
overall death rates were absent. Dominic Cummings, who hovered at the back of the room, famously likes
science. Maybe here was one area of government policy where civil servants were utterly trusted?
During the press conference Whitty pointed out that he didn’t want to make even a central projection
(beloved of economists during Budgets) because the range of outcomes was so wide. Yes, the outbreak
could theoretically hit 80% of the population but the figure was ‘probably a lot lower’, he said. The
mortality rate of 1% could well be lower than estimates from China suggested. There was no need to panic
or exaggerate, was the message.
In fact what was most striking today was the way the experts, fully backed by the PM, played down a lot of
the worst-case scenario options. Closing schools is an emergency option but there are doubts about whether
the disruption caused would be justified by the impact on stopping the disease, not least as young children
are very low risk. Reason, aided by the right reassuring tone, ruled the day. .

Similarly, banning mass events like football matches and concerts is on the table, but may well be pointless.
The risk of transmission seems just as high if football fans watch matches in a pub (where sustained close
physical contact occurs) than if they are part of a crowd of 70,000 people (of which only a doughnut of
around 12 people may contact them).
And on foreign travel, the advice was there’s no point cancelling foreign holidays booked for this summer as
by that stage the virus may be so widespread that the issue is academic. “Once the epidemic is everywhere,
then actually restricting travel makes no difference at all,” Vallance said, wonderfully matter-of-factly.
Stockpiling food and medicines was also frowned on.
The caution even rubbed off on Johnson, who is normally as bouncy as a Great English Sheepdog in
grabbing a populist headline. When asked about the idea of deploying the Army, he stressed there would be
‘backfill’ to replace any police shortages due to coronavirus, but this would be limited (nuclear power
stations at most). The idea of ‘troops on the streets’ was not encouraged.

23
That’s not to say that the impact of an established outbreak will be small. The tentative plans for cancelling
non-urgent NHS treatment and focusing police activity on serious crime and public order would affect lots
of people. “Everyone will face increased pressures at work,” the action plan warns. It’s not often a
government paper talks about ‘everyone’ like that.
There were areas where the document was perhaps too light on detail. It was difficult to see exactly how the
NHS would find the beds and staff for the peak of the crisis, especially as retired GPs and nurses who could
be drafted back are likely to be more at risk given their age.
Discharging patients quicker from hospital could be undermined by the fact that community nurse numbers
have been hit during austerity. Johnson was also remarkably vague when asked whether all workers could
get statutory sickness pay if forced to stay at home, and even health secretary Matt Hancock (who has had a
good war so far) couldn’t give any guarantees.
Overall though, the press conference and its accompanying document worked for the government. A Cabinet
minister (Hancock) was allowed on the Today programme and Channel 4 News (both on the No.10 banned
list) and the world didn’t fall apart. It’s almost as if openness and scrutiny can help politicians. Spooky
thought. Has it taken a highly abnormal threat to force the government to get back to normal?
The whole day was indeed a sharp contrast to the undercurrent of distrust of civil servants and obsession
with removing any perceived hindrance to the centralising power of Cummings (though the BuzzFeed scoop
today, about the ousting of a special adviser who dared stand up to him, suggested this is a war of attrition
without end).
There was one moment during the press conference however when there was a flicker of distance between
the prime minister and his experts. Asked if he was shaking hands with No.10 visitors, Johnson couldn’t
resist saying: “I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were coronavirus patients and I was
shaking hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands.” No.10 later
clarified that the PM hadn’t actually been shaking hands with coronavirus patients.
“People must make up their own minds but I think the scientific evidence is... “ Johnson said. Quick as a
flash, Vallance interrupted to say “Wash your hands”. And when the PM blithely said “I’m shaking hands
continually”, I’m sure I detected a tiny raise of an eyebrow from chief medical officer Whitty. Like London
Mayor Sadiq Khan, many doctors and scientists advise against hand shaking in a bid to delay the spread of
the disease as much as possible.
Still, the PM for once eschewed the chance to tubthump about the Blitz spirit and other wartime metaphors.
In fact it was Whitty who came up with one of the best lines today. He declared that the outbreak of the
virus was one thing, but often the “response of the British public to disasters and emergencies is
extraordinary outbreaks of altruism”. Johnson looked on admiringly. Those pesky experts, they even sound
like human beings, dammit.
Quote Of The Day:I want to stress that for the vast majority of the people of this country,
we should be going about our business as usual.”

Results of “Herd Immunity”

Today’s UK figures:33,718 Infected and 2,981 Dead

From “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe published 1722

“It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained, it was immediately said he had the plague;
and though I had indeed no symptom of that distemper, yet being very ill, both in my head and in my
stomach, I was not without apprehension that I really was infected; but in about three days I grew better; the
24
third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much refreshed. The apprehensions of its being the
infection went also quite away with my illness, and I went about my business as usual.
These things, however, put off all my thoughts of going into the country; and my brother also being gone,
I had no more debate either with him or with myself on that subject.
It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at the other end of the town, began to now
come eastward towards the part where I lived. But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes,
which being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper found more to prey upon than in the city,
as I shall observe afterwards. We perceived the distemper came at length to spread its utmost rage and
violence in those parts, even when it abated at the western parishes where it began.
During the month of July, and while, as I have observed, our part of the town seemed to be spared in
comparison of the west part, I went ordinarily about the streets, as my business required, and particularly
went generally once in a day, or in two days, into the city, to my brother's house, which he had given me
charge of, and to see if it was safe; and having the key in my pocket, I used to go into the house, and over
most of the rooms, to see that all was well; for though it be something wonderful to tell, that any should
have hearts so hardened in the midst of such a calamity as to rob and steal, yet certain it is that all sorts of
villainies, and even levities and debaucheries, were then practised in the town as openly as ever—I will not
say quite as frequently, because the numbers of people were many ways lessened.
But the city itself began now to be visited too, I mean within the walls; but the number of people there
were indeed extremely lessened by so great a multitude having been gone into the country; and even all this
month of July they continued to flee, though not in such multitudes as formerly. In August, indeed, they fled
in such a manner that I began to think there would be really none but magistrates and servants left in the
city.
As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe that the Court removed early, viz., in the month of
June, and went to Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them; and the distemper did not, as I heard of, so
much as touch them, for which I cannot say that I ever saw they showed any great token of thankfulness, and
hardly anything of reformation, though they did not want being told that their crying vices might without
breach of charity be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible judgement upon the whole nation.
The face of London was—now indeed strangely altered: I mean the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties,
suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within the
walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered; sorrow
and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply
concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the
utmost danger. Were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the
reader due ideas of the horror 'that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their
minds and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go
about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest
25
friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the streets. The shrieks of women and children at the
windows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were so
frequent to be heard as we passed the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to
hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the first part of the
visitation; for towards the latter end men's hearts were hardened, and death was so always before their eyes,
that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that themselves should
be summoned the next hour.”

CORONAVIRUS CASES WORLDWIDE TOP ONE MILLION

03/04/2020 The coronavirus pandemic has reached a grim landmark, with more than one
million cases confirmed worldwide.
Almost a quarter of that number (236,000) are people diagnosed with COVID-19 in the US,
according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.Italy and Spain make up nearly another
quarter between them (225,000), with China, Germany and the UK also having a high number of
cases. On Thursday, Spain's death toll rose above 10,000 after a record 950 people died overnight
- but health officials are encouraged by a slowdown in daily increases in infections and
deaths.Spain has the world's second-highest number of deaths after Italy at 10,003 - but today's
one-day toll is the highest for any country since the start of the pandemic. Italy recorded 760 more
deaths, and now has a total of almost 14,000 - the worst of any nation - but new infections
continued to level off. More than 10,000 medical personnel in the country have been infected, and
69 doctors have died.

Coronavirus: Cruise ship with suspected patients on board allowed to dock in Florida.
Coronavirus: Canada investigates reports medical supplies shipment 'diverted to US'.
Coronavirus masks advice could change after new evidence emerges.
Coronavirus: US warship captain 'relieved of duty' over COVID-19 memo.
Coronavirus: Physical health 'crucial' to chances of coronavirus recovery, says WHO in new
lockdown advice

From “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe published 1722

“Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even when the sickness was chiefly there;
and as the thing was new to me, as well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing to see those
streets which were usually so thronged now grown desolate, and so few people to be seen in them, that if I
had been a stranger and at a loss for my way, I might sometimes have gone the length of a whole street (I
mean of the by-streets), and seen nobody to direct me except watchmen set at the doors of such houses as
were shut up, of which I shall speak presently.
One day, being at that part of the town on some special business, curiosity led me to observe things more
than usually, and indeed I walked a great way where I had no business. I went up Holborn, and there the
street was full of people, but they walked in the middle of the great street, neither on one side or other,
because, as I suppose, they would not mingle with anybody that came out of houses, or meet with smells and
scent from houses that might be infected.
The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln's Inn, or
Gray's Inn, to be seen there. Everybody was at peace; there was no occasion for lawyers; besides, it being in
26
the time of the vacation too, they were generally gone into the country. Whole rows of houses in some
places were shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and only a watchman or two left.
When I speak of rows of houses being shut up, I do not mean shut up by the magistrates, but that great
numbers of persons followed the Court, by the necessity of their employments and other dependences; and
as others retired, really frighted with the distemper, it was a mere desolating of some of the streets. But the
fright was not yet near so great in the city, abstractly so called, and particularly because, though they were at
first in a most inexpressible consternation, yet as I have observed that the distemper intermitted often at first,
so they were, as it were, alarmed and unalarmed again, and this several times, till it began to be familiar to
them; and that even when it appeared violent, yet seeing it did not presently spread into the city, or the east
and south parts, the people began to take courage, and to be, as I may say, a little hardened. It is true a vast
many people fled, as I have observed, yet they were chiefly from the west end of the town, and from that we
call the heart of the city: that is to say, among the wealthiest of the people, and such people as were
unencumbered with trades and business. But of the rest, the generality stayed, and seemed to abide the worst;
so that in the place we call the Liberties, and in the suburbs, in Southwark, and in the east part, such as
Wapping, Ratcliff, Stepney, Rotherhithe, and the like, the people generally stayed, except here and there a
few wealthy families, who, as above, did not depend upon their business.
It must not be forgot here that the city and suburbs were prodigiously full of people at the time of this
visitation, I mean at the time that it began; for though I have lived to see a further increase, and mighty
throngs of people settling in London more than ever, yet we had always a notion that the numbers of people
which, the wars being over, the armies disbanded, and the royal family and the monarchy being restored,
had flocked to London to settle in business, or to depend upon and attend the Court for rewards of services,
preferments, and the like, was such that the town was computed to have in it above a hundred thousand
people more than ever it held before; nay, some took upon them to say it had twice as many, because all the
ruined families of the royal party flocked hither. All the old soldiers set up trades here, and abundance of
families settled here. Again, the Court brought with them a great flux of pride, and new fashions. All people
were grown gay and luxurious, and the joy of the Restoration had brought a vast many families to London.
I often thought that as Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans when the Jews were assembled together to
celebrate the Passover—by which means an incredible number of people were surprised there who would
otherwise have been in other countries—so the plague entered London when an incredible increase of
people had happened occasionally, by the particular circumstances above-named. As this conflux of the
people to a youthful and gay Court made a great trade in the city, especially in everything that belonged to
fashion and finery, so it drew by consequence a great number of workmen, manufacturers, and the like,
being mostly poor people who depended upon their labour. By this, however, the number of people in the
whole may be judged of; and, indeed, I often wondered that, after the prodigious numbers of people that
went away at first, there was yet so great a multitude left as it appeared there was.

27
 But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising time. While the fears of the people were
young, they were increased strangely by several odd accidents which, put altogether, it was really a wonder
the whole body of the people did not rise as one man and abandon their dwellings, leaving the place as a
space of ground designed by Heaven for an Akeldama, doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth,
and that all that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but a few of these things; but sure
they were so many, and so many wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered
there was any (women especially) left behind.
In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the
year after another, a little before the fire. The old women and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the other
sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked (especially afterward, though not till both those
judgements were over) that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses
that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone; that the comet before the pestilence was
of a faint, dull, languid colour, and its motion very heavy, Solemn, and slow; but that the comet before the
fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that,
accordingly, one foretold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and frightful, as was the plague; but
the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular some people were,
that as they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and
fiercely, and could perceive the motion with their eye, but even they heard it; that it made a rushing, mighty
noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance, and but just perceivable.
I saw both these stars, and, I must confess, had so much of the common notion of such things in my head,
that I was apt to look upon them as the forerunners and warnings of God's judgements; and especially when,
after the plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like kind, I could not but say God had not yet
sufficiently scourged the city.
But I could not at the same time carry these things to the height that others did, knowing, too, that natural
causes are assigned by the astronomers for such things, and that their motions and even their revolutions are
calculated, or pretended to be calculated, so that they cannot be so perfectly called the forerunners or
foretellers, much less the procurers, of such events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like.
But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philosophers be, or have been, what they will, these things had
a more than ordinary influence upon the minds of the common people, and they had almost universal
melancholy apprehensions of some dreadful calamity and judgement coming upon the city; and this
principally from the sight of this comet, and the little alarm that was given in December by two people dying
at St Giles's, as above.
The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times; in which, I
think, the people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological
conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper
was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it—that is to say, by printing
28
predictions and prognostications—I know not; but certain it is, books frighted them terribly, such as Lilly's
Almanack, Gadbury's Astrological Predictions, Poor Robin's Almanack, and the like; also several pretended
religious books, one entitled, Come out of her, my People, lest you be Partaker of her Plagues; another
called, Fair Warning; another, Britain's Remembrancer; and many such, all, or most part of which, foretold,
directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay, some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets
with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular, who, like
Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, 'Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed.' I will not be positive
whether he said yet forty days or yet a few days. Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his
waist, crying day and night, like a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, 'Woe to Jerusalem!' a little before
the destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried, 'Oh, the great and the dreadful God!' and said
no more, but repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace; and
nobody could ever find him to stop or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that ever I could hear of. I met
this poor creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into
speech with me or any one else, but held on his dismal cries continually.
These things terrified the people to the last degree, and especially when two or three times, as I have
mentioned already, they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St Giles's.
Next to these public things were the dreams of old women, or, I should say, the interpretation of old
women upon other people's dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits. Some heard
voices warning them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in London, so that the living would
not be able to bury the dead. Others saw apparitions in the air; and I must be allowed to say of both, I hope
without breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never appeared; but
the imagination of the people was really turned wayward and possessed. And no wonder, if they who were
poring continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representations and appearances, which had nothing
in them but air, and vapour. Here they told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand coming out of a
cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city; there they saw hearses and coffins in the air carrying to be
buried; and there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and the like, just as the imagination of the poor
terrified people furnished them with matter to work upon. So hypochondriac fancies represent Ships, armies,
battles in the firmament; Till steady eyes the exhalations solve, And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve.
I could fill this account with the strange relations such people gave every day of what they had seen; and
every one was so positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that there was no contradicting
them without breach of friendship, or being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, and profane
and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague was begun (otherwise than as I have said in St
Giles's), I think it was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined with them to satisfy my
curiosity, and found them all staring up into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her,
which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his hand, waving it or brandishing it over his
head. She described every part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and the form, and the poor

29
people came into it so eagerly, and with so much readiness; 'Yes, I see it all plainly,' says one; 'there's the
sword as plain as can be.' Another saw the angel. One saw his very face, and cried out what a glorious
creature he was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as the rest, but perhaps not with
so much willingness to be imposed upon; and I said, indeed, that I could see nothing but a white cloud,
bright on one side by the shining of the sun upon the other part. The woman endeavoured to show it me, but
could not make me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had I must have lied. But the woman, turning
upon me, looked in my face, and fancied I laughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, for I really
did not laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the poor people were terrified by the force of their own
imagination. However, she turned from me, called me profane fellow, and a scoffer; told me that it was a
time of God's anger, and dreadful judgements were approaching, and that despisers such as I should wander
and perish.
The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she; and I found there was no persuading them that I did
not laugh at them, and that I should be rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive them. So I left them;
and this appearance passed for as real as the blazing star itself.
Another encounter I had in the open day also; and this was in going through a narrow passage. In this
narrow passage stands a man looking through between the palisadoes into the burying-place, and as many
people as the narrowness of the passage would admit to stop, without hindering the passage of others, and he
was talking mightily eagerly to them, and pointing now to one place, then to another, and affirming that he
saw a ghost walking upon such a gravestone there. He described the shape, the posture, and the movement
of it so exactly that it was the greatest matter of amazement to him in the world that everybody did not see it
as well as he. On a sudden he would cry, 'There it is; now it comes this way.' Then, 'Tis turned back'; till at
length he persuaded the people into so firm a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another fancied he
saw it; and thus he came every day making a strange hubbub, considering it was in so narrow a passage, till
Bishopsgate clock struck eleven, and then the ghost would seem to start, and, as if he were called away,
disappeared on a sudden.
I looked earnestly every way, and at the very moment that this man directed, but could not see the least
appearance of anything; but so positive was this poor man, that he gave the people the vapours in abundance,
and sent them away trembling and frighted, till at length few people that knew of it cared to go through that
passage, and hardly anybody by night on any account whatever.
This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses, and to the ground, and to the people,
plainly intimating, or else they so understanding it, that abundance of the people should come to be buried in
that churchyard, as indeed happened; but that he saw such aspects I must acknowledge I never believed, nor
could I see anything of it myself, though I looked most earnestly to see it, if possible.
These things serve to show how far the people were really overcome with delusions; and as they had a
notion of the approach of a visitation, all their predictions ran upon a most dreadful plague, which should lay
the whole city, and even the kingdom, waste, and should destroy almost all the nation, both man and beast.”
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POSTED BY ASTROLOGER JOHN WADSWORTH March 19th 2020

As Above So Below. We Are In Unprecedented Times

We are current facing a global crisis the like of which few of us will have seen in our lifetimes. And
this is mirrored by the type of astrological alignments that are seen only once or twice in a
millennium. As above, so below, we are in living in unprecedented times, and the entire fabric of our
world, and the way we live, is fundamentally changing in a way that will reverberate down the
decades to come. Over the coming months, we will witness many of the established Capricornian
structures of our world collapsing (even while those in power do everything they can to prop them
up). Meanwhile, we must radically adapt to the very different demands of an Aquarian future.

Saturn in Aquarius & the Re-Evaluation of Socialism

It strikes me that the countries that are likely to recover the most effectively from the consequences
of this pandemic are those that retain an inherent socialism within the core values of their society.
Those that haven’t abandoned the idea of community; those who place the well-being of the whole
society above the privilege of individual freedoms are undoubtedly better prepared to deal with this
pandemic. Socialism is in many ways an Aquarian social ideal, and despite its Uranian idealism it
has tended to be more Saturnian in its political application (Saturn is the traditional ruler of Aquarius
and in less than a week’s time, it will enter that sign) and has proved less appealing than the more
apparently free market economical model that has come dominate the western world. Yet we
cannot fail to be impressed when we see China stemming the spread of the virus, through a
massive (albeit rigidly enforced) collective effort. In Europe, we have seen quarantined Italians
singing to one another from their balconies to keep spirits up, the Spanish in Madrid applauding, as
one, the efforts of medical staff. These countries are no longer run by socialist governments (and
clearly there are significant numbers ignoring curfews and acting out of personal interest); however
that spirit of extended family and community remains strong enough to assist in the collective effort.

Acknowledging our Shared Humanity

Even in the UK today, we saw the National Trust opening up all its beautiful gardens and offering
free access for people to get out and experience the natural world coming back to life, and benefit
from the rejuvenating spirit of spring, as we approach the equinox and its promise of longer
light-filled days. Such spontaneous acts of community spirit, which are in no way motivated by
financial gain, express socialism at its very best. Acts of abundant giving like this make us all feel
good, they acknowledge our shared humanity, the recognition that we are inevitably interdependent
upon one another, regardless of our background, age, class, religion, education, wealth status, or
national identity. This has to come to the forefront of our collective awareness now. Governments,
corporations, institutions, business owners, landlords and community leaders must change their
attitudes and behaviours in line with that realisation, as must we all, each one of us.

Coronavirus is a Neptune in Pisces Manifestation

And while we could be forgiven for our instinctive reactions, ‘how am I going to get through this?” or
‘how do I make my own / my family’s future more secure in the face of what’s happening?’, or ‘how
could I still profit from this?’, we cannot let such individualistic preoccupations go unchallenged. We
should all be taking a hard look at ourselves, and thinking beyond our own personal interests. This
virus is a Neptune in Pisces manifestation; such a great leveller, it has no respect for boundaries of
nation, wealth or societal status, it infiltrates everywhere without discrimination. And with the
invisible, nebulous, unpredictable, way in which it spreads, the securing of our own personal health
is not enough – we have no choice but to think of how our actions and behaviours impact others.
Although it is less immediately obvious, this is not unlike the way that the invisible forces of money
work, how our pursuit of wealth and the actions we take to ensure our own financial security
inevitably affect others. This is becoming more obvious through this pandemic, where both our
health and wealth are under direct and immanent threat.
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Uranus in Taurus: A Radical Overhaul of Money & Wealth
Our western, liberal democracies and their political and economic ideologies have convinced us
that life is like a game of monopoly – that in order to succeed, we must compete with our fellow
human beings to bag all the assets for ourselves, to secure our own lot in a world of finite, limited
resources. Yet resources are primarily confined by the limits of our own imaginations. Whilever we
remain indoctrinated by the idea of scarcity; by the toxic myth that there is not enough, by the idea
that more is better, then no matter how much we have and how much we gain materially, we will
always demand more, living in fear that at any moment it could be taken away from us. Regardless
of our wealth status, our health status, or our status in society, we remain trapped in a
consciousness of poverty, competing with others, trying to shore up our personal defences and buy
up everything we can in order to keep at bay the personal threats of disease, bankruptcy or a fall
from power. We are not properly educated to appreciate the valuing of having enough, that more
balanced experience of knowing that our needs are met by the common wealth that exists within a
healthy, thriving community. This is the radical demand of Uranus in Taurus, our whole relationship
to money and personal acquisition and ownership must be completely overhauled. The idea that
we pool our skills, our food, our tools, our knowledge, our creative energy, our land, our money,
might seem like a naively quaint, hippy ideal but in the future that we are now facing, this may be
the only realistic choice we have if we are to survive and flourish.

Should We Really Be Declaring War on a Virus?

It must surely be the case that our capacity to thrive as a society requires not just the
accommodation, but the celebration of every diverse way of life that the genius of humanity has
concocted. This is our Aquarian common wealth. And when we extend this inclusive perspective to
the more-than-human world, to our ever-present inter-relationship with the animal, plant, fungi,
protista and bacteria kingdoms, which naturally include this virus, then we might start to realise that
this virus itself carries its own genius, its own form of consciousness within the web of life to which it
rightfully belongs. And if Covid-19 carries a message for us, it is surely saying that we must change
direction if we are to progress as a species, and if the planet is to recover to the extent that it can
continue to support life as we know it. I think that is an altogether better message that the one we
are hearing from our governments, that we are ‘at war’ with the virus. It’s hardly surprising with
Mars so strong and active at the moment in Capricorn and about to make three volatile
conjunctions with Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn. But just like the ‘war on terror’, declaring war on the
virus is part of the old paradigm and it keeps us locked into a polarity of good and evil that got us
into this mess in the first place.

Saturn-Pluto: The Shadow of Corporate Capitalism

I will get properly onto the astrology in a moment, and address the consequences of this year’s
Saturn-Pluto conjunction which is now unveiling the shadow of corporate capitalism and free
market liberalism, those parasitic economic structures to which we have become so accustomed.
We have been told that the acquisition, accumulation and hoarding of resources is the way to
secure our future, yet it is so fiercely antagonistic to the fabric of life, with its creative living systems
that naturally renew and recycle their diverse components for the benefit of the whole. I do not want
to glamorise socialism as a political ideology, it carries its own shadow of organisational control and
is just as susceptible to manipulation by those in power. However, it is undoubtedly more aligned to
the needs of the whole community, founded as it is in the recognition that a society can only thrive
when all its members are supported, and granted an inalienable right to live a sustainable life. By
contrast, the type of capitalism we are currently subjected to serves the short term interests of a
privileged elite, that have ironically made themselves immune to the market forces that dictate the
fortunes of everyone else! It casts a shadow of poverty, dependency, and dis-ease over those who
are either unable or unwilling to compete within the limited imagination of those market forces.

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Saturn-Pluto & Collective Accountability
As I have said before, this viral pandemic is a Neptune in Pisces phenomenon, triggering the
immense economic and societal breakdown that is pre-figured in the Saturn-Jupiter-Pluto in
Capricorn alignment of this year. The Saturn-Pluto conjunction in January of this year (12th Jan)
has brought the shadow of collective accountability to bear and is making us face up to the
exploitation, greed and ruthless ambition that has brought us to the brink of self-destruction as a
species.

The Jupiter-Pluto Conjunctions…

The three forthcoming conjunctions of Jupiter and Pluto (5th April, 30th June & 12th Nov) will reveal
the amplified scope and extent of the societal breakdown we are facing, which is still beyond what
many people can currently imagine. Yet, if we can exercise our imagination beyond the
understandable Saturnian fear and lockdown, beyond the tragedy of people losing their lives and
the trauma of lost livelihoods, businesses and thwarted personal ambitions, the Jupiter-Pluto
conjunctions will also expose some opportunities that could be profoundly beneficial to society. It
offers the possibility that communities could rise from this with a dramatically transformed
perspective on what is possible through collaboration and care for one another. And with enough
solidarity this could overturn the old order of government that will inevitably try to exploit the fear
and bring even more draconian controls. Aquarius brings hope of a radically different future, and
his becomes more apparent still at the end of the year when Jupiter and Saturn make their
paradigm shifting conjunction in the sign of the water-bearer.

The Historic Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction in Aquarius…

On 23rd March, Saturn will leave Capricorn and enter Aquarius, where it will remain until 3rd July,
when it returns to Capricorn during its retrograde phase (remaining there until 18th Dec). Saturn in
Aquarius will show us that collective responsibility and accountability is the only way forward. On
21st December this year, Jupiter will make its historic conjunction with Saturn in the first degree of
Aquarius. These conjunctions occur every 20 years, but this one is special, it marks a new era – the
beginning of a 200 year period when the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions will occur in the air signs (for
the last 200 years they have occurred in earth signs – with the exception of 1980-81). We get a
powerful glimpse of this at the end of March, when Mars makes his own conjunction with Saturn in
that same first degree of Aquarius. Indeed, Mars is very busy over the next thirteen days…

Mars Conjuncts Jupiter & Pluto…

On 20th March, the Spring equinox, Mars conjuncts Jupiter at 22 degrees Capricorn, releasing a
huge burst of energy that could really shake things up, in terms of the global perspective on the
pandemic, escalating actions taken by governments to try and contain the spread of the virus and
waking people up to the scale of what is unfolding, which has probably, as yet, been
underestimated by the majority of people. Then, on 23rd March, Mars conjuncts Pluto at 24
degrees Capricorn, which may bring up the shadow of fear collectively, as a result of the
Mars-Jupiter escalation. This could be where we see a lot more restriction of travel and
enforcement of curfews in countries around the world, who have not yet taken these measures. We
could also see an increased incidence of violence, as people react to the restrictions upon their
personal freedoms that occur through these much more extreme measures.

Mars Conjuncts Saturn…

Things move fast then through the last week of March, and on 31st March, Mars conjuncts Saturn
in the first degree of Aquarius. While it might seem like we are hitting a wall at this point, this is
actually the first major injection of Aquarian energy that is set to characterise the coming era; a shift
that will ultimately lead to a rejuvenated sense of community thinking and collective responsibility.
This may be very hard too appreciate though in the early stages, as it is likely to manifest as the
most severe curbing yet of individual rights and freedoms, and it will hit us hard. Actually, it will hit
33
some more than others. Mars-Saturn carries a theme of inevitable restriction, it sobers us up, puts
us in touch with our mortality, and forces us to manage our energy and expectations appropriately.
In Aquarius, it forces us to realise that we are stronger together than we are alone. How poignant,
and paradoxical then, they we will be living more isolated from another that most of us have ever
been used, reliant more than ever upon technology and the more abstract Aquarian medium of the
internet to stay connected with one another.

From “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe published 1722

“To this, as I said before, the astrologers added stories of the conjunctions of planets in a malignant
manner and with a mischievous influence, one of which conjunctions was to happen, and did happen, in
October, and the other in November; and they filled the people's heads with predictions on these signs of the
heavens, intimating that those conjunctions foretold drought, famine, and pestilence. In the two first of them,
however, they were entirely mistaken, for we had no droughty season, but in the beginning of the year a hard
frost, which lasted from December almost to March, and after that moderate weather, rather warm than hot,
with refreshing winds, and, in short, very seasonable weather, and also several very great rains.
Some endeavours were used to suppress the printing of such books as terrified the people, and to frighten
the dispersers of them, some of whom were taken up; but nothing was done in it, as I am informed, the
Government being unwilling to exasperate the people, who were, as I may say, all out of their wits already.
Neither can I acquit those ministers that in their sermons rather sank than lifted up the hearts of their
hearers. Many of them no doubt did it for the strengthening the resolution of the people, and especially for
quickening them to repentance, but it certainly answered not their end, at least not in proportion to the injury
it did another way; and indeed, as God Himself through the whole Scriptures rather draws to Him by
invitations and calls to turn to Him and live, than drives us by terror and amazement, so I must confess I
thought the ministers should have done also, imitating our blessed Lord and Master in this, that His whole
Gospel is full of declarations from heaven of God's mercy, and His readiness to receive penitents and
forgive them, complaining, 'Ye will not come unto Me that ye may have life', and that therefore His Gospel
is called the Gospel of Peace and the Gospel of Grace.
But we had some good men, and that of all persuasions and opinions, whose discourses were full of terror,
who spoke nothing but dismal things; and as they brought the people together with a kind of horror, sent
them away in tears, prophesying nothing but evil tidings, terrifying the people with the apprehensions of
being utterly destroyed, not guiding them, at least not enough, to cry to heaven for mercy.
It was, indeed, a time of very unhappy breaches among us in matters of religion. Innumerable sects and
divisions and separate opinions prevailed among the people. The Church of England was restored, indeed,
with the restoration of the monarchy, about four years before; but the ministers and preachers of the
Presbyterians and Independents, and of all the other sorts of professions, had begun to gather separate
societies and erect altar against altar, and all those had their meetings for worship apart, as they have now,
but not so many then, the Dissenters being not thoroughly formed into a body as they are since; and those

34
congregations which were thus gathered together were yet but few. And even those that were, the
Government did not allow, but endeavoured to suppress them and shut up their meetings.
But the visitation reconciled them again, at least for a time, and many of the best and most valuable
ministers and preachers of the Dissenters were suffered to go into the churches where the incumbents were
fled away, as many were, not being able to stand it; and the people flocked without distinction to hear them
preach, not much inquiring who or what opinion they were of. But after the sickness was over, that spirit of
charity abated; and every church being again supplied with their own ministers, or others presented where
the minister was dead, things returned to their old channel again.
One mischief always introduces another. These terrors and apprehensions of the people led them into a
thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really wicked to
encourage them to: and this was running about to fortune-tellers, cunning-men, and astrologers to know their
fortune, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their fortunes told them, their nativities calculated, and the
like; and this folly presently made the town swarm with a wicked generation of pretenders to magic, to the
black art, as they called it, and I know not what; nay, to a thousand worse dealings with the devil than they
were really guilty of. And this trade grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to have
signs and inscriptions set up at doors: 'Here lives a fortune-teller', 'Here lives an astrologer', 'Here you may
have your nativity calculated', and the like; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these
people's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin's
head, and the like.
With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous stuff these oracles of the devil pleased and satisfied the people I
really know not, but certain it is that innumerable attendants crowded about their doors every day. And if but
a grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a band, and a black coat, which was the habit those quack-conjurers
generally went in, was but seen in the streets the people would follow them in crowds, and ask them
questions as they went along.
I need not mention what a horrid delusion this was, or what it tended to; but there was no remedy for it till
the plague itself put an end to it all—and, I suppose, cleared the town of most of those calculators
themselves. One mischief was, that if the poor people asked these mock astrologers whether there would be
a plague or no, they all agreed in general to answer 'Yes', for that kept up their trade. And had the people not
been kept in a fright about that, the wizards would presently have been rendered useless, and their craft had
been at an end. But they always talked to them of such-and-such influences of the stars, of the conjunctions
of such-and-such planets, which must necessarily bring sickness and distempers, and consequently the
plague. And some had the assurance to tell them the plague was begun already, which was too true, though
they that said so knew nothing of the matter.”

And in Asia 03/04/2020 Mosques stay open in Pakistan even as virus cases rise:

Mosques were allowed to remain open in Pakistan on Friday — the important Muslim Sabbath
when adherents gather for weekly prayers — even as the pandemic spread and much of the
35
country had shut down. Some provinces, however, have issued their own lockdown orders to
prevent Muslims from gathering for Friday prayers. In southern Sindh province, a complete
lockdown is being enforced from noon until 3 p.m. — the time when the faithful gather for prayers.
Anyone found on the streets will be arrested, according to the provincial local government minister
in a statement. Authorities in Pakistan have struggled lately to persuade conservative religious
groups to maintain social distancing. Still, mosques remain open in the rest Pakistan, even as they
have been shut down across much of the Middle East and elsewhere. Pakistan has reported nearly
2,500 people infected with the virus, the highest in South Asia.

03/04/2020 8.24pm A further 588 people in France have died from coronavirus, bringing the
country's total to 6,507. It's an increase on Thursday's figure of 471 deaths in a 24-hour period.
The number of cases nationally has increased to 64,338, a rise of more than 5,000. France's death
toll from the virus is the third highest in Europe, behind Italy (14,681) and Spain (10, 935). We
reported today that a high number of people have been dying in care homes in Europe - 884 in
France since the epidemic began. France's baccalaureat - the high-school leaving exam - will not
take place this summer. This is the first time they have not been held since being introduced in
1808 under Napoleon Bonaparte.

AND FROM AUSTRALIA

GLOBAL MEDITATION FOR PLANETARY HEALING AND ASCENSION ON APRIL 4TH/5TH 2020

It is time to take action! It is time to take the destiny of our world in our own hands!
We all agree that the process of planetary liberation is taking too long, and the current timeline is
not going in the best direction. Here is our chance to collectively shift the timeline back into our
optimal timeline for planetary liberation. We are using the opportunity of the massive
astrological configuration of Jupiter Pluto conjunction on April 4th/5th to create a
portal through which we will unify our consciousness and trigger the process that will solidify the
optimal Ascension time-line for the planet and help humanity unite to overcome the
current global health crisis.​
MAKE THIS VIRAL! SHARE IT WORLDWIDE!
Post it on your websites and blogs! If you know an alternative media outlet, you can send it to them.
You can create a Facebook event for your local group of people doing this in your part of the world.
We also need one main Facebook group for this event. You can create a video about this and post it
on Youtube. Scientific studies have confirmed positive effects of mass meditations on human
society, so each of you that will participate in this activation can actually help bringing the Age of
Aquarius closer to us. This mass meditation helps the Light forces to ground the energy of Light on
the surface of the planet to completely heal the global human population from any illness, fear and
negativity, and to help the shifting of the planetary evolution back into the most positive Ascension
timeline that will lead us into the Age of Aquarius. Number of people doing that activation is the
single most influential factor within the power of the surface human population for speeding up
this process.
We can reach the critical mass of 144,000 people doing this activation!
This will create a massive healing chain reaction in the energy field worldwide.

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But for what we wish to accomplish, we need many more than that which is why we are aiming for
at least ONE MILLION MEDITATORS ON APRIL 4th/5th. We are counting on each of you to
make this happen! The power that we will have at our disposal on APRIL 4th/5th is
truly Astronomical in the most literal sense when the planets of Jupiter and Pluto
come together in the sky that day. We intend to harness this powerful astrological alignment
and create a massive SHIFT for humanity in the most positive and harmonious direction possible,
but this will require MASS PARTICIPATION and a joining of Hearts and Minds with singular
focus and intention on a level that has not yet been reached on planet Earth. With all of this global
chaos swirling around us, it is imperative that we the true Bearers of Light come together in
a Global Meditation on April 4th/5th and with profound heartfelt love Unite As One
Million Points of Light who will anchor in the energies of Peace, Harmony, Abundance,
Freedom, Healing and the most positive Ascension Timeline imaginable. No doubt
most, if not all, who read this letter already believe in and promote the power of meditation as a
tool for spiritual growth, healing and manifestation and that is commendable. You are now being
asked to expand that power by reaching out to all who follow your social media pages and read
your books or blogs and communicate that MASS MEDITATIONS on a GLOBAL SCALE need to
become a Top Priority – beginning with the powerful Astrological Ascension Portal that will open
April 4th/5th, 2020 when an unprecedented wave of light (5D gamma waves) will flood our planet.
There are Legions of Light Beings that have entered our galaxy at this time to assist us in our
ascension and help direct this high dimensional light our way on that momentous day. Whatever
your personal view or belief about ascension/evolution might be at this juncture, we can all agree
that it is beyond time for us to advance our consciousness as a collective for the upliftment and
healing of all beings on Earth.
The best possible way to do this is with MASS MEDITATION.
The greater the numbers the grander the results! We must harness our power collectively and
come together in much larger numbers to meditate, more often, and especially on key strategic
dates and times with a singular focus. This is the ONLY WAY we are going to evolve or ascend as a
society and put an end to all this madness! GLOBAL MASS MEDITATIONS ARE THE KEY TO OUR
LIBERATION AND THE QUANTUM LEAP WE ALL LONG FOR IN HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. IT IS
TIME TO USE THE MAGIC KEY! We will be doing this meditation in the exact moment of Jupiter
Pluto conjunction on April 4th/5th which will be the first moment when a truly powerful energy of
Age of Aquarius will hit the surface of the planet: We will be doing this meditation at 10:45 pm EST
on April 4th in New York.
This equals 9:45 pm CDT in Chicago, 8:45 pm MDT in Denver and 7:45 pm PDT in Los
Angeles. Europe, Asia and Australia will already have April 5th at the moment of the activation,
which will be:
3:45 am BST in London,
4:45 am CEST in Paris,
4:45 am EET in Cairo,
10:45 am CST in Taipei and Beijing,
11:45 am JST in Tokyo and
12:45 pm AEST in Sydney.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR MEDITATION
1. Use your own technique to bring you to a relaxed state of consciousness.
2. State your intent to use this meditation as a tool to shift the planet into the most optimal timeline
and as a tool to completely remove the coronavirus.
3. Visualize a pillar of brilliant white Light emanating from the Cosmic Central Sun, then being
distributed to Central Suns of all galaxies in this universe. Then visualize this light entering through
the Galactic Central Sun, then going through our Galaxy, then entering our Solar System and going
through all beings of Light inside our Solar System and then through all beings on planet Earth and
also through your body to the center of the Earth.
4. Visualize this Light transmuting all remaining coronavirus on Earth, disinfecting infected areas on
the planet, healing patients, removing all fear associated with this epidemic and restoring stability.
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5. Visualize the course of events on planet Earth shifting into the most positive timeline possible,
shifting away from all epidemics, away from all wars, away from all global domination. Visualize
white, pink, blue and golden Light healing all inequalities, erasing all poverty and bringing
abundance to all humanity. Visualize a new grand cosmic cycle of the Age of Aquarius beginning,
bringing pure Light, Love and Happiness to all beings on Earth.

(Suggested time for this meditation is 20 minutes.)

THE MOST POWERFUL TOOL WE HAVE FOR THE LIBERATION, UPLIFTMENT AND HEALING
OF HUMANITY AND ALL LIFE ON THIS PLANET IS FOCUSED GROUP INTENTION THROUGH
MASS MEDITATION. Please encourage everyone in your groups to print out, write down or copy
these instructions and save to a computer document ahead of time so that if they are unable to
access the guided audio/video or lose internet connection they can still participate right on time as
one cohesive unit. Let’s DO THIS regardless of what time of day it falls in your time zone!
It’s only 20 MINUTES that can change the entire Destiny of Our Planet. The power for radical
change and timeline shifts lies within us but we must execute it in practice together as a collective!

Saturday 4th April No post, no rubbish collection and everyone is asleep. Silence, sun and wind:
the world created anew. In small flats and high-rise buildings the world over locked-in children are
climbing the walls and people are discovering CREATIVITY in self-defence. My sister and her
family in Germany are making masks in different colours as a fashion statement, and her 8 yr-old
grand-daughter insists that all her teddies wear masks to perform the new musical she has written.
(She regularly mounts productions of various kinds, including circus acrobats (teddies) who fly up
to the ceiling crying Holé!) In this blisteringly hot weather it is horrifying to think of millions
worldwide incarcerated indoors with fractious children and exhausted parents. Violence is implicit in
this domestic situation. I feel SO SORRY for them in this forest paradise where we roam at will!
France's coronavirus death toll has risen by more than 1,000 to around 6,500 -
as another 160,000 police officers were deployed to enforce the country's strict
confinement laws. The head of the country's national health agency said the steep rise in
fatalities was because the figures included deaths from around 3,000 care homes for the
elderly.Worldwide, confirmed infections surged past one million and deaths topped 54,000,
according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say both numbers are seriously
under-counted because of the lack of testing, mild cases that were missed and governments that
are underplaying the extent of the crisis. Europe's three worst-hit countries - Italy, Spain and
France - surpassed 30,000 dead, or over half of the global toll.
And from America: 04/04/2020:

For Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard, the unfolding calamity is the
fulfilment of her worst fears. “When we first heard about coronavirus, I and several of my
colleagues worried that Trump would not attend to scientific advice. This is a man who has
exhibited a reckless disregard for scientific evidence over climate change; if he could do that, there
38
was always the question of whether he would take seriously any science.” Oreskes sees
Covid-19 as Trump’s ultimate challenge. Would he put the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Americans first, or would he dig into the tried-and-tested Republican playbook of showing hostility
to science and expertise, reining in government intervention and prioritizing the money markets?
“This was a test of whether Trump’s government would act. What we’ve seen is that for the people
in power in this country, ideology beats even an imminent threat.” Call for more
volunteers for coronavirus clinical trials as public urged to stay home over warm weekend.
President Trump encourages Americans to wear face masks, but says he will not comply

From the UK 04/04/2020

Britons should stay at home this weekend, despite the warm weather, to prevent the spread
of coronavirus. Prime minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the
public must stick to social distancing rules and resist the temptation to go outside in the sunshine.
But it came as Professor Graham Medley, a pandemic modeller advising the Government, warned
that Britain had “painted itself into a corner” with no clear exit strategy from the Covid-19 crisis. He
told The Times: “This disease is so nasty that we had to suppress it completely. Then we’ve kind of
painted ourselves into a corner, because then the question will be, what do we do now? “We will
have done three weeks of this lockdown, so there’s a big decision coming up on April 13. In broad
terms are we going to continue to harm children to protect vulnerable people, or not?”Prof Medley
added: “If we carry on with lockdown it buys us ore time, we can get more thought put into it, but it
doesn’t resolve anything, it’s a placeholder.”

The number of confirmed Coronavirus cases and deaths in the UK. His comments came after
England’s chief nursing officer, Ruth May, urged people to think of two nurses who died after
contracting coronavirus and “stay home for them”. Areema Nasreen and Aimee O’Rourke, both
mothers of three children, died alongside two healthcare assistants, it was announced on Friday.
Ms May, speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference, said: “This weekend is going to be
very warm and it will be very tempting to go out and enjoy those summer rays. But please, I ask you
39
to remember Aimee and Areema. Please stay at home for them. I worry that there’s going to be
more and I want to honour them today and recognise their service.” Meanwhile: The Department of
Health confirmed 684 more people died in hospital after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing
the total deaths in the UK to 3,605 as of 5pm on Thursday. Boris Johnson, who remains in
self-isolation inside Downing Street as his coronavirus symptoms persist, said he is “feeling better”.
The Queen will make an address to the nation about the coronavirus crisis on Sunday. Mr Johnson
urged people not to break social distancing rules as the weather warms up, even if they were going
“a bit stir crazy”. In a video on social media, he said: “I reckon a lot of people will be starting to think
that this is all going on for quite a long time and would rather be getting out there, particularly if
you’ve got kids in the household, everybody may be getting a bit stir crazy, and there may be just a
temptation to get out there, hang out and break the regulations. I just urge you not to do that.
Please, please stick with the guidance now.”
Coronavirus UK: Woman fined £660 for refusing to tell police why she was out
Thursday 2 April 2020 15:30, UK A woman arrested by police for breaking a new coronavirus
law has been fined £660 by magistrates. According to police, Marie Dinou, 41, refused to explain
to officers her reason for essential travel when they found her on a platform at Newcastle railway
station.She was arrested for breaching the new Coronavirus Act and ticket fraud and appeared in
court two days later, where she denied both offences. She was found guilty.The case was
condemned by privacy campaigners who claimed police risked losing public support by their
handling of the new emergency powers. Dinou, from York, was fined £85 for ticket fraud, but £660
for breaking the new COVID-19 regulations on leaving home without a reasonable excuse. She
was also ordered to pay £80 costs.

And from America

White House coronavirus briefing as U.S. surpasses 300,000 COVID-19 cases, 8,000 deaths
Medical staff dying as the Trump Federal Government inexplicably launches a bidding war to
prevent states receiving the essential protective and surgical equipment they had already ordered.
States are competing for supplies, and manufacturers aren’t sure who to ship PPE to first. Nurses
and supporters protest the lack of personal protective gear available at UCI Medical Center in
Orange, California amid the coronavirus pandemic on April 3. For weeks, state legislators and
health care providers across the country have called on the Trump administration to help with the
lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) available to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The
Trump administration has meanwhile argued it is the states’ responsibility to procure PPE, a stance
that has led states to compete with one another for supplies — and that has led to confusion on the
part of suppliers. Since March, US hospitals have faced shortages as the disease became
widespread: Health care workers say they’re rapidly running out of masks, gowns, gloves,
ventilators, and other protective supplies to treat Covid-19 patients, some of which are necessary to
40
protect doctors, nurses, and providers on the front lines. Some workers are wearing bandanas and
scarves as an alternative to masks, fashioning gowns from trash bags, and rationing or even
reusing medical equipment. The federal emergency stockpile is nearly depleted and “the supply
chain for PPE worldwide has broken down,” a DHS official told the Washington Post. The situation
is dire, and states, especially those with increasing numbers of coronavirus cases, are desperate
for supplies. However, the federal distribution of supplies has occurred unevenly and several
actions taken by the Trump administration will likely make it harder for hospitals to get the PPE and
ventilators they need in the weeks to come. There’s not enough PPE in the federal stockpile. States
are forced to compete for supplies. After President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus a
national emergency in March, he instructed governors to order their own ventilators and other PPE,
saying the federal government is “not a shipping clerk.” Trump added the administration will
“help out wherever we can,” but state leaders say that current efforts aren’t enough — and that the
Trump administration’s refusal to coordinate PPE distribution has forced them to compete with
one another for supplies. “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator,” said
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a press briefing on March 31. “We the states are trying to actively
get every piece of PPE that we can. We’re bidding against one another, and in some cases, the
federal government is taking priority,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on CNN’s State of the
Union.

A number of governors — including Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker — have said they’ve seen
orders for masks and other needed equipment canceled because the federal government outbid
them. This has led to some finding creative ways to disguise their orders to mask them from the
Trump administration. Baker’s administration worked with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, the Chinese
UN ambassador, and other Chinese officials to secure a shipment of 1.2 million face masks to the
state. The governor told reporters Thursday he worked with the Kraft family to create a “‘private
humanitarian mission’ to keep the Feds from finding out” about the mask shipment and seizing it,
and the masks came to the state on the Patriots’ team plane. Masks are being unloaded from the
New England Patriots jet, which was used to fly a massive shipment of more than 1 million N95
masks from China to Boston. Trump administration policy has left other states having to make
similar extraordinary efforts to obtain PPE — for example, Illinois legislators rushed to deliver a
$3.4 million check to a middleman at a McDonald’s parking lot so that the supplier he represented
wouldn’t cancel the deal in favor of other, potentially more lucrative offers. They successfully
handed off the check, and secured a shipment of 1.5 million N95 respirators from China.

The goods states have received from the Trump administration haven’t always been helpful. Local
governments, in some cases, have received broken or damaged PPE. Montgomery County,
Alabama’s shipment of 5,880 masks had dry rot and were expired, although the county later

41
received a replacement order. The city of Los Angeles was also given 170 broken ventilators,
which had to be repaired before use.

And distribution of medical supplies from the stockpile also appears to be uneven, the Washington
Post reported in late March. Massachusetts officials said the city of Boston has received 17 percent
of the protective gear it requested, while the state of Maine got a shipment of 25,558 N95
respirators, or 5 percent of what it sought. On the other hand, Florida has received all the supplies it
requested — two shipments for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face
shields, and 238,000 gloves. The amount of supplies left in the federal stockpile is dwindling, and it
appears that what the US currently has on hand isn’t close to meeting the overall demand that’s
expected to last through the coronavirus pandemic.

Supplies are being made, but companies are struggling with where to send them.

Critical medical supplies are being produced in the US, but instructions as to who will receive the
products haven’t been made clear to suppliers — a situation that has reportedly left badly needed
supplies sitting in warehouses. Manufacturers who are making PPE at the request of the Trump
administration told CNN recently they have not yet heard whether they should ship their products to
states, to FEMA for distribution, or elsewhere.

On March 24, the Advanced Medical Technology Association wrote a letter to FEMA, urging the
Trump administration to decide “how to allocate these products in the most effective way” among
state and local governments. “Some of these potential purchasers should have a higher priority
than others based on the acuity of patient needs in their areas,” the letter read. “It is difficult for
manufacturers to establish these priorities.”

The solution to this would be for the federal government to make greater use of the Defense
Production Act, which would allow the Trump administration to coordinate production,
procurement, and delivery. Trump, however, has made limited use of the act thus far, first to ask
General Motors to manufacture ventilators, and later using the law to prevent the hoarding or
exporting of critical medical gear like gloves and surgical masks — a move some in industry, like
3M, have warned “would likely cause other countries to retaliate and do the same.” As a result, 3M
claimed, “the net number of respirators being made available to the United States would actually
decrease.” These policy choices ultimately mean there will continue to be delays in getting PPE into
the hands of health workers, putting greater strain on hospitals and caretakers — and that local
officials and hospital procurement officers will continue to have to take extraordinary measures to
get PPE.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner now in charge of US organisation and supply.

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 CHAPTER SIX
Domestic Issues

Sunday 5th April 5, 2020 2.15am and I’m sorry to say there has been a violent scene on the
doorstep. It’s a beautiful night and Cutie-Pie has been out flirting in the moonlight. Suffice it to say
that she aroused a gentleman caller to pay us an unscheduled visit obliging the Goddess to give
him a round telling-off that you could hear in the next village. She is so brave and beautiful - we
really should call her Boadicea after the warrior Queen. I have been out and done my own bit of
hissing and clapping, though nothing to rival hers, and heard the heartbroken lover crying beyond
the gate. Cruel Cutie-Pie! My heart bled for him. Then I blocked the doorway and went back to bed.

TOILET ROLL CRISIS

FROM THE DIRECTOR OF ECOLOGY AT MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY

“. . . . folks in my place will wonder how to survive without tissues and toilet paper, until
they discover my bum-washer as an epiphany of liberation…from toilet paper forever!”
“BUM-WASHER” JAPANESE BIDET

The cat can’t steal this but she can have a nice drink or a good wash
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Monday 6th April 6, 2020

Coronavirus: Japan to declare state of emergency in bid to contain outbreak

New measures are set to come into force this week amid alarm over the growing number of
confirmed cases in the country.

This will give governors the authority to call on people to stay at home and businesses to close
Japan's PM Shinzo Abe to announce state of emergency as infection spreads
Boris Johnson spent the night in hospital as his COVID-19 symptoms persist
US braces for 'Pearl Harbor moment' as deaths reach 'horrific point'
England's chief medical officer has recovered from his coronavirus symptoms and is back at work
Debenhams moves to protect itself from creditors during crisis
Spain latest coronavirus figures - 4,273 new cases taking total to 135,032 while there have been a
further 637 deaths, bringing the overall number to 13,055

This blog from government advisor on life sciences, tweeted by a health minister, sets out how all
the antibody tests so far have failed, why they’ve failed and it’s so hard it will take at least a month
to develop / find a new test.

We may never forget the coronavirus lockdown. But are we still going to be
talking to each other at the end of it?
Because apart from worries about the virus, there are likely to be rising tensions in some families
having to live on top of one another at home. In ordinary times, couples spend on average
two-and-a-half hours together each day, says researcher into relationships Prof Jacqui Gabb of the
Open University. But that was in the BC era (before coronavirus), and now we can spend 15 or 16
of our waking hours together. And throw into that combustible mix, children who are out of school.
Is it going to leave us seething with irritability or bring us serenely closer than ever before? "We've
never lived through something like this," says Prof Gabb. Most of the usual emotional pressure-
cooker points - like being cooped up together at Christmas or going on a family holiday - have
clearly defined exit points.

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But not with the coronavirus lockdown. "There are no certainties any more," she says. But there are
all the ingredients for stress on relationships, she says. There are worries about jobs and money,
not enough personal space, lack of childcare, not being able to do the things you enjoy, not seeing
friends and the anxieties caused by the virus outbreak.
The parent
"I am a single parent who is a key worker. I can work from home but am finding it impossible with
my six and 10-year-old at home. Work have said I can drop my hours, but will lose the pay which I
can't afford. My son has immune difficulties so cannot send him to school and we live with my
84-year-old mother. Feel really stuck!" Shelley-Ann on workingmums.co.uk

"Lack of freedoms will be felt differently," says Dr Caroline Schuster, a psychologist who has
worked with families in Dorset and Wiltshire. “People might be feeling a "lack of privacy, boredom
and isolation, even in a family. For all of us, kids included, there is a loss of the old way of life."

Both experts are concerned about an increase in domestic violence from the lockdown. Figures
from the National Domestic Abuse helpline show a 25% increase in calls for help since the
lockdown began. We've also entered a strange new digital existence, with many working and
socialising online. But Prof Gabb warns that self-broadcasting on social media during the lockdown
can put even more psychological pressure on families. Particularly if the smugness levels get too
high. "Not everyone is at home in their giant kitchen. Other people are struggling to feed their kids
and are going stir-crazy," she says.

The teenager

"My parents are so annoying. I'll come downstairs and say, 'Good morning', and they'll reply, 'Good
AFTERNOON'. It's like, OK, I'm a bum, I get it." From "annoying parents" on Twitter.

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The story of the lockdown is being seen through the eyes of the haves, rather than the have-nots,
says Prof Gabb.

"It's not as easy as just put on an exercise video and bond with each other," she says.

Her concerns are echoed by research from Save the Children, with the charity finding the biggest
worries for parents in the lockdown are getting enough food, helping children with schoolwork and
concerns about money.

Children are worried about someone in their family getting sick, food shortages and not seeing friends.

The loss of control over much of our everyday lives is stoking the domestic tensions. For adults used to
being independent "it's quite infantilising", says Prof Gabb.

"A sense of control is incredibly important for humans," says Dr Punit Shah, a psychologist at the University
of Bath.

ey are going to end

When we feel we have no control we feel stressed - and he says there are all kinds of "coping
mechanisms" appearing. People might take a sudden interest in exercise, or focus on cleaning their
house or working on the garden, giving them a sense of control over something.

The head teacher

"It is absolutely not possible to facilitate distance-learning with a primary-aged child and work from
home at the same time. The very idea is nonsense. If you're trying to do that, stop now. You can
certainly have activities where your child learns, but your focus is your job, and survival. Stop trying
to be superheroes." Joseph Hellett to parents in Hastings. But Dr Shah says we should be more
upbeat about what might emerge from this enforced confinement - and to "give ourselves more
credit" for how we're adapting. There could be an "identity shift" within families, as parents and
children get to know each other better, says the psychologist. "We shouldn't assume it will be
negative and problematic," he says.

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Dr Shah says we're still finding out during this experience what helps us feel better. It might be a
case of fear and clothing in the lockdown. Because in his case, Dr Shah says he feels more
comfortable wearing smart working clothes when he is working from home, even if it surprises
everyone else on the video conference.

One of the most visible tactics for stress-busting seems to be the family pet. When you go outside
everyone who isn't jogging seems to be walking a dog. "There are really positive benefits," says
Prof Gabb. Pets are particularly important for people living on their own, a group she thinks are not
being adequately acknowledged during the lockdown.

Walking a dog might also make people feel more justified in being outside - and Dr Shah says our
behaviour is being heavily influenced by "social pressure". This includes parents feeling made to
feel guilty about not having turned overnight into an accomplished teacher for their stay-at-home
children. But there are soothing words for anyone already suffering from laptop neck or Zoom ache.
A primary school head teacher in Hastings sent a message telling parents "not to stress or feel
guilty" during these strange weeks. "Stop trying to be superheroes," he told them.

UK STATISTICS TODAY: 51,608 infected, 5,914 deaths. And in America

3337,309 infected, and 9643 deaths. Boris working from hospital.
Damning report from government watchdog finds hospitals face
severe shortages of medical gear
Top public health officials warned this weekend that the worst of the pandemic
in the United States will be seen this week.
47
Although the virus has hit different states with different degrees of severity, there is almost
no community left in the country that does not have several cases, and the virus’s
contagiousness and hardiness — it can survive on surfaces much longer than a typical flu
virus, for example — means that it will be impossible to get under control without severely
limiting public life.

To that end, although public officials like Fauci and Adams warn about almost unimaginable
future consequences — particularly in the short term — they have continued to encourage
individuals to practice social distancing. Knowing how limited medical supplies are and
facing what will potentially be our worst weeks yet, Fauci said Sunday that things will
improve if everyone can “just buckle down, continue to mitigate, continue to do the physical
separation ... we got to get through this week that’s coming up.”
AND IN ITALY
Doctors and nurses are in trauma over deaths of more than 100 colleagues. In Rome doctors are
dealing with the trauma of losing their colleagues. Italy's medical community feels a sense of
trauma. At the time of writing this, 80 doctors and 21 nurses have lost their lives to COVID-19 since
February. In that time, two more nurses have taken their own lives. As medics grieve for the
colleagues they have lost, they are working to compensate for so many others that have been
infected and are in quarantine. More than 12,000 healthcare workers have tested positive for the
coronavirus so far in Italy. In one hospital alone in Lombardy, more than 300 staff have been
infected.The town's mayor called for more support after precious beds in Spedali Civili's intensive
care unit had to lie empty due to a lack of healthy staff. "We were asking each other who will be the
next and that of course is psychologically demanding because apart from colleagues, we are
friends," he said.

Queen delivers historic speech to promise Britain: "We'll meet again"

48
Her Majesty, who has lived through a multitude of crises, invoked the Blitz spirit in a
compassionate speech. It was the moment we had all been waiting for. Cooped up indoors
like battery hens, facing an Easter separated from our loved ones, the nation needed the
kind of rallying reassurance that only the Queen can provide. In these strange times of
self-isolation and social distancing, there was only ever going to be one person Britons
would willingly invite into their living rooms on a Sunday night. Here was the Queen of them
all, delivering her own lesson, not just to the home-schoolers but their anxious parents, and
their exiled grandparents and great-grandparents. From selfless NHS workers, to hard
-working shelf-stackers, to the newly unemployed - this was a message of hope for all....
Dame Vera Lynn's classic soars in charts after Queen references lyric in speech

“We’ll meet again . . “ Dame Vera's daughter said her mother found it funny she was back in
the charts after all these years.

My cousin, a highly-esteemed portrait painter and landscape artist in his sixties, has taken up
knitting during the lockdown. Here is his first project not yet finished. A SCARF!

Tuesday 7th April 2020

Coronavirus has now infected more than one million people worldwide, but its impact
extends far beyond just those who have had it. Even the frequency of use of the word
"unprecedented" is unprecedented at the moment. According to Google Trends it's been used
three times more over the last two weeks than the highest point recorded previously.

As governments around the world have enacted new measures and given official advice, we take a
look at the impact that it's had on people and the world around them. How the world shut down. The
49
approaches to dealing with coronavirus across the world have been wide-ranging to say the
least.
In Colombia the days that you're allowed to leave the house depend on the number of your national
ID card; in Serbia a designated dog-walking hour was introduced; and in Belarus the president has
gone against medical advice, recommending vodka and saunas as a way to stay safe. Some of the
more common approaches have seen governments issue recommendations on social distancing
for part or all of the country, while others have acted to restrict all non-essential internal movement.
The latter is often called a lockdown.
When the virus was first identified in China in late 2019, lockdown seemed extreme.But as the
outbreak has spread around the world, it has become more difficult to manage. More countries
have opted to take the strictest measures possible to contain it. Well over 100 countries worldwide
had instituted either a full or partial lockdown by the end of March 2020, affecting billions of people.

And many others had recommended restricted movement for some or all of their citizens. China
has managed to ease its restrictions after passing through the worst period of climbing cases and
deaths, but life is still far from normal. The rest of us may have a long way to go.

Flight risk

When the virus first appeared, several countries brought in initial restrictions on flights from China,
or required visitors from at-risk areas to be quarantined on arrival.

After it had been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, on 11 March, there were
more all-encompassing measures. President Trump blocked all non-essential arrivals to the US
from the European Union on 15 March, and a day later the EU did the same to all visitors from
outside the Schengen free-travel zone. By the end of March, air traffic from some of the world's
biggest airports had dropped to a fraction of what it was at the same time last year, or even what it
was at the start of this month. The number of commercial flights last month was down by more than
a quarter globally, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. In the final week of March,
as more and more countries introduced travel restrictions to try to contain the virus, traffic declined
63% from the same period last year. On 25 March, Heathrow - one of the busiest airports in the
world serving about 80m passengers per year - recorded more than 1,000 fewer flights compared
with an equivalent day in 2019.
Getting around
It's not just getting from city to city. Travel within major cities across the globe has ground to a halt
as restrictions on movement and social contact have come into force. As of 31 March, residents in
cities like Madrid, Paris, London and New York were making fewer than one-tenth as many
journeys using the app as they did normally, according to data from travel app Citymapper.

50
In Milan in northern Italy, which has been locked down for several weeks now, only 3% of trips were
being planned via the Citymapper mobile app, compared with before the outbreak. The data also
suggests that people cut down on travel in the days leading up to government-enforced shutdowns.

For example, the partial lockdown in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous city, came into place on 24
March but trips had already declined sharply the week before. Even in cities where authorities have
issued recommendations on social distancing and refrained from imposing strict lockdowns, it
appears that people are still restricting their travel. ln Stockholm, Sweden, where the government
has avoided draconian measures, issuing guidelines rather than strict rules, the Citymapper data
suggests planned trips - which can include both walking and public transport - fell by 70%.

Stockholm's public transport company reported last week that passenger numbers on subway and
commuter trains had halved. Movement is also below normal rates in some of the Asian cities that
Citymapper collects data for, like Hong Kong and Singapore, which have not enforced the type of
shutdowns seen elsewhere. The South Korean capital Seoul hasn't come to a standstill like
European capitals, despite facing huge numbers of coronavirus cases - a sign of the country's
decision to focus on widespread testing and contact tracing rather than social distancing. We see
the same behaviour with people on the roads. Major cities around the world were already becoming
steadily less busy before official lockdown measures came in, congestion data from location
technology specialists TomTom shows. In Tokyo there hasn't been an official lockdown yet, but
schools have been shut since the beginning of March. That, and a lack of tourists, could explain
why traffic there has been marginally below last year's levels without the sharp downturn obvious
elsewhere. In Jakarta, Indonesia, where there has also been no official lockdown, congestion has
already dropped to almost zero - similar to Los Angeles and New Delhi which shut down on
different dates.
The congestion score is an indication of how much longer it would take to make a journey through
the city compared with when there is no traffic at all. A rating of 50 means that a trip will take 50%
more time than it would if the roads were completely free, for example, so a half-hour drive would
become 45 minutes. The regular low points on the chart generally come at weekends. In China
there are signs that things are beginning to get back to normal. Traffic levels are back to about half
the 2019 level in Beijing and Shanghai but have been steadily growing since the beginning of
February following extended Chinese New Year celebrations from 25 January.
In Wuhan, where the outbreak originated, traffic levels are still next to zero compared with last year.

Satellite images from the European Space Agency and NASA show a dramatic reduction in the
amount of harmful greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Researchers from Stanford
University say in places like China the reduction in air pollution has led to fewer premature deaths
from breathing toxic air.

51
AND FROM AMERICA

Death rate in New York from coronavirus shoots past peers in Europe. It has the highest
death rate from coronavirus when analysed against comparable regions around the world.

Coronavirus: Why healthcare workers are at risk of moral injury o

It is widely known that veterans can return from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD). Far less appreciated is moral injury - a trauma wrapped up in guilt that we are now
learning more about thanks to US-based research. Moral injury most often occurs when a
person commits, fails to prevent or witnesses an act that is anathema to their moral beliefs. The
Department of Veterans Affairs website likens it to psychological trauma involving "extreme and
unprecedented life experience", that can lead to "haunting states of inner conflict and turmoil".
US-based research into moral injury is now illuminating how such injuries can impact people in all
walks of life, but especially first responders and healthcare workers facing the Covid-19 coronavirus
outbreak. Amid reports of New York City's emergency services getting overwhelmed and states
struggling to provide enough ventilators, first responders and healthcare workers potentially face
having to decide who gets a ventilator and who gets saved - something one nurse has described as
"her biggest fear".'You prepare for the worst as a nurse but not this' Already thousands are
dying in their care - and medical workers say they are facing scenarios they had never anticipated.
One doctor told the BBC the stress was intense. "Seeing people die is not the issue. We're trained
to deal with death… The issue is giving up on people we wouldn't normally give up on."

The young doctors being asked to play god

A professor in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, says: "Few people
in healthcare have had real-life experience with triage in which a significant number of
life-and-death decisions had to be made because of equipment shortages. That increases the
chances that they may experience moral injury as a result of their jobs." The risk is compounded,
he says, by workers at the front-lines of the epidemic - in places like New York, Italy and Spain -
working long shifts with little break and sleep before they get back on the job. This leaves little if any
time to process an incident that, if left unattended, may prove a moral injury in the making. "A
person doesn't just take the gloves off afterwards without that loss affecting their moral fibre, their
soul," says Nöel Lipana, who was left with a moral injury from his 2008 Afghanistan tour. He now
works as a social worker while promoting better understanding of moral injuries both in the military
and beyond, which includes staging art performances and a forthcoming documentary film, Quiet
Summons. "They came into this profession to help people, so what do you do when there is that
sense of helplessness: you are a great physician, a great surgeon, you have some of the best
medical equipment in the world, but you still can't save someone."

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Wednesday 8th April
Basking on the sunlit terrace with Cutie-Pie this morning we were awoken by
the sweet love-song of Basil - a misshapen white-coated gentleman bearing a
gift - (not for me I am thankful to say, for though at least it was dead, it was not
really to my taste). Cutie-Pie lived up to her name, observing her suitor with no
visible signs of tenderness, but maybe an awakening appetite in spite of
having put away a hearty breakfast. The Man in the White Suit clearly knew
how to please the Ladies, but I had to shoo him away as it was not his garden
and he had not been invited.

It is becoming clear that this crisis is revealing who we are. For if Europeans are
fixated on toilet paper it seems Americans are determined to shoot the virus dead with guns.
BOISE, Idaho The world’s largest gun store, in metro Atlanta, has had lines that are six and eight
people deep. A gun store in Los Angeles had lines that stretched down the block. And at least one
store in Idaho put limits on sales after its shelves were nearly cleared out.

Just as grocery stores have been stripped bare by Americans panicked by coronavirus, guns and
ammunition have started flying off the shelves. Retailers say the buying frenzy is being fueled by
consumers who are worried that people are becoming so desperate and unpredictable, they need
to ensure they can protect themselves. “It’s been insane,” said Jay Wallace, who owns Adventure
Outdoors in Smyrna, Georgia, adding that his ammunition sales are up more than five times the
usual numbers. Sales spiked in a matter of days, industry experts say. Some of the purchases are
made by people buying their first firearm. Others are existing gun owners adding to their collection
or stocking up on ammunition after seeing grocery stores depleted, schools closed and big events
cancelled, including the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting.

As recently as Friday, Retting Guns in Culver City, California, posted on its Facebook page that it
had plenty of handguns and a decent supply of ammunition. But by the weekend, photographs
showed lines extending out its doors and down the block. The store posted on its Facebook page
that the staff was too busy to answer the phone or continue holding firearms safety certification
classes. Ed Turner, who owns Ed’s Public Safety in Stockbridge, Georgia, said his shop was not
seeing people “flailing their arms screaming it’s the end of the world,” but sales were up five times
the usual volume. “Worst day on the stock market since 1987 and shelves getting bare apparently
have got everyone’s attention,” he said. In the 27 years he’s been in business, he said, “I’ve never
seen it like this. … This is self-preservation. This is panic. This is ‘I won’t be able to protect my
family from the hordes and the walking dead.”

53
 Social distancing offences

Thursday 9th April UK Figures today 5491 new cases, 938 new deaths

UK TOTAL CASES 60,733, TOTAL DEATHS 7,097 RECOVERED 135

HERE A very surprised Cutie-Pie got chased by a blackbird this morning and no doubt she
deserved it. And in England a very gentle spiritual healer friend of mine went shopping in
London. Queueing outside Waitrose in an orderly 2 metre line she was appalled to find a
woman inserting herself to look at Easter Eggs in the window: ”GET OFF!” she screamed.
“You’re invading my space! LEAVE NOW!” The new normal? I did my exciting furtive visit to
the bank again last night – for I’m not allowed out – and the streets were empty but for a tiny
handful of elderly ladies who were getting their money from the ATM machines.

A huge drama tonight - Drifting off to sleep in a hot bath there was an explosive
bang and water started pouring onto the floor from an unseen source. It seems
the tap had blown off after succumbing to twenty-five years of hard water from
my well, (a large iron content due to afore-mentioned Pre-Cambrian features
54
perhaps,) and before I could get dry and struggle into my nighty the whole
cottage was flooded with several inches of water. I phoned my nearby plumber
/electrician friend who was accustomed to saving me in my hour of need, (this
was our fourth flood), and he and his wife managed to mop, sweep and dab at
what seemed a Biblical addition to the four horseman of the Apocalypse: War,
Fire, Plague and now Flood. When will it end?

LATER: Have been up all night drying the place out and was just falling asleep
again when my dear friend arrived in his huge van and REPLACED THE TAP
for me. So my emergency buckets of water intended for flushing the toilet and
washing my APC (Arm-Pits and Crutch) can now be used to water the plants.
Hooray!

Coronavirus: 500,000 cases in the US as 2,000 patients die in one day

More than 2,000 people who tested positive for coronavirus died across the US on Friday -
the highest number of fatalities seen so far.
Saturday 11th April

UK 19 NHS workers die with coronavirus but health sec says PPE not to blame
Once COVID19 seeps into care homes it’s monumentally difficult to control
Scandal among scandals is the care home structure in Britain.We will look back at
this appalling, tragic episode in our global history, and our children and grandchildren will
ask us: Did you really leave the most vulnerable of our society - the elderly, the infirm, the
defenceless, the muddled, sick and weak - in care homes, shut away from their closest
relatives? Did you leave them to be ravaged by a deadly virus, and do very little. Once
COVID-19 seeps into these homes, it is a monumentally difficult job to protect the residents
inside. The respiratory disease attacks the lungs, making it difficult to breathe. We're told by
the experts that it hits those with underlying conditions worst. That has become a catch-all
phrase that means most of us believe it couldn't possibly apply to us or anyone we know or
love. And yet it does. It basically covers everybody. I've interviewed fit men in their 30s who
have collapsed after they have done their training runs. I've spoken to the children of
medical directors who're still working beyond retirement, nurses with young children, and
pensioners. They are all susceptible to this disease.
55
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Easter 12th April 2020

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE

We feared this would happen to Julie Andrews one day. And the innocent Little Ones being
lectured simply for being alive to The Sound of Music! Horrifying!

HAPPY EASTER

56
A London Correspondant made this WWII Brooklyn Blackout cake, which has three
tiers of sponge coated with chocolate fudge. He wore latex gloves so he could safely
offer it to friends during the Plague lock-down. Well Done David!

Mother and new-born baby drowned in bowl of water at Easter-tide

Yes alright they were salamanders - but so what? It’s a tragic accident that should never

have happened. Why was she giving birth in a bowl of water when there was a huge pond

nearby? Did she not feel safe surrounded by all those males in the mating season? Once

again we must suspect domestic violence. And who was there to support and protect her in

this vulnerable moment when a precious new life was being born? I feel responsible.

No-one told me she needed help or I would have guided her to a zone of safety. All Life is

precious, and this should never have taken place in my garden always regarded as a

safe-haven for wild-life in this Pre-Cambrian forest. May God be with their tiny souls on

this beautiful Easter Sunday.

From “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe published 1722

“The ministers, to do them justice, and preachers of most sorts that were serious and
understanding persons, thundered against wicked practices, and exposed the folly as well
as the wickedness of them together, and the most sober and judicious people despised
and abhorred them. But it was impossible to make any impression upon the middling
people and the working labouring poor. Their fears were predominant over all their
passions, and they threw away their money in a most distracted manner upon those
whimsies. Maid-servants especially, and men-servants, were the chief of their customers,
and their question generally was, after the first demand of ‘Will there be a plague?’ I say,
the next question was, ‘Oh, sir I for the Lord’s sake, what will become of me? Will my
mistress keep me, or will she turn me off? Will she stay here, or will she go into the country?
And if she goes into the country, will she take me with her, or leave me here to be starved
and undone?’ And the like of menservants.
The truth is, the case of poor servants was very dismal, as I shall have occasion to
mention again by-and-by, for it was apparent a prodigious number of them would be
turned away, and it was so. And of them abundance perished, and particularly of those that
these false prophets had flattered with hopes that they should be continued in their
services, and carried with their masters and mistresses into the country; and had not public

57
charity provided for these poor creatures, whose number was exceeding great and in all
cases of this nature must be so, they would have been in the worst condition of any people
in the city.
These things agitated the minds of the common people for many months, while the first
apprehensions were upon them, and while the plague was not, as I may say, yet broken out.
But I must also not forget that the more serious part of the inhabitants behaved after
another manner. The Government encouraged their devotion, and appointed public
prayers and days of fasting and humiliation, to make public confession of sin and implore
the mercy of God to avert the dreadful judgement which hung over their heads; and it is
not to be expressed with what alacrity the people of all persuasions embraced the occasion;
how they flocked to the churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there
was often no coming near, no, not to the very doors of the largest churches. Also there
were daily prayers appointed morning and evening at several churches, and days of private
praying at other places; at all which the people attended, I say, with an uncommon
devotion. Several private families also, as well of one opinion as of another, kept family
fasts, to which they admitted their near relations only. So that, in a word, those people who
were really serious and religious applied themselves in a truly Christian manner to the
proper work of repentance and humiliation, as a Christian people ought to do.
Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in these things; the very Court,
which was then gay and luxurious, put on a face of just concern for the public danger. All
the plays and interludes which, after the manner of the French Court, had been set up, and
began to increase among us, were forbid to act; the gaming-tables, public dancing-rooms,
and music-houses, which multiplied and began to debauch the manners of the people,
were shut up and suppressed; and the jack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet-shows,
rope-dancers, and such-like doings, which had bewitched the poor common people, shut
up their shops, finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the people were agitated with
other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at these things sat upon the countenances
even of the common people. Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of
their graves, not of mirth and diversions.
But even those wholesome reflections—which, rightly managed, would have most
happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make confession of their sins, and look up
to their merciful Saviour for pardon, imploring His compassion on them in such a time of
their distress, by which we might have been as a second Nineveh—had a quite contrary
extreme in the common people, who, ignorant and stupid in their reflections as they were
brutishly wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by their fright to extremes of folly;
and, as I have said before, that they ran to conjurers and witches, and all sorts of deceivers,
to know what should become of them (who fed their fears, and kept them always alarmed

58
and awake on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets), so they were as mad upon
their running after quacks and mountebanks, and every practising old woman, for
medicines and remedies; storing themselves with such multitudes of pills, potions, and
preservatives, as they were called, that they not only spent their money but even poisoned
themselves beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their bodies
for the plague, instead of preserving them against it. On the other hand it is incredible and
scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over
with doctors’ bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering in physic, and
inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which was generally set off with such
flourishes as these, viz.: ‘Infallible preventive pills against the plague.’ ‘Neverfailing
preservatives against the infection.’ ‘Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air.’
‘Exact regulations for the conduct of the body in case of an infection.’ ‘Anti-pestilential
pills.’ ‘Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before.’ ‘An universal
remedy for the plague.’ ‘The only true plague water.’ ‘The royal antidote against all kinds
of infection’;—and such a number more that I cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a
book of themselves to set them down.
Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for directions and advice in the
case of infection. These had specious titles also, such as these:—

‘An eminent High Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland, where he resided during
all the time of the great plague last year in Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people
that actually had the plague upon them.’

‘An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice secret to prevent
infection, which she found out by her great experience, and did wonderful cures with it in
the late plague there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day.’

‘An ancient gentlewoman, having practised with great success in the late plague in this city,
anno 1636, gives her advice only to the female sex. To be spoken with,’ &c.

‘An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of antidotes against all sorts
of poison and infection, has, after forty years’ practice, arrived to such skill as may, with
God’s blessing, direct persons how to prevent their being touched by any contagious
distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis.’

I take notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two or three dozen of the like
and yet have abundance left behind. ’Tis sufficient from these to apprise any one of the
humour of those times, and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and
cheated the poor people of their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious and fatal
preparations; some with mercury, and some with other things as bad, perfectly remote

59
from the thing pretended to, and rather hurtful than serviceable to the body in case an
infection followed.
I cannot omit a subtility of one of those quack operators, with which he gulled the poor
people to crowd about him, but did nothing for them without money. He had, it seems,
added to his bills, which he gave about the streets, this advertisement in capital letters, viz.,
‘He gives advice to the poor for nothing.’
Abundance of poor people came to him accordingly, to whom he made a great many fine
speeches, examined them of the state of their health and of the constitution of their bodies,
and told them many good things for them to do, which were of no great moment. But the
issue and conclusion of all was, that he had a preparation which if they took such a
quantity of every morning, he would pawn his life they should never have the plague; no,
though they lived in the house with people that were infected. This made the people all
resolve to have it; but then the price of that was so much, I think ’twas half-a-crown. ‘But,
sir,’ says one poor woman, ‘I am a poor almswoman and am kept by the parish, and your
bills say you give the poor your help for nothing.’ ‘Ay, good woman,’ says the doctor, ‘so I
do, as I published there. I give my advice to the poor for nothing, but not my physic.’ ‘Alas,
sir!’ says she, ‘that is a snare laid for the poor, then; for you give them advice for nothing;
that is to say, you advise them gratis, to buy your physic for their money; so does every
shop-keeper with his wares.’ Here the woman began to give him ill words, and stood at his
door all that day, telling her tale to all the people that came, till the doctor finding she
turned away his customers, was obliged to call her upstairs again, and give her his box of
physic for nothing, which perhaps, too, was good for nothing when she had it.
But to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be imposed upon by all sorts
of pretenders and by every mountebank. There is no doubt but these quacking sort of
fellows raised great gains out of the miserable people, for we daily found the crowds that
ran after them were infinitely greater, and their doors were more thronged than those of Dr
Brooks, Dr Upton, Dr Hodges, Dr Berwick, or any, though the most famous men of the time.
And I was told that some of them got five pounds a day by their physic.
But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may serve to give an idea of
the distracted humour of the poor people at that time: and this was their following a worse
sort of deceivers than any of these; for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their
pockets and get their money, in which their wickedness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the
side of the deceivers, not upon the deceived. But in this part I am going to mention, it lay
chiefly in the people deceived, or equally in both; and this was in wearing charms, philtres,
exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations, to fortify the body with them
against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of possession of an
evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up

60
with so many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as particularly the word
Abracadabra, formed in triangle or pyramid, thus:—
ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR Others had the Jesuits’
ABRACADAB mark in a cross:
ABRACADA IH
ABRACAD S.
ABRACA
ABRAC Others nothing but this
ABRA mark, thus:
ABR
AB **
A {*}
I might spend a great deal of time in my exclamations against the follies, and indeed the
wickedness, of those things, in a time of such danger, in a matter of such consequences as
this, of a national infection. But my memorandums of these things relate rather to take
notice only of the fact, and mention only that it was so. How the poor people found the
insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the
dead-carts and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms
and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along.
All this was the effect of the hurry the people were in, after the first notion of the plague
being at hand was among them, and which may be said to be from about Michaelmas 1664,
but more particularly after the two men died in St Giles’s in the beginning of December;
and again, after another alarm in February. For when the plague evidently spread itself,
they soon began to see the folly of trusting to those unperforming creatures who had
gulled them of their money; and then their fears worked another way, namely, to
amazement and stupidity, not knowing what course to take or what to do either to help or
relieve themselves. But they ran about from one neighbour’s house to another, and even in
the streets from one door to another, with repeated cries of, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us!
What shall we do?’
Indeed, the poor people were to be pitied in one particular thing in which they had little
or no relief, and which I desire to mention with a serious awe and reflection, which perhaps
every one that reads this may not relish; namely, that whereas death now began not, as we
may say, to hover over every one’s head only, but to look into their houses and chambers
and stare in their faces. Though there might be some stupidity and dulness of the mind
(and there was so, a great deal), yet there was a great deal of just alarm sounded into the
very inmost soul, if I may so say, of others. Many consciences were awakened; many hard
hearts melted into tears; many a penitent confession was made of crimes long concealed. It

61
would wound the soul of any Christian to have heard the dying groans of many a
despairing creature, and none durst come near to comfort them. Many a robbery, many a
murder, was then confessed aloud, and nobody surviving to record the accounts of it.
People might be heard, even into the streets as we passed along, calling upon God for
mercy through Jesus Christ, and saying, ‘I have been a thief, ‘I have been an adulterer’, ‘I
have been a murderer’, and the like, and none durst stop to make the least inquiry into
such things or to administer comfort to the poor creatures that in the anguish both of soul
and body thus cried out. Some of the ministers did visit the sick at first and for a little while,
but it was not to be done. It would have been present death to have gone into some houses.
The very buriers of the dead, who were the hardenedest creatures in town, were sometimes
beaten back and so terrified that they durst not go into houses where the whole families
were swept away together, and where the circumstances were more particularly horrible,
as some were; but this was, indeed, at the first heat of the distemper.
Time inured them to it all, and they ventured everywhere afterwards without hesitation,
as I shall have occasion to mention at large hereafter.”

Easter Monday 13th Aprl 2020

2am: A horrific fight has erupted as a sexually explicit gentleman, driven to distraction,

tried to force his way in through the private door of the Goddess, who drove him out in a

fury of curses and blood-curdling expletives. Luckily I was awake and did my best to help,

but he had left the premises by the time I got out, and I could not hope to emulate her

ferocious passion and extraordinary vocabulary. For an exquisitely small and glamorous

lady, still in the first flush of youth, she has an amazing power and authority, and I am

fearfully proud of her. Cutie-Pie too surprised me by remaining calm and showed her

fearlessness by having a bite to eat - then settling down again to go back to sleep on my

bed, where they remain as guardians to my slumber. How did I deserve to be so blessed?

Coronavirus hospital deaths in UK top 10,000 as Matt Hancock says it is

'sombre day' The official figures for Coronavirus deaths do not give a complete picture,
as they do not include deaths in care homes. Another 737 people have died with
Coronavirus in UK hospitals, taking the total to 10,612, says the Department of Health. The
total number of COVID-19 infections in the UK is now 84,279. In England, a further 657
people have died, bringing the overall number of Coronavirus deaths to 10,53

62
“We've never faced anything like this” Of the deaths recorded in England, there were 42
patients aged between 30 and 98 who had no known underlying health condition. "The fact
that over 10,000 people have now lost their lives to this invisible killer demonstrates how
serious this Coronavirus is and why the national effort is so important." But the latest
figures don’t give a true picture of fatalities as they don’t include deaths in care homes.
It comes amid mounting concerns that elderly residents in nursing homes and the staff
looking after them have been "forgotten" during the coronavirus crisis. It has also been
confirmed three more nurses have died after contracting the virus, taking the number of
NHS staff deaths to more than 30. Meanwhile, controversy continues to grow around the
lack of personal protective equipment for health workers on the front-line. In response,
the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has issued new guidance to its members, saying they
have the right to refuse to treat infected patients "as a last resort" if they are not given the
proper clothing and masks. With the government accused of being slow to to tackle
shortages, Business Secretary Alok Sharma admitted to Sky News that more needed to be
done to get protective equipment to medical staff, but refused to apologise for it.

Boris Johnson is discharged from hospital but won't immediately return to work.
Government adviser Sir Jeremy Farrar has warned the UK could be the worst hit in Europe.
The Archbishop of Canterbury delivered his Easter Sunday sermon from his
kitchen table, pre-recorded on his computer tablet. Boris Johnson is recovering
from Coronavirus at his country retreat of Chequers where he is joining his pregnant mistress
and reviewing social distancing rules. He is at the 16th-century Buckinghamshire mansion
after a seven-night stay in London's St Thomas' Hospital. Johnson's pregnant mistress
Carrie Symonds has revealed she has "spent the past week in bed" after suffering
coronavirus symptoms but is now recovering. The 32-year-old, who is expecting the
couple's baby in early summer, falls into the group of vulnerable people urged to avoid
contact with those with symptoms of Covid-19. So the prime minister will not be returning
to work immediately.
Coronavirus: Gove given special permission for daughter's test

Michael Gove was in isolation for two days cleaning out his burrow
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IN FRANCE The total death toll, which includes data from hospitals and nursing homes,
rose to 14,393 as of Sunday. The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 95,403.

AND IN AMERICA Death penalty states are stockpiling medicines for lethal injections that
could save the lives of hundreds of coronavirus patients were they released for medical use.
A group of prominent medical practitioners and experts has issued an appeal to capital
punishment states to release their stocks of essential sedatives and paralytics that they
hoard for executions. The drugs are among the most sought after in hospital intensive care
units around the country where shortages of the key medicines are putting lives of
Covid-19 patients at risk. A letter, co-signed by seven leading anesthesiologists,
pharmacists and medical academics, is being sent out to the corrections departments of all
death penalty states. It points out hospitals are facing desperate shortages of sedatives
and paralytics used for intubations and mechanical ventilation of the most severely ill
coronavirus patients who cannot breathe for themselves. The letter to the directors of state
prison departments warns the drug shortages could put even the lives of those
departments’ own top officials in peril.

Wednesday 15th April HERE IN FRANCE Macron’s new lock-down seems to be strangely
beneficial. We’ve been put on the naughty step for another month and at last are starting to
behave. Here in this tiny 16th Century forest hamlet we are jollying up and people are being
nice to each other, laughing and joking and helping out. Clearly this was what we needed.
Mind you we are in Paradise, the sun is hot and it is what most people call a HOLIDAY.
Astonishing it has taken so long and needed a global crisis.
TOTAL CASES NOW 147,863. TOTAL DEATHS 17,167

AND IN AMERICA The Lunatic has taken over the asylum with the full endorsement of his
party as “The President of the United States has the power to do what he wants” even if that
involves killing more thousands of people by opening up the country from lock-down
without the necessary safety measures to limit the spread of the virus. (eg: Very limited
testing and control measures in place.) No-one seems able to stop him and the Founding
Fathers must be turning in their graves.)

SHAM SCAN SCAM

Satire or what? Have just been scammed by my anti-scam scanner offering 80% reductions
to protect me from bogus programmes offering to protect me from on-line scammers. As
I had been seriously attacked last week, having had all my documents locked down and had
just paid an 80% reduction for the same programme to open them up, this struck a chord
even in my addled state-of-mind, and I was shaken enough to jump through the same
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hoops as before. Hilariously though, they too must have noticed something amiss, for at
the point of sale they suddenly backed down and refused to go through with it. They did
claim to have successfully completed all the necessary pre-scan “cleansing” however and
listed 20 or so programmes which they had previously removed (God alone knows why),
forcing me to painstakingly re-install them in order to work normally. I groaned at the
thought of repeating this exhausting labour, noticing I had not even managed to replace
them all as I set about it. And this was when I realised I had been duped again. For the
programmes they boasted to have removed so thoroughly were still firmly entrenched on
my computer ready for use, and it appeared that even their scan scam was a sham!

Thursday 23rd April

831,794 Confirmed cases in U.S. 46,149 Deaths in U.S.

Have been off-air for a week due to circumstances beyond my control, but the virus is no
respecter of editors and has been increasing and multiplying in a time-honoured fashion.
However enough countries have seen their curves flattening to induce a kind of “get out of
jail free” fever, and many states and are juggling with life-and-death decisions, where
economic and political issues are dramatically affected by the three Apocalyptic horsemen
of poverty, death and starvation, with incipient violence lurking round every corner as food
runs out and there is nowhere to bury the corpses. Of course everyone is blaming everyone
else and accusations run rife in every direction. It is hard to accept that it can be YOUR
FAULT that hundreds of thousands of people are dying in unaccountable, or even
uncountable, concealed numbers in care homes where mortality has only just begun to
emerge as up to 50% of the total figures published. The Man with the Scythe seems to
lurking everywhere, spawning his traditional clownish responses on the internet, where
“Working From Home” (WFH) parents are gallantly trying to cope with educating their
offspring while maintaining a credible presence in the office.

It seems unfair to criticise the poor creatures who are actually “in office” and trying to hold
things together, and one can only hope that they are really doing their best when they
seem so hopelessly incapable of tying their own shoe-laces: for the Man with the Scythe is
lying in wait for them too. .The Angelic Forces are there as well of course, in their
hopelessly inadequate PPE and obliterating face masks, and their deaths are daily
honoured by the “Clap for Carers” movement risking dangerous proximity to come out on
the streets or balconies every afternoon to do them homage. We are in a medieval world
where the horrors of Defoe’s London resonate on every corner. And we forget that the
Plague was an almost annual occurrence that closed the theatres and sent people spinning
out into the countryside to infect the peasants and agricultural workers there.
(Shakespeare famously wrote “King Lear” while away on one of these jaunts.)

Meanwhile here in the forest there have been developments, and a sort of freemasonry or
even anarchy has been installed among the free-roaming gentlemen of the area. Everyone
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is at home because local offices, businesses and organisations are now closed, and this has
permitted a general relaxation of - well everything. Gentlemen from next door, down the
lane, or even the next village are ambling about in a spirit of casual amiability. Ladies are
rediscovering their roots, as the homes where they were born and grew up are once more
inhabited by people they once knew and loved. The sun is shining and the woods are
possessed by the deafening silence of God. You might even say that this is the famous
Peace and Love in Our Time.

Except at night. For suddenly at 2am or 4am or 6am the peace is shattered by horrific
screams as The Goddess, who has been out delicately savouring the moonlight, is accosted
by a desperate gentleman insisting on accompanying her in through her private door. And
harrowing shrieks of rage affront the moonlit garden as Cutie-Pie, who has been sweetly
flirting in the scented trees hurtles upstairs in terror at the importunities of a despairing
lover . . . It is their fault of course. I’ve told them not to go out flirting in the moonlight -
but what can you do? They are SO beautiful and only want to play and dance in the trees.
You are only young once after all . . .

FRIDAY 24th April

USA: "Trump's briefings are actively endangering the public's health. Boycott the
propaganda. Listen to the experts. And please don't drink disinfectant." Robert Reich, a
professor of public policy at the University of Berkeley

Donald Trump has come under fire from medical experts for suggesting further research
and tests into whether injecting COVID-19 patients with disinfectant could cure them from
coronavirus. Doctors immediately warned against the unproven idea, blasting it as
"irresponsible" and "dangerous", and said it could kill people.

TRUMP: 24/4/2020 "So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's
ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that has not been checked but
you're going to test it," he said. "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside
the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you
said you're going to test that, too, sounds interesting. "Right, and then I see the
disinfectant, it knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do
something like that by injection inside or or almost a cleaning, 'cause you see it gets on the
lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. "So it will also be interesting to
check that so you're gonna have to use medical doctors. But it sounds, it sounds
interesting to me so we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it goes in and one
minute, that's - that's pretty powerful." At one point, he turned to Dr Deborah Birx, the
co-ordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, and asked her to speak with
doctors "to see if there's any way that you can apply light and heat to cure".

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"Maybe you can, maybe you can't," he said: "I'm not a doctor. I am a person that has a good,
you know what," he added while pointing to his head.
Phil Rucker of The Washington Post said: "Respectfully, sir, you're the president, and
people tuning into the briefings, they want to get information and guidance and want to
know what to do. They're not looking for rumours."
Mr Trump responded: "Hey Phil. I'm the president, and you're fake news. And know what I
will say to you? I will say very nicely. I know you well. I know you well. Because I know the
guy, I see what he writes. He's a total faker. "Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?
It is just a suggestion, from a brilliant lab by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant man. He's
talking about sun. He's talking about heat. And you see the numbers, so that's it. That's all
I have. I'm just here to present talent. I'm here to present ideas, because we want ideas to
get rid of this thing. And if heat is good, if sunlight is good, that's a great thing as far as I'm
concerned."
Pulmonologist Dr Vin Gupta told NBC News: "This notion of injecting or ingesting any type
of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible and it's dangerous." Walter Shaub, the
former director of the Office of Government Ethics, added: "It is incomprehensible to me
that a moron like this holds the highest office in the land and that there exist people stupid
enough to think this is OK. I can't believe that in 2020 I have to caution anyone listening to
the president that injecting disinfectant could kill you."
The president was already facing criticism for championing hydroxychloroquine as a
possible cure for COVID-19, which has been shown to provide no benefit and possibly a
higher risk of death.

FRANCE In the Land of Haute Cuisine fans queue for thee hours for burgers in newly
-opened McDonald’s Drive-thrus in France. YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP

UK
'Damage done by lockdown could outweigh that of coronavirus', Professor Carl Heneghan,
director of the centre for evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, told Radio 4’s
Today programme: “In fact, the damaging effect now of lockdown is going to outweigh the
damaging effect of coronavirus.” Heneghan argued that not enough testing has been done
so the government cannot understand how many people have actually had COVID-19, and
that lockdown was preventing people seeking help for potentially life-threatening issues.
“The key is no-one has really understood how many people actually have the infection,” he
said. “You could do that really quickly with random sampling of a thousand people in
London who thought they had the symptoms. Heneghan suggests Boris Johnson's
government may have imposed lockdown after coronavirus peaked in Britain. “You could

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do that in the next couple of days and get a really key handle on that problem and we’d be
able to then understand coming out of lockdown much quicker.”

But he argued that the government had no plan for what happens next. “You go into a
lockdown - you should have a clear exit strategy,” he said on Monday. “You should
understand the advantages and disadvantages of what you’re doing.” Heneghan suggested
the coronavirus peak may actually have taken place the week before Boris Johnson
imposed the lockdown. “We have failed to look at the data and see when the lockdown
actually occurred. The peak of deaths occurred on April 8, and if you understand that then
you work backwards to find the peak of infections. That would be 21 days before then,
right before the point of lockdown.” This is based on the delay in the time it takes for an
infected person to fall seriously ill and die - three weeks on average.

Heneghan claims that if the Government accepts that deaths peaked on April 8, then it
must mean that infections were at their highest around three weeks prior. He said: “We
should be reopening society. We need to get a plan in place rapidly, we can’t wait three
weeks then slowly open up. “As well as major economic issues, austerity will impact
people's physical and mental health.

“The second issue of lockdown is that it's making the public scared to engage with
healthcare. People are avoiding going to GPs and hospitals because they believe there is so
much infection there that they might catch it [coronavirus]. That’s really damaging.”
Figures show that more than 80 extra deaths are occurring every day in London alone
before paramedics reach the victims because patients are reluctant to phone for an
ambulance in case they catch the virus in hospital. Professor Heneghan said the decision
to abandon mass-testing and contact tracing had “completely failed” elderly people. “The
shielding has failed - 70 per cent of all the deaths are in the over-75s. Forty per cent of all
the nursing homes have the infection. “So whatever we have done it has completely failed
in terms of shielding.”

Saturday 25th April USA Donald Trump cuts daily briefing short after day of
mockery over disinfectant comments. The US president had suggested that
scientists should investigate inserting a cleaning agent into the body to cure COVID-19. He
cut off his daily coronavirus briefing without taking questions after a day of mockery over
this suggestion disinfectant could cure Coronavirus. The US president was angry on Friday
after a day of punishing headlines in relation to his remarks. The briefings often stretch
well beyond an hour and feature combative exchanges between Mr Trump and reporters.
Mr Trump did answer questions from reporters earlier on Friday and claimed that his
suggestion about disinfectant had been "sarcastic". His words came just hours after he was
68
widely criticised for holding up disinfectant and "(ultraviolet) light inside the body" as
possible solutions to the coronavirus crisis. He had said about disinfectant: "It knocks it
out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection
inside or almost a cleaning..." Among the critics were doctors, who said the idea was
"irresponsible" and "dangerous", and companies that produce disinfectant, such as Dettol
maker Reckitt Benckiser, which said that "under no circumstance should disinfectant
products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other
route)".
The White House is considering scaling back President Donald Trump's daily briefings on
the coronavirus pandemic as his aides and allies increasingly worry that his lengthy
appearances may backfire politically. Those concerns reached an inflection point when the
president suggested on Thursday evening that people might be able to inject household
cleaning items or disinfectants to deter the coronavirus, sparking immediate and universal
backlash from the medical community. The evaluation of Trump's briefings comes as the
worldwide death toll for the coronavirus surpassed 200,000 on Saturday, according to
Johns Hopkins University data. Over 20,000 of those fatalities have been in the United
Kingdom, the country's health minister said Saturday, making it the fifth nation to reach
that grim milestone.

Sunday 26th April

Americans crowd beaches and parks, sparking coronavirus concerns
Summer-like weather across much of California drove large crowds to the beaches
Saturday despite a statewide stay-at-home order intended to curb the spread of
coronavirus. Temperatures reached into the 80s and 90s in Southern California, where
people were swimming in the Pacific and sunbathing on beaches that had previously been
closed to discourage large gatherings. Not all were reopened but some counties had eased
restrictions while warning people to maintain social distancing. "It’s crowded out," said
Brian O'Rourke, a lifeguard battalion chief in Newport Beach. "We haven’t had too many
issues with [social distancing] as lifeguards. Our primary mission is watching the water.
We’ve had dozens of ocean rescues and hundreds of preventative actions." An estimated
40,000 packed onto Newport Beach on Friday and similar crowds were expected Saturday.
"We've had very good compliance," he said. "People are spreading out."

USA Donald Trump has said his news conferences are "not worth the time and effort" after
he faced condemnation for suggesting disinfectant could be injected into COVID-19
patients to kill the disease. He made the suggestion on Thursday, cut short his coronavirus
news conference on Friday by walking out when he would normally take questions, and
then refused to hold one last night as the criticism continued. Having called off Saturday's
briefing, the US president lashed out at what he labels "the lamestream media" - and
69
indicated he may not hold any such briefings again. Mr Trump has been stung by the
amount of criticism levelled at him for indicating that injecting disinfectant could combat
COVID-19, saying that it "knocks it out in a minute".
His remarks sparked criticism by doctors, who branded the idea "irresponsible" and
"dangerous", while Dettol maker Reckitt Benckiser said that "under no circumstance should
our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection,
ingestion or any other route)". The White House initially claimed his comments had been
taken out of context, while Mr Trump later said it was an attempt at sarcasm. SOn Saturday
evening, he tweeted: "What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when
the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the
truth or facts accurately.

The coronavirus crisis has sparked a “perfect storm” of global online disinformation,
cyber-espionage and disruption, involving up to a dozen states but most prominently
Russia and China, experts have warned.

In the midst of a pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of people, analysts have
witnessed a sharp rise in deliberate misinformation campaigns on social media, which have
occurred in parallel with attempts to hack international organisations at the forefront of
the coronavirus response. Senior executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter are
scheduled to appear before UK MPs next Thursday to answer questions about the spread of
coronavirus disinformation.
A report published by the EU on Friday accused Russia and China of targeting European
citizens, including Britons, during the pandemic, and provided In the last week alone
reports have emerged of hacking attacks on the World Health Organization and the US
National Institutes of Health. The WHO has reported a fivefold increase in cyber-attacks on
both itself and on the public. While some of the activity has been criminal, or linked to
“dark PR” firms who work with governments and the far right, other attempts to sow
discord have been laid at the door of governments – including disruptive messaging to US
mobile phones that has been blamed by US officials on China. In that incident, according to
the New York Times, millions of mobile phone and social media accounts were bombarded
with fake messages in March, including one saying the Trump administration was about to
deploy troops to enforce a lockdown.Paul Barrett, a New York University expert in
disinformation and fake news, has identified similar trends and said that some malicious
actors are feeding off each other’s disinformation for their own ends. “It’s a three-ring
circus of disinformation” he said. “It’s almost impossible to pick out one strain and isolate
it, because simultaneously Russian and China and Trump are getting in on the act and
imitating each other more and more. It is incredibly difficult for an ordinary citizen to
navigate what’s true.”
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UK hospital deaths pass 20,000 Another 813 people have died bringing the total to more
than 20,000, the Department of Health has announced.

There are strong signs - at least in hospitals - that we have passed the peak of deaths. The
fact that may have happened without the health service being overwhelmed is at least
some good news. However, the deaths in care homes, which the daily figures from
government do not include, are rising rapidly and could prove very difficult to get under
control. If we included them we would have passed the 20,000 mark some time ago.

IN BRITTANY IT IS SUNDAY MORNING AND THE FOREST IS SILENT.

Unbearable the sweetness of the honeysuckle,

the tenderness of falling rain,
the sobbing crimson death of the sun crashing into the forest,
the senseless cooing of inevitable doves making the sweetness bearable.
In a time of such great suffering, what have we done to merit this?

Basil, the misshapen little gentleman in white is on the doorstep, his sweet face turned
hopefully towards Cutie-Pie who is hiding behind the curtain.

And here I will end this journal in the knowledge that the three ring-circus has only just
begun, and I have neither the genius or the endurance of my great forebear Daniel Defoe,
or the stamina to see it through as millions die. I am just too old. (copyright e.j.ward 2020)

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I discovered the following article on the internet on December 2nd 2020 and
wished I had read it earlier:

Daniel Defoe’s “JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR”

by Dr. Frank Palmeri

Reports reached London in 1720 and 1721 that the plague had killed tens of thousands in
Marseilles. Almost three hundred years ago in 1722, shortly after he published Robinson
Crusoe, Daniel Defoe wrote a similarly fact-based fictional narrative “A Journal of the
Plague Year” to warn of what to expect if the bubonic plague were to afflict England as it
had with horrific effects in 1665. Reports reached London in 1720 and 1721 that the plague
had already killed tens of thousands in Marseilles, and the laws for quarantining ships from
foreign ports had been tightened. As it happened, England fortunately did not suffer from a
visitation of the plague in the 1720s or indeed in later times. Nevertheless, Defoe’s Journal
contains many elements that resonate with the circumstances surrounding the current
Covid-19 epidemic—especially concerning the behaviour of public officials, the persistent
role of misinformation and rumour, and the psychological stress of living in a time of such
anxiety.
Defoe was only 5 years old in 1665, but he had an uncle, Henry Foe (Daniel added the
prefix “De-” to the family name when he was an adult), who may have been a model for the
narrator of the Journal. Henry would have been in his mid-thirties at the time of the plague;
the narrator says his family came from Northamptonshire, as the Foes did, and the book
concludes with the initials “H.F.” as a signature. Defoe probably did not base his account on
a journal by his uncle, but he may well have drawn on the memories and experiences of
that uncle and other family members. We know that he also performed historical research,
reading numerous books and pamphlets about the plague as he wrote the Journal. Some of
what he wrote comes from his imagination, but his vividly imagined anecdotes, characters,
and details could, he believed, bring out important truths about the experience of the
plague.
Although I want to examine some echoes of the plague in the experience of the Corona
virus in the US, certain contrasts must be stressed. First, the plague was much more deadly
and dramatic. From one-fifth to one quarter of the population of London died from the
disease—upward of 100,000 people, proportionally the equivalent of more than 65,000,000
people in the US. The worst-case scenarios advanced so far anticipate that at the upper
limit there might be 2.2 million deaths in this county before a vaccine or treatment is
developed—a very high number, but a small percentage of what London and other cities of
England suffered in the seventeenth century. Secondly, the plague caused a particularly
gruesome kind of suffering and death. Those afflicted experienced painful swellings of the
lymph glands (buboes), accompanied by high fever, severe chills and body aches, and
frequently vomiting of blood and delirium.
One common factor between the two afflictions is that there was no treatment for the
plague in 1665, just as there is none for the corona virus in spring 2020. But the most
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noteworthy parallels can be found in the social and political responses to each. Defoe’s H.F.
reports, consistent with historical events, that as soon as the plague appeared in early June
1665, the king fled London and sought shelter with his court in rural Oxford, where he did
nothing to help his subjects. After noting this abdication of his responsibilities, H.F. barely
mentions the king again in the Journal.
Instead, in a continuing refrain, he gives credit to the Lord Mayor, aldermen and
councilmen of London, their sheriffs, and other officers for remaining at their posts as they
conscientiously and tirelessly managed the city’s response. They personally oversaw the
distribution of supplies from the countryside that prevented food shortages; they
maintained the system of justices of the peace that prosecuted criminals, including
charlatans and frauds; they organized the system of enquirers and watchers to enforce
quarantine orders for those with the disease; and they oversaw those who collected the
bodies of the victims for burial. They issued orders that were clear and consistent, and they
made themselves visible and available to hear complaints and requests from those who
remained in the city. Because these local officers carried out their duties, London did not
descend into chaos; however hellish the atmosphere, H.F. reports that there was never a
time when the city could not bury its dead.
It is not difficult to see the parallel. As the king and his court proved themselves to be
incompetent, cowardly, and callous, the Lord Mayor and his officers stepped into the
vacuum and managed the response to the 1665 plague. Similarly, faced with the
fecklessness, delusion, and inaction of the highest authorities in the federal government,
many mayors, governors, and city councils have stepped up, taking difficult and effective
measures to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of course, it was the rich, like the royals and aristocrats, who were able to escape London;
the poor who had to stay were afflicted most severely by the effects of the plague,
including unemployment. They often had to take jobs as watchers of houses, nurses of the
afflicted, or carters of the dead: H.F. reports that dozens of watchers were killed by
residents breaking out of quarantines, and that carters fell down dead of the plague as they
pulled their load toward the burial grounds. Although H.F. is usually sympathetic to the
trials of the poor and of those who cared for the sick, at one point he takes a position
similar to that put forward recently, that some of the vulnerable may need to die if
economic activity is to be restored.H.F. suggests that it might have been fortunate that tens
of thousands of the poor died at the height of the plague, because that way they did not
need to be provided for and there was enough food for the rest of the population. However,
he elsewhere states that in fact private citizens provided huge amounts for the financial
support of the poor and that the city experienced no shortage of food during the plague. In
fact, despite this one dismissal of mass deaths among the poor, H.F. seems to recognize
that regular business activity cannot be re-established until the population recovers its
physical health.
H.F. notes the numerous charlatans, quacks, frauds, fortune-tellers, and dreamers of false
dreams who tried to sell the credulous unproven nostrums, hopeful astrological predictions,
or useless practices. They join other purveyors of false claims, unrealistic optimism,
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misinformation, rumours, and unsubstantiated tales. Through H.F., Defoe takes pains to
debunk exaggerations, and to express strong skepticism about tales of ghosts, supernatural
signs, and divine interventions. In this way, H.F. acts not only as the writer of a journal but
as a responsible journalist, attempting to report facts to the degree that he observed or can
verify them. At least in this way, those who endured the plague were in a better situation
than those going through the corona virus pandemic: although the king and his court fled
the scene and abdicated responsibility, at least they did not actively spread disinformation
and conspiracy theories or promote untested remedies and delusive hopes, as the
leadership in the US has done since the beginning of the crisis.
Defoe’s work thus musters the resources of various genres—combining a journal or memoir
with a journalistic report and a policy document. It cites from the official Bills of Mortality
the number of the dead for many weeks from the most affected parishes (these reports
resemble the current graphs showing the increases in the number of cases in various states
and countries). On a policy matter, the Journal questions the value and practicability of the
enforced quarantining of whole families once one member of the household is afflicted. In
addition, it sounds a warning to the people of England to be prepared because they may
face another infestation within the year. But it is also a work of history and of fiction. And
paradoxically, its accomplishment as a work of history lies not so much in the accuracy of its
numbers or facts as in its power as a work of fiction, in the observing eye and skeptical
intelligence of H.F., and in the stories he tells, which convey through common language and
the details of common life what it was like to live through the plague.
In the middle of his account, H.F. inserts a narrative of two brothers, a soldier and a sailor,
who along with their friend a carpenter decide to leave the city after the plague has arrived.
They are not wealthy, but through their skills, intelligence, and ingenuity, combining with
others like themselves, they overcome the suspicion and opposition of those outside the
city and establish a small, functioning, healthy community in the countryside until the
plague passes. This self-contained short story is like a breath of clean air in the grim and
claustrophobic narrative.
When the Journal ends, it is with a sense of a sudden lifting and relief. This too has passed,
Defoe seems to say. In our own day, we need to be clear-eyed and sensible like H.F., not
irresponsible or deluded like some leaders of his time and ours. The new virus presents a
serious challenge, but it can be resisted and delayed, and it is not as deadly as the bubonic
plague. Researchers will find a treatment and a vaccine, not tomorrow or next week, but
eventually. Let us be mindful of our responsibilities to each other. This too shall pass.
e.j.w.

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