Writing in the time of pandemic- a retrospective focus on today

Appreciated reading this opinion echo, an analysis with perspective, published in the Tennessee newspaper Knox County News

'A Journal of the Plague Year' relevant 300 years after publication | Opinion

By Misty G. Anderson 

"...a time in history when our ways of talking about the health of our nation have been narrowed down to talking about business profits", Misty Andereson

Daniel Defoe wrote the book everyone knows, whether they have read it or not: "Robinson Crusoe." It’s a story we tell again and again, whether as "Castaway," "Gilligan’s Island" or "Lost," about what you would do if you were shipwrecked on a desert island, which looks more appealing than ever these days. But Defoe’s less well-known 1722 book, "A Journal of the Plague Year," about the 1665 London outbreak of bubonic plague, might be the more useful read for this moment. 

The Black Death wasn’t just a 14th-century event, and yet another outbreak of it in Europe in the 1720s prompted Defoe, with the help of his uncle, to reflect on how England had behaved during the 1665 epidemic. Like modern reporters, Defoe tells the story of the epidemic through the death count by region. His descriptions of those who sickened and died are harrowing. The disease hit doctors and nurses hard (then as now), prompted hoarding and led to rumors about minority groups (in London, the Jesuits) who could be blamed for it. Astrologers, quacks with miracle cures and fortune tellers all sprang up to pick the pockets of frightened people desperate for a sense of control. They preyed on the most vulnerable, especially those who couldn’t afford not to go to work.

Health is about more than the economy

In fact, Defoe was a small businessman himself before he was a novelist. He wrote about the impact of interrupted trade on people’s livelihoods during and after the epidemic, and he worried about when the economy would pick up. But he was always clear, like Tennessee state Sen. Richard Briggs, that there isn’t much of a livelihood without life, nor an economy without people.
Our current crisis asks us the classic stick-up question: “Your money or your life?” Unfortunately, it comes at a time in history when our ways of talking about the health of our nation have been narrowed down to talking about business profits. Tennessee has been especially hard hit by this substitution of economic for actual health. Thirteen rural hospitals have closed since 2012 because they weren’t profitable (they make money on elective procedures), and that number could double by the end of this year. Those closures take thousands of rural jobs and strain the remaining hospitals.

The national shortage of personal protective equipment is also an effect of just-in-time supply chains that maximize profit for companies and shareholders, but that can be deadly for medical professionals and the patients they are trying to save.

Our most popular stories of self-reliance, as attractive as they are, don’t tell the whole story, because their heroes don’t really live alone. The fictional Robinson Crusoe had all the stuff from the ship, “his man” Friday, a lot of goats and, eventually, more castaways. He also shipwrecked while running an illegal slave trading venture. The real Henry David Thoreau, who went to the woods to “live deliberately” and wrote the American tribute to self-reliance, "On Walden Pond," had neighbors. He bought a shack from an Irish railroad worker’s family for $4.25 and stripped the wood to build his cabin. He went to dinner at Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house often, and his sister and mother brought him baked goods and doughnuts every weekend. Even Han Solo realized he needed his friends, that he loved them and that he wasn’t doing it just for the money. Veterans know this in their hearts and their bones.

We’re in a moment where we have to think about the relationship of the individual to the community flourishing in order to face this crisis. Our country will get through it, but no matter how much we socially isolate, we won’t be doing it alone. We’ve all seen and experienced anxiety and selfishness since the coronavirus pandemic hit, but also empathy, sharing, sacrifice and community-making.

Joy awaits us

Defoe saw that same range of responses 300 years ago, and he ends his book by commenting on the utter delight people experienced on seeing each other in the street after the plague had passed, with strangers sharing in the joy of being together. 

So, as you look forward to the joy of being with friends, loved ones and, yes, strangers at restaurants and concerts and ball games, take a moment to think about how our ability to flourish is tied up in the flourishing of others. What would we do differently as a society if we took that seriously? We’re all on this island planet together.

You can slow the spread of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, by staying home for all but essential trips, practicing social distancing and washing hands with soap and water frequently. If Americans can slow the pandemic’s spread, it will prevent deaths by reducing stress on medical professionals and the health care system. 

For more information about COVID-19, please visit cdc.gov/coronavirus.

Misty G. Anderson is a professor of English at the University of Tennessee.