We see that the conditions the urban planners and other “experts” have urged us to adopt - high density living, public transportation, urbanization, reusable shopping bags - are exactly those which make pandemics more likely and harder to stop.
Conversely, those conditions which they oppose - private autos, suburban sprawl, single family dwellings - are just what we need to slow a pandemic’s progress. Social isolation is what breaks the transmission chain.
We were sailing along ignoring the apocalyptic horseman of pestilence, thinking I suppose we were somehow ‘beyond’ all that. Thinking only nutcases find inspiration and life lessons in the Book of Revelation.
I wonder if, somewhere in Italy, Boccaccio’s spiritual descendent is writing a latter-day The Decameron? When I read Boccaccio as a teenager, it was steamy erotic stuff; by modern standards it would probably not even be R Rated.
Later ... Maybe Game of Thrones is this generation's Decameron? It is plenty long, raunchy and violent, and has a cast of thousands, many of whom die onscreen.
