© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

pandemic

Bats, viruses, immunity and Covid-19

Three things in particular I have found striking, amongst the avalanche of information circulating about Covid-19 - the "novel coronavirus" now infesting humanity. One: whenever any group does random testing of groups of people, a surprising proportion proves to be infected with the virus but has no symptoms whatever. Two: the worst of the illness caused by the virus is actually wrought by the immune system of the host victim. Three: bats are apparently the reservoir for large numbers of viruses - and are said to be the source of this one - but tend not…

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Read more about the article Daniel Defoe’s London Journal of the Plague Year: insights for the year 2020

Daniel Defoe’s London Journal of the Plague Year: insights for the year 2020

PUBLISHED in 1722, A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe, is full of relevance in the year of COVID-19. Not because the diseases are similar: they aren't. But because many elements of the story ring true across the centuries. It's believed that Defoe's extraordinary novel may have been based on the real life journal of the experiences of his uncle in London during the plague. Certainly Defoe was only five years old in the plague year of 1665, but the document is so persuasively authentic it must surely have had a significant foundation in…

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Read more about the article The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20
People being inoculated against the "Spanish Flu" in Australia in 1919.

The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20

On June 18, 1918, German gunner Herbert Sulzbach noted that “there is an epidemic on, what they call Spanish ’flu, so that even leave has been stopped”. It’s a throwaway war diary line about a virus that ultimately killed more people than the Great War itself. The war is estimated to have killed about 18 million (though that number must be greater when those who died later from the consequences of the war are taken into account), but the influenza pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million in the years from 1918 to 1920. Sydneysider Eric…

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