I think I could.
I need time to organize my household, go through my closets, ready things for donation.
I can imagine catching up on my reading, watching movies I haven't yet, trying recipes I've been meaning to make. Writing letters or calling old friends I haven't had contact with in a while. And of course there's always genealogy research and family history writing to continue.
Maybe you're sequestering yourself at the moment, or just staying home and out of crowds more than usual, and maybe you're reading this blog - ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY Blogspot to occupy your time.
I've been thinking about the term PANDEMIC and how diseases effected whole populations. Like maybe all of you, my ancestors/ family have died of:
Tuberculosis
Cholera
Typhus
The flu - as recently as 1955 and 1963 (Seeing the death records reminds me that taking the flu shot is a good idea.)
And perhaps most frightening - Small Pox. As I understand it, you could catch it and go through horrible symptoms such as so much vomiting that you became completely dehydrated, resulting in organ failure. There were also hideous weeping sores that left survivors with scars. A husband could give it to his wife who was nursing a newborn and all three would be dead in days. A feminine survivor in, say, colonial Philadelphia, might use pink colored wax - that contained led - to fill in the scars and give herself a smooth complexion.
I've seen the epidemics or pandemics in church records especially, when whole rows of people, young and old, related or not, have the same reason for death listed. One after another.
An epidemic becomes a PANDEMIC when it effects a whole country or the world.
Pandemics have weened some DNA from populations. There's some evidence that those who were more resistant may have even had changes in their DNA that they could pass on. For instance the Black Death required thousands of burials and in those days before modern sanitation every opportunity to catch it and yet some survived.
The Black Death did something else to Europe. People discarded class considerations in order to re-partner as a matter of survival.
And as there was more superstition than science at that point, people did not understand the role of filth.
I'm sure you are all listening to the news, watching YouTube videos, reading newspapers and on-line articles with the latest on this Wuhan Coronavirus. Mixed in there is some speculation, some fake news (in both suggesting there is no problem and suggesting it's totally out of control.)
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