SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

Daniel Defoe published the ultimate social isolation novel, ROBINSON CRUSOE, in 1719.  His uncle lived through the Great Plague of London in 1665-66, and when another epidemic of plague broke out in the warring Baltic states in 1721, London was worried.  Defoe published A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR the following year, based on his uncle’s recollections.  It’s a novel, but historians view it as an invaluable look at a time when a quarter of the population of London died of the bubonic plague. 

Like COVID-19, London’s plague was most contagious before its carriers began to feel sick.  “It was very sad to reflect how such a person as this,” Defoe wrote, “had been a walking destroyer perhaps for a week or a fortnight before that; how he had ruined those that he would have hazarded his life to save, and had been breathing death upon them, even perhaps in his tender kissing and embracings of his own children.” 

Then as now, social isolation saved lives.  I was raised by worriers, and I can easily locate any given set of symptoms for the disease du jour.  But that two weeks of silent contagion really makes me crazy.  Am I sick already and don’t even know it?  Who gave it to me?  Who might I have given it to?  When I leave the house, it feels a bit like playing Russian Roulette – only I’m not just putting myself at risk, but also all the people I encounter as well.  In Defoe’s words, I could be a walking destroyer.

All that is by way of saying that my wife Vicki and I have cancelled classes at our yoga studio through the end of the month, in accordance with Mayor Regina Romero’s proclamation yesterday (which, remarkably enough, specifically mentioned yoga studios).  At our studio, classes are small, everyone’s a regular, and I trust them to stay away if they experience COVID-19 symptoms.  But those first two weeks of asymptomatic contagion make it impossible to evaluate your own risk, much less anyone else’s.  On Sunday,  Arizona Governor Doug Ducey ordered schools to close, but declined to order the closure of non-essential businesses.  On Tuesday, Mayor Romero’s proclamation plugged that gap in this part of the state, and even though it will leave our studio on precarious financial footing, it was the right thing to do.  (One of those two politicians is a Republican, while the other is a Democrat.  I’ll let you guess which is which.)

The only social activity that I haven’t distanced myself from is my work as a volunteer driver for Lend A Hand (LAH), a non-profit that helps elderly and infirm folks get to medical appointments and suchlike.  Social isolation is the default condition for many LAH clients, some of whom live alone and have few visitors.  In terms of contagion, a trip to the doctor or the grocery store is probably the riskiest part of their week.  But our clients have little choice, because in addition to being elderly and infirm, many of them are also poor.  They couldn’t be hoarders if they wanted to, because they can’t get to stores on their own, and they don’t have enough money to buy more than a few days’ worth of necessities anyway.

The best advice I’ve seen on responsible behavior during an epidemic came from Martin Luther.  In 1527, there was an outbreak of the plague in Wittenberg.  The university shut down, and some residents asked Luther, the town’s most prominent citizen, for advice.  Luther’s response took the form of a 16 page open letter that has come to be known as "Whether One May Flee From a Deadly Plague."  This is the heart of his message.

“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person, but will go freely.”

Holler if you need help.  And if you have extra time on your hands these days, the full text of Luther’s letter can be found here:  https://blogs.lcms.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Plague-blogLW.pdf