It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

A couple of years ago, I pulled down my copy of Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year to read.  As frequently happens,  I read several pages and then it drifted downwards in the stacks by my bed.  

When Covid-19 descended on us, I surfaced it and read some more but then once again business and research pressures pushed it downwards.  Owing to a couple of foot surgeries over the past twelve months, I have not been upstairs at all; out of sight out of mind.  

Then, for no apparent reason, it crossed my mind.  I am sufficiently far along in my recuperation that I can, with time and exaggerated care, manage the stairs.  I retrieved the Journal to match it up to our 2020-2021 experience with Covid-19.

Daniel Defoe was only five years old at the time of plague which hit London and England in 1665 but the book was published fifty-seven years after the event.  From Wikipedia:

A Journal of the Plague Year is a book by Daniel Defoe, first published in March 1722. It is an account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the bubonic plague struck the city of London in what became known as the Great Plague of London, the last epidemic of plague in that city. The book is told somewhat chronologically, though without sections or chapter headings, and with frequent digressions and repetitions.

Presented as an eyewitness account of the events at the time, it was written in the years just prior to the book's first publication in March 1722. Defoe was only five years old in 1665 when the Great Plague took place, and the book itself was published under the initials H. F. and is probably based on the journals of Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, who, like 'H. F.', was a saddler who lived in the Whitechapel district of East London.

In the book, Defoe goes to great pains to achieve an effect of verisimilitude, identifying specific neighbourhoods, streets, and even houses in which events took place. Additionally, it provides tables of casualty figures and discusses the credibility of various accounts and anecdotes received by the narrator.

The book is often compared to the actual, contemporary accounts of the plague in the diary of Samuel Pepys. Defoe's account, which appears to include much research, is far more systematic and detailed than Pepys's first-person account.

Scholars have wrestled with whether A Journal of the Plague Year should be considered autobiography, non-fiction history, fiction or historical fiction.  Regardless of the debate, it is consistent with all the known facts established from contemporary accounts and from the recollections later of those who experienced it.  Probably best considered in Truman Capote's words about his own work, a nonfiction novel.

I have begun rereading from the start to see where the experiences of 1665 mirror those of 2021.  I had intended to read the whole thing before commenting but there are too many examples to let them all slide by.

Some of the terminology is different as is the context but you can see the same basic human interaction with an ill understood calamity.  1665 is just barely at the beginning of the Age of reason but you can see much Age of Reason thinking in the text.

For example, the opening paragraph is all about the origins of the plague.

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

Where's it from?  

Check -  a major preoccupation today.  

Wet markets or Wuhan Institute of Virology?  Today, the question has somewhat greater pertinence because the origin both influences our view on how to tackle it but also helps us to interpret what happened and why.  If manmade, then that is suggestive of how we research it.  If from China, it allows us to interpret China's behaviors and actions as, or not, a good faith international actor.