This post is excerpted from an article written by Geoffrey Botkin on Sep 30th at WesternConservatory.org. Mr. Botkin is a historian and cultural analyst, and was interviewed for the Beyond Off Grid documentary to provide insight and context on understanding where America is at today and how she compares to other great civilizations. Editor’s comments will be in italics.
Ebola the Plague
Ebola is a plague with a capital P. It is more than an annoyance, and it is not fiction. It has wiped out entire villages. It is now rampaging its way onto airlines and into America’s medically-advanced Bible belt. Today Ebola became life-and-death relevant to every American as authorities diagnosed a case in Texas. Authorities then admitted that the critically ill carrier had an unknown number of interactions with other Americans before he was quarantined in a Dallas hospital. Authorities then assured Americans that Ebola will be “stopped in its tracks in the US.” But then authorities refused to tell Texans who this carrier was or where his tracks had taken him after he had left Africa.
It’s time for America to be honest about plagues. They can move faster than technology can keep up, and they can overwhelm medical facilities. But they cannot move faster than moral resolve, and this is how America’s response to Ebola will be measured by historians. Plagues test the ethical courage of entire nations.
Geoffrey Botkin is right to point out that the solution to Ebola, like our other modern threats of disaster, is not primarily a technological one, but first and foremost one of ethics and self-discipline by a population.
A Nation’s Leading Moral Indicators
How will America handle today’s news about Ebola? Presumably with more integrity than the carefree response to the following recent events: the massive wildfires in Washington and Oregon; the multi-year drought in California; the horrific pig virus known as porcine epidemic diarrhea that’s killing an average 19,000 American pigs per day; the greening disease that could kill the US citrus industry; and drug-resistant superbug infections which have increased 500% and now stand at near-epidemic levels. We don’t have to like these events, but we do have to acknowledge them. I confess that I hate every plague. I have never had a “favorite plague.”
But I do have a favorite plague story, and there’s a lesson here for Dallas, Texas…and for a neighborhood near you.
In 1665, the deadly bubonic plague visited London. Many fled the city early because everyone in Europe knew about the nature of the plague. The pattern had been the same for a thousand years: the infection quickly swept through urban neighborhoods, killing with horrendous speed and indignity. It was ugly, painful, and unmerciful.
About the time that news of the new London outbreak reached north into the Derbyshire countryside, a package from London arrived in the village of Eyam. A tailor had ordered fabric. When the package was opened, a hungry plague-carrying flea bit the tailor and the plague killed the man. But before he died, the tailor passed the disease to customers.
One thing I hate about plagues is the irrational behavior that follows them. People of all backgrounds can suddenly descend into wild behavior, frantic carousing, desperate looting, and bizarre superstitions, not because of personal sickness, but because they are trying to escape the realities of the situation, the possibility of death or the lessons of judgment.
But in Eyam, there lived a cool-headed young pastor. William Mompesson talked calmly about reality, and the people listened. He correctly informed villagers that northern England was plague-free, and only Eyam had the infection. As villagers began to sicken, and others talked of fleeing northward to other villages, Pastor Mompesson told them it might be too late. They might be infected. If they fled they could infect all of northern England by trying to escape Eyam.
Mompesson was a farsighted leader. By careful argument he persuaded the entire village to quarantine itself until the plague ran its course. Eyam sent messages to nearby villages to bring food to an area of no-man’s land outside the village walls, and the Eyam residents paid with coins disinfected and submerged in vinegar. As deadly weeks passed, the people did not panic. They took care of each other. They were considerate.
They were deliberate about internal home quarantines of family members, and family burials near their houses. They tried to minimize infection. Eyam church services were conducted outdoors, where congregants could spread out and keep a polite distance. By the time the deadly plague had run its course, 270 of the brave and farsighted inhabitants had died. But 80 survived. This is a stunningly high number for the black plague. And the village succeeded in keeping Northern England mostly plague-free.
Contrast this story with today’s news about West Point village in Liberia. The Ebola plague continues to sweep the West Point Liberia area. Last month, some lawless residents went berserk. They decided to attack and loot the quarantined West Point Liberia medical office where infected patients lay dying on filthy mattresses and blood-soaked sheets. The looters chased the weak, highly contagious patients into the neighborhoods of the village and ran off with all the precious material they could carry: the infected bedding.
Richard Kieh, who lives in the area, reported that some of the looted items were visibly stained with blood, vomit and excrement. Even though heroic health workers tried to enter the area of West Point Liberia to help, the villagers attacked them, drove them off, and accused them of bringing Ebola into the village. One minute the villagers denied there was a plague, the next they held it to their breasts, and the next they erupted in fury at strangers who might be carriers. The national government quarantined the area with soldiers, but hundreds of unruly villagers escaped the quarantine. The government admitted defeat and called off the quarantine after only 10 of the announced 21 days.
It is important to note here that the primary difference between the historical example of plague and the modern one in Liberia is that of a moral and ethical foundation based on Christianity that allowed for leadership to be effective through the self-discipline of the populace. Without self-government, external government has only force and tyranny as its effectual means.
The Difference Between Life and Death
The people of Eyam modeled a tough, victorious attitude toward the plague. They didn’t close the city gates in despair, crying “Woe, woe, woe, we shall all perish.” They braced for reality. They knew some of them would perish. They knew that careful, considerate living would mean that others would live.
Plagues offer entire nations the opportunity to find moral clarity, moral courage, mental toughness, and faith. There is a big difference between disciplined, self-sacrificing conduct and irrational suicidal behavior. There will be death in both cases, but for very different reasons. Without the self-discipline and knowledge to know the difference, families and communities will not be able to face the killer Ebola and contain it.
Take a lesson from West Point Liberia. Irrational dread and ignorant denial is spreading the disease far and fast. How many people in West Point Liberia are now infected, spreading the virus as they travel here and there, boarding taxis and planes? No one knows. The failure to quarantine one village may have been responsible for the introduction of Liberian Ebola to Dallas, Texas.
Today the world is paying closer attention to Dallas than any village in Liberia. Will the people of Dallas respond like those in West Point Liberia, or like the villagers of Eyam, England? The world must take a hard lesson from Eyam. No plague can ever be defeated by hospitals and technology. Plagues move faster than technology and overwhelm hospitals. Ebola has been killing health workers. There is no proven cure. There is no fully tested vaccine. But there is a known pathology. We know what Ebola is and how it spreads.
All plagues can be faced head-on by populations who look the threat directly in the eye. The people of Eyam had the calm, moral discipline to isolate themselves and hold to their agreement voluntarily. They kept faith to the heartrending end. The end was sad, but not bitter. The entire village lived nobly with a killer plague and survived it, even though it took more than half of them.
By living well they gave life and a future to their nation. Historians later discovered that English villages with inferior leadership, and inferior containment policies fared worse than Eyam, and later ceased to exist. I should repeat that. They later ceased to exist, but Eyam still stands…
Read the full article on WesternConservatory.org.
It is important that you are educated about Ebola and prepared for how to respond to a potential outbreak, so that you can be calm and self-controlled like the people of Eyam, England, and not panicked and irrational like the people of West Point, Liberia.
To learn more, join our webinar on Thursday night, Oct 9th at 9:00pm ET on Ebola Pandemic Preparedness with survival and emergency medicine experts Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy.
