Reading "Boccaccio on the Black Death" made me realize just how similar the Black Death is to COVID-19. While there are major differences, there are also similarities. For instance, Europeans had to quarantine and social distance just as we do now. Obviously, there are some stark differences between the two pandemics: one's symptoms seemed more painful, involving black lumps that would appear on the body. In the case of the Black Death, death usually occurred just after three days. I found Boccaccio's account of the plague to be somewhat comforting, however, as 700 years ago, people were suffering as we are now. I thought it was interesting the different approaches people took to the plague. The article described that people would either shut themselves up in their houses and keep themselves entertained, go out to taverns and get hammered, or fall somewhere in the middle. The article pointed out interestingly that most people at this time expected death, so they acted with little concern to getting sick. The dichotomy between carefulness and carelessness strikes me as being class-oriented in a way, as most likely, it was the rich who could afford to be shut off from the rest of the world for long periods of time, whereas the working class had to work. This distinction from our modern plague is interesting, because we have been blessed with modern technology, which has allowed us to continue working even when the world has been shut down. While I was reading the article, I kept thinking that the obvious solution to the plague would be to quarantine, as we are doing now, but it is the privilege of the technological society in which we live that allows us to do that. During that time period, people could not afford not to work: then, quarantining really wasn't an option. I also found it interesting that minority groups such as Jews were being blamed as the reason for the plague. Similar to today, Asian communities are being wrongly blamed for "starting the pandemic". We know from the "Boccaccio on the Black Death article" that the initial incident that started the plague is more complicated than having origins than just one place, or community. To blame a group of people for a natural disaster such as plague is ignorant of science.