Reading Boccaccio's text, all I could think about was just how awful it would have been to live in Europe during the plague. People didn't truly know how to avoid the spread of the disease, so there was no real effective way to ensure your survival/avoidance of the plague. There was no vaccine, mask ordinance, social distancing, etc. For the group that shut themselves in houses, they didn't have Zoom, the internet, or phones. They only had the people in the house they were trapped in to talk to. They couldn't keep in touch with any of their other family and friends like we can today. He also mentions how the number of doctors was increasing but many people didn't have any medical training. I'm so glad today we have hospitals and clinics that only hire trained professionals. He also mentions all the dead and decaying bodies in the streets and houses. In the United States today, this hasn't been a problem for us, at least that the news has reported. People are being buried one way or another. I've heard of other countries having to build mass graves to bury their dead, but at the very least, they are off the streets, not exposing anybody else. Plus the smell and view of dead bodies just really decreases the quality of life of those still living.
In the Article by Sarah Zielinski, she mentions the connection between Asian climatic events and the plague waves in Europe. The spread of disease has interested me in my biology classes I've taken here on campus. The idea of cause and effect also always catches my attention. Rat populations in Asia decreasing in Asia leading to the death of 25 million Europeans 15 years later is what really caught my attention in this article. If I told that to somebody who doesn't know much on the subject out of context, that would be a hard leap for them. People might be able to guess that statement is about the bubonic plague because of the mention of rats, but the misplaced blame comes in. The rat populations decrease, the fleas need a new host. The fleas move to domestic animals and people, so the disease is then transferred to these new hosts who carry it with them across trade routes and on military campaigns. It is hard to wrap your head around a 15 year dely from a climate event in Asia to plague in Europe because it is so easy to travel now, but then you take into account how long it took to travel in the Middle Ages and it makes sense. It all just seems like the perfect storm.