Page 24 - Discover Summer 2020

Kate’s Corner CONTINUED

was either too sick to care about the notice worldwide. It spread on flea-infested rats that
tacked to our door, or perhaps Dad had stowed-away on trade and cargo ships. The
gotten to it before I could see it. Besides, rats themselves did not pass the disease...

this time I had company: my younger sister it was borne by the fleas that they hosted.
and baby brother, and a cousin who had Nearly one half of those who caught the
contracted the disease while visiting on a Black Plague died.
weekend. We were all cloistered in our little
Believing that the disease was spread
house together. Whooping cough is a horrible
only by sick humans, ships traveling from
disease. It features endless coughing without
areas with high rates of the illness were
being able to catch your breath, followed
required to stay off-shore for 30 days before
by projectile vomiting. It’s a frightening,
docking. Eventually, that length of time
exhausting experience. The thing is that
was increased to 40 days, hence the name
when one of us started coughing, the others
quarantine, which comes from the Italian
would too, as the cough was as contagious as
word quaranta, meaning 40. According
a yawn.
to online accounts, over 600 cases of the
Besides the unmerciful racking cough, Bubonic (or Black) Plague are still reported
my clearest memory of that disease is the each year. Today, thankfully, we have
day that I got to pick what we had for lunch. antibiotics to treat it.
I opted for tomato soup, which was my
In 1918, near the end of World War
favorite. The four of us had barely finished
I, the Spanish Flu, also called the H1N1
eating when my cousin started coughing.
virus, swept the globe, taking 50 million
We all stared at her, first in pity, and then
lives worldwide and 675,000 in the USA.
in dread because we knew that we would
We are also still battling HIV/AIDS, which
be next. I have no recollection of the clean-
is believed to have killed 25 million and
up but I can tell you that by the time the
infected 60 million as of 2011. As many as 38
coughing had subsided, our dining room
million are believed to still be infected as of
look like the scene of a triple homicide. I’ve
2018.
never eaten tomato soup since then without
thinking about that scene. It is also no longer I will say this for COVID 19 -
my favorite soup. Besides being responsible for getting me

Segregating the sick from the healthy off the sofa and into my closet, it knocked
dates back to leprosy colonies during the impeachment and global warming out of
Middle Ages. The modern concept of the headlines, at least for a while.
quarantine is a result of the Black Plague,

perhaps the worst pandemic ever. It killed 40
to 50 million people in Europe over a period
A ma r y l lis
Amaryllis
of four years, and an estimated 200 million

22 Discover Smith Mountain Lake SUMMER 2020