
‘God preserve us all’: Samuel Pepys and the Great Plague (2015) - benbreen
https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind-the-scenes/blog/‘god-preserve-us-all’-samuel-pepys-and-great-plague
======
robin_reala
If you want to read more of Pepys (and I highly recommend it) then
[https://www.pepysdiary.com/](https://www.pepysdiary.com/) is great, and I
also did over the course of 14 months a thoroughly produced PD ebook for
Standard Ebooks with all of the footnotes added back in that Gutenberg missed:
[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-pepys/the-
diary](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-pepys/the-diary)

~~~
rsynnott
This is also fun; the diary in realtime (currently on 1667, so a bit late for
the plague):
[https://twitter.com/samuelpepys](https://twitter.com/samuelpepys)

------
verytrivial
BTW the name is pronounced "Peeps", peeps. I had it wrong for decades.

~~~
Luc
There's a book, which I can't find at the moment, which describes how some in
the family pronounced their name 'Peppis', but Sam preferred 'Peeps'.

I had a 'Pépin' in my family (French given name), which apparently is what
Pepys is based on.

~~~
rsynnott
"It's pronounced BOUQUET!"

~~~
mathieuh
For non-Brits:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances)

Dunno if this is known outside the UK

~~~
RLN
It's very well known in some areas of Europe, from Wikipedia:

"Keeping Up Appearances was a great success in the UK, and also captured large
audiences in the US, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Ireland,
Belgium, and the Netherlands. By February 2016, it had been sold nearly 1,000
times to overseas broadcasters, making it BBC Worldwide's most exported
television programme."

------
redcalx
You may also be interested in _A Journal of the Plague Year_ by Daniel Defoe.

[https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Plague-Year-Observations-
Rema...](https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Plague-Year-Observations-
Remarkable/dp/B00EQFF6U4)

------
pbourke
1665: Plague

1666: Great Fire of London

It must have seemed like the world was ending.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Same with WW1 and the Spanish Flu.

------
asdfasgasdgasdg
It's good to keep things in perspective. Our grandparents lived through worse
than the upper limit of what is projected for this virus. The virus is a
terrible thing, and we need to fight, but at least it's not Spanish Flu/The
Great Depression/World War II/The Cultural Revolution/...

~~~
alltakendamned
Actually it is worse than Spanish flu. Mortality rate for the Spanish flu is
estimated at 2-3% according to the WHO. COVID-19 currently stands at 3.4-3.6%.

We do have the advantage maybe that the world today is better prepared at
handling this kind of events, but we're only just 50 days in, the Spanish flu
ended up lasting 2 years.

Source Spanish flu:
[https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44123/97892...](https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44123/9789241547680_eng.pdf)
Source COVID-19: [https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-
general-...](https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-
opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020)

~~~
huhtenberg
> _COVID-19 currently stands at 3.4-3.6%._

Not according to other studies that covered people with no obvious symptoms.

[https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-
environment/article/30...](https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-
environment/article/3065187/coronavirus-south-koreas-aggressive-testing-gives)

0.6%

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There's been consistent - IMO unprofessional - confusion between Case Fatality
Ratio and Population Mortality.

The >1% numbers are all CFRs, calculated from _diagnosed cases_. They don't
account for people with no symptoms, or those who aren't tested.

It's very hard to estimate unmodified population mortality, because the real
numbers are lowered by quarantine measures and health care.

But real population mortality seems set to be well under 1%, with the bulk of
deaths among the over the 60s, heavily skewed to the over 80s.

That's hardly trivial, but it's a long way off the 240 million who would die
if the population mortality really were around 3%.

------
Vysero
Why are people freaking out about this? The upper end of the mortality rate is
3% imho that's simply not nearly high enough to garner this kind of reaction.
Polio had a 30% mortality rate for adults, let's keep some perspective here.

~~~
verytrivial
Yes, perspective matters, so here's another: 3% x number of infections. What
fraction of the population were exposed to polio vs what fraction are going to
be exposed to coronavirus?

It is the _product of these factors_ which is causing the "freaking out" as
you call it.

~~~
cheschire
When the German chancellor is declaring 60% of the population will become
infected, you start to get a sense of the scale.

If you look at just first world nations[0], you're talking a total population
of 1.04 billion people. 60% of that is 630 million people. 3% of that 60% is
18 million people that could die just in the first world nations.

And that's rounding everything _down_.

0: [https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/first-world-
coun...](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/first-world-countries/)

~~~
hef19898
technically it is not wrong, after all it is backed by actual, true science.
That being said, this estimation assumes that nothing will change, so no
working counter measures of any kind.

In reality, you have China. They are nowhere near these numbers. In Germany
trade show get cancelled, events get cancelled, soccer games take place
without spectators, schools close. Quarantine measures will certainly be put
in place as well when needed. All this helps to keep infections down and slow
the spreading. It worked in China after all.

I am no expert on diseaes, but I did my fair amount of number crunching. And
that tell me that just taking the current average of deaths and infections,
currently somewhere around 3.4%, extrapolate the number of infections
worldwide and multiply the two doesn't fly. At the very least you have to
brake down the world population by age groups based on the same groups we have
specific mortality rates for. doing so already gives you a better picture and
a more realistic number. Nobody who comes up with expected fatalities seems to
bother to do so.

Obviously, that leaves the whole impact of counter-measures out of the
equation. it doesn't account for time nor for any regionl clusters of people.
Neither does it account for any local shortages due to an overwhelmed medical
system for certain periods in certain regions. Or for any steps taken to
counter these effects. To properly do so requires a full scale modelling of
this thing. unfortunately the numbers are changing quite fast, so building
these models is quite ifficult i suspect.

You would also have to account for margins of error and the fact that testing
is a major influence in any parameter of this model. And testing varies highly
between countries.

TLDR: The numbers a re a mess, calculation and modelling is difficult and
everything is changing daily. Good luck with coming up with any reliable
predictions.

I would love to see numbers for testing so. Especially how many tests have
been conducted by region, how many where positive and how many negative.
Ideally over time.

------
lihaciudaniel
How do I flag something on HN?

~~~
robin_reala
There’s a flag button below the title, but you need a certain amount of karma
to see it. Is this flag-worthy though?

~~~
dang
No, historical material is welcome on HN.

