Boccaccio's Typology of Plague Responses

Completely coincidentally, I happened to be part of a Decameron reading group as the Coronavirus pandemic hit. We have managed to continue the reading group on Zoom (not in a country estate) as we continue to work through the book.

The book is set in the midst of the Florentine Black Death of 1348. In a marvelous introduction, Boccaccio describes the effect of the plague on life in the city. I was especially struck by this passage, which applies just as well to the range of Coronavirus reactions today:

Some people were of the opinion that living moderately and being abstemious would really help them resist the disease. They, therefore, formed themselves into companies and lived in isolation from everyone else. Having come together, they shut themselves up inside houses where no one was sick and they had ample means to live well, so that, while avoiding overindulgence, they still enjoyed the most delicate foods and the best wines in moderation. They would not speak with anyone from outside, nor did they want to hear any news about the dead and the dying, and instead, they passed their time playing music and enjoying whatever other amusements they could devise.  

Others, holding the contrary opinion, maintained that the surest medicine for such an evil disease was to drink heavily, enjoy life's pleasures, and go about singing and having fun, satisfying their appetites by any means available, while laughing at everything and turning whatever happened into a joke. Moreover, they practiced what they preached to the best of their ability, for they went from one tavern to another, drinking to excess both day and night. They did their drinking more freely in private homes, however, provided that they found something there to enjoy or that held out the promise of pleasure. ... And yet, while these people behaved like wild animals, they always took great care to avoid any contact at all with the sick. 

In the midst of so much affliction and misery in our city, the respect for the reverend authority of the laws, both divine and human, had declined just about to the vanishing point, for, like everyone else, their officers and executors, who were not dead or sick themselves, had so few personnel that they could not fulfill their duties. Thus, people felt free to behave however they liked. 

There were many others who took a middle course between the two already mentioned, neither restricting their diet so much as the first, nor letting themselves go in drinking and other forms of dissipation as much as the second, but doing just enough to satisfy their appetites. Instead of shutting themselves up, they went about, some carrying flowers in their hands, others with sweet-smelling herbs, and yet others with various kinds of spices. They would repeatedly hold these things up to their noses, for they thought the best course was to fortify the brain with such odors against the stinking air that seemed to be saturated with the stench of dead bodies and disease and medicine. Others, choosing what may have been the safer alternative, cruelly maintained that no medicine was better or more effective against the plague than flight.

All these reactions are on display today. Although it's worth noting that the abstemious group in Florence still permitted themselves to drink and wisely closed themselves off from news of the plague. The extreme shut-ins today have, regrettably, chosen to closely follow hourly pandemic updates, and to share their findings with great exuberance online.

Most amusing, however, is Boccaccio's flat assessment of the success rates of the various strategies:

Of the people holding these varied opinions, not all of them died, but, by the same token, not all of them survived. On the contrary, many proponents of each view got sick here, there, and everywhere.

Boccaccio's probably right about that. Then again, he didn't know about "flattening the curve." Such progress we have made!