I am at work on a book, The Great Deliverance, for @PrincetonUPress, about the long fight against epidemic disease.
And I have been thinking lately about the social isolation of #COVID19 victims, hospitalized, possibly dying, & unable to see family or anyone else, except medical staff dressed like this. 
(Yes, the baby is a #coronavirus victim. Born that way.)
It reminds me of what happened to lepers in the Middle Ages, when no one knew the cause of the disease-- sinfulness was widely suspected--& everyone considered victims contagious.
Probably like #AIDS victims in the 1980s. (For some reason, we watched "Philadelphia" last night. Maybe the combination of Jonathan Demme dead & Tom Hanks down with a new virus plague.)
It also makes me think of the "Mass of Separation," a medieval ritual in which the leper stood in a dug grave & heard the priest pronounce him/her an eternal outcast from human society.
Here are the dreadful words: "I forbid you to ever enter a church, a monastery, a fair, a mill, a market or an assembly of people. I forbid you to leave your house unless dressed in your recognizable garb and also shod.
I forbid you to wash your hands or to launder anything or to drink at any stream or fountain, unless using your own barrel or dipper. I forbid you to touch anything you buy or barter for, until it becomes your own.
I forbid you to enter any tavern; and if you wish for wine, whether you buy it or it is given to you, have it funneled into your keg. I forbid you to share house with any woman but your wife.
I command you, if accosted by anyone while traveling on a road, to set yourself downwind of them before you answer. I forbid you to enter any narrow passage, lest a passerby bump into you. I forbid you ... to touch the rim or the rope of a well without donning your gloves.
I forbid you to touch any child or give them anything. I forbid you to drink or eat from any vessel but your own."
In the middle of the current outbreak of #COVID19, maybe this could be a reminder of how brief & insignificant our own isolation is? We have the phone, the TV, the Internet, we are never alone the way a leper was alone.
And our own brief social distancing now may spare other people--& ourselves--much more complete isolation later on. Even #COVID19 victims mostly come home alive.
It's also a reminder how lucky we are to have vaccines, antibiotics, antiseptics, respirators & all the other tools of modern medicine, to spare us from so many appalling diseases of the past. Use them! #VaccinesWork
Thanks finally to the doctors & nurses & other medical staff now risking their own health to tend the sick. Take care, please. This will pass.
