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Hi, everybody.

Patrick here.

So we've done a few episodes of Tides over the years on pandemics.

Black death, the Justinianic plague, and so on.

Since we are currently living through a pandemic, the coronavirus meets all of the definitions,

I wanted to revisit these old episodes and put them back out there for you to listen

to.

Now, let's be clear about this.

The coronavirus is not the bubonic plague.

I'm not saying that it is.

Let's get that straight.

But it's worth trying to wrap our heads around what the worst case scenarios were like,

how the disease spread, what it was like to live through it, and most important of all

what the consequences were.

As Mark Twain put it, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

So, with that in mind, here's our episode on the Justinianic plague.

An icy, unseasonably cold march wind cut through the villagers' worn woolen clothing.

Two dozen people stood clustered around the edge of an open pit dug out of the fertile

soil of the Tiber River Valley in central Italy.

The villagers bowed their heads in prayer as a priest read out a blessing.

...