It’s why Obama’s administration, in turn, failed to adequately stockpile PPE. dismantled the pandemic response team established under Obama. The Plague, Albert CamusĪll too often, we foolish humans like to imagine that things will continue going how they presently are forever, even though we know very well that major calamities arise all the time.

There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. While people can certainly be generous, courageous, and wise - and Camus certainly included these qualities in The Plague as well - they can just as often be shortsighted, selfish, and outright stupid.Įverybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. I believe he accomplished this thanks to his rather pragmatic appraisal of his fellow humans. While he was only five during the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918, I think we’ve all come to appreciate that pandemics have a way of leaving an impression, and this experience was bolstered by Camus’ research into a plague that had decimated Oran in 1849.īut that would not explain the accuracy with which he described the townspeople’s reactions, which largely reflected those we’ve seen in the era of COVID. On the practical side of things, it’s not hard to see where Camus would have gleaned his detailed understanding of the mechanics of the extraordinary situation.

From there we watch how the various characters react as they wait for the crisis to abate.įrom the vantage of today, the accuracy of Camus’ depiction of life under epidemic is almost incredibly accurate, both in terms of practical considerations like measures taken to combat the plague and less tangible factors like how those grappling with the circumstance react. It’s not until hospitals are packed and the dead are stacked that plague is declared and the city is locked down. Even once the disease does make the jump from animals to humans, the town’s leadership attempts to minimize and disregard the situation for fear of causing panic and disrupting business. Coming Down with the Sicknessįor the residents of Oran, the plague’s arrival is marked by a mass die-off of rats, which they chalk up as unusual but unconcerning.

To put that another way, it’s impossible to read The Plague from the vantage point of 2021 without seeing the stark similarities between Camus’ imagined affliction and our all-too-real pandemic, and not merely in terms of sickness. Read it anytime post-March 2020, however, and the philosophical content largely takes a backseat to the simple day-to-day descriptions of what it’s like to live under the threat of epidemic malady - so familiar have they become.

If you had read it in 2019, you’d probably be struck by the keen philosophical insight for which Camus was so renowned.

Oran the plague