Our research shows why it's vital to protect older South Africans from coronavirus

Elderly people form part of families and households, and fulfil important caregiving and economic roles. Getty/Klaus Vedfelt

Evidence is building around the world that elderly people are the most vulnerable group in the COVID-19 pandemic. They are more likely to develop severe symptoms and to die from this viral disease, especially if they have other medical conditions like heart disease or high blood pressure.

Globally, the death rate from COVID-19 increases most sharply for those aged 70 or higher. But this data comes primarily from high income countries with strong health care systems. In less developed countries, which have shorter life expectancies, high levels of pre-existing conditions known to worsen outcomes, and generally weaker health systems, mortality is likely to rise earlier.

The Gauteng City-Region Observatory, an independent research and analysis unit in Johannesburg, South Africa, conducts a survey every two years to measure people’s quality of life in the Gauteng city-region, the country’s economic centre. This mostly urban region has had the highest number of COVID-19 cases in South Africa so far. Because of the particularly high risk that the elderly face, we have used the data from the latest Quality of Life survey to understand more about their lives. This work forms part of the GCRO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This picture of older people’s lives in Gauteng can inform welfare and health responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Decision makers need to understand the lives of the vulnerable, to ensure that policies provide appropriate protection and support.

We looked at how the elderly form part of families and households, and fulfil important caregiving and economic roles. Our findings show that a very large proportion of people over the age of 60 identify themselves as head of the household. An equally high proportion identify themselves as the primary caregiver.

Our findings point to the fact that households headed by the elderly are likely to be particularly vulnerable in the COVID-19 pandemic.

A closer look at households in Gauteng province

South Africa’s apartheid history created substantially different population-age structures for different population groups. As household structure and the distribution of care-giving roles also vary by population group, we present separate data for African elders, for whom we have the largest sample size.

We focused our analysis on those aged 60 and above – about 13% of all the 24,889 people in our Quality of Life survey.

Key results of our analysis can be explored in our interactive visualisation below.

Dashboard. GCRO

Like South Africa as a whole, Gauteng has a high prevalence of medical conditions believed to worsen COVID-19 outcomes, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, TB and untreated HIV/AIDS. Life expectancy is already low (63.8 years for males and 69.2 years for females).

We found that most (74%) of the over-60s live in households of two or more people. Just 16% live only with their spouse. Their households are likely to contain several generations: 59% of the elderly live with family members other than their spouse, and 42% live in households with children under 18 years. Africans were even more likely (54%) to share the household with children.

The elderly frequently support children financially, including their own adult children. This is in part due to South Africa’s high unemployment rate and the fact that South Africans over 60 qualify for a social grant. Some 65% of elderly respondents (74% of African elderly) reported having at least one dependent child, and those with dependent children had an average of three.

Of elderly respondents who report having dependent children, 87% fulfil the role of primary carer. That makes up 56% of all elders.

As many as 85% of elderly respondents identify themselves as the head of their household and 48% of these are male.

What lockdown means for these households

With South Africa now under lockdown, the social and economic implications of the pandemic, and efforts to contain it, are becoming increasingly clear. Evidence of growing levels of hunger and income insecurity raises concerns about spiralling poverty, social unrest and economic collapse as a result of long term shutdowns.

This has led some commentators to suggest that in countries like South Africa, there is a choice to be made between policies of lockdown, with wide economic and social impacts, and simply allowing the disease to run its course, which would increase deaths among the elderly. Others have convincingly highlighted the flaws in this argument and point to the social and economic costs of an overwhelmed health system and large numbers of deaths in a short period.

The relatively youthful population (South Africa’s median age is 25 and Gauteng’s is 29) may provide some protection against the impact of COVID-19. But the elderly do not exist in isolation from the rest of the population. Our analysis (consistent with national-level data) suggests that without intervention, this pandemic will have significant implications for many households that include the elderly, or rely on their support.

Even with intervention, the risks are substantial. South Africa’s current lockdown will inevitably need to be eased in coming weeks. Measures to protect the elderly and other at-risk groups, for example through “shielding”, must be considered. Understanding the location of the elderly – both physically and within families, households and communities – will be critical to establishing how to do this.
Household structure, along with population age distribution, is relevant to the risk of transmission. There is evidence that a large proportion of infections occur within households.

Our analysis highlights some of the difficulties of isolating the elderly in South Africa. It also shows that policies must take into account the financial and social support that the elderly provide.

The lives of Gauteng’s elderly are almost certainly intertwined with those of younger residents in numerous other ways beyond those presented here. Along with the pandemic’s economic and social costs, the human and emotional impacts of disrupted relationships between generations will be substantial.

Ways to support the elderly and their dependants

President Ramaphosa, in his address of Tuesday 21 April, announced several interventions to provide social and economic support. New interventions include expanded food assistance, temporary increases in social grant amounts, and temporary social distress grants for other unemployed individuals. If implemented rapidly and impartially, these interventions will relieve some pressure on the elderly and the households they support.

But if the virus causes large numbers of hospitalisations and deaths, further support to the families of those affected will be needed. This may include continuing to pay out old age grants for six months after a beneficiary passes away, and psycho-social support to deal with illness and loss. Ongoing careful, data-driven and localised analysis of challenges and potential solutions will remain essential. The importance of protecting and supporting Gauteng’s elderly is clear.


Alexandra Parker, Researcher of urban & cultural studies, Gauteng City-Region Observatory and Julia de Kadt, Senior Researcher, Gauteng City-Region Observatory
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Diary of Samuel Pepys shows how life under the bubonic plague mirrored today's pandemic

There were eerie similarities between Pepys’ time and our own. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In early April, writer Jen Miller urged New York Times readers to start a coronavirus diary.
“Who knows,” she wrote, “maybe one day your diary will provide a valuable window into this period.”

During a different pandemic, one 17th-century British naval administrator named Samuel Pepys did just that. He fastidiously kept a diary from 1660 to 1669 – a period of time that included a severe outbreak of the bubonic plague in London. Epidemics have always haunted humans, but rarely do we get such a detailed glimpse into one person’s life during a crisis from so long ago.

There were no Zoom meetings, drive-through testing or ventilators in 17th-century London. But Pepys’ diary reveals that there were some striking resemblances in how people responded to the pandemic.

A creeping sense of crisis

For Pepys and the inhabitants of London, there was no way of knowing whether an outbreak of the plague that occurred in the parish of St. Giles, a poor area outside the city walls, in late 1664 and early 1665 would become an epidemic.

The plague first entered Pepys’ consciousness enough to warrant a diary entry on April 30, 1665: “Great fears of the Sickenesse here in the City,” he wrote, “it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.”

Portrait of Samuel Pepys by John Hayls (1666). National Portrait Gallery

Pepys continued to live his life normally until the beginning of June, when, for the first time, he saw houses “shut up” – the term his contemporaries used for quarantine – with his own eyes, “marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there.” After this, Pepys became increasingly troubled by the outbreak.

He soon observed corpses being taken to their burial in the streets, and a number of his acquaintances died, including his own physician.

By mid-August, he had drawn up his will, writing, “that I shall be in much better state of soul, I hope, if it should please the Lord to call me away this sickly time.” Later that month, he wrote of deserted streets; the pedestrians he encountered were “walking like people that had taken leave of the world.”

Tracking mortality counts

In London, the Company of Parish Clerks printed “bills of mortality,” the weekly tallies of burials.
Because these lists noted London’s burials – not deaths – they undoubtedly undercounted the dead.
Just as we follow these numbers closely today, Pepys documented the growing number of plague
victims in his diary.

‘Bills of mortality’ were regularly posted. Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Image

At the end of August, he cited the bill of mortality as having recorded 6,102 victims of the plague, but feared “that the true number of the dead this week is near 10,000,” mostly because the victims among the urban poor weren’t counted. A week later, he noted the official number of 6,978 in one week, “a most dreadfull Number.”

By mid-September, all attempts to control the plague were failing. Quarantines were not being enforced, and people gathered in places like the Royal Exchange. Social distancing, in short, was not happening.

He was equally alarmed by people attending funerals in spite of official orders. Although plague victims were supposed to be interred at night, this system broke down as well, and Pepys griped that burials were taking place “in broad daylight.”

Desperate for remedies

There are few known effective treatment options for COVID-19. Medical and scientific research need time, but people hit hard by the virus are willing to try anything. Fraudulent treatments, from teas and colloidal silver, to cognac and cow urine, have been floated.

Although Pepys lived during the Scientific Revolution, nobody in the 17th century knew that the Yersinia pestis bacterium carried by fleas caused the plague. Instead, the era’s scientists theorized that the plague was spreading through miasma, or “bad air” created by rotting organic matter and identifiable by its foul smell. Some of the most popular measures to combat the plague involved purifying the air by smoking tobacco or by holding herbs and spices in front of one’s nose.

Tobacco was the first remedy that Pepys sought during the plague outbreak. In early June, seeing shut-up houses “put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell … and chaw.” Later, in July, a noble patroness gave him “a bottle of plague-water” – a medicine made from various herbs. But he wasn’t sure whether any of this was effective. Having participated in a coffeehouse discussion about “the plague growing upon us in this town and remedies against it,” he could only conclude that “some saying one thing, some another.”

A 1666 engraving by John Dunstall depicts deaths and burials in London during the bubonic plague. Museum of London

During the outbreak, Pepys was also very concerned with his frame of mind; he constantly mentioned that he was trying to be in good spirits. This was not only an attempt to “not let it get to him” – as we might say today – but also informed by the medical theory of the era, which claimed that an imbalance of the so-called humors in the body – blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm – led to disease.

Melancholy – which, according to doctors, resulted from an excess of black bile – could be dangerous to one’s health, so Pepys sought to suppress negative emotions; on Sept. 14, for example, he wrote that hearing about dead friends and acquaintances “doth put me into great apprehensions of melancholy. … But I put off the thoughts of sadness as much as I can.”

Balancing paranoia and risk

Humans are social animals and thrive on interaction, so it’s no surprise that so many have found social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic challenging. It can require constant risk assessment: How close is too close? How can we avoid infection and keep our loved ones safe, while also staying sane? What should we do when someone in our house develops a cough?

During the plague, this sort of paranoia also abounded. Pepys found that when he left London and entered other towns, the townspeople became visibly nervous about visitors.

“They are afeared of us that come to them,” he wrote in mid-July, “insomuch that I am troubled at it.”
Pepys succumbed to paranoia himself: In late July, his servant Will suddenly developed a headache. Fearing that his entire house would be shut up if a servant came down with the plague, Pepys mobilized all his other servants to get Will out of the house as quickly as possible. It turned out that Will didn’t have the plague, and he returned the next day.

In early September, Pepys refrained from wearing a wig he bought in an area of London that was a hotspot of the disease, and he wondered whether other people would also fear wearing wigs because they could potentially be made of the hair of plague victims.

And yet he was willing to risk his health to meet certain needs; by early October, he visited his mistress without any regard for the danger: “round about and next door on every side is the plague, but I did not value it but there did what I could con ella.”

Just as people around the world eagerly wait for a falling death toll as a sign of the pandemic letting up, so did Pepys derive hope – and perhaps the impetus to see his mistress – from the first decline in deaths in mid-September. A week later, he noted a substantial decline of more than 1,800.

Let’s hope that, like Pepys, we’ll soon see some light at the end of the tunnel.

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Ute Lotz-Heumann, Heiko A. Oberman Professor of Late Medieval and Reformation History, University of Arizona
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Book raises poignant questions about the future of Nelson Mandela's party

The African National Congress fought against the evils of apartheid, but couldn’t escape the sins of power itself. EFE-EPA/Yeshiel Panchia

My instinctive reaction on first laying my eyes on Mcebisi Ndletyana’s new book, Anatomy of the ANC in Power: Insights from Port Elizabeth, 1990-2019, was to wonder if the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994, was destined to atrophy.

The book is set to heighten the debate about the future of the party, whose dominance has been in decline since 2009. Ingenuously titled, it adds to the growing body of knowledge on liberation movements in power.

It explains how the party, which had fought against the injustice of the brutal system of apartheid, became so absorbed by the sins of incumbency when it came to power.

The book is a distillation of analytical savvy, intellectual prowess, wit and the fine pen of an outstanding pundit.

The political scientist Anthony Butler and sociologist Roger Southall have bemoaned analyses of the ANC for lacking practical and intuitive knowledge of its institutional life, complexity and informal networks. Ndletyana’s book attempts to fill that void.

As emeritus professor of historical studies Chris Saunders has put it, the

ANC’s history is a large mosaic of many different parts.

But can these different parts be knitted together into a complete historical narrative?

Making history

The history of political organisations is made every day of their existence, and continues even after their demise. The ink that writes history does not dry up.

Ndletyana gives the history of power politics in the ANC interpretation. He answers the vexing question that Joel Netshitenzhe, a national executive committee member of the party, asked in 2018:

how do liberation movements lose sense of idealism that included a preparedness to pay the ultimate price?

The book analyses the internal workings of the ANC, starting at the time when it reestablished itself inside the country, after it was unbanned in 1990, and ends in 2019.

It covers the two decades of the ANC in power. It is, therefore, wide-ranging and large in scope. I am not aware of any other other book that has gone to this length in analysing the ANC in power.

Port Elizabeth – the populous seaport city in the Eastern Cape province – is the contextual setting of the narrative. It has since been renamed Nelson Mandela Bay or simply called The Bay.

The place has always been the fulcrum of political activism, from the earliest days of African nationalism. This, coupled with the ANC’s popularity there, gives the historical reason for its choice as the scene for the book’s narrative.

The strength of the book comes from its causal processes approach and ethnography as a means used to gather information, including studying theoretical literature, official documents and archival materials.

Ndletyana argues that the decline of the ANC, as shown in various electoral outcomes, especially from 2009, is the function of its very political dominance as a governing party. It created the illusion of invincibility.

Oligarchic tendencies

When the ANC took control in Port Elizabeth in 1995, it reconfigured its internal workings to align them with the structure of power in the governance of the municipality. The party became the city government and city government became the party.

This spawned oligarchic tendencies and marked the onset of the scramble for the resources of the city. The platform for this is factionalism – a phenomenon which started to show glaringly in the ANC’s 52nd national conference in 2007 in Polokwane, when Jacob Zuma replaced then ANC president Thabo Mbeki.

Ndletyana shows how these tendencies belie the essence of democracy, including the party’s self-characterisation as a leader of society. His view is that these aberrations are a

manifestation of systematic weaknesses occasioned by the party’s inability to adapt to being a party-in-government.

Of course, being unable to adapt to being in power and sustaining political dominance by keeping a hand in the cookie jar – sheer corruption, which has assumed proportions of state capture – are two distinct factors. But, in building the thesis of his book, to explain the decline of the ANC in Port Elizabeth, Ndletyana talks of these as conflations in a blended way, not as binaries. This makes the narrative plausible.

This is ingenuity of thought and interpretation, coupled with a no-holds- barred approach – a function of unencumbered scholarship. The book may ruffle the feathers of those it implicates.

They are revealed as hurdles to the reform of the party. Their resistance goes to the extent of sabotaging the electoral prospects of the party to protect their sanctuaries, which are sustained through access to municipal resources.

This is how the ANC lost the “jewel of the crown” – Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality – in the 2016 local government elections. This is where the ANC had enjoyed historical popularity. The Democratic Alliance performed better than the ANC, and cobbled together a coalition to form government. The ANC lost because it had hollowed out its political capital.

Self-correction

But can the party of Nelson Mandela self-correct? Ndletyana is understandably unconvinced. That’s because attempts to reform the party are thwarted by those wielding an invisible hand in the affairs of the government, to maintain their networks of patronage.

Former ANC leader and South African President Nelson Mandela. Piere Verydy/AFP/GettyImages

Unfortunately, this mirrors the state of the ANC nationally, which is at war with itself. The greed of unscrupulous leaders and party members is in contestation with its historical mission of social justice. Ndletyana lays bare this insidiousness of power.

The distinction of his book lies in the strength and clarity of elucidation. It engages the reader in a topic of profound historical significance. But its resonance is in the problems of the day.

I strongly recommend the book to anybody with an interest in South Africa’s future. After reading it, they’ll no doubt wonder: will the ANC survive the future, or is it destined for inevitable demise?

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Read more: 'ANC Spy Bible': a real-life South African thriller, but too much left unsaid

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Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

How the rich reacted to the bubonic plague has eerie similarities to today's pandemic

Franz Xavier Winterhalter’s ‘The Decameron’ (1837). Heritage Images via Getty Images

The coronavirus can infect anyone, but recent reporting has shown your socioeconomic status can play a big role, with a combination of job security, access to health care and mobility widening the gap in infection and mortality rates between rich and poor.

The wealthy work remotely and flee to resorts or pastoral second homes, while the urban poor are packed into small apartments and compelled to keep showing up to work.

As a medievalist, I’ve seen a version of this story before.

Following the 1348 Black Death in Italy, the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a collection of 100 novellas titled, “The Decameron.” These stories, though fictional, give us a window into medieval life during the Black Death – and how some of the same fissures opened up between the rich and the poor. Cultural historians today see “The Decameron” as an invaluable source of information on everyday life in 14th-century Italy.

Giovanni Boccaccio. Leemage via Getty Images

Boccaccio was born in 1313 as the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker. A product of the middle class, he wrote, in “The Decameron,” stories about merchants and servants. This was unusual for his time, as medieval literature tended to focus on the lives of the nobility.

“The Decameron” begins with a gripping, graphic description of the Black Death, which was so virulent that a person who contracted it would die within four to seven days. Between 1347 and 1351, it killed between 40% and 50% of Europe’s population. Some of Boccaccio’s own family members died.

In this opening section, Boccaccio describes the rich secluding themselves at home, where they enjoy quality wines and provisions, music and other entertainment. The very wealthiest – whom Boccaccio describes as “ruthless” – deserted their neighborhoods altogether, retreating to comfortable estates in the countryside, “as though the plague was meant to harry only those remaining within their city walls.”

Meanwhile, the middle class or poor, forced to stay at home, “caught the plague by the thousand right there in their own neighborhood, day after day” and swiftly passed away. Servants dutifully attended to the sick in wealthy households, often succumbing to the illness themselves. Many, unable to leave Florence and convinced of their imminent death, decided to simply drink and party away their final days in nihilistic revelries, while in rural areas, laborers died “like brute beasts rather than human beings; night and day, with never a doctor to attend them.”

Josse Lieferinxe’s ‘Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken’ (c. 1498). Wikimedia Commons

After the bleak description of the plague, Boccaccio shifts to the 100 stories. They’re narrated by 10 nobles who have fled the pallor of death hanging over Florence to luxuriate in amply stocked country mansions. From there, they tell their tales.

One key issue in “The Decameron” is how wealth and advantage can impair people’s abilities to empathize with the hardships of others. Boccaccio begins the forward with the proverb, “It is inherently human to show pity to those who are afflicted.” Yet in many of the tales he goes on to present characters who are sharply indifferent to the pain of others, blinded by their own drives and ambition.

In one fantasy story, a dead man returns from hell every Friday and ritually slaughters the same woman who had rejected him when he was alive. In another, a widow fends off a leering priest by tricking him into sleeping with her maid. In a third, the narrator praises a character for his undying loyalty to his friend when, in fact, he has profoundly betrayed that friend over many years.

Humans, Boccaccio seems to be saying, can think of themselves as upstanding and moral – but unawares, they may show indifference to others. We see this in the 10 storytellers themselves: They make a pact to live virtuously in their well-appointed retreats. Yet while they pamper themselves, they indulge in some stories that illustrate brutality, betrayal and exploitation.

Boccaccio wanted to challenge his readers, and make them think about their responsibilities to others. “The Decameron” raises the questions: How do the rich relate to the poor during times of widespread suffering? What is the value of a life?

In our own pandemic, with millions unemployed due to a virus that has killed thousands, these issues are strikingly relevant.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on April 16, 2020.
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Kathryn McKinley, Professor of English, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

5 Buddhist teachings that can help you deal with coronavirus anxiety

Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images

Buddhist meditation centers and temples in coronavirus-hit countries around the world have been closed to the public in order to comply with social distancing measures.

But Buddhist teachers are offering their teachings from a distance in order to remind their communities about key elements of the practice.

In Asia, Buddhist monks have been chanting sutras to provide spiritual relief. In Sri Lanka, Buddhist monastic chanting was broadcast over television and radio. In India, monks chanted at the seat of the Buddha’s enlightenment, the Mahabodhi Temple in the eastern state of Bihar.

Monks praying at the Mahabodhi Temple in India.

Buddhist leaders argue that their teachings can help confront the uncertainty, fear and anxiety that has accompanied the spread of COVID-19.

This is not the first time Buddhists have offered their teachings to provide relief during a crisis. As a scholar of Buddhism, I have studied the ways in which Buddhist teachings are interpreted to address social problems.

Engaged Buddhism

The Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh first coined the concept of “engaged Buddhism.” During the Vietnam War, faced with the choice between practicing in isolated monasteries or engaging with the suffering Vietnamese people, he decided to do both.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Geoff Livingston/Flickr, CC BY-ND

He later ordained a group of friends and students into this way of practice.

In recent years many Buddhists have been actively involved in political and social issues throughout much of Asia as well as parts of the western world.

The following five teachings can help people in current times of fear, anxiety and isolation.

1. Acknowledge the fear

Buddhist teachings state that suffering, illness and death are to be expected, understood and acknowledged. The nature of reality is affirmed in a short chant: “I am subject to aging … subject to illness … subject to death.”

This chant serves to remind people that fear and uncertainty are natural to ordinary life. Part of making peace with our reality, no matter what, is expecting impermanence, lack of control and unpredictability.

Thinking that things should be otherwise, from a Buddhist perspective, adds unnecessary suffering.

Instead of reacting with fear, Buddhist teachers advise working with fear. As Theravada Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm explains, when “we fight the world, we have what is called suffering,” but “the more we accept the world, the more we can actually enjoy the world.”

2. Practice mindfulness and meditation

Mindfulness and meditation are key Buddhist teachings. Mindfulness practices aim to curb impulsive behaviors with awareness of the body.

For example, most people react impulsively to scratch an itch. With the practice of mindfulness, individuals can train their minds to watch the arising and passing away of the itch without any physical intervention.

With the practice of mindfulness, one could become more aware and avoid touching the face and washing hands.

Meditation, as compared to mindfulness, is a longer, more inward practice than the moment-to-moment mindful awareness practice. For Buddhists, time alone with one’s mind are normally part of a meditation retreat. Isolation and quarantine can mirror the conditions necessary for a meditation retreat.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, advises watching the sensations of anxiety in the body and seeing them as clouds coming and going.

Regular meditation can allow one to acknowledge fear, anger and uncertainty. Such acknowledgment can make it easier to recognize these feelings as simply passing reactions to an impermanent situation.

3. Cultivating compassion

Buddhist teachings emphasize the “four immeasurables”: loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. Buddhist teachers believe these four attitudes can replace anxious and fearful states of mind.

When emotions around fear or anxiety become too strong, Buddhist teachers say one should recall examples of compassion, kindness and empathy. The pattern of fearful and despairing thoughts can be stopped by bringing oneself back to the feeling of caring for others.

Compassion is important even as we maintain distance. Brother Phap Linh, another Buddhist teacher, advises that this could be a time for all to take care of their relationships.

Dealing with isolation.

This could be done through conversations with our loved ones but also through meditation practice.

As meditators breathe in, they should acknowledge the suffering and anxiety everyone feels, and while breathing out, wish everyone peace and well-being.

4. Understanding our interconnections

Buddhist doctrines recognize an interconnection between everything. The pandemic is a moment to see this more clearly. With every action someone takes for self-care, such as washing one’s hands, they are also helping to protect others.

The dualistic thinking of separateness between self and other, self and society, breaks down when viewed from the perspective of interconnection.

Our survival depends on one another, and when we feel a sense of responsibility toward everyone, we understand the concept of interconnection as a wise truth.

5. Use this time to reflect

Times of uncertainty, Buddhist teachers argue, can be good opportunities for putting these teachings into practice.

Individuals can transform disappointment with the current moment into motivation to change one’s life and perspective on the world. If one reframes obstacles as part of the spiritual path, one can use difficult times to make a commitment to living a more spiritual life.

Isolation in the home is an opportunity to reflect, enjoy the small things and just be.

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Brooke Schedneck, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Rhodes College
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

6 things you can do to cope with boredom at a time of social distancing

Being at home at a time of social distancing can set in a feeling of boredom. PeopleImages E+ via Getty Images

More and more of us are staying home in an attempt to slow down the spreading coronavirus. But being stuck at home can lead to boredom.

Boredom is a signal that we’re not meaningfully engaged with the world. It tells us to stop what we’re doing, and do it better – or to do something else.

But, as a social psychologist who studies boredom, I know that people don’t always make the best choices when bored. So if you’re stuck at home, dutifully practicing your social distancing, how do you keep boredom away?

About boredom

We can feel bored even with jobs and activities that appear to be meaningful. For example, researchers have found anesthesiologists and air traffic controllers find themselves bored on the job.

What this research reveals is that just because something is objectively meaningful doesn’t mean it feels that way to us all the time. And even meaningful work can be boring if the person performing it finds it too hard or too easy. Once that happens, individuals might struggle to stay focused.

Reducing boredom requires that individuals solve the problems that produced it – not having sufficient activities that are both meaningful and optimally challenging.

However, sometimes people turn to activities that make them feel better in the moment, but that don’t provide long-term meaning or challenge. For instance, studies have shown that people are willing to self-administer electric shocks when bored.

Other behaviors linked to greater susceptibility to boredom include increased alcohol intake and marijuana use. Boredom is also tied to unhealthy snacking and online pornography.

While these may feel good in the moment, they provide only temporary relief from boredom. To prevent boredom and keep it away, we need to find solutions at home that provide lasting meaning and challenge.

1. Remind yourself why you’re doing this

People generally prefer doing something to doing nothing. As staying home is the most effective way to prevent the further transmission of the coronavirus, it is meaningful to socially isolate. However, it may not always feel that way.

Like all emotions, boredom is about whatever you’re thinking at the moment. That means staying at home will only feel meaningful when we’re actively thinking about the greater good it does. For instance, in studies, when students were prompted to reflect on why their schoolwork mattered to them personally, researchers found that their interest in learning increased.

In other words, reframing our activity changes how we feel about it.

Doing meditation at home while self-isolating. Justin Paget/Digital Vision via Getty Images

Creating simple reminders, such as a note on the fridge, or a morning meditation, can help us keep the big picture in view: Staying home is a sacrifice we’re actively making for the good of others.

2. Find a rhythm

Routines structure our days, and provide a sense of coherence that bolsters our meaning in life. People’s lives feel more meaningful in moments when they’re engaged in daily routines.

We lose those routines when we give up going to the office, or when we are laid off. Even retirees or stay-at-home parents are disrupted by closures to cities, restaurants and schools. This loss of routine can foster feelings of boredom.

By creating new routines, people can restore a sense of meaning that buffers them from boredom.

3. Go with the flow

Figuring out what to do when faced by long days unstructured by work or school can be hard. A recent study of people in quarantine in Italy found that boredom was the second most common issue, after loss of freedom.

One thing that makes such situations hard is that it can be tricky to find activities that are just challenging enough to keep one occupied, without being too demanding. This situation can leave people bored and frustrated.

It helps to keep in mind that what counts as too challenging, or not challenging enough, will shift throughout the day. Don’t force yourself to keep at it if you need a break.

4. Try something new

Boredom urges many of us towards the novel. Embrace that urge, judiciously. If you have the energy, try a new recipe, experiment with home repairs, learn a new dance on TikTok.

Doing new things not only relieves boredom, it helps acquire new skills and knowledge that may relieve boredom in the long run. For instance, we feel a surge of interest when we read an interesting novel or go through complex experiences, but only if we have the capacity to understand them.

Evidence shows that embracing new experiences, can help us lead not only a happy or meaningful life, but a psychologically richer one.

5. Make room for guilty pleasures

It’s okay to binge on television, if that’s all you can handle at the moment.

We sometimes paint ourselves into a box where our most meaningful hobbies are also mentally taxing or effortful. For instance, digging into a classic Russian novel may be meaningful, but it doesn’t necessarily come easily.

Similarly, well-intentioned suggestions for how to cope at home, such as hosting a virtual wine-and-design night, may be simply too exhausting to be pleasurable at a time when many of us are already struggling.

Give yourself permission to enjoy your guilty pleasures. If need be, reframe those moments as much-needed mental refreshment, nourishing and recharging you for a later date.

6. Connect with others

Finding easy meaningful alternatives – bite-sized options that don’t take much effort, but that we find deeply rewarding – can be a challenge.

Luckily one good option is open to us all: connecting with others, whether virtually or for those lucky enough not to be quarantined alone – in-person.

Talk with friends while working from home. Julie Jammot/AFP via Getty Images

Looking at old photos, or reminiscing with a friend, are simple meaningful actions most of us can take even when we’re not feeling our best. One does not need a reason to call up a friend – our best socializing is the kind that happens casually, in the unstructured time between scheduled activities.

Create room for that virtually as well: Next time you’re pouring a glass of wine or watering the plants, call up a friend while you do it. Make dinner together. We don’t have to be bored, when we’re all in this together.

Boredom itself is neither bad nor good, only our choices about how to counter it make it so.
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Erin C. Westgate, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Florida
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians, and British overlords' indifference strengthened the anti-colonial movement

Cremation on the banks of the Ganges river, India. Keystone-France via Getty Images

In India, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a staggering 12 to 13 million people died, the vast majority between the months of September and December. According to an eyewitness, “There was none to remove the dead bodies and the jackals made a feast.”

At the time of the pandemic, India had been under British colonial rule for over 150 years. The fortunes of the British colonizers had always been vastly different from those of the Indian people, and nowhere was the split more stark than during the influenza pandemic, as I discovered while researching my Ph.D. on the subject.

The resulting devastation would eventually lead to huge changes in India – and the British Empire.

From Kansas to Mumbai

Although it is commonly called the Spanish flu, the 1918 pandemic likely began in Kansas and killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide.


During the early months of 1918, the virus incubated throughout the American Midwest, eventually making its way east, where it traveled across the Atlantic Ocean with soldiers deploying for WWI.

Indian soldiers in the trenches during World War I. Print Collector / Contributor via Getty Images

Introduced into the trenches on Europe’s Western Front, the virus tore through the already weakened troops. As the war approached its conclusion, the virus followed both commercial shipping routes and military transports to infect almost every corner of the globe. It arrived in Mumbai in late May.

Unequal spread

When the first wave of the pandemic arrived, it was not particularly deadly. The only notice British officials took of it was its effect on some workers. A report noted, “As the season for cutting grass began … people were so weak as to be unable to do a full day’s work.”

By September, the story began to change. Mumbai was still the center of infection, likely due to its position as a commercial and civic hub. On Sept. 19, an English-language newspaper reported 293 influenza deaths had occurred there, but assured its readers “The worst is now reached.”

Instead, the virus tore through the subcontinent, following trade and postal routes. Catastrophe and death overwhelmed cities and rural villages alike. Indian newspapers reported that crematoria were receiving between 150 to 200 bodies per day. According to one observer, “The burning ghats and burial grounds were literally swamped with corpses; whilst an even greater number awaited removal.”

Members of the British Raj out for a stroll, circa 1918. Fox Photos/Stringer via Getty images

But influenza did not strike everyone equally. Most British people in India lived in spacious houses with gardens and yards, compared to the lower classes of city-dwelling Indians, who lived in densely populated areas. Many British also employed household staff to care for them – in times of health and sickness – so they were only lightly touched by the pandemic and were largely unconcerned by the chaos sweeping through the country.

In his official correspondence in early December, the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces did not even mention influenza, instead noting “Everything is very dry; but I managed to get two hundred couple of snipe so far this season.”

While the pandemic was of little consequence to many British residents of India, the perception was wildly different among the Indian people, who spoke of universal devastation. A letter published in a periodical lamented, “India perhaps never saw such hard times before. There is wailing on all sides. … There is neither village nor town throughout the length and breadth of the country which has not paid a heavy toll.”

Elsewhere, the Sanitary Commissioner of the Punjab noted, “the streets and lanes of cities were littered with dead and dying people … nearly every household was lamenting a death, and everywhere terror and confusion reigned.”

The fallout

In the end, areas in the north and west of India saw death rates between 4.5% and 6% of their total populations, while the south and east – where the virus arrived slightly later, as it was waning – generally lost between 1.5% and 3%.

Geography wasn’t the only dividing factor, however. In Mumbai, almost seven-and-a-half times as many lower-caste Indians died as compared to their British counterparts - 61.6 per thousand versus 8.3 per thousand.

Among Indians in Mumbai, socioeconomic disparities in addition to race accounted for these differing mortality rates.


The Health Officer for Calcutta remarked on the stark difference in death rates between British and lower-class Indians: “The excessive mortality in Kidderpore appears to be due mainly to the large coolie population, ignorant and poverty-stricken, living under most insanitary conditions in damp, dark, dirty huts. They are a difficult class to deal with.”

Change ahead

Death tolls across India generally hit their peak in October, with a slow tapering into November and December. A high ranking British official wrote in December, “A good winter rain will put everything right and … things will gradually rectify themselves.”

Normalcy, however, did not quite return to India. The spring of 1919 would see the British atrocities at Amritsar and shortly thereafter the launch of Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement. Influenza became one more example of British injustice that spurred Indian people on in their fight for independence. A periodical published by the human rights activist Mahatma Gandhi stated, “In no other civilized country could a government have left things so much undone as did the Government of India did during the prevalence of such a terrible and catastrophic epidemic.”

The long, slow death of the British Empire had begun.

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Maura Chhun, Community Faculty, Metropolitan State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

How the rich reacted to the bubonic plague has eerie similarities to today's pandemic

Franz Xavier Winterhalter’s ‘The Decameron’ (1837). Heritage Images via Getty Images

The coronavirus can infect anyone, but recent reporting has shown your socioeconomic status can play a big role, with a combination of job security, access to health care and mobility widening the gap in infection and mortality rates between rich and poor.

The wealthy work remotely and flee to resorts or pastoral second homes, while the urban poor are packed into small apartments and compelled to keep showing up to work.

As a medievalist, I’ve seen a version of this story before.

Following the 1348 Black Death in Italy, the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a collection of 100 novellas titled, “The Decameron.” These stories, though fictional, give us a window into medieval life during the Black Death – and how some of the same fissures opened up between the rich and the poor. Cultural historians today see “The Decameron” as an invaluable source of information on everyday life in 14th-century Italy.

Giovanni Boccaccio. Leemage via Getty Images

Boccaccio was born in 1313 as the illegitimate son of a Florentine banker. A product of the middle class, he wrote, in “The Decameron,” stories about merchants and servants. This was unusual for his time, as medieval literature tended to focus on the lives of the nobility.

“The Decameron” begins with a gripping, graphic description of the Black Death, which was so virulent that a person who contracted it would die within four to seven days. Between 1347 and 1351, it killed between 40% and 50% of Europe’s population. Some of Boccaccio’s own family members died.

In this opening section, Boccaccio describes the rich secluding themselves at home, where they enjoy quality wines and provisions, music and other entertainment. The very wealthiest – whom Boccaccio describes as “ruthless” – deserted their neighborhoods altogether, retreating to comfortable estates in the countryside, “as though the plague was meant to harry only those remaining within their city walls.”

Meanwhile, the middle class or poor, forced to stay at home, “caught the plague by the thousand right there in their own neighborhood, day after day” and swiftly passed away. Servants dutifully attended to the sick in wealthy households, often succumbing to the illness themselves. Many, unable to leave Florence and convinced of their imminent death, decided to simply drink and party away their final days in nihilistic revelries, while in rural areas, laborers died “like brute beasts rather than human beings; night and day, with never a doctor to attend them.”

Josse Lieferinxe’s ‘Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken’ (c. 1498). Wikimedia Commons

After the bleak description of the plague, Boccaccio shifts to the 100 stories. They’re narrated by 10 nobles who have fled the pallor of death hanging over Florence to luxuriate in amply stocked country mansions. From there, they tell their tales.

One key issue in “The Decameron” is how wealth and advantage can impair people’s abilities to empathize with the hardships of others. Boccaccio begins the forward with the proverb, “It is inherently human to show pity to those who are afflicted.” Yet in many of the tales he goes on to present characters who are sharply indifferent to the pain of others, blinded by their own drives and ambition.

In one fantasy story, a dead man returns from hell every Friday and ritually slaughters the same woman who had rejected him when he was alive. In another, a widow fends off a leering priest by tricking him into sleeping with her maid. In a third, the narrator praises a character for his undying loyalty to his friend when, in fact, he has profoundly betrayed that friend over many years.

Humans, Boccaccio seems to be saying, can think of themselves as upstanding and moral – but unawares, they may show indifference to others. We see this in the 10 storytellers themselves: They make a pact to live virtuously in their well-appointed retreats. Yet while they pamper themselves, they indulge in some stories that illustrate brutality, betrayal and exploitation.

Boccaccio wanted to challenge his readers, and make them think about their responsibilities to others. “The Decameron” raises the questions: How do the rich relate to the poor during times of widespread suffering? What is the value of a life?

In our own pandemic, with millions unemployed due to a virus that has killed thousands, these issues are strikingly relevant.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on April 16, 2020.
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Kathryn McKinley, Professor of English, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.