Keeping Safe: From PPE to Crazy Cures
Before social distancing you probably knew what 2 meters meant, but social distancing has given that measurement new meaning. Scientists think that Covid-19 travels via sneezes or coughs.
Once airborne, the virus is on the hunt for a new host. If you stay 2 meters away from people, chances are you won’t give the virus a home.
Personal Protective Equipment – PPE – has been top of mind for front line workers and the public too. But we’re not the first people in history to know it’s value.
During the plagues of old, doctors visiting the sick wore a uniform including cloak, gloves and mask with dried herbs inside – a sort of medieval hazmat suit. They prescribed remedies such as eating only sugar candy, spraying plague sores with snake poison, or rubbing them with plucked raw chicken rumps.
How does this compare to the precautions and popular remedies taken for Covid-19?
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Challenge a friend to a debate to determine who has it covered! One person argues: resolved that the doctors of old were sufficiently protected from the plague and used the best medicine vs. resolved that today’s PPE and treatments work best.
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Have some fun with this… There have been some crazy treatments suggested for COVID-19, such as drinking bleach! In 1800, a Pennsylvanian doctor researching a cure for Yellow Fever, aka the Black Vomit, actually ate the black vomit of his patients to see how the disease was transmitted.
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There are no winners here, but if you dig into Pandemic Survival, you’ll find many desperate and ridiculous cures that our ancestors tried during scary pandemics.