Tuesday, in Plague Time

I did just finish "The Plague" and I have numerous thoughts about it. It is supposed to be written by Dr. Rieux, who is also the protagonist. But Camus' emphasis of course is not mere science but philosophy in general and ethics in particular. Interestingly, every character in the book is seen sympathetically, even Cottard the criminal who takes advantage of the plague to make lots of money off his desperate fellow-prisoners. It is a bit like Dostoevsky's survey, from the inside, of prison life in Siberia, since no one is allowed to leave the town of Oran once plague is identified as their ague.

The fashion in which these two great writers treat their characters isn't unlike the way doctors have to experience things--we literally have to find some worthwhile aspect of every human life we treat or even contemplate treating, even if our some of our patients are at war with each other, us, and with the rest of the world. Particularly when we are on call and have almost no choice as to whom we will treat--and all have to be considered with the same intensity and quality as the "alpha male" so to speak.

On the other hand, when Sartre alleged that there was no difference, to him at least, between the lowest drunk in the gutter and the most powerful king in the world--one might hope that he was being egalitarian, but his other judgments tend to cast doubt on that hypothesis, like the quote from "No Exit" which Dennis and I discussed earlier, "Hell is other people." Camus could also get quite irritated at some people, but he saw this as a limitation of his vision, not a final verdict.

My immediate thought at the end of the book, however, is I believe grounded in current medical practice, and is the same reaction as I had to the 9/11 sabotage, which is this:

"Well, that's a one-trick pony!" (And the pony died doing its act)

What happened on flight 93 could reasonably be expected to happen consistently in future attacks of the same nature. Passengers and pilots had been trained to be passive and just wait. The feeling in the plague city was the same, that one was at the mercy of factors beyond their personal or collective control. But the lies that were told to the people on those flights were exposed to the entire world instantly--no terrorist who commandeers an airplane again will ever be taken at his word, and the assumption now is that it's not money or political prisoners they want, but the death of every one on the plane and at the target site. So? "Let's Roll!" Nothing to lose, everything to gain. And so forth.

Similarly, what happened in Camus' fictional city would not happen again at least in the Western world, because shortly after his book was written, numerous groups of antibiotics were discovered to treat the plague bacillus. Streptomycin would have been the first available. But there is also instant worldwide publicity and a marshaling of international effort that regularly occurs now; but even so, much less need to panic than in the past, this novel being set in the late 1940's I would guess.

I am concerned of course about places like Myanmar/Burma, where my son Mark is going, and where the junta does not allow international help and where medical care is worse nowhere else in the world, as I understand. So if you are a praying person, that's yet another reason to pray. He'll be there two solid years, based in Thailand where medical help is very good, thanks in part to my alma mater, the U of Illinois, which has greatly helped to modernize the med school at Chengmai (sp?) and other major cities.

I wonder if I should give him plague vaccine before he goes.............