The COVID-19 pandemic that is happening today is strikingly similar to the one in Decameron

　Gentle ladies, I know that you are inherently compassionate, and reading this book makes it inevitable to think that the beginning of the story is too tragic and sad, and that people cannot help but think of the terrible plague that happened not long ago, which is a very uncomfortable thing for those who have experienced it or heard about it. But please don't think that reading this book will cause you to sigh and shed tears, so you are too scared to read any further. The beginning of the book, though bleak, is like a steep mountain, blocking a beautiful plain, and turning over the mountain in front of it to reach the pleasing realm; the hard work of climbing will be exchanged for doubling joy. Although Happy Pole is sad, when the sorrow comes to an end, unexpected happiness will also spring up.

　　So this is only a temporary bleakness—I say it is temporary, because it is only a few pages long; and then there is a burst of joy, as has just been predicted—if it were not for this statement first, I am afraid that you would not have guessed that there would be no end to the suffering. To tell you the truth, I really don't want to tire you of this rough trail, but there is no other way to go, because without looking back at the tragic past, I can't tell you what kind of situation the many stories you are going to read came about; so I have to write such an opening in the book.

　　In the year 1,348 after the birth of our Lord, a terrible plague struck the most beautiful city in Italy, the bustling City of Florence. It is not known whether the plague was influenced by the celestial bodies or by the punishment of the majestic God who had been inflicted on the evil human race; it had first occurred in the East, and within a few years, countless people had died; and it had been seen that the plague was constantly spreading from place to place, and later unfortunately spread to the West. Everyone was helpless, and there was no way to prevent it. All the filthy places in the city have been swept away, orders forbiding the sick from entering the city have been issued, measures to protect health have been carried out, and pious people have sometimes prayed to God in droves and sometimes in pieces; but in the early spring of that year, strange and terrible illnesses finally appeared, and the situation of disaster was immediately aggravated.

　　The plague here is not like the plague in the East, where the blood in the nostrils of the patient is bound to die, but there is another sign. Infected men and women initially swell a tumor in the groin or under the arm socket, and then grow larger and larger, there is a small apple, or the size of an egg. Ordinary people call this tumor "epidemic tumor", and it does not take long for this death-like "epidemic tumor" to spread from those two parts to various parts of the human body. After that, the symptoms changed again, and the patient's arms, legs, and even other parts of the body appeared black or purple spots, sometimes sparse and sparse large pieces, sometimes thin and dense; but anyway, this is the same as the early tumor, is a sign of death.

　　No matter how you ask the doctor to take medicine, this disease is always unsaved. Perhaps this was simply an incurable disease, or perhaps it was because the physicians were too shallow to find the true source of the disease, and therefore could not come up with a proper treatment—many men and women who knew nothing about the way of medicine at that time also practiced medicine like trained physicians. All in all, there are very few people who have this disease and are cured by chance, and most of the patients die within three days of the appearance of the "tumor"; and most of them do not have any fever or other symptoms.

　　The plague was so terrible that a healthy man became ill as soon as he came into contact with the sick, and it burned as easily as dry wood near a blazing fire. No, the situation is even more serious, not to say that approaching the patient and talking to the patient will cause fatal diseases, and even as long as you touch the clothes worn by the patient and touch the things, you will immediately become infected.

　　There are also appalling things. If it weren't for me, and many others who had seen and witnessed it, I wouldn't have believed it, let alone recorded it, even if I had heard it from the most reliable people. The spread of this plague is so terrible that not only will it be transmitted from person to person, but even livestock other than humans will become infected as soon as they come into contact with the sick or the deceased, and it will not be uncommon for them to die in a short time. One day, I saw with my own eyes that there was such a thing: there was a pile of tattered clothes thrown on the road, which was clearly the relics of a poor man who had died of illness, and at this time came two pigs, as we all know, pigs always like to arch things with their noses, and they should also fall over, turn the clothes over with their noses, bite them in their mouths, chew and wave for a while, and after a while, the two pigs will not stop rolling, and after a while, as if they have eaten poison, they will fall on the pile of clothes and die.

　　The living people, who see this kind of tragedy, big or small, are filled with terror and strange thoughts every day; later, almost every one of them has adopted a ruthless and ruthless means: everything that the patient and the patient has used avoids touching, they think that in this way their safety can be preserved.

　　Some people think that only by living a life of purity and moderation can they escape this plague. So they each formed a few companions, and chose some clean houses without patients to live in, completely isolated from the outside world. They eat the most exquisite food and drink the most beautiful wine, but they always try their best to be moderate, and they never want to overdo it. They paid no attention to the situation of illness and death in the outside world, and only used music and other gadgets to pass the time.

　　There are also some people who think the opposite, thinking that only indulging in joy, indulging in wild songs, trying to satisfy all their desires, and laughing at everything is an effective way to deal with the plague. They really did what they said, often day and night, drinking heavily, from this hotel to that hotel, and even on a whim, breaking into people's homes and doing whatever they wanted. No one came to stop them, because everyone is alive today and can't save tomorrow, where else can they care about what property is not property? Therefore, most of the houses have become public property, and any passerby can break into it in a big way, just as if it were his own home. However, despite their rampage, they still avoid the patient.

　　At the moment of the catastrophe, almost all the laws and ordinances of the city have been destroyed; for the priests and law enforcers, as well as the officials of the law, have died, are sick, or have not even had a single man under their command to carry out their duties; therefore, almost everyone can do whatever they want.

　　Many have adopted another eclectic attitude. They are neither as strict as the first, nor are they as lascivious and debauched as the second. Although they also satisfied their own desires, but in moderation, they did not close their doors, but also went outside to walk, but always had to take some flowers and herbs, or spices and the like, from time to time to put it to the nose to sniff, clear the mind, thinking that this would eliminate the smell of patients, drugs, and corpses that filled the air.

　　Some people have a more cruel view for their own safety. Say, there is only one way to fight the plague – the only good way is to avoid it. Men and women who have this idea care only about themselves and leave nothing else. They turned their backs on their cities, abandoned their homes, their loved ones and their possessions, and fled elsewhere— at least to the outskirts of Florence, as if God had fallen in anger against mankind for his misdeeds, but the punishment fell only on those who remained in the city, and as soon as they left the city, they escaped the catastrophe. Or rather, they thought that the end of the people who remained in the city had arrived, and that they would soon all perish.

　　These people have different opinions, but none of them are dead, and not all of them have escaped this catastrophe. There are many different kinds of people everywhere, when they are healthy, they first set an example and teach people not to pay attention to the sick person, and then they fell ill and were abandoned by people, and no one took care of them, so they lost their breath.

　　Really, later everyone avoided me, I avoided you; neighbors, no one cared about anyone's business, relatives and friends almost cut off contact, even if it was rare to say a word, they were far away. And that's not all, the plague has caused panic, and it is not uncommon for an older brother to abandon a younger brother, an uncle to abandon a nephew, a sister to abandon a brother, and even a wife to abandon her husband. The saddest thing, the most unbelievable, is that even parents refuse to take care of their children, as if they were not born of themselves.

　　So many sick men and women were left unattended, and occasionally a few friends came to give them some comfort out of compassion. But this is a very small minority; occasionally there are some servants who covet high salaries and are willing to serve the sick, but there are very few, and most of them are rude and ignorant men and women, who do not know how to take care of them, and will only pass tea and other things to the patient, and will only watch the patient die. Most of these servants who were waiting for the sick lost their lives and made so much money for themselves!

　　Just because once he was sick and could no longer be cared for by his neighbors and friends, and the servants were so difficult to hire, an unheard of custom occurred. Those grandmothers, no matter how flowery and noble they were, once they fell ill, she no longer cared about hiring a man as a close servant, nor did she ask him about his old age, and she did not care about undoing her dress and exposing everything in front of him, only when he was a maid. They are also forced by illness and helpless, and later some women save their lives, and their character becomes less dignified, which may be a reason.

　　There are many patients who, if properly conditioned, could have been saved, but now they are dead. Since the plague was so fierce, and the patients lacked care, they cried out, so a large number of people were going to die in the city day and night, and the scene was stunned to hear, let alone see it on the spot. As for those who are fortunate enough to live, they are forced by this situation to change many ancient customs.

　　According to the custom of the past (and can still be seen today), when a person dies, the female relatives of relatives, friends, and neighbors must gather at the funeral home to mourn the family of the deceased; the men of that family gather at the door with their neighbors and citizens from elsewhere. Then the priest came, more or less numerous, depending on the pomp and circumstance of the family. The coffin was carried by the deceased's friends, and everyone lit a candle, held it in their hands, and sang an elegy, all the way to the church designated by the deceased. But as the plague became more and more rampant, the custom was almost abolished, if not completely abolished; in its place a new ethos was established. When the patient dies, not only are there no women sobbing around, but often no one is present even for the moment of the breath loss. It is really rare that a few deceased people can get the grief and tears of their relatives, and relatives and friends do not come to mourn--they are having fun in time, feasting, and joking with each other. Women were originally compassionate, but now in order to save their lives, they have not hesitated to go against their nature and follow this trend.

　　Moreover, when a person dies, there are very few ten neighbors who come to the funeral; the people who come to the funeral are by no means famous and high-ranking citizens, but some low-ranking people who claim to be gravediggers; in fact, they do this business, all for money, so they always lift the corpse rack and leave in a hurry, not to the church designated by the deceased, but often to the nearest church. In front of them walked five or six monks, sometimes with a few candles in their hands and sometimes none at all. As soon as they saw that the tomb was empty, they asked the gravedivers to throw the dead bodies in, no longer ask for trouble, and solemnly performed some burial ceremony for the deceased.

　　The situation is even worse for the lower classes, and even for most of the middle classes. Most of them stay at home because they don't have money, and perhaps because they have a fluke mentality, and as a result, thousands of them fall ill every day. And because they lack proper healing, they are left unattended, and almost all of them are dead. Day or night, there are always many people who fall on the road. Many died in their homes until the bodies decayed and smelled, and the neighbors knew he was dead.

　　The city was full of corpses, and if the nearby living could find the porter, they asked the porter to help carry the body out and put it at the gate; if they could not find the porter, they did it themselves, not out of compassion, but out of fear that the rotting corpse would threaten their survival. Every day at dawn, I saw that the doorways of every house were full of corpses. The bodies were put on the shelves and carried out, and if they could not be found, they were carried on wooden boards.

　　A skeleton often carries two or three bodies. Husband and wife, or father and son, or two or three brothers together on a corpse shelf, became a very common thing. It is also unknown how many times two priests were seen, walking in the head with a cross, and porters carrying three or four corpse racks, following behind. It often happens that the priest only said that he wanted to hold a funeral for one person, but suddenly six or seven corpses came and buried at the same time, sometimes even more than that. No one shed tears for the dead anymore and lit a candle to send him a funeral; then a man who died was like a goat dead now, which is not the same thing. Originally, a wise man occasionally encountered a few unsatisfactory things on the road of life, and it was difficult to learn the kung fu of patience; now, after this unprecedented catastrophe, it is obvious that even the most uncultured person is calm about everything.

　　Every day, even every hour, a large number of corpses are transported to the churches of the city, and the cemeteries of the churches can no longer accommodate them, especially some families, according to custom, ask to be buried in ancestral graves, which is even more serious. When the cemetery was fully buried, he had to dig some long and wide pits around him and bury hundreds of later corpses. Like the cargo piled up in the cabin, these corpses were placed in the pit layer by layer. It was covered with only a thin layer of dirt until the whole pit was filled, and then it was sealed with soil.

　　At that time, the miserable scenes of the whole city did not need to be discussed in detail, and I would just like to add that when the plague was rampant in the city, the towns and villages in the suburbs did not escape this catastrophe, but the disaster was not as loud as in the city. Poor peasants (and their families), in neglected villages, in deserted fields, once sick, with neither a doctor nor anyone to take care of them, are ready to die on the road, in the fields, or at the doorstep of their homes. They died, not as if they were dead of a man, but as if they were of an animal.

　　The people in the city are in great trouble, leaving everything behind and only looking for pleasure; the peasants in the countryside, knowing that the time of death has arrived, are no longer willing to engage in labor, and eat whatever they get, and how much effort they have invested in the fields and on cattle and sheep, and how many expectations they have placed, can no longer take care of them. Thus the cattle, the donkeys, the sheep, the goats, the pigs, the poultry, and the faithful companions of man, the dogs, were forced to leave the pens and run around in the fields, where the wheat was long overdue for harvest and ready to be collected, but no one came to inquire. Many of these cattle, as if endowed with reason, ate enough hay in the fields during the day, and when they arrived late, although no family came to catch them, they would automatically walk back to the farm.

　　Let's go back to town from the countryside. In fact, in addition to saying that God is really cruel to human beings, what else can we say (of course, some places have to blame human beings for being too cruel)? As a result of this fierce plague, because of the terror of the sick, the refusal to help take care of them, or to ignore them at all, from March to June, more than a hundred thousand people died in the city of Florence. Before the plague, no one had expected that there were so many people living in the city.

　　Alas, the magnificent palace, the magnificent mansion, the tall mansion, the former high-ranking officials and noblewomen came and went like clouds, but now there are ten rooms and nine empty rooms, and even the lowest servant cannot be found! How many prominent surnames, huge family properties, and wealthy properties have been left behind by no one! How many handsome men, beautiful girls, lively lads (even Galen, Hippocrates, and Isclapius had to admit that they were strong) who ate snacks with their relatives and friends in the morning were so happy that, in the evening, they had gone to another world to accompany their ancestors to dinner.