The first would examine how rural India is responding to the coronavirus pandemic; the second would research India’s response to the Spanish Flu outbreak that took place a little over a hundred years ago. The Spanish Flu is far from being an ideal reference point to assess the scale of destruction of the Covid-19 pandemic or societal responses to contain such outbreaks. The coronavirus’s link to bats or such other vector species as pangolins remains specious at present; contrastingly, scientific evidence has uncovered the complicity of fleas in the spread of Black Death. The Black Death altered the countenance of cities. This list of similarities should convince the UGC that the analogy between Black Death and the (new) Big C is not implausible.

Source: The Telegraph June 23, 2020 19:18 UTC