This is a fictional journal of when the bubonic plague hit London in 1665. It's roughly chronological (you can tell by the monthly charts of how many people died) but there are no chapters or headings. The writing is very meandering and circular, but there are some interesting anecdotes.

My main interest in reading this book was to compare my plague year to his. Thank God we're not dealing with the bubonic plague this year. But there are a lot of similarities:
- Rich people were the first to escape the city. In São Paulo and New York pretty much everyone who had a second home fled to it.
- Travel was very difficult: not only did other countries seal off their ports, but citizens had trouble getting permission documents to travel to other counties within their country.
- An inclination to infect other people. Certainly some people don't have the choice, "I have to work," and he addresses that, and others chalk it up to "We're all going to die eventually," but there were people who wilfully infected others. Cannot but help think of all those people have temper tantrums about putting on a mask. "Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of a rage, and a hatred against their own kind—as if there was a malignity not only in the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil will..." Or maybe it's a subconscious self-loathing: "When men are once taken to a condition to abandon themselves, and be unconcerned for the safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot be so much wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other people."
- There was no true lack of goods or food, but the supply chain was all thrown off. Certainly seeing that in SP--sometimes there's just a random product missing in the stores. Cornstarch, coconut milk, etc.
- People came back into the city at the first reports of the plague abating, and even though they had been so careful up until that point, they reopened too early and many died.

Some differences, too:
- People forgot about religious differences, letting Dissenters preach in churches left empty by Church of England ministers who had fled.
- The gov't appointed doctors, nurses, and surgeons to help poor people for free.
- Infected people were locked in their houses under guard. The guards were paid by the gov't and were to run errands if the families requested.

After the plague of 1665 and the fire of London the following year, the whole country saw many years of financial growth to meet demands in the worldwide markets after 2 years of lack. During this time, poor laborers demanded and were granted higher wages, lifting many out of desperate poverty. The country also saw a flourishing of arts and sciences. I hope we will be able to say the same after our pandemic.