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Comes A Horseman
Graham observes dolefully …
… that the horseman is likely white, and one of four. As a friend of his recently commented …
Rickets, scurvy, whooping cough, and TB have come roaring back in England. What a time to be alive, albeit with a wicked cough. Chronic TB will help cure any lingering obesity issues England may be having, too.
How bad could it be, though? CNN reported a year ago:
Some London neighborhoods have higher rates of tuberculosis than almost anywhere else in the world, as high as 113 per 100,000 people. That’s significantly higher than in countries such as Rwanda, Iraq and Guatemala.
And why?
Modern factors like migration are contributing to the resurgence, as well as age-old afflictions: malnutrition, poverty and lack of access to health care.
In England, malnutrition has risen by 51% over the past five years, the National Health Service reports. And there are other factors.
“We are seeing a reduced vaccine uptake, for example with measles; reduced population immunity, for example with whooping cough; increased poverty and more people on the poverty line,” says Dr. Nuria Martinez-Alier, a London immunologist.
*Oh, and the white horse? Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“The horseman on the white horse was clad in a showy and barbarous attire. […] While his horse continued galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence abroad. At his back swung the brass quiver filled with poisoned arrows, containing the germs of all diseases.”
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, 1916
John adds pestilence to the reasons he doesn’t live in England …
and recalls Thaddeus Bradley from the movie “Now You See Them”.
How do you like your Horsemen, fricasseed or fried?