April 2020.

     Through March 2020 and into April, as the coronavirus spread, hospitalizations surged, and the death toll climbed, the fear it engendered grew as well.  To this point, everything I had submitted to a newspaper or magazine had been written from the perspective of a concerned citizen with no special expertise.  As it became evident that the coronavirus would be no fleeting event, expertise came into play.  I knew a bit about the Black Death, the mother of all pandemics.  If a comparison between the plague and the coronavirus might lend people perspective and allay their concerns in a small way, it seemed worth doing.  I wrote an editorial-length juxtaposition of the two diseases.  Although I was reluctant to mention an academic qualification – it’s the opposite of persuasive for some readers – it was relevant, so I included it.  An effort was made to keep the tone non-partisan.  I dispatched the thing to The Richmond Times-Dispatch and soon heard back from one of its opinion page editors.  It would run in the Sunday edition.  My exchange with the editor was pleasant.  I had to provide a head shot.  That didn’t thrill me, but The Better Half did as well as she could with the material given her.

Here’s the editorial:

“Coronavirus and the Black Death,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 5 April 2020, D1, D3 (https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/david-routt-column-coronavirus-and-the-black-death/article_c3f6f286-6efb-5ea4-86db-253d825cb5b0.html).