Literature again. Thanks to a great American friend we discussed the ending of “La Peste” - “the Plague” from Camus. One of the obvious reference book for this period. May we meditate again and again this call to vigilance. The virus is a reminder of the many viruses we should keep in mind. Viruses that might use this period to come back to life or to gain in strength and wake up the rats. No complacency. No blind eye.
“But he knew, however, that this chronicle could not be that of final victory. It could only be the testimony of what had to be accomplished and which, doubtless, should still need to be accomplished against terror and its tireless weapon, despite their personal heartbreak, all the men who, being unable to be saints and refusing to admit the plagues, strive however to be doctors.
Listening, in fact, to the cries of joy rising from the city, Rieux remembered that this joy was always threatened. Because he knew what this joyful crowd did not know, and which one can read in books, that the plague bacillus never dies or never disappears, that it can remain for decades asleep in furniture and the linen, which he patiently awaits in the rooms, cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs and paperwork, and that perhaps the day would come when, for the misfortune and the teaching of men, the plague would awaken his rats and would send them to die in a happy city.”
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