Over the decades the world has witnessed an outbreak of threatening viruses including pandemics such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), swine flu (H1N1), Ebola and influenza, commonly known as the flu.ĬOVID-19 was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China but was not recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) until mid-March. When the clock chimes midnight, a tall terrifying figure covered in bloody garments enters the ballroom, only to reveal itself as the red death.
On the sixth month of the lockdown, Prospero stages a masked ball held in seven rooms. The prince keeps his guests at comfort by providing them with all resources and appliances of pleasure. With half the population gone, he gathers a thousand of his courtesans in seclusion behind the walls of his castle and locks the gates to keep the plague away. The story tells the tale of Prince Prospero amid a deadly plague. Īlthough Poe’s short story is completely fictional, the American poet who was inspired by existing diseases relie d on biblical symbolism and takes upon a realistic approach to human behavior that resonates with today’s current events and the public reaction. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men.” is how Poe describes this gruesome disease in the short story. “There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The coronavirus pandemic that’s been dominating news headlines throughout the world has been compared to Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film, “ Contagion ” but it can also be compared to Edgar Allan Poe’s 1842 short story “ The Masque of the Red Death ” - a macabre tale of a deadly disease called the Red Death that spreads like wildfire and wipe s out half of the population.
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