The Red Plague: An Analysis
Ok, I’m to preface this that I am not at ALL a student of medicine or science I am just a humble blogger who really likes diseases, literary analysis, and the science behind death. This will also be a STUPIDLY long post so I am letting you all live by putting it behind a readmore this time
This goes without saying but there is a content warning to this. I’m talking about death, stages of decay, rotting, corpses, vomit, and other gross medical stuff. There will be NO images however. I subjected myself to viewing those images and I will not condemn you all to view them.
I’m going to start this off making sure everyone is on the same page and post an image from the art book about the Red Plague itself
So let’s start with the canonical facts about the plague first
Average life expectancy was 3-7 days once symptoms show, Averages are also liars which means it could’ve taken a little bit more than 7 days or under 3 days to die.
Spread by the plague beetles, exact method of transfer is unknown but Julian was force fed one and contracted the plague however they are safe to keep in containment.
Plague beetles also infected nonhuman objects like the water supply which is shown as a thick ichor. This ichor no longer possesses infectious properties at the time of the story
Julian believed that it had to do with a corruption in the blood hence the usage of leeches
The Lazarus started as a containment center before becoming a crematorium, meaning people believed that it was spread from contact or things like that
HOWEVER This is not the first appearance of the plague as it would show up at locations Lucio stayed for too long but no note if it spread from these locations.
It’s not a disease, its a curse.
So, this is one nasty plague on our hands. Most diseases that are this lethal would never be able to spread as much as it did unless it could spread from corpse contact or through other means like a carrier. I think that it could be spread through a combination of both which would add an additional need for cremation.
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