From the Plague of Justinian to the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic, infectious disease has massively shaped the course of history. Historians use primary sources, like diaries, to understand the effects disease had on the individual and society. In light of the current pandemic, I have started a pandemic diary, what should I include to make my diary as useful as possible to future historians?
•How much should I talk about my personal life vs. work (nuclear weapons policy/history— unclassified)? •Should I avoid idioms, vernacular, and slang or should I use them? •How should I address privacy (eg. full names vs pseudonyms vs initials)? •How much and what type of meta-information/analysis should I include? •What aspects of daily life should I include?
Before you die believing humanity is doomed, make sure you compose a final entry as dramatic as John Clyn’s. Clyn was a 14th century Irish Friar who was likely dying of plague and believed that the disease would ultimately consume almost everyone. He left a few blank pages so that someone could finish his work and record what happened.
"So that notable deeds should not perish with time, and be lost from the memory of future generations, I, seeing these many ills, and that the whole world encompassed by evil, waiting among the dead for death to come, have committed to writing what I have truly heard and examined; and so that the writing does not perish with the writer, or the work fail with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, in case anyone should still be alive in the future and any son of Adam can escape this pestilence and continue the work thus begun."