Did 'Little House on the Prairie' Predict the Coronavirus Pandemic?
by EG
Back in the 1970s, Little House on the Prairie featured a storyline about an epidemic and quarantines. That's led some on social media to suggest that the series was eerily prescient. It's also possible that it was simply telling a story that has been relevant throughout human history. There have always been diseases and epidemics. Maybe we've just always thought they were part of history and that they couldn't happen to us. Read on for details.
Via Page Six.
Burning fevers? Check! Quarantining? Check! An alarming death toll from a mysterious illness amid widespread fear and confusion? Check and check!
Two haunting episodes of the classic show “Little House on the Prairie,” which ran between 1974 and 1983, chillingly foreshadow the current coronavirus crisis in the form of a typhus epidemic, a common occurrence in the mid- to late-19th century.
Fans of the series are freaking out over similarities between the storylines of episodes titled “Plague” and “Quarantine” and the grim reality of today’s coronavirus pandemic, which has so far claimed more than 60,000 lives in America.
“Thought I would take some time away from the news and constant coronavirus coverage,” one fan tweeted. “Turned on an old rerun of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and it is about a FLU EPIDEMIC — really?” Another chimed in on Twitter: “I’ve been preparing for the #Coronavirus since watching the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ episode ‘Quarantine’ as a kid.”
The social media reaction has been so prevalent that New York-based actress Melissa Gilbert, who played lovable Laura Ingalls Wilder on the show, tells The Post she’s been thinking a lot about how the series tackled life in isolation while she herself is on lockdown in her converted hunting cabin in the Catskills.
“I realized how prescient it was,” says the 55-year-old. “We can all learn something from what happens in that episode.”
How is your family adapting to the Lockdown?
— Sean (@_Sean_________) April 30, 2020
Are you, Little House on the Prairie
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The Shining pic.twitter.com/FWjDP4GK0m
In the tear-jerker “Plague,” which premiered January 29, 1975, Laura’s father, Charles Ingalls, struggles with Walnut Grove’s pastor, Rev. Alden, and physician Doc Baker — perhaps the Dr. Anthony Fauci of the late 1800s — to contain the outbreak of typhus among the frightened settlers.
The three men — the equivalent of today’s front-line workers during COVID-19 — turn the local church into a makeshift hospital and morgue while searching for the origins of the disease.
“Even on that tiny scale, so much of what they were doing is now applicable,” Gilbert says. “The town mitigated the situation by getting everyone to quarantine at home, putting the sick in one place and trying to find the source.”
Get the rest of the story at Page Six.
Did you learn about epidemics from Little House? Let us know in the comments below.