The plague recorded in A Dream of Red Mansions: No worse than COVID-19?

Nowadays, the COVID-19 epidemic has swept the world, causing people to complain and panic. In fact, a plague was mentioned in A Dream of Red Mansions. This book does not express the epidemic situation or plague, but uses seven bad times to hint at the severity of the plague. 5 1 wrote that xiren was away, and Qingwen wanted to play a trick on Musk Moon, but it got cold. This time, I mentioned the bad weather twice. When Li Wan learned that Qingwen had caught a cold, she immediately realized the seriousness of the problem. If you don't treat her well in a short time, you must let Qingwen move out so as not to hurt others. Even the doctor who came to see Qingwen said the weather was bad. It was the middle of winter, and it was the high season of influenza, cold and typhoid. The symptom of Qingwen's illness is that although she took medicine and sweated a little, the symptoms did not ease. She still has a fever, headache and a bad stuffy nose. From the onset of her illness until her death, the disease never recovered.

Cao Xueqin wrote in his fifty-third reply that the New Year's Eve of Ningguo Mansion was just a sacrifice to the ancestral temple, and Li Wan caught a cold because of the bad weather. Li Wan has been a very cautious person all her life. Even she can catch a serious illness, which shows that the plague is still very severe. Qingwen hasn't been out of the Grand View Garden since she got this disease. Li Wan probably got the disease indirectly from Qingwen. The fifty-fifth time, the author wrote that just after the Lantern Festival, Lin Daiyu began to cough, and Shi Xiangyun was bedridden and kept taking medicine. A seemingly unremarkable background note actually describes that the plague has been raging from years ago to early spring, and it has not been alleviated for several months, which makes people feel uneasy.

Shi Xiangyun is a sunny and lively girl with a good figure. Even she was seriously ill, showing that the epidemic was still very serious at that time. In episode 57, Baoyu went to see Lin Daiyu and told Zijuan that he was in a bad mood. He suggested not visiting the Grand View Garden. This shows that the plague is terrible. It didn't end until after the early spring and lasted for four or five months. According to relevant historical records, during the reign of Kang Yong, plagues of all sizes broke out more than 60 times.