A Brief History of Quarantines
China is currently experiencing the largest quarantine in human history. By some estimates, more than 46 million people are now under lockdown in Wuhan and surrounding cities, and other nations such as the US and Australia are considering or have already implemented quarantines of their own for people who have traveled from China and may be affected by the coronavirus. And these are just the official figures: as we well know, many millions more of us are currently experiencing self-imposed quarantine in which we strive to leave our homes as little as possible to minimize the risk of contacting somebody who may be carrying the virus.
I am in fact writing this blog from Australia, as my planned CNY break to visit family has been extended into a prolonged remote-work period. While I am free to move around this country, my colleagues and I are now figuring out how to continue the business of blogging about daily life in Beijing from three different time zones, and while those that are still in Beijing have limited ability to observe daily life.
It is certain that being under informal quarantine like this is no fun at all, yet with our access to food, delivery services, and the full range of entertainment as offered by the internet, in the grand scheme of history, we're actually fairly lucky. Let's take a quick look at the history of quarantines, and their sometimes ghastly results...
Venice, pictured here in the 1600s, was a thriving port city
The idea of quarantining sick people goes back to ancient times: the book of Leviticus describes how to quarantine lepers, and Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, discussed the topic in a text he wrote on epidemics. Yet the word 'quarantine' first came into common parlance in 14th century Europe, during the epidemic known as the Black Death. People were dropping like flies from the mysterious pestilence, and as the death toll climbed into the millions (eventually killing approximately half of the European population), cities began to take drastic measures to protect their citizens. The port city of Venice, Italy, was an important trading hub with ships coming from all corners of the Earth every day. If a ship was suspected to be harboring the plague, it was sent to an offshore quarantine/hospital island and ordered to wait there for 40 days while those abroad either recovered, or more likely, died. The waiting period gave rise to the term quarantinario, from the Italian word for 40.
One severe side effect of the current Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is an uptick in apparently xenophobic or racist reactions. Our sister publication beijingkids recently shared advice on how to deal with potential backlash while abroad, as ill-informed or frightened people assume that all Chinese nationals (or even those who just appear to be Chinese) are carrying the virus. While stories such as this are anecdotal, quarantine has long been used as a political tool to target minority groups. In 1892, ships carrying many Russian Jewish immigrants arrived in the US via Ellis Island, many of whom turned out to be carrying typhus. The disease was not detected until many of the passengers had already settled in New York, upon which they were rounded up and quarantined nearby. This incident was followed closely by another ship, again carrying majority Russian Jewish passengers, which was the source of a cholera outbreak. A wave of anti-semitic finger-pointing was to soon follow. In 1900, it was Chinese citizens in New York who came under fire, as an outbreak of the bubonic plague was believed to be traced to the city's Chinatown. After caucasian residents were evacuated, the area was completely quarantined for a few days, long enough for many Chinese laborers to lose their jobs, and for vicious public discussions about mass deportations of Chinese citizens to occur.
Attractive women hanging around US army bases? As Admiral Akbar would say, "It's a trap!"
During the early days of World War I, increasing numbers of American troops preparing to ship out from US-based military camps were falling ill with venereal diseases. The blame was laid squarely on the itinerant population of 'camp girls,' or prostitutes, who were then promptly rounded up, subjected to forced venereal disease testing, and incarcerated en-masse sometimes even long after they were found to be disease-free. The US army also began issuing condoms as standard to all soldiers shipping out. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, in which the gay, male population was the most severely affected, Los Angeles authorities toyed with the idea of imposing a quarantine on victims. Despite some reports that 'half the US population supported the measure' as well as other measures such as forcing HIV positive people to carry identification cards (hello, Nazi Germany), due to overwhelming public opposition, the plan was abandoned.
At its most simple, quarantine can be just locking up an affected person and waiting until they either recovered from the disease or died. But what to do when these measures are not practical? During the 1917-1918 flu pandemic, which affected almost a third of the entire global population and killed almost 50 million worldwide, authorities struggled to control the situation. Restrictions were placed on public gatherings and schools and similar institutions were closed, yet these measures were not enough, due to the highly contagious nature of the virus. In late 18th century Philadelphia, on the other hand, authorities believed that the best way to deal with the Yellow Fever outbreak was bloodletting of quarantined patients, which was supposed to drain them of their infected blood, and to give them wine. A recipe for getting hammered? Indeed, but a recipe for treatment, not so much.
'Typhoid Mary' Mallon, far left, in quarantine
For a quarantine period to be effective, the containment period of any given disease must be established. But what do you do when you are quarantining against potential unknown or even alien diseases? That's the problem faced by space missions the world over, a field generally known as Planetary Protection. Astronauts returning from the Apollo 11 space mission, for example, were visited by President Nixon while being confined in a mobile quarantine facility (pictured in lead image). The converted Airstream trailer was their home for a few days immediately after returning to Earth, before they were transferred to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center for the rest of their quarantine period.
We don't yet know exactly how long this current quarantine period will last, but we can be pretty sure that it won't be as long as that endured by 'Typhoid Mary.' Irish-born Mary Mallon was herself totally immune to the disease, yet managed to single-handedly cause a deadly typhoid outbreak in New York City in 1907 via her work as a cook. When authorities realized the source of the problem, Mallon was sent to a three-year quarantine, and promised never to cook for anybody else again... a promise she didn't keep, which eventually led to a second quarantine period that lasted until her death, a full 23 years later.
READ: All Quiet on the Front Lines of the Beijing Zombie Apocalypse
Images: NASA (via Wikimedia Commons), Gaspar van Wittel (via Wikimedia Commons), motherjones.com, irishtimes.com
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