Screams rang out from the balconies of shanghai and one resident has said that the screaming helped to ease the boredom of being locked indoors. Shanghai has instituted a lockdown in response to a recent outbreak of Covid-19 starting March 28th of 2022. Millions of people are trapped in their homes and multiple areas have different levels of lockdown. “Quarantine” areas forbid residents to leave their houses while “Prevention” areas allow residents to leave but they are still urged to stay home. But even with these restrictions Shanghai has had a record 26,330 Covid-19 cases as of April 13,2022 (1). In this article I set out to examine the history of quarantines, the effect that they have had on the public, and how they have changed over the years. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a lot of investigation into what can be used to combat pandemics and quarantines have been shown to be a good but very heavy handed way to stop the spreading of a virus. Governments do not want there to be high cases of a virus or overcrowding in hospitals (2&3) so quarantines have been used throughout the years to help mitigate the effects of such pandemics.
So What Is A Quarantine?
A quarantine is the physical separation of an individual with a confirmed case of a disease (4). But in this article we will go through many different forms of quarantines. In the early days it could have been anything from the holding of a ship to the separation of sick patients, but as the years have gone on it has become much more specific within each society.
A lot of governments have had to come out now and make explicit plans for the Covid-19 pandemic and as such we have gotten fantastic insight into how governments will try to combat viruses. Plans such as the “The Biden-Harris plan to beat COVID-19” (5) have shown that governments are starting to invest billions into measures to combat these pandemics as they do not want to rely on quarantines. The quarantines within the US have had massive effects on the economy and work force which in turn affects the government as well. But even though it has had massive affects it doesn’t begin to match the effect of the quarantines within China. Stories have started to come to light that are quite frankly terrifying, “Students being trapped in Quarantine” (6) and “A US lawyer being stuck for 3 months” (7) are just the tip of the iceberg as similar recounting seem to pour onto the internet almost daily. China’s quarantines are government mandated and, while rigorous, are very effective. Since going into quarantine the cases went from a rising 20,000 to a lowering 14,000 from April 21-23. (8)
Quarantine Over The Years
If we take a step back in time though we can see that quarantines have happened a lot throughout different pandemics. The first ever quarantine took place in the mid-13th century during the plague epidemic. Some city-states throughout Italy “prevented strangers from entering their cities” (9). Armed guards were even stationed throughout the cities to enforce the rules of this quarantine and they sought to rid the city of all the dead. While an official quarantine was not used until 1377 this lockdown in some city-states of Italy offered a first glimpse into government intervention during pandemics. The first ever official quarantine took place in Croatia in the city of Dubrovnik. (9) A plague hospital was opened and then surrounded by a moat as to physically separate the sick and dying residents from other healthy citizens. Back then they even had an “isolation time” of 40 days because they believed that was the correct amount of time to avoid infecting others and become healthy. Later on in the early 20th century America faced drastic measures being taken because of the Bubonic Plague (10) An incident that occurred within San Francisco’s Chinatown shows this as they faced a massive quarantine after a passenger ship that had arrived brought the Bubonic plague. The fear of this plague mixed with racist Anti-Chinese feelings led to the entirety of Chinatown facing a lock down and quarantine (11). A “Quarantine Officer” was put into place to deal with this but after trying to push both the quarantine and travel restrictions the officer was shut down by a federal judge because it targeted Asians heavily.(12) This caused tons of political problems on the state and federal level. Eventually the quarantine was lifted but that did not mark the end of problems for Chinatown as health officials started to run “house-to-house” inspections and Chinese businesses were hurt badly due to this scare. Eventually the cause of the infection was found to be rats and was reported on in newspapers such as The Ogden Standard (13). This specific paper talked about medical experts being “alarmed” at the fact that cases of the bubonic plague had appeared within New Orleans. The ,again, heavy handed and quick response of a quarantine on Chinatown did not stop the spread as it was not only transmitted from person to person. This paper came out long after the Chinatown quarantine but shows just how long the Plague continued to affect the United States.
Another example is the quarantine that the United States has undergone during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a perfect example of a quarantine that had a quick response but that worked fairly well(14). It was only around a month between WHO declaring a global health emergency and the US announcing a national emergency due to Covid-19. For a government response time this is very quick and helped to slow the spread a lot. While not as rigorous and strict as china the US’s version showed that every quarantine will be different for each country and time period. A lot of change is needed to make sure that everyone is safe. For the US this meant encouraging people to stay home with things such as stimulus checks and passing things such as the CARES act into law so that citizens felt comfortable with being home for however long was needed. Each quarantine throughout the ages has always been used as a quick response but today it has proven very effective for Covid-19. This does not mean that it should be the only government response though.
While having a quick response to a outbreak is amazing it doesn’t always help the general public. When looking at Chinatown it is very obvious that the quarantine did little to nothing to help slow the spread and only allowed those in power to push down the people they did not like. Instead of investigating the “why” of the outbreak the government instead looked for an easy, quick, and less costly method. While quarantines can take a toll on the economy they do not cost nearly as much as looking for a vaccine that can be widespread or investigating the outbreak itself.
All In All
Quarantines have had a variety of success and failures within the past and present, while our society today has had to become okay with quarantine is that what should happen in the future? I think we should instead be looking for other options to face outbreaks, I still support quarantines but that should not be the only way the governments fight a pandemic. Things such as social distancing have proven to not only be effective to stamp out a pandemic but also allow citizens to still participate in a lot of activities. Luckily governments have shown that they are trying to prepare for this in the future. Covid-19 has ignited a lot of preparation within the US specifically. “The Biden-Harris plan to beat Covid-19”(5) not only shows that the government is fully willing to listen to science but also shows that they plan to scale the fight of pandemics dramatically. Things such as “doubling the number of drive-through testing sites” and “fixing ppe problems for good” will massively help not only the fight of the Covid-19 pandemic but any pandemic that may come in the future. The most important takeaway is that quarantines have always and will always be changing constantly and that is a good thing. Change helps the future and looking at the past will give a good path that we should follow.
