Shelter in place, stay at home, quarantine, social distancing and protests.
Yep, 2020 has been the year of CoVid19.
We can just add it to the list of infectious diseases the world has seen for thousands of years.
Here in the US we have definitely had our share of contagious outbreaks over the years.
How did we cope with these diseases back then? You will be surprised to learn.
It's the history of quarantine in America.
Next on Marking History!
This is the historical marker for a Quarantine Boarding Station.
It is located here on Staten Island, New York.
From 1783 to 1971, officers working at the Staten Island station boarded and inspected
thousands of ships coming into New York Harbor each year to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
When deadly and contagious diseases were present,
the vessels were fumigated and the passengers quarantined until it was safe for them to land in New York.
The word “Quarantine” comes from an old Italian phase
quaranta giorni- meaning forty days.
The practice of quarantine began during the 14th century
in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics.
Ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing.
When smallpox and yellow fever threatened to strike New York in 1738,
the City Council set up a quarantine anchorage off Bedloe's Island
now home to the Statue of Liberty.
This island became a quarantine station for contagious passengers and crew from arriving ships.
When George Washington took the reins of a newly formed Continental Army in 1775,
smallpox was running rampant through Boston.
Washington knew how smallpox could incapacitate his Army
because he survived small pox when he was 19 years old.
So during the Siege of Boston, Washington chose a strict quarantine of both sickened soldiers and civilians.
Civilians showing smallpox symptoms were held in the town of Brookline,
while military cases were sent to a quarantine hospital located near Cambridge.
The quarantine did its job, isolating the sick long enough for the British to surrender Boston.
Later Washington dodged another epidemic bullet as first President.
In November 1793, yellow fever decimated our nation's capital of Philadelphia,
wiping out 5,000 of its 50,000 residents.
It forced President Washington and his cabinet to self- quarantine
ten miles away in neighboring Germantown.
The National Quarantine Act was passed in April 1878, shifting quarantine powers from state to federal government.
It established a number of federal quarantine stations across the country.
Today, the CDC manages US Quarantine stations located at 20 ports of entry and land- border crossings.
In 1899, the world's third great wave of bubonic plague reached Honolulu!
Health officers in Hawaii did not know how to kill it,
they did not know how rapidly it spread, and they did not know how to cure it.
And they were under intense economic and political pressure!
All trade with the islands was suspended under international protocols, and local government panicked.
The city's health officials began by implementing quarantines around the district where the first victims died.
The Honolulu Board of Health isolated 14 blocks of Chinatown where ten thousand people lived.
Officials acted on long-held stereotypes about the dirtiness of Chinese residences,
turning to tactics of radical disinfection:
spraying homes with carbolic acid
forcing residents to shower at public stations
throwing out belongings.
But those quarantines failed to contain the disease.
With no proven options available to contain the Black Death,
they decided to try burning any building where a victim had died.
Newspapers cheered the new policy, calling it “fighting the devil with fire.”
On January 20, 1900, an unexpected shift in the prevailing wind transformed one of those targeted burns
into an uncontrollable firestorm,
which completely destroyed one- fifth of Honolulu in a matter of hours!
Eight thousand who lived in the incinerated district not only lost everything,
but also found themselves forced into ad hoc quarantine camps under armed guard for weeks.
By submitting to political pressure, those health officials had inadvertently
precipitated the worst civic catastrophe in Hawaiian history.
It was the Chinese Year of the Rat
when bubonic plague struck San Francisco in 1900.
When a 41-year-old San Franciscan Wong Chut King died of a particularly violent disease in March 1900,
city authorities quarantined a 12-square-block section of Chinatown with rope and barbed wire
after allowing all Caucasian residents to leave.
The epidemic was recognized by medical authorities in March 1900,
but its existence was denied for more than two years by California Governor Henry Gage.
Why, you ask?
Because his denial was intended to protect California's $40 million dollar
fresh produce industry from quarantine.
Governor Gage even called it a “fake plague.”
So when federal authorities proved that there was a major health problem
it undermined the credibility of Gage, and he lost the governorship in the 1902 elections.
The new Governor George Pardee, a doctor of medicine,
implemented sanitation measures and the epidemic was stopped in 1904.
Now, eliminating large gatherings is not a new idea.
It has saved thousands of American lives during contagious epidemics over the years.
In a great example of how eliminating large gatherings saved lives during a pandemic,
St. Louis decided to cancel their 1918 Liberty Loan parade,
while Philadelphia decided to ignore health officials
and allow 200,00 visitors to gather for their event.
In October 1918, more than 12,000 people in Philadelphia had died from pandemic flu,
while the death toll in Saint Louis did not rise above 700.
And of course, there were those who just did not want to comply,
feeling that quarantines and wearing masks infringed on their civil liberties.
By mid-October 1918, San Francisco had more than 2,000 Spanish flu cases.
The city's Board of Health enacted various measures to try to curb the disease,
such as banning gatherings, closing schools and movie houses, and warning citizens to avoid crowds.
Professions that served customers - including barbers, hotel employees, and store clerks
were required to wear masks.
The October mask ordinance was annulled effective November 21, 1918;
however, when cases of the flu began to increase again, guess what...
a new ordinance mandating masks took effect again January 17, 1919.
However this ordinance galvanized serious opposition and the Anti-Mask League was formed.
An estimated 2,000 San Francisco citizens attended the meeting on January 25, 1919.
The debate was heated.
Some objections to the ordinance were based on questions of scientific data
while others considered the infringement on civil liberties.
San Francisco buckled under pressure and lifted the mask requirement effective February 1, 1919
on the recommendation of the Board of Health.
The Flu pandemic eventually came to an end,
as those that were infected either died or developed immunity.
2020 is the year of CoVid19, but the public responses, good and bad, are not surprising,
since public health choices and citizen behavior to epidemics have been documented since our country was founded.
By the way, can you guess who was quarantined the longest in American history?
It was Mary Mallon, also known as "Typhoid Mary," who was immune to the typhoid she carried.
Working as a cook, she spread the disease in New York
and ended up quarantined on North Brother Island, New York for the last 23 years of her life.
If history can be taught with stories
they can never be forgotten.
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