TO CONTINUE LOCKDOWN OR NOT’?

Sir,
 
That is a priceless question. In 1720, a ship was quarantined at a port in Marseille because a strange infection was killing people on the ship. But the deputy mayor of Marseille lifted the quarantine to ‘help the economy’, and as a result 100 000 people died; more than half of the people in Marseille. This was the Great Plague of Marseille.

The government of Marseille felt they could not afford to lose all the valuable goods on the ship as it would destroy the economy. As they lifted the quarantine and moved the goods into the city, they moved in the infection too.

Infection

By the end of the Great Plague of Marseille, the city had 50 000 dead people (out of a total of 90 000 population back then). The ship had left Sidon in Lebanon, and picked up people in Tripoli and Cyprus, which already had the infection outbreak. A Turkish man on the ship got infected first and died, then several sailors died. The ship’s surgeon also died. Immediately the ship got to Marseille, doctors quarantined it.

Now because Marseille had a very huge trading arrangement with ‘Levant’ (a term for countries like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine); the government was convinced by businessmen that the quarantine of all on the ship had to be removed and the goods released.

Convinced

Some powerful businessmen led by the deputy mayor of Marseille (who was also the owner of the ship) convinced his friends in government to lift the quarantine. Some merchants needed the cotton and silk cargo on the ship to do business for the upcoming festival in Beaucaire. It was only a matter of days as the infection broke out in the whole of Marseille.

People started dropping dead; they died in such a way that there were no longer graves to bury them. Dead bodies littered the streets of Marseille. To this day, the people of Marseille remember this story.

Apparently what happened was that the government tried to be clever. They told themselves ‘we will only move the silk and cotton from the ship into the city but not the infected people on the ship’. But in moving the goods, they unknowingly moved infected rats which then infected other people.

As people got infected, they infected one another. At some point, the Government of France built a wall to stop Marseille from infecting the rest of the country. But it was too late. About 10 000 people from Marseille had already travelled to neighboring cities, and as a result, 50 000 people died outside of Marseille.

The Great Plague of Marseille lasted for about three years. Those were horrible years for Marseille and for France. Hospitals were overwhelmed and residents were fleeing their homes. Dead bodies were lying and decaying on the streets. And as the infection then spread, nobody cared anymore about the ‘economy’.

The Great Plague of Marseille is a huge warning to governments never to prioritise the ‘economy’ ahead of human lives and public health. It can be a very costly mistake. We can always rebuild the economy but we can never revive the dead.

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