We Have All Been Here Before

I've been reading a great deal of difficult stuff (economics) for what will probably turn out to be a relatively short post.  But I've got to share something I came across in an article that I'll probably not be able to use.

There have been pandemics aplenty before, and if it seems currently like we haven't learned anything from them, that is not quite true.  We actually know where they come from and how to stop them (see "Ebola").  And they knew where it came from and how to stop it in 1720, when the bubonic plague struck Marseilles and southern France; at over two years, it was the longest pandemic on record. 

In a stunning reflection on the stubborn, not-susceptible-to-the-lessons-of-history greed and foolishness of the human animal, the stories of Marseilles in 1720, according to the New Statesman, is far too similar to the current stories of the mismanaged countries which have kept the current pandemic going when it could be all but over.

The French remembered the first plague, almost four hundred years before, and had suffered smaller outbreaks ever since.  They knew where the plague came from, and how to stop it.  An extensive system of inspections and quarantine laws had kept disease at bay for a long time.  But humans will be human.  In Marseilles, it was greedy merchants and shipowners who evaded the extensive and (up until then) effective inspection and quarantine process who brought the plague into the city.  And then the city fathers - tradesmen, all of them - who "dithered" about whether to do anything about it:

The city's primary municipal magistrate, Jean-Baptiste Estelle, owned part of the ship as well as a large portion of its lucrative cargo.  He used his influence to arrange for the premature unloading of the cargo onto the city's warehouses so the goods could be sold soon thereafter at the trade fair.

The number of infections and deaths began to climb within days... Instead of undertaking emergency measures... officials launched an elaborate campaign of misinformation, going as far as hiring doctors to diagnose the disease as only a malignant fever instead of the plague.

Proper municipal responses weren't put into effect for two months (two months!), and by then 10,000 citizens of the city had fled, taking the plague with them.  Half of the population of Marseilles died. 

I guess we just don't learn.  Or maybe we do, and because of that, it was only Marseilles, not every major port in Europe, that was devastated.  Given the current missteps, though, born out of both ignorance and greed, it's hard to be optimistic about the new world.