An unequal history of quarantines

The Uncertain Hour

Marketplace

Government, News

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As long as there’s been such a thing as quarantine, each person’s experience under it has depended largely on their economic status. On this week’s show, we take a tour of quarantines through history, from the bubonic plague outbreaks in 14th and 17th century Italy, to the a typhoid outbreak in New York in the early 1900s and a few other stops along the way. Those quarantines looked very different if you were, say, an immigrant, or a Jewish textile merchant, or a sex worker.

Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic shine a spotlight on all the inequalities already lurking in the system, and ideas of what the government owes to people in quarantine have changed over the centuries too. Long gone are the days of the government sending your family fennel sausage, cheese and wine to make it through.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, Caitlin, so I want to read you something that I was reading the other night in bed.
0:04.5	It comes from another person in quarantine.
0:07.7	It's in a city that's been hit really hard.
0:10.8	Lots of people are dying.
0:11.9	There's not enough room for all the bodies.
0:14.2	I've come to the conclusion that the best thing for us to do in our present situation
0:19.8	would be to leave the city.
0:22.0	We should go and stay on one of our various country estates, having as much fun as possible,
0:26.8	feasting and making Mary.
0:29.4	There we will hear the little bird sing and see the hills and plains turning green.
0:34.1	The fields full of wheat, undulating like the sea, and thousands of kinds of trees.
0:39.3	There we will have a clearer view of the heavens, which are so much more attractive to look
0:43.5	at than are the walls of our empty city.
0:46.3	More over the air is much fresher in the country.
0:49.0	Although the peasants are dying there in the same way the city dwellers are here, our
0:53.3	distress will be lessened if only because the houses and the people are fewer and farther
0:58.2	between.
1:00.1	So, Caitlin, what is this bringing up for you?
1:04.4	What does this make you think of?
1:06.9	Escape from the city.
1:07.9	I like the sound of undulating wheat and nature and feasting, apart from the dying peasants.
1:16.4	It all sounds great.
	...

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