Chapter 2 - New Dogs, Old Tricks

Summary

Since there was, as yet, no cure nor a vaccine, the coronavirus epidemic could be fought only with the traditional tools of population management. Breaking chains of transmission by isolating the ill, identifying the possibly infected, and tracing their contacts – those were the techniques that had for millennia been used against contagious disease. They did duty yet once again. Quarantines were imposed, the ill were isolated, eventually, entire nations were shut down. Many of the precautions used against the cholera epidemics of the nineteenth century were reprised. One of the few big differences now was that goods were no longer disinfected. Some nations, especially in Asia, targeted the infected and their contacts. The Western nations, in contrast, were unable to focus their preventive measures as precisely and ended up shutting down their economies across the board instead.