COVID-19: Policy responsesWill Coronavirus Change Europe Permanently?
As scary, surreal and disruptive as it is now, the long-term political and economic consequences of the biggest public health challenge the continent has faced since the 1918 Spanish flu are likely to be huge. Aside from quarantining, the past also has some possible lessons for Europe about how infectious diseases can leave a long-term imprint, say historians. They say plagues and pestilence have reshaped countries before, changing politics, contributing to instability, retarding economic development and altering social relations.
The bells are tolling in the villages of the north Italian region of Lombardy, registering yet another coronavirus death.
North Italy has suffered epidemics before, albeit much more deadly contagions in the 17th and 18th centuries, which left more than 300,000 dead. But Italians never thought they would encounter again a contagion powerful enough to test their country to its limits.
Opinion polls suggest that more than 60 percent of Italians approve of the government lockdown. But cooped up in their homes for a second week, Italians are wondering how many more times the bells will toll sounare a morto (song of death). And how long the country will remain at a standstill because of a virus that first appeared nearly 9,000 kilometers away in a Chinese city most had never heard of.
The Italian government, like its pre-industrial forerunners, has turned to the use of quarantines, first used by Venice in the 14th century to protect itself from plague epidemics.
Quarantining was at the heart of a disease-abatement strategy that included isolation, sanitary cordons and extreme social regulation of the population. Without a vaccine — or as yet effective pharmaceutical therapy for those who suffer severe illness — there’s not much else to do, as Italy’s neighbors and the United States are also discovering.
Hand-painted banners with the slogan, “Everything will be alright,” have started to appear in Italian cities. But many worry about the likely duration of the war against an invisible killer, and what the long-term consequences will be for their livelihoods and their country.
They aren’t the only ones in Europe asking the same questions.
As scary, surreal and disruptive as it is now, the long-term political and economic consequences of the biggest public health challenge the continent has faced since the 1918 Spanish flu are likely to be huge.
Aside from quarantining, the past also has some possible lessons for Europe about how infectious diseases can leave a long-term imprint, say historians. They say plagues and pestilence have reshaped countries before, changing politics, contributing to instability, retarding economic development and altering social relations.
“Plague caused a shock to the economy of the Italian peninsula that might have been key in starting its relative decline compared with the emerging northern European countries,” noted Italian historian Guido Alfani in an academic paper on the impact of the 17th century plague.
