Book contents
- Fighting the First Wave
- Also by Peter Baldwin
- Fighting the First Wave
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction: One Threat, Many Responses
- Chapter 1 Science, Politics, and History
- Chapter 2 New Dogs, Old Tricks
- Chapter 3 The Politics of Prevention
- Chapter 4 What Was Done?
- Chapter 5 Why the Preventive Playing Field Was Not Level
- Chapter 6 Where and Why Science Mattered
- Chapter 7 From State to Citizen
- Chapter 8 Who Is Responsible for Our Health?
- Chapter 9 Difficult Decisions in Hard Times
- Conclusion: Public Health and Public Goods
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 2 - New Dogs, Old Tricks
Fighting Covid-19 with Ancient Preventive Tactics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2021
- Fighting the First Wave
- Also by Peter Baldwin
- Fighting the First Wave
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction: One Threat, Many Responses
- Chapter 1 Science, Politics, and History
- Chapter 2 New Dogs, Old Tricks
- Chapter 3 The Politics of Prevention
- Chapter 4 What Was Done?
- Chapter 5 Why the Preventive Playing Field Was Not Level
- Chapter 6 Where and Why Science Mattered
- Chapter 7 From State to Citizen
- Chapter 8 Who Is Responsible for Our Health?
- Chapter 9 Difficult Decisions in Hard Times
- Conclusion: Public Health and Public Goods
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
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.
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- Fighting the First WaveWhy the Coronavirus Was Tackled So Differently Across the Globe, pp. 31 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021