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The practice of quarantine, as we know it, began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. Ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing.
Medieval Europe
The word “quarantine” originates from quarantena, the Venetian language form, meaning “forty days”. This is due to the 40-day isolation of ships and people practised as a measure of disease prevention related to the plague.
Descriptions of 40-day quarantines occur repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible, several millennia before the Venetians introduced the maritime practice. And when they occur, they are virtually always momentous and life-altering.
Rank | Epidemics/pandemics | Date |
---|---|---|
1 | Black Death | 1346–1353 |
2 | Spanish flu | 1918–1920 |
3 | Plague of Justinian | 541–549 |
4 | HIV/AIDS global epidemic | 1981–present |
Stay home for 14 days after your last contact with a person who has COVID-19. Watch for fever (100.4◦F), cough, shortness of breath, or other symptoms of COVID-19. If possible, stay away from people you live with, especially people who are at higher risk for getting very sick from COVID-19.
Bible Gateway Leviticus 13 :: NIV. “When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a bright spot on his skin that may become an infectious skin disease, he must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest. … When the priest examines him, he shall pronounce him ceremonially unclean.
Earliest narratives of quarantine
Though there is no date, Biblical scholars have stated this can be as far back as the 5th to 8th century BCE. The Bible narrates how during this age, priests would examine the affected persons and pronounce them ceremonially unclean.
The virus has infected thousands of people and killed more than half of them. It started in Guinea and spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria. A man who traveled to the U.S. from Africa died of Ebola in October. A nurse who helped treat them came down with Ebola.
Studies showed some patients could be re-infected within a year. Research at King’s College London also suggested levels of antibodies that kill coronavirus waned over the three month study. But even if antibodies disappear, then the cells that manufacture them, called B cells, may still be around.
Isolation has roots in the Latin word for “island,” and quarantine has origins in the French for “forty” or “a forty day period.” … Initially, the French word ‘quarantaine’ (“about forty”) was borrowed with the meaning “a period of forty days.”
Research suggests that COVID-19 doesn’t survive for long on clothing, compared to hard surfaces, and exposing the virus to heat may shorten its life. A study published in found that at room temperature, COVID-19 was detectable on fabric for up to two days, compared to seven days for plastic and metal.
In the first outbreak, two thirds of the population contracted the illness and most patients died; in the next, half the population became ill but only some died; by the third, a tenth were affected and many survived; while by the fourth occurrence, only one in twenty people were sickened and most of them survived.
Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia pestis. (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)
Since the earliest recorded pandemic, which decimated Athens, North Africa and the Middle East in the years 429-426 BC (known as the Plague of Athens), and likely before, pandemic diseases have been some of the greatest challenges to humankind.
COVID-19 Is Officially the Worst Pandemic in US History, Surpassing the Death Toll From the 1918 Spanish Flu. Let’s put this alarming milestone in perspective. For more than a century, the deadly 1918 flu has been the benchmark for pandemics in the US.
A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found evidence that the 1918 virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 pandemic.
I Kings 16:29-18:1 tells the story of Elijah when he follows God’s command to withdraw into isolation to keep himself safe. Later, Elijah joins the household of a widow and her son. Together they live in isolation, overcoming challenges of poverty and illness.
The verse in the Bible that most Christians make reference to is Leviticus 19:28, which says,”You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the Lord.” So, why is this verse in the Bible?
In Bible times, people suffering from the skin disease of leprosy were treated as outcasts. … They were forbidden to have any contact with people who did not have the disease and they had to ring a bell and shout “unclean” if anyone approached them.
Bible Gateway Leviticus 15 :: NIV. “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: `When any man has a bodily discharge, the discharge is unclean. … Whoever sits on anything that the man with a discharge sat on must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening.
Because leprosy was so visible and involved the decay or corruption of the body, it served as an excellent symbol of sinfulness. Sin corrupts someone spiritually the way leprosy corrupts someone physically.
Proverbs 18:1 – A man who isolates himself seeks his own desires; he rages against all wise judgment.
Psalm 91:5-6, a great psalm of protection, says that we will not fear the terror of the night, the arrow of the day, the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that comes at noon. For the sake of argument, let us accept for a moment that Covid-19 is really a plague.
A combination of public health efforts to contain and mitigate the pandemic – from rigorous testing and contact tracing to social distancing and wearing masks – have been proven to help. Given that the virus has spread almost everywhere in the world, though, such measures alone can’t bring the pandemic to an end.
Does the bubonic plague still exist? There have been other episodes of bubonic plague in world history apart from the Black Death years (1346-1353). Bubonic plague still occurs throughout the world and in the U.S., with cases in Africa, Asia, South America and the western areas of North America.
On May 3, 2021, the DRC Ministry of Health and WHO declared the end of the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu Province.
In the largest Ebola outbreak in West Africa, there were 28,616 cases of Ebola virus disease and 11,310 deaths, for a death rate of 39.5% (low compared to historic death rates for Ebola Zaire). If we only had 28,616 cases of COVID-19, at the current death rate of 4.1%, that would translate to 1,173 deaths.