Sublime

Quarantines are back, the word itself referring to the forty days (quaranta giorni in Italian) that Venetians held ships away from the port when the ships were suspected of carrying plague. The policy of quarantine dates back to the late fourteenth century.

Ryan and other epidemiologists wanted Western countries to follow the approach that Harvard biostatistician Xihong Lin had suggested in his March 12 briefing—aggressively isolate infected people, as China had done. “Centralized quarantine worked!” Lin had proclaimed. “Infected patients, suspected cases and close contacts were less likely to infect