Reflection on the Recent COVID Lockdown

Winter 2021 was incredibly bleak where COVID-19 was concerned. The data show that since 16 June 2021, 69,695 people in NSW acquired COVID-19, and there have been 522 COVID-19 deaths. To help contain the spread of COVID, the NSW Government instituted a series of lockdowns. But are lockdowns the best way of managing the spread of illness?

History suggests that lockdowns are effective. Do you recall hearing about a town in England that went into lockdown during the bubonic plague in the 17th century to ensure the disease didn’t spread to the broader population? That village was Eyam in Derbyshire.

It all started in September 1665, when George Viccars, a tailor’s assistant in Eyam, unloaded a bundle of flea-infested blankets from London. Within a week, Viccars was dead, and six weeks afterwards, some 29 Eyam residents had also died of the plague. While the disease seemed to hibernate in winter, it came back with a vengeance in spring and summer, such that by June 1666 it was rampant. It was then that Eyam’s newly arrived rector, William Mompesson, realized the need to contain the disease and began to formulate a quarantine plan.

Eyam lay on an important trade route between Sheffield and Manchester; if plague got into those cities, thousands would die. Mompesson convinced Eyam residents to establish a quarantine cordon around the town with a one-mile radius marked by a ring of stones. For 14 months nobody went in or out of the village. Fourteen months. Food was left at the boundary stone by nearby townspeople in exchange for gold coins submerged in vinegar, which villagers believed would disinfect them. Sadly, the death-rate skyrocketed in the village. One woman, Elizabeth Hancock, buried six of her children and her husband within a month. Mompesson himself described the village in one of his letters: “My ears have never heard such doleful lamentations. My nose has never smelt such noisome smells, and my eyes have never beheld such ghastly spectacles.”

In all, 260 of Eyam’s estimated 800 residents perished during the quarantine, but Mompesson and the villagers’ self-sacrifice had worked. The plague never spread to nearby towns and 14 months later, in November 1667, the quarantine was lifted.

It is interesting to note Mompesson’s own distress over the situation. These days we hear of distress, but it seems to be overwhelmingly of the economic kind. Businesses have lost trade, have downsized, or even worse, have folded. People have been crushed financially, but there is also another cause of distress related to lockdowns, and that is the emotional distress of being cut off from family and friends who reside in other Local Government Areas, and the added stressors of moving to remote work or schooling.

COVID-19 vaccination is seen as the panacea against lockdowns. Israel’s government decided to deal with the latest wave of COVID-19 without imposing lockdowns, rather, it was the first country in the world to embrace COVID booster shots by launching, in July this year, a sweeping nationwide campaign to vaccinate all of its population over the age of 12. Here’s hoping that Australia gets on with the job of providing booster shots to all the population in a timely manner, and here’s hoping that we get a 100 per cent uptake in COVID-19 vaccination rates. Another lockdown in the near future is unthinkable.

• Topics:

• Covid-19
• Lockdown
• History
• Health & Wellbeing