How epidemics impacted society
By Olivier THIBAULT
The major epidemics have had important repercussions in history, rocking millions of lives and changing society deeply.
For example, the Justinian Plague, between the 6th and 8th centuries -- which went hand in hand with a sharply cooling climate -- contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, according to American historian Kyle Harper.
In March 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) sounded the alarm over Covid-19 and classified it as a pandemic. We look back at the traces left by the big epidemics of the past.
PARIS, March 15, 2020 (AFP) - Countries brought to a standstill, borders closed, economic slowdowns, schools shut. In the space of several weeks the coronavirus has made its mark on almost everything.
But what marks did the big epidemics of the past, like the "Spanish Flu" of 1918 or the "Black Plague" of the 14th century leave on their respective societies?
Europe at the end of the Middle Ages or at the end of World War I had little in common with today's society, which is highly-connected and globalised.
"But an epidemic is always a testing point for a society and an era," says science historian Laurent-Henri Vignaud, of the University of Bourgogne in France.
"It endangers social links, unleashes a latent form of civil war in which everyone is suspicious of their neighbour," he says.
"As things stand, that leads to grotesque scenes where supermarket customers fight for the last packet of toilet paper... More tragically in Italy doctors have to choose to save one patient rather than another for the lack of equipment, like in a war situation," he adds.
Minimum distance : From the establishmentof quarantines to the invention of methods of disinfection,the big epidemics have more than anything made their mark on our health systems, insists historian and demographer Patrice Bourdelais, of the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales (EHESS).
What was dubbed the Spanish flu at the end of World War I had "a structural effect on the history of health," geographer Freddy Vinet, of Paul Valery University in Montpellier, says.
A major global pandemic that killed 50 million, it led to the emergence of a generation of young doctors who were specialists in managing viruses.
Epidemics also lead to scapegoating, he said.
"We went through a small wave of xenophobia against the Chinese at the start of the current epidemic," he says.
During the major plague which ravaged medieval Europe between 1347 and 1351, Jewish populations were the targets of exacerbated attacks, which sometimes spiralled into massacres. In 1349 in Strasbourg nearly 1,000 Jews were burned.
Major outbreaks of the plague also sometimes prompted hedonist reactions, with people carrying on regardless, as if every day was their last, British historians William Naphy and Andrew Spicer wrote in the "Black Plague 1345-1730".
Others decided to withdraw from the world, as described by Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), who in his book "The Decameron" recounts how 10 people from Florence sealed themselves off outside the city to escape the plague.
'Co-production' : "An epidemic is a co-production between nature and society, between bugs and humans. A bacterium only becomes dangerous in certain circumstances," Vignaud says.
Thus the black plague ravaged at the end of the 14th century "A Europe in fine form where trade was intensive, cities well populated, the countryside exploited to saturation point," he says.
The plague benefits from this prosperity, puts the brakes on it and brings an end to the serfdom system which was the basis of medieval society," Dr Vignaud says.
In 1918, the flu epidemic had economic consequences which were "at the end of the day quite weak compared with the effects of the war in Europe," Vinet says.
However that is an exception. As a general rule, epidemics have major economic impacts cutting off and diverting trade, Bourdelais insists.
In medieval times, it is likely that the repeated plague outbreaks in the Mediterranean basin benefitted the development of the cities of northern Europe, he says.
Today, repeated health crises in China, the world's manufacturing hub, could lead to the diversification of production and supply sites, he says.