Romola Davenport
When the covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020 there was no stockpile of coronavirus vaccines, and no cure. Instead, governments were forced to fall back on a repertoire of very traditional measures to control epidemics: surveillance, lockdowns, quarantines, and cordons sanitaire. To many people’s surprise, these measures were quite effective in the early stages of the pandemic. Countries that implemented strict quarantines, such as Australia and New Zealand, avoided large outbreaks. In countries with high levels of infection, lockdowns were followed by falling case numbers and deaths.
Did similar strategies help to control other infectious diseases in the past, before vaccines and antibiotics?
Romola Davenport
In 2007 the United Nations announced an historic milestone: the world had become decisively urban, with half the global population living in towns and cities. This represented a dramatic reversal of historic norms, when 80-90 percent of people worked and lived in the countryside. And this unprecedented shift from rural to urban areas shows no sign of abating – indeed, the UN predicts that all future population growth will be urban.
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The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure