A Tale of Two Cities

We are almost at the end of lockdown. The past few days have been rough for everyone. Some have perceived this as an opportunity to find latent talents, pursue hobbies. And here we are, less than 10 days to go. Most people would have already prepared their after lockdown bucket list, visiting friends, eating out. It's a sad thing that the bucket list contains exactly what we are not supposed to do.

Coming to the topic, this blog isn't about the two cities of London and Paris. And also not Cuttack and Bhubaneswar ( Coz most of my readers will be from Odisha ). It will actually be two tales about 2 pairs of cities and how ensuring strict lockdown measures helped in truncating pandemic.

Philadelphia and St. Louis

It was 1918. The Spanish flu was yet to become a global pandemic. The city chiefs of the American city of Philadelphia decided to conduct a parade with 600 soldiers infected with Spanish flu, completely ignoring the fact that it was a potential human bomb, waiting for the right moment to burst. By the end of the week, more than 4000 people have fallen into it's deadly jaws.

900 miles away,the city of St. Louis introduced measures to limit public gatherings by closing schools,churches,play grounds and libraries within 2 days of detecting the first case.

Restrictions were imposed on gatherings over 20 people. Flu related deaths in St. Louis were half that of Philadelphia. The graph perhaps provides better insights on the statistics.

A 2007 paper  in the proceedings of National Academy of Sciences,from which this this curve is obtained states that " cities in which multiple interventions were implemented at an early phase of the epidemic had peak death rates ≈50% lower than those that did not and had less-steep epidemic curves ." 

Now you may wonder that the cities were 900 miles apart,which isn't exactly the best way of assessing effects of a lockdown. So let us take a look of a pair of Italian cities.

Lodi and Bergamo

 See the map for yourselves. How far does this seem, 65 km? A meagre 56 min drive it is. The city of Lodi imposed severe lockdown measures after the detection of it's first case of COVID-19 while Bergamo didn't. While both had 800 cases on 7th of March,the number of cases in Lodi became half of that of Bergamo by 13th,when Bergamo had 2300 cases while Lodi had 1100.

What makes this virus perilous is a high reproduction number combined with a mammoth 6.9 % fatality. Harvard University has said even after Lockdowns are lifted, intermittent social distancing should be followed for atleast 6 months. So even if you have mighty plans of  having fun after the lockdown,choose to stay home so that you protect not just yourselves but also the people around you.

There is a great quote by Hegel,a German philosopher which goes by " We learn from history that we do not learn from history. " And our history does say that we have always been sloppy when it comes to Viruses.

Stay home,Stay safe.