Another instance in which we haven’t learned from our history:

Pope Francis’s favorite novel, Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, published 1840 describes the plague that devastated northern Italy in 1629–31. In the excerpt below substitute: mosquitoes for troops, Zika for plague, Olympic Committee for the Cardinal and W.H.O. for the Tribunal of Health and perhaps one can see how hard it is to learn the lessons of history.

Foreign troops in 1629 carried the plague to Mantua from where it spread to Milano and Venice. Despite public health measures executed by the City, three waves of infection till 1631 led to the death of almost half the population of Milano, 130,000 souls.

Some choice quotes from The Betrothed:

“Still it was not absolutely the plague; the use of the word was prohibited, it was a pestilential fever…that is to say, the plague, but only in a certain sense, — and further, combined with poison and witchcraft. Such is the absurd trifling with which men seek to blind themselves, willfully abstaining from a sound exercise of judgment to arrive at the truth.”

A major source of contagion was the procession for carrying through the streets the body of San Carlos. The Cardinal tried to resist “but finding resistance useless, finally yielded; he did more, he consented that the case which enclosed the relics of San Carlos should be exposed for eight days on the high altar of the cathedral. The Tribunal of Health…did not oppose this proceeding, they only ordained some precautions, which without obviating the danger indicated too plainly their apprehensions.”

Have we learned nothing in the past 400 years?