Coronavirus Quarantine Fights Not A First For U.S.
Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 presidential address to Congress is famous for bringing us the Roosevelt Corollary, which warned European nations from involving themselves in the affairs of Latin America. What is not as well-known is a small paragraph sandwiched between two other issues. In the address Roosevelt said: “It is desirable to enact a proper national quarantine law. It is most undesirable that a state should, on its own initiative, enforce quarantine regulations which are in effect a restriction upon interstate and international commerce. The question should properly be assumed by the government alone. The Surgeon-General of the National Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service has repeatedly and convincingly set forth the need for such legislation.” As early as 1905, years before the now famous Spanish Flu, and over a century before our current crisis, the government and the states already were arguing over jurisdiction and legality for public health.
Before the Spanish Flu or COVID-19, southern Americans feared Yellow Fever epidemics that sprung up every couple of years. States like Louisiana suffered many of the same calamities we have today as people became so sick that businesses began to fail and their lives were turned upside down. It was estimated that the Louisiana economy suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in those years.
Believing the fever was spread by germs, the state and towns’ boards of health did all they could to prevent the spread by ordering quarantines of towns and homes where the disease was, making it difficult to conduct business in such towns. As the numbers of dead reached into the thousands, contagious cities could not even hold funerals as the dead were rushed away too quickly for burial before the contagion could spread. Another way to stop the spread was to order every ship entering the state to be checked and cleared by medical personal. Ships suspected of fever were quarantined for 10 days before they could continue up river.
During this time, the federal government, under the Marine Hospital Service instituted in the John Adams’ administration, tried to coordinate with the Louisiana state health boards. The problem was the national health boards were being blocked by similar state health boards. Not far removed from the Civil War, the gulf coast states did all they could to boost their own quarantine laws so as to reject national help and push out ...
