Coronavirus

[Cheerful]

Once again, the rules and common sense apparently only apply to some of us.

A similar thing happened in New Hampshire, a man violated advice to self-quarantine.

[mythbuster]

    At the medical center where Mr. Buster works they has a similar situation. Sister of an employee at Medical Center came back from Italy and is is self-quarantine. So employee went and hung out with her sister over the weekend. I'm not sure if the sister has any symptoms. Once word of this got out, days later, the medical center acted as fast as they could to isolate the employee and determine a chain of contact.
   People need a review of what the word quarantine actually means.

[mamselle]

Originally from French, "quarrantaine," a 40-day period (like Lent) or distancing and deprivation for the purposes of purification.

I don't know/am too lazy to pull out the OED to look up first uses, etc. but at some point that usage was broadened  to include medical segregation.

I'm sorry these peoples' selfishness is causing such problems.

M.

[ergative]

Originally from French, "quarrantaine," a 40-day period (like Lent) or distancing and deprivation for the purposes of purification.

I don't know/am too lazy to pull out the OED to look up first uses, etc. but at some point that usage was broadened  to include medical segregation.

I'm sorry these peoples' selfishness is causing such problems.

M.

In Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, he discusses a delay in reported cases between the first few in December 1664 and the later ones in February 1665, and says the following: Now the question seems to lie thus: Where lay the seeds of the infection all this while? How came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Either the distemper did not come immediately by contagion from body to body, or, if it did, then a body may be capable to continue infected without the disease discovering itself many days, nay, weeks together; even not a quarantine of days only, but soixantine; not only forty days, but sixty days or longer.

So at the time quarantine had a very specific meaning, not just of medical isolation, but specifically isolation for the period of 40 days--and the morphology of the word was productive enough that it was possible to adjust it to keep the same word form but allow different numbers in the root to indicate different durations of isolation. Defoe wrote the book in 1722, but the OED dates this particular usage back to 1630 in English, and it came from Italian (Italy had a lot of plague outbreaks in the 17th century). There are, of course, other usages that refer to the passage of time, but are unrelated to medical isolation (e.g., penance, a deadline for turning a dower over to a widow, or a place where Christ fasted for 40 days).

[mamselle]

Thanks, yes, that's what I had in mind.

I'm curious, though....Does it actually say, "place" where Christ fasted?

I could understand it saying "a time for fasting," or withdrawal/isolation: that's where the timing for Lent is derived, from the period of temptation between Jesus' baptism and first days of public ministry (Matt. 4: 1-11; Luke 4:2-13--OK, so I have my Bible closer at hand than my OED....sorry!)

But I hadn't heard of there being a place identified for that. Interesting.

When I'm up next (still crutching around) I'll have to see if I can pull the OED down without it falling over on me and look at that further.

Anyway, back to our regularly-scheduled whatever-it-is-we-were-doing.....oh, yeah, still trying to find that colonial gravestone's background info....

ETA: Apropos of this exact discussion, this Tweet--a MS citation on plague isolation in Old England--just showed up in my Twitter feed two minutes later:

   https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FSonja_Drimmer%2Fstatus%2F1237059343343747074&widget=Tweet

M. 

[ergative]

Yes, the place itself:

†1. Christian Church. The place where Jesus fasted for forty days. Obsolete.
c1470   W. Wey Itineraries 14   By yonde ys a wyldernys of quarentyne, Wher Cryst wyth fastyng hys body dyd pyne; In that holy place, as we rede, The deuyl wold had of stonys bred.
c1500   Stations of Jerusalem 780 in C. Horstmann Altengl. Legenden (1881) 2nd Ser. 365/2 (MED)   And after we..turnyd vp to Quryntyne [read Quaryntyne], There Jhesu fastyd xl deys.

[Anselm]

Once again, the rules and common sense apparently only apply to some of us.

A similar thing happened in New Hampshire, a man violated advice to self-quarantine.

How exactly does one do this?  Do you just stay in the house and have others deliver food to you?

[wwwdotcom]

Once again, the rules and common sense apparently only apply to some of us.

A similar thing happened in New Hampshire, a man violated advice to self-quarantine.

How exactly does one do this?  Do you just stay in the house and have others deliver food to you?

Or eat the food you have in your house.

[apl68]

Once again, the rules and common sense apparently only apply to some of us.

A similar thing happened in New Hampshire, a man violated advice to self-quarantine.

How exactly does one do this?  Do you just stay in the house and have others deliver food to you?

Or eat the food you have in your house.

Defoe gives examples of this as well.  Really, A Journal of the Plague Year gives a LOT of food for thought about epidemic and pandemic situations.  It's not only a vivid historical novel portrayal of a devastating epidemic, it's also the grandaddy of modern epidemic disaster stories.  You can even see the distant ancestors of all those zombie apocalypse stories of recent years in Defoe's descriptions of people fleeing from shambling, delirious plague victims.

[spork]

Eastern Psychological Association meeting, scheduled for Boston this weekend: cancelled this morning.

The head of the NY/NJ Port Authority has tested positive for Covid-19. I think NYC and environs is going to become a mess.

[bacardiandlime]

All of Italy now on lockdown. But per the BBC, that does not apply to foreign nationals. Who are allowed to leave as they please: BA is running a reduced schedule but has not cancelled all flights to Milan...

[mamselle]

Once again, the rules and common sense apparently only apply to some of us.

A similar thing happened in New Hampshire, a man violated advice to self-quarantine.

How exactly does one do this?  Do you just stay in the house and have others deliver food to you?

Or eat the food you have in your house.

Defoe gives examples of this as well.  Really, A Journal of the Plague Year gives a LOT of food for thought about epidemic and pandemic situations.  It's not only a vivid historical novel portrayal of a devastating epidemic, it's also the grandaddy of modern epidemic disaster stories.  You can even see the distant ancestors of all those zombie apocalypse stories of recent years in Defoe's descriptions of people fleeing from shambling, delirious plague victims.

Yes.

And then there's the Decameron...

M.

[mamselle]

Eastern Psychological Association meeting, scheduled for Boston this weekend: cancelled this morning.

The head of the NY/NJ Port Authority has tested positive for Covid-19. I think NYC and environs is going to become a mess.

IHE had these two articles up:

1. The ACE (Am. Council on Ed.) has cancelled its annual meeting:
   https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/03/09/college-presidents-group-cancels-annual-meeting

2. A roundup of news on higher ed and coronavirus-related issues (including those discussed on threads here):
   https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/03/09/roundup-news-coronavirus-and-higher-ed

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

Defoe gives examples of this as well.  Really, A Journal of the Plague Year gives a LOT of food for thought about epidemic and pandemic situations.  It's not only a vivid historical novel portrayal of a devastating epidemic, it's also the grandaddy of modern epidemic disaster stories.  You can even see the distant ancestors of all those zombie apocalypse stories of recent years in Defoe's descriptions of people fleeing from shambling, delirious plague victims.

Ooooh, thanks for the tip! I look forward to reading this!



For my part, it's weird to compare (what looks like) the panic south of the border to the mostly calm take up here. All the American conferences and things are in the process of being cancelled, including well into the summer; so far, it looks like ours aren't. (I'm involved in organizing an American conference in April which isn't yet cancelled, which is also an interesting experience. Not sure we'll make our room numbers, but COVID-19 seems like a good excuse for it.)

[no1capybara]

Argh, I can't deal!!

Today was our first day after spring break. My university's computer network has been down for four days but no one is stating why. It was a sunny day so I took the students outside to sit on the lawn and discuss our options for the rest of the semester if we have to move to an online/remote environment. Did I mention that our computer network is down?

The major university in my city just closed for the next three weeks.   My students' anxiety levels are sky high.  This is fun.