The last outbreak of bubonic plague arrived to Marseille, France in 1720 aboard a ship.

That ship was put in quarantine, but because powerful merchants wanted the goods, they convinced authorities to lift the quarantine prematurely.
1/

The predictable result was the rapid spread of the plague.

They say history doesn’t always repeat, but it does rhyme. In our case, we could be on the verge of a veritable Groundhog Day scenario.
2/

I’m not sure allowing rich merchants to determine public health policy is the soundest course of action—in any century.

And I’d hope that we’d be ever so slightly more sophisticated than our 18th century counterparts.
3/end