If this novel coronavirus had emerged in 1719 instead of 2019, the effect would have been very different.
For a start, the disease might not have spread beyond the place where it first appeared. Most people didn’t move around much in 1719. But merchants did, so if a merchant became infected at a market in Wuhan, he might have carried the virus to other markets and passed it on to other merchants. Then it could have spread, at walking pace, around the globe.
But, if an infected merchant had turned up at the market where your ancestors shopped 300 years ago, they might have still escaped infection. This is because villagers in 1719 were in the habit of keeping strangers at arm’s length.
No one would have worried about a shortage of hospital beds because there were no hospitals—at least not hospitals as we know them. People were nursed at home by their families.
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Doctors and other healers visited people on their sickbed but not everyone could afford their fees, and there was little these medics could do anyway.
Their beliefs about the causes of fevers were wrong and their idea of “intensive care” might have involved using leeches to remove some of their patient’s blood.
