In Marseille, France, in 1720 arrived a trade ship - the Grand Saint Antoine - skippered by a certain Captain Jean-Baptiste Chataud, coming from an area in the eastern Mediterranean known as Levant.
On the ship there were some plague infected and diseased personnel and travellers aboard.
All the passengers were immediatly put in quarantine in the Lazaret, but some crew members bribed their way off and gained their liberty.
Hey, sounds familiar?
... physicians disagreed amongst themselves as to whether or not the plague was present on the ship ...
... do I have the TV turned on?
... and because the ship carried vitally needed silk and cotton for a great fair planned in July at Beaucaire, influential Marseille merchants pressured port authorities to lift the quarantine.
... are we talking about 1720, or ...?
So goes the story: the ship attracked and 100 thousand people - only in France - died because of a large epidemic of Yersinia Pestis, which is the bacterium responsible for pneumonic.
As Karl Marx would say: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce".
And now, year 2021, we're still in the tragedy phase, with a great political farce made by whom has to deal with it. Some of them, at least.
