COVID-19 and the Typhoid Mary Parallel

In my apartment, several people who got diagnosed as having Covid-19 were asymptomatic. They only got found because they had to be tested prior to international travel or upon arrival in the state.

 

The most famous asymptomatic carrier (and spreader) of a disease is a cook and housekeeper named Mary Mallon, who became notorious as Typhoid Mary. Bill Bryson’s terrific book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, tells her story. As an adult, she worked in many well-to-do households of New York City. Wherever she went, two things happened:

“People came down with typhoid and Mary abruptly disappeared.”

 

In 1907, after a particularly bad outbreak, she was tracked down, tested, and found to be infectious but without symptoms – the first asymptomatic carrier. Well, earlier ones were probably burnt as witches.

 

Typhoid Mary was held in protective custody for 3 years, against her will. She was released on promising never to take a job handling food. Upon which, she immediately started working in kitchens again. Always on the move after every new round of infections started in her vicinity, she was finally captured in 1915 and spent the rest of her life under house arrest.

 

The tragedy of Mallon is that a lot of the damage she inflicted was avoidable, had she only washed her hands (before handling food). Sadly, far too many people don’t do that even today during the Covid-19 epidemic…

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