Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Will quarantine for travellers become normal again?

It wasn’t a coincidence that the US government chose Ellis Island as an immigration station. The crucial word is ‘island’.

Had the RMS Titanic missed that fateful iceberg in 1912, she would eventually have taken up station at a quarantine area at the entrance to the Lower Bay of New York Harbor, to await medical inspectors who would board the ship from a cutter.

The quarantine exam would have been performed aboard, but only for first- or second-class passengers (US citizens were exempt). These would have been inspected for cholera, plague, smallpox, typhoid fever, yellow fever, scarlet fever, measles and diphtheria. A few might have been marked to be sent to Ellis Island for further examination.

Much of the world’s tourist and travel industry is dependent on the continued efficacy of vaccines and antibiotics

Only after the visiting medical inspectors had returned to shore would the Titanic have sailed into the main harbour, docking at the White Star Line’s Pier 59 on Manhattan, There only the pre-vetted cabin-class passengers would have disembarked. All steerage passengers would have been transferred to barges for the trip to Ellis Island and at least five hours of further processing — and possible rejection or quarantine.

As for those famous locked gates on the Titanic which separated third-class areas of the ship from everyone else, and which subsequently provided rich material to filmmakers wishing to pass comment on British class divides? These had been installed to comply with US immigration law, again to control the spread of disease on board.

What if this becomes normal again? It is chastening to contemplate the extent to which we have built the whole edifice of the modern world on the assumption that no technological gains can ever be lost.

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