Green pass, historical courses and appeals
Green pass between news and history. The comment of the columnist Giuliano Cazzola
As Seneca wrote to the young Polybius “ what is and will be has already been ''. Without claiming to be incisive like the great Stoic philosopher (of his literary style he wrote the eminent Latinist Concept Marchesi : “ of words that everyone hears are written sentences that no one has ever heard '') problems are found more or less the same solutions.
To contain the spread of the plague (whether bubonic or pulmonary), the surgeons advised to wash their hands, to keep away from outbreaks; the authorities built hospitals and walled up the doors and windows of the houses where there were infected people.
Mutatis mutandis, even today, to mitigate the devastating effects of Covid-19, the fundamental measures have not been very different from those adopted in past centuries. Fortunately, science has made progress since the days of bloodletting. Today we have miracle drugs and therapies that have solved many scourges of humanity, through compulsory vaccination; just think of smallpox, polio. The same exanthematous diseases that in the last century were considered an obligatory passage for children today undergo an immunizing procedure because their severity and transmissibility have been realized.
Returning to the Black Death, in order to limit the contagion as much as possible it was necessary to limit the mobility of people, especially those who came from the affected areas. Thinking about it, it has been the same now, even between regions of the same country. At that time the traffics did not have the intensity we know today, but even that economy was in its own way '' globalized '' perhaps within the boundaries of limited areas, which however were widened as much as possible by merchants and sailors. The Republic of Venice lived on trade and commerce, its ships had gone as far as distant seas. And he couldn't give up his own standards of existence. Here then was the solution found in the city of the Doge. Those who had to move asked for a sort of safe-conduct (a forerunner of the green pass, as seen in the image) issued by the Venice Health Office which certified the bearer was free from contagion.
Just go to Wikipedia to find even older certifications than the one reproduced which dates back to 1713. Who knows if even then there were demonstrations of opponents who accused the Doge of trampling their rights? Of course, without that card the ships of the '' dodgers '' would have remained at anchor in the Arsenal.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/green-pass-corsi-e-ricorsi-storici/ on Fri, 06 Aug 2021 10:34:21 +0000.