What Hamburg's Missteps In 1892 Cholera Outbreak Can Teach Us About COVID-19 Response
Lesson No. 1: Have "proper precautions in place," says historian Richard Evans. And don't "try to hush it up." Thousands died in Hamburg after the government failed to acknowledge a cholera outbreak.
As British scholar Richard Evans researched the history of pandemics for a book more than 30 years ago, he was struck by the uniformity of how governments from different cultures and different historical periods responded.
"Almost every epidemic you can think of, the first reaction of any government is to say, 'No, no, it's not here. We haven't got it,'" he says. "Or 'it's only mild' or 'it's not going to have a
