'Typhoid Mary' Mary Mallon, Asymptomatic 'Super-Spreader' Infected 51 People, Early 20th Cent.
'Typhoid Mary: the super-spreader before the term even existed.' Mary Mallon triggered multiple outbreaks in New York at the turn of the 20th century – and some believe she suffered prejudice not shown to other asymptomatic carriers. The Guardian, March 10, 2020.
Mary Mallon was a super-spreader before the term existed, a disease carrier so notorious she acquired a celebrity nickname: Typhoid Mary. Mallon showed no symptoms but was infected with typhoid and triggered multiple outbreaks in New York at the turn of the 20th century. She was a cook for affluent families, and everywhere that Mallon went the bacterial infection followed, sickening one household after another.
In 1907 a medical researcher identified her, leading to Mallon being forcibly quarantined for the rest of her life on North Brother Island, a containment site on New York’s East River. She died in 1938, aged 69, vilified in folk memory as “the most dangerous woman in America”, a patient zero who needed to be isolated and locked up, a de facto prisoner, until death.
- Mary Mallon, (L) in a hospital bed during her first quarantine 1907-1910. Mary Mallon (1869–1938), also known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish cook believed to have infected 51 people, 3 of whom died, with typhoid fever, and the first person in the U.S. identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the disease. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
A century later it is the turn of cruise ship passengers, air travellers and millions of people in Italy, China and other countries to be quarantined – temporarily – in the battle to control coronavirus. Measures range from pleas for social distancing and self-isolation to travel restrictions, bans on public gatherings and strict surveillance. A church congregation at the centre of an outbreak in South Korea has been accused of murder.
In some parts of China there are rewards for informing on sick neighbours. China’s drastic measures seem to be working, fuelling debate about how far to curb individual liberty in order to protect public health.
Mallon’s fate offers a cautionary tale about getting the balance wrong, according to scholars who started revisiting her case in the wake of HIV, Sars and other epidemics. They cast Mallon, an Irish immigrant, as a victim of public hysteria and official over-reach, a woman who committed no crime but ended up incarcerated and dehumanised as a metaphor for contagion. “It is very difficult for most healthy Americans to envision themselves as the ones whose liberty might be threatened in the effort to protect the health of the community,” Judith Leavitt, a historian, wrote in her book Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health.
Mallon was born in 1869 in Cookstown, County Tyrone. She emigrated to the United States as a teenager and from 1900 started working as a cook for wealthy New York families. A pattern emerged. Her employers and other domestic staff members became feverish and nauseous – stricken with typhoid, some fatally – while Mallon, busy in the kitchen, remained healthy. Oblivious to her infection, she would move on to another household. In 1906 Mallon cooked for the family of Charles Henry Warren, a banker, at their rented house in Oyster Bay, Long Island. When six of the 11 people in the household fell ill, the owners hired George Soper, a civil engineer, to investigate. Through a process of elimination he tracked down Mallon as the source – the US’s first confirmed asymptomatic carrier of the disease. Seven of eight families she had worked for had become infected...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/mar/10/typhoid-mary-super-spreader-history
* 'Super-spreaders: what are they and how are they transmitting coronavirus? About one in five people transmit infections to far more people than the majority do - why? The Guardian, March 3, 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/what-are-super-spreaders-and-how-are-they-transmitting-coronavirus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
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