Notes & Queries response: If every person in the world isolated for a month, would all transmissible diseases disappear?

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This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 11^th September 2022

The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site.

I am replying here instead because it is too good a writing exercise to give up: How quickly can you go from a prompt, a blank mind, and a blank page to a finished piece? And how good can you make it?

This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.

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If every person in the world isolated for a month, would all transmissible diseases disappear?

On the 13th January, 1915, British forces attacked defensive Ottoman positions along the Wadi River (located in what is now modern-day Iraq). From the outset the offensive seemed doomed to failure. The Ottoman force was large in number and well dug-in. The attackers were dependent on inaccurate maps of the area, and were therefore lacking a reliable foundation upon which they might have been able to construct a more informed plan for the assault. Heavy fog in the morning, coupled with the slow movement of artillery, resulted in further delays that undermined the element of surprise. By the end of the day, the British had chalked up 1600 casualties, in what was widely regarded as a catastrophe, in spite of the ground that was captured.

On the morning prior to the battle, a party of scouts from the Essex Estuary Regiment, who had been dispatched on a largely fruitless mapping expedition in impenetrable mist, stumbled across what they believed was a sacked tomb. At the far end of a long underground corridor, with a low ceiling, they discovered a large stash of elephant tusks wrapped up in sheets of canvas. The men re-bailed the tusks and dragged them closer to the entrance of the tomb for later recovery. Word of a potential treasure trove, along with the coordinates of the find, was passed up the chain of command, though understandably, given the events that were to shortly unfold, this intelligence was not acted upon immediately.

All twelve of the men in the scouting party were killed in the ensuing fighting and the cache of ivory became a footnote in the reports that were made in the aftermath of the battle.

In 1928, with the region now known as 'Mandatory Iraq', and under the control of a British Administration, a decision was made to mount an expedition to the tomb and reclaim the bounty of ivory, if it was still there.

“There was an idea that it would be used in some way to commemorate the men who had fallen at Wadi,” said Major-General Peter Easton. “It would be inlaid into a memorial and perhaps also incorporated in some personal keepsakes that could be handed down to the relatives of the dead.”

In the aftermath of the War, the Essex Estuary and Kent Estuary Regiments had been combined to form a new force called the Thamesmouth Regiment. As it happened, this newly-coined regiment had been posted to Mandatory Iraq where they had been tasked with maintaining order. Given their participation in the Battle of Wadi, it was decided to give the unit the task of recovering the trove that had been discovered by their fallen comrades, 13 years before.

The ivory was discovered “almost” in the same condition as it had been described.

Almost.

The canvas wraps had been daubed with red markings that the regimental translators were unable to decipher, but were attributed to one of the itinerant desert tribes.

The ivory was transported to a camp nearby where the unit planned to undertake practise manoeuvres. Here, the tusks were unpacked, lined up flat on the ground and inventoried.

The following morning, men began to fall ill. The medical tent was quickly overrun by patients in the grip of thirst and whose sweat ran pink with blood. They had contracted Cana Fever. By the end of the day, 80% of the regiment had been infected. A 3-mile temporary quarantine was established around the camp while the unit commanders awaited further instruction.

The following morning they received an order to “hold position.”

By the end of the week, the quarantine zone had become permanent.

Cana Fever is a rare, but highly-contagious haemorrhagic virus. There are some Biblical scholars who attribute it as the source of the story of Jesus turning water into wine, and the origins of transubstantiation – the conversion of communion wine to the blood of Christ.

Private Robert Doll recalled "the hands of the men in the hospital tent dripping with rivulets of blood, like they had just killed someone.”

There is no known cure for Cana fever, though it will eventually burn itself out. Thanks to the quick action of one Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Abrey, a convoy of trucks was soon piping water to the edge of the quarantine zone. Other food and medical supplies were dropped over the site by aircraft.

Eight days after the first infection had been reported, all of the men in the regiment had contracted the fever, and the majority had recovered. There had been a total of 77 deaths as a result of the virus, along with a further two deaths that were attributed to “a mishap with a loaded firearm”.

A medical officer named Billy Healy later claimed that, had it not been for the prompt intervention of Andrew Abrey, the death toll might have surpassed ten-times that number.

The bodies of the dead, along with their personal effects, were cremated. The ivory was returned to the tomb and the ground around it dynamited on a weekly basis by Brigadier General Robert Cotgrove until the camp was disbanded.

The joy of the recovering soldiers would have been short-lived. Survivors of Cana fever are known to remain contagious for up to six months. Not wishing to risk a wider outbreak of the virus, the British government decided that a year in quarantine, in the regiment's present location, would be the most prudent measure. Effectively an entire British regiment, amounting to almost 4000 men, was taken out of commission.

“It was a shock,” recalled Captain James Evans. “I didn't get the fever until we were four days in. During that time I helped to establish the water supply in the camp. Early on, I saw men literally wither and die from dehydration in front of me. I saw other men on the ground, lapping up puddles of their own sweat and blood like dogs.

“I was out of commission for almost two weeks. Those of us who picked it up later seemed to get it worse. I remember, during the high point of my delirium, fighting off these gigantic moths. They would come right up to me and thrash their wings blindly against my face. After my fever broke I mentioned it to one of the doctors. 'Oh no, they are 100% real,' he assured me.

“Eventually we discovered that you could take yourself off their radar by darkening your skin. We dug right down into the sand until we hit a stratum of powdered igneous rock that was slightly damp. It was being pushed along through the desert by the vapours of a subterranean river. We rubbed it all over our faces. We looked like we had been mining coal.”

Finally on March 12th, 1929, the regiment finally received orders to move out.

“The only contact we'd had with the outside world was the letters we had received from home,” recalled Private Brian Ursell. “We had to dictate our replies over the radio. When we got the orders to leave we had to burn everything we owned. We were searched. Then we marched stark-naked out of the quarantine zone, where there were fresh sets of clothing waiting for us in heaps. There was a mad scramble to get something on.”

“I remember there being a terrible apprehension that we were poised on the same stairwell as the dodo,” said Major-General Peter Easton. “I am in no doubt that if the virus had been allowed to run wild, hundreds of thousands would have died and it would have laid waste to the region. After the Thamesmouth Regiment moved out, we doused the area in recharter foam – which had proven to be an effective method of cleansing the land following outbreaks of anthrax in Great Britain.”

The descendants of the men who were infected by Cana fever retain a level of immunity to this day. In 2016, the Goodger Foundation in Cambridge began studying volunteers with known resistance to the virus in the hope that the data will play a role in developing vaccines and treatments.

I hope this is of help.

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