Epidemics are not a 21st-century thing. The men and women of early America dealt many times with extensive and deadly diseases—including smallpox, cholera, measles, and yellow fever. They were well aware of the bubonic plague that came before and would visit again.
While I wouldn’t pretend to know what the men and women of Washington’s day might prescribe for a coronavirus response in ours, it’s fair to say they believed statism to be no cure for anything—and in fact, to be a mortal danger itself and deadlier than any pathogen.
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