In a measure reminiscent to the ones being taken during the current Covid- 19 pandemic, Sir Isaac Newton was in his early 20s when he was sent home from Cambridge when the Great Plague hit London. According to the Washington Post, it was during this time, confined in his home, that Newton made some of his greatest discoveries, including gravity.

It was in 1665 during the Great Plague that Cambridge sent students home as a precautionary measure. Newton returned to his family estate, Woolsthorpe Manor, about 60 miles northwest of Cambridge, where he then thrived. The year 1666, which he spent away from Cambridge at his estate, is termed as Newton’s annus mirabilis, his “wonder year” when he began work on his discoveries in the fields of calculus, motion, optics and gravitation.

The mathematical papers he wrote during this time went on to form the early foundations of calculus. He then experimented with a few prisms in his bedroom, going so far as to punch a hole in his shutters for a small light beam to come through. This led to his theories in optics. Outside his window at Woolsthorpe Manor was ‘the apple tree’ that led to the discovery of gravity.

According to a draft account of Newton’s life by his assistant John Conduit, as published by the Newton Project, “In the year he retired again from Cambridge on account of the plague to his mother in Lincolnshire and whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the same power of gravity (which made an apple fall from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but must extend much farther than was usually thought.”

A quarter of London’s population perished in the Great Plague of 1665 and 1666. Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was made a fellow within six months of his return. The current Covid-19 pandemic has affected over 140 countries worldwide, with more than 1,88,000 confirmed cases worldwide and a death toll of over 7,800, according to the World Health Organisation.

Over the last few days, a number of states in India have enforced measures aimed at reducing public gatherings. This is called ‘social distancing’. With 100,000 reported cases of Covid-19 in 100 countries, starting with the outbreak in Wuhan in China several weeks ago, researchers have analysed trends in the spread and have made a case for social distancing as a mitigation and containment strategy.

To stem the speed of the coronavirus spread so that healthcare systems can handle the influx, experts are advising people to avoid mass gatherings. Offices, schools, concerts, conferences, sports events, weddings, and the like have been shut or cancelled around the world, including in a number of Indian states.

An advisory by the US Centers for Disease Control recommends social distancing measures such as reducing the frequency of large gatherings and limiting the number of attendees; limiting inter-school interactions; and considering distance or elearning in some settings (which could be interpreted as serving the same purpose as working from home). Compared to deadlier diseases such as bird flu, or H5N1, coronavirus is not as fatal —which ironically also makes it more difficult to contain.

With milder symptoms, the infected are more likely to be active and still spreading the virus. For example, more than half the cases aboard a cruise ship that docked in California did not exhibit any symptoms. In a briefing on March 11, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said, “Action must be taken to prevent transmission at the community level to reduce the epidemic to manageable clusters.”

The main question for governments is how do you reduce the impact of the virus by flattening the trajectory of cases from a sharp bell curve to an elongated speed-bump-like curve. This is being called “flattening the curve”. A slow growth in patients can be handled by healthcare systems much more than a sharp rise.

In effect, the goal is to postpone the spread over time.As a report in The Atlantic stated: “A pandemic is like a slow-motion hurricane that will hit the entire world. If the same amount of rain and wind is to hit us in any scenario, better to have it come over the course of a day than an hour.

People will suffer either way but spreading the damage out will allow as many people as possible to care for one another.” Limiting community transmission is the best way to flatten the curve.

(The writer is with Eastern Institute for Integrated Learning in Management (EIILM), Kolkata)