Henry, would it be true that the greater the base of operations for viruses, the more likely they are to come up with another successful version of mass murder?
By that I mean, 100 years ago there were fewer people in frequent contact with each other and slow boats to China for migration of bugs.
Now, in literally hours, bugs can and do move around the world and speed down freeways to rural hinterlands and hang around in supermarkets in small towns waiting for farmers to come in to collect their latest viral test packets.
1000 years ago, people mostly lived in small villages, surviving by agriculture and hunter gathering, with negligible contact with the next village, 20 km away, let alone across a large waterway or ocean. A virus would have to figure out a way to succeed in very small communities, which would have immunity.
Travel would be even more arduous for the bugs than for the people.
Without vaccines and other hygiene practices to interrupt bug propagation, we would perhaps be in big trouble a lot more often.
100 years ago there were 1 billion people, living much more widely separated, with much less travel between communities.
Now, there are 6 billion people in a surging, bug-swapping maelstrom.
1000 years ago there were 200 million or so people, widely spread with bug travel from England to New Zealand being a very, very long and arduous trek. Not many bugs would make it that far. Now they hop on a 747 and are here, still in the incubation stage, 24 hours later.
It's surprising that we don't suffer much greater viral carnage than we do.
Mqurice |
