Pandemics and Lessons From the Past

Most anthropologists will say that it is not the wheel (certainly a worth invention) but agriculture that was the most significant invention of mankind.  And agriculture is an invention of women.  It was the women of the clan who were often relegated to the home fires by virtue of the constraints of childbearing and it is they who would have noticed an interesting phenomenon.  While most clans were nomadic, they followed set patterns, visiting the same spots in order as they followed game and weather.  These tribes tended to dispose of their wastes and garbage in one central area of each campsite.  The women, sitting around the fire, heavy with child, nursing or too old to hunt, busied themselves with the “sit” work of the extended family.  These women would have noticed that season after season the areas of trash disposal were also where the grains and vegetables were sprouting up.  They made use of, relied upon, and eventually encouraged this growth of plant-based food. 

Agriculture was born.

The use of land for food cultivation did three things.  First, it employed men at home as they saw the profit in using their size and strength to produce crops.  Second, it lengthened the time people could occupy a specific area, forming permanent homes.  Third, as food supplies became stable clans grew into communities, villages and towns.  The world saw the emergence of population density. 

            Population density is one of the criteria for specialization, in turn, a criterion for advancement in technology, science and general quality of life.  But there is nothing free.  All of life is a cost/benefit analysis and if you think you have found a “win-win” scenario you simply have not followed the chain of effect far enough.  With population density come the problems of ecological damage, pollution and pandemic.  Many times, these three biological negatives are simply three legs on the same stool. 

            Enter COVID-19 (or any one of a dozen other viruses you can name).  Viruses are primitive life forms (not living things per se) that exist as parasites of opportunity.  When a living cell (in a bird, a bat, a monkey, you and me…) encounters a virus and finds that virus compatible, it will absorb it.  Then the host becomes the prey.  The virus uses the cell’s substance to replicate, destroying the cell in the process.  When viruses existed in remote areas with small populations and limited transportation they had limited impact.  As we destroy forested areas, we force viruses into densely populated areas where they thrive.  When we enhance transportation arteries, we allow those viruses to move through the world as it moves through a single body.  

            Pandemics are not new.  The fact that we are getting better at understanding and creating science-based and social-based responses does not change the ultimate outcome of a pandemic.  Here are the only possible outcomes, take your choice.

1.        No one left to die.  The virus outruns its supply lines.  Those who can get the disease have gotten it and die.  The only people left are immune.  The Plague of Justinian (541 CE) is an example. 

2.      The source of the disease is discovered.  Intervention prevents its spread.  The tracing of the London cholera epidemic to a Broad Street water pump by John Snow is an example.

3.      A vaccine is discovered that neutralizes the disease.  Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine in 1955 is an example.

4.      We learn to live with the disease, accepting its outcome and reality.  HIV/AIDS is the 6^th leading cause of death in Americans from ages 25-44.  There is no cure.  It is preventable only through lifestyle choices, yet it thrives. 

…and yet, I keep the faith.