why things could be worse

the 1918 Spanish Flu and the black plague were bad, but did give populations time to recover, unlike the smallpox, influenza and hepatitis epidemics that wiped out a large percentage of the indigenous Americans because they came one after another...

indeed, the several epidemics that depopulated the western Roman empire and left it too weak to oppose the invasions of the barbarians changed history.


but there were many terrible epidemics in the past that could reappear.


DNA is settling the causes of previous  infections (justian's plague was bubonic plague, the plague of Athens was Typhoid). Luckily, these diseases can be treated today with antibiotics.

similarly, numerous epidemics of European diseases that killed much of the indigenous population in the Americas can be prevented with vaccines (e.g. measles, smallpox) or treated with antibiotics.

But one of the Mexican epidemics was an indigenous hemorrhagic fever named Cocliztli that was unknown to Europeans. from wikipedia:

There have been 12 epidemics that have been identified as potentially being of cocoliztli, with the largest ones being those in 1520, 1545, 1576, 1736, and 1813.[6] Soto et al. have hypothesized that a large scale outbreak of hemorrhagic fever could also have contributed to the earlier collapse of the Classic Mayan civilization (AD 750–950)

So what would happen if this disease reoccured and spread around the world?

But that is not the only mysterious disease that one finds in history:

And what would happen if there was a reoccurance of the sweating sickness, that killed people within 24 hours, and killed Henry VIII's older brother.




Personally, I worry that the reaction to the Corona virus is overdone, especially here in the third world: Because the danger of destroying jobs, destroying the supply chain to feed people living in cities, and the relapse of poverty, which kills via malnutrition and the inability to pay for medicines needed for chronic disease etc. is a much bigger danger than a disease that kills one percent of the population.

and even with China's territorial aggression, and their theft of intellectual property, selling shoddy goods, etc. one does not wish China to have a severe recession.

there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that the NWO is taking advantage of the epidemic to work their nefarious plots.

I'm sure that this, like most conspriacy theories, has a nugget of truth in it that is exaggerated by the anxious and the paranoid (and certain folks who get rich pushing conspiracy theories).

But myself, I worry that the overreaction is a "test drive" for a future epidemic: Bird flu or a terrorist release of smallpox comes to mind, both of which have been "war gamed" by Johns Hopkins similar to their recent training session for a SARS like virus a few months before the Covid virus emerged, a meeting that was of course pounced on by conspiracy theorists who weren't aware that such meetings/disaster drills/ war games go on all the time in medicine and in the military.

so if you think Covid virus is bad, remember there are a lot more dangerous bugs out there that experts in public health are worried about:

it's just a matter of time...