Epidemics are scary. Medicine is hard. Real experts are needed.

Right now, I am reading/listening to the Tale of Genji (third time).

This has led me to read about that period in Japanese history, about the introduction of tea, about the varieties of Buddhism that changed from ceremonial and strict to the more popular version that lets non intellectuals to get to heaven by taking Buddha as their Lord and savior without all that complicated rituals.

but anyway, one of the side issues is disease. Lots of child birth deaths, not just in Genji but in other related writings by ladies of those days.

But what about disease?

I am just starting to do research into the healing ceremonies, but one of the issues I ran across was infectious disease

Japan, being an island, and in rural areas in valleys tended to be isolated, was what in public health calls virgin territory: where no one is immune to a disease so the result is a huge number of deaths.

This is what happened to the American Indians for example. Or to the Europeans who got Syphillis in return

So back to Japanese history: This medical article summarized that country's experiences.

there was a major smallpox epidemic

The first recorded smallpox epidemic in Japan was in the eighth century. The smallpox that started in 735 ravaged the country and killed probably about one-third of the entire population. Almost certainly this was a virgin soil epidemic. Later, twenty-eight smallpox epidemics were recorded until 1206. Among these epidemics, there was a clear trend of progressive shortening of the interval between two epidemics: until the year 1000, smallpox visited Japan with the interval of twenty-four years on average, while between 1001 and 1206 the interval became thirteen years.4 (Table 1) By the Tokugawa Period or the early modern period in Japan, smallpox was firmly settled as an endemic disease.5 Statistics from a village show that the village experienced major outbreaks of smallpox about every ten years. (Figure 1) They also show that about ninety-five per cent of the deaths from smallpox were those who were under ten-years-of-age.

I bring this up for two reasons: 

One: that a new disease into a population without immunity could kill a large percentage of the population, and 

TWO: that as time goes on, with each epidemic, fewer die, until it essentially becomes a disease of childhood

The lessons for covid? Well, thanks to the omicron varient, the milder disease took over and once that happened, the epidemic was over.

but the mishandling of covid will make people sceptical when the next bad disease hits.

Sigh.

But anyway: Yes, stop the conspiracy theories about meetings planning for future epidemics: because such epidemics do happen.

But two: remove the nincompoops who mishandled the Covid response.

................

a longer version of this is posted on my medical blog.