If the Pox Don't Kill You, Something Else Surely Will

I ran across this "Big Think" article about what was the final blow to the Aztec civilization. I always thought it was Small Pox that traveled with the Spanish Conquistadors to the New World in the 1500s. As it turns out, infestation by Small Pox did weaken an otherwise very prosperous and productive society, but the pox only killed five million or so Aztecs. Apparently what finished them off was a type of enteric fever, a category of diseases that include salmonella and typhoid. That epidemic killed up to an estimated fifteen million Aztecs. The Conquistadors did indeed bring Small Pox with them. Now some experts are wondering if they also brought this "super salmonella" to the New World. ......Or not.

As I read the article, I considered what it might have to tell me regarding our current pandemic experiences over the last two plus years.

A natural ethnic, racial, arbitrary cleansing by disease is rare and takes longer than folks think it does. Some from our past lasted decades, yet they failed to eradicate everyone in the path of the pathogens. Humans are more rugged and resilient than they look.

As a matter of my research, paltry as it was, I could find no epidemic other than the Aztecs that is credited with killing off an entire ethnic group or at least decimating their populations so badly, their civilization ceased to exist. I am guessing it has happened, but I would need to dig deeper to verify. 

Even the great killer of Europe, the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) did not kill off enough people that a civilization died solely because of it. It raged off and on for hundreds of years. The various pandemics of the previous 5000 years may have been a factor to the many political downfall's that occurred back then. But no one other than the Aztecs seemed to have been completely wiped off the face of the planet as the result of a disease.

So what do I draw from this?

 From my previous couple of hours dicking around with the idea of pandemics and population kill offs, I came up with a few kernels I thought might be worth sharing .............. Hmm ...... A take away or maybe even a few.

• Don't worry so much about the disease of a pandemic. Follow rational directives and hope for the best. Of more importance in my opinion would be to be concerned about the countries, groups and assholes who would take advantage of such weak moments.
• Go ahead and resist help in the form of vaccinations, hospitalization, etc - your death, no doubt, will be a silver lining somewhere.
• Pandemics and epidemics are and have been part of the human experience before we even became human. And is it possible that some outbreak in our past created a mutation in the brains of a certain group of pre-humans that gave us the path to the high intelligence of our species versus the rest of the animal world?
• Uh, I, in no way mean to infer we are as intelligent as the imagined Alien Einsteins circling our planet as I write this and who are anxiously waiting for the go ahead to turn us into herds of food on two legs.. On the contrary, lately I have decided that we are dumber than dirt. But we are, at the moment, masters of our the planet. Damned if I can figure that out. Dumb luck I guess.

So anyway, this was my feeble attempt to stop mixing it up with the other FB trolls exchanging "yo momma" posts that pass for civil discussion on the Internet.

Keep it 'tween the ditches .....................................

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Music today is "Conquistador" played live with full orchestration, Procol Harum.