There is nothing unusual about devastating epidemics.
It is one of those things like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or tsunamis that are well known and bound to happen at some point and which have never went away. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic killed 50 million people around the world and around 675,000 Americans. Influenza killed nearly as many American soldiers in World War I as those who died in combat. 70,000 Americans died from influenza in 1957/1958 and 34,000 died in 1968/1969.
Maybe the Wuhan coronavirus will fizzle out like SARS, Ebola, bird flu or swine flu before it. There is no reason to believe that epidemics are a thing of the past though because we have developed vaccines for the common flu. If you added up all the Americans who died from all causes in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, a century of war on foreign battlefields still wouldn’t have been as deadly as the Spanish Flu was a century ago.
Bad things do eventually happen on a long enough time scale. Disease is also now a greater threat than war between the great powers. China and the United States would much rather trade and grow wealthy than go to war over almost any conceivable issue. The same was true in the past. Plague came to Europe in the first wave through trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean and the second time via the Silk Road. There hasn’t been a major airborne pandemic in the age of global commercial air travel. It is only a matter of time though.
Note: In the age of mass shootings, the possibility of a rogue eco-terrorist motivated by some cause like climate change releasing a deadly genetically engineered virus is also worth thinking about. It was the plot of the movie 12 Monkeys in the 1990s.
Two Miami University of Ohio students, recently returned from China, have been diagnosed as having the Novel Coronavirus. They have been quarantined at home.
Basketball games have been canceled.
What? No bakkaball, WTF is that. Have you consulted with basketball Americans about this yet? Damn rayciss.
I bet the U.S. government would never cancel the Superbowl, there would be open rebellion if they did. Better to spread the corona virus at a million MPH than cancel the Superbowl. That’s also how feetsball fan about the issue.
Bread and circuses.
The “Spanish Flu” was incubated and carried over to Europe and other places from America by drafted US troops in crowded barracks conditions at military depots and on board naval ships, and spread through the civilian populations rather quickly in big cities because of crowds gathered to cheer parades of troops going off to war (with a lot of kissing and hugging of strangers.)
Sounds like any “diversity” ethnic day parade in NYC except, of course you have to add in the obligatory rapes, shootings, stabbings, muggings etc.
Chinese conspiracy theorists are claiming that the CIA is responsible for nCoV. They believe it was spread in China, so that the Blompf administration would have the upper hand in trade negotiations. As if China would not be able to out maneuver Blompf on any trade deal. It’s a very weak cope by the Chinese.
The 1918 flu pandemic was probably started in Army posts like Ft. Riley, KS by dust bowl conditions that carried mounds of infected horse and mule dung through the air and into the clothes, hair and respiratory tracts of soldiers shipping off for Europe. Nothing good came out of US involvement in the Great War. Except for the Zionists, the Bolsheviks and International jewish finance.
Globalism creates the conditions for pandemics. A deadly, exotic strain of the flu or the reappearance of an antibiotic-resistant plague could conceivably wipe out hundreds of millions. Such devastation would probably result in countries becoming more isolationist and nationalist. Maybe people would even be willing to seek revenge on that rootless, raceless tribe of cosmopolitans who are exclusively responsible for the world’s misfortunes!!!
Or just a an accidental or intentional release from a BLS Level 4 laboratory.
Have you ever read the non-fictional “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston about the Ebola outbreak amongst laboratory monkeys in Reston Virginia? I highly recommend it. Spoiler Alert: The monkey strain of Ebola can be transmitted through the air, unlike its two human variants.
Spahn –
The “Dust Bowl” appeared 15 years later.
Yes, but there are periodic dust storms in dry areas.