Gun, Germs and Steel

If you try to summarize the history of human development and globalization in three words then the most appropriate three words would be ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel ’. Before you brand me as geek, let me be clear that I have not come up with this. This is a book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies) written by Jared Diamond. Quite an interesting read to explain why Eurasian and North American civilization was able to conquer others. Basic idea is that it wasn’t intellectual, moral or inherent genetic superiority of the Eurasian civilization but the gap in technology (aided and amplified by environmental difference) and not to mention the frequent aid given by the germs to wipe/incapacitate the native population.

Despite the title, I am not going into gun and steel but will delve into much relevant topic for today – Germs. An unprecedented crisis of 21^st century, COVID-19 has managed to grip the world into its clutch. Just yesterday we were celebrating arrival of 2020 and who would have thought that world will come to standstill in just two and half months and all of us will be in house arrest looking into an exponential growth of death and destruction caused by the GERMS.

Tracing the terror

History of Pandemics (by Germs) is as old as the history of human civilization. About 5000 years ago, an epidemic wiped out a prehistoric village in China (Germs love China. Sorry, no pun intended 😉). The archaeological site is now called "Hamin Mangha" and is one of the best-preserved prehistoric sites in northeastern China.

A war between Athens and Sparta triggered another epidemic that consumed around 0.1 million souls (rough estimation). It is believed that it was either Ebola or Typhoid and scholars believe the overcrowding was the main source of epidemics. Alas, if only our forefathers knew about social distancing 😉.

Jumping back to the modern time, who can forget the greatest of the all-time great pandemics: The Black Death (the 14^th century). The Black Death traveled from Asia to Europe, leaving devastation in its wake. Some estimates suggest that it wiped out over half of Europe's population (It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia). The plague changed the course of Europe's history. It not only caused the naked dance of death and destruction but also triggered a renaissance that turned the wheel of history by major advancement in science, art and technology. Some say that Malthusian theory was proved correct and surviving workers had better access to meat and higher-quality bread and in turn better quality of life (truth of that is the discussion for another day).

Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/

Let’s take another Jump, back to the ultra-modern times (20^th and 21^st century). Major epidemic of 20^th century was Spanish Flu (during 1918 to 1920, direct result of World War I). An estimated 500 million people from the South Seas to the North Pole fell victim to Spanish Flu. One-fifth of those died, with some indigenous communities pushed to the brink of extinction. Despite the name Spanish Flu, the disease likely did not start in Spain (one theory states that it came for China). Spain was a neutral nation during the war and did not enforce strict censorship of its press, which could therefore freely publish early accounts of the illness. As a result, people falsely believed the illness was specific to Spain, and the name Spanish Flu stuck. The Spanish flu was the first of two pandemics caused by the H1N1 influenza virus; the second was the swine flu in 2009.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) stuck in early 200s and was a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin (Origin in China's Yunnan province). It is caused by the first-identified strain of the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1). Currently COVID-19 is strain of SARS-CoV-2. At the end of the epidemic in June 2003, the incidence was 8,422 cases with a case fatality rate (CFR) of 11%.

The 2009 swine flu pandemic was caused by a new strain of H1N1 that originated in Mexico in the spring of 2009 before spreading to the rest of the world. In one year, the virus infected as many as 1.4 billion (around 20% of World’s population) people across the globe and killed between 151,700 and 575,400 people, according to the CDC. The 2009 flu pandemic primarily affected children and young adults, and 80% of the deaths were in people younger than 65 (in the case of the swine flu, older people seemed to have already built up enough immunity to the group of viruses that H1N1 belongs to, so weren't affected as much).

Ebola ravaged West Africa between 2014 and 2016, with 28,600 reported cases and 11,325 deaths.

Coming to the present where world is in grip of COVID 19, and already 700 thousand (700000) people are infected with 33000+ death. Count is still on. Fatality and infection rate are still a microscopic dot in comparison with the other pandemics in history that wiped out cities and sometimes the entire civilization. We fervently hope and pray that the dot remains a dot and the history is not repeated here.

Moral of the story – What do the Germs tell you:

Each pandemic tells us a unique story, but underline theme never changed.  Malthus theorized a positive check (or Natural check) that would correct the imbalance between food supply and population growth in the form of natural disasters such as earthquakes, diseases or the human-made actions such as wars and famines. Though his theory is not entirely correct, but pattern still exists across all pandemics to give an iota of credit to Malthus. When Black Plague stuck Europe, Europe was mired in corruption and ignorance, there was no savior to save it from the pit of doom. Though deadly, but Black plague certainly proved a savior in long term (I am not a sadist, I would rather have another savior than death and destruction) and it ushered an era of renaissance that ultimately resulted in greater prosperity. But we can’t say diseases is always a result of check and balances imposed by nature. Sometimes it was a weapon that was used by one set of humanities to conquer other set of humanities (another kind of Malthusian check that is human made). Millions of people died in North, Central and South America when this weapon was used to subjugate the native population.

What is COVID-19: A Natural Malthusian Check or Man-made Malthusian check? There are multiple conspiracy theories being whispered all around. Or it is just some random event with no impact on history of mankind? I guess humanity will only know the truth once it looks back and try to decode the history. My fervent hope is that it doesn’t leave any trace on human history and just die down quietly in the infinite page of history. I hope that human in future don’t have to travel back in time to Wuhan to stop the spread of Virus that changed the course of history 😉.