A unified response

No book has taught me more about the development of our world than has Jared Diamond’s Guns Germs, and Steel (1997). Diamond says, “Because diseases have been the biggest killers of people, they have also been decisive shapers of history.” Our most lethal diseases are infections that came from diseases of animals. Microbes are continually evolving ways to spread from animals to people and from people to people.

The diseases that Europeans brought to the New World killed far more natives than did their guns and swords. Beginning in 1520, smallpox killed half of the Aztecs and a great many of the Incas. When Hernando de Soto marched through the southeastern U.S. in 1540, he found many Indian settlements that were deserted because the inhabitants had died in epidemics. French explorers who came through the lower Mississippi Valley in the late 1600s found the same thing. In a little over a century the Native American population may have been decimated by as much as 95 percent. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus were the most prominent of a dozen new diseases that ravaged the New World.

Epidemics have been a major shaping force throughout U.S. history. They have played havoc with commerce, our universities, and other institutions. They have brought considerable loss of life and disruption to calendars.

And so it goes without end. Despite the wonders of modern medicine, microbial diseases will continue to evolve and adapt and will beset us at every turn. A pandemic is not a time for political posturing and political games. It’s a time for a unified response that should be guided by medical experts and steady, mature leaders.

SANDY WYLIE

Bella Vista