Facts That Make Our Society Massively More Vulnerable To Pandemics & Bio-Risks…(6…)
SurvivalDan101.com
May 21, 2019
Two things make our society massively more vulnerable to what we term bio-risks – anything from deliberately introduced lethal diseases to the results of random mutation of regular viruses and bacteria already in our environments.
But to start with, here’s an interesting fact. Most diseases don’t like to kill too many people too fast, because they rely on living people for their own survival – as a host to live in, and as a means of passing on their offspring. If a disease kills too many people, too quickly, they end up harming themselves as well. So evolution tends to moderate the lethality of most diseases.
Furthermore, in places where there are common diseases, the people develop some resistance to those diseases, meaning the people and the diseases can co-exist in a balanced situation. That is why we Americans have to take anti-malarial precautions when traveling somewhere rife with malaria for example, even though the local people are living quite comfortably alongside malaria.
But – and here’s the catch. Changes in our lifestyles have occurred faster than diseases can evolve to keep up with us. The two key changes, below, in particular, mean that diseases that once posed moderate risks now can pose massively greater risks.
Population is More Densely Crowded
When people lived in rural areas, what happened in one homestead or one small town rarely impacted much beyond that because people weren’t crowded together for much of every day. A person would get sick, and stay at home, and their family would largely stay close around them, with only limited interactions with other households. And if they did travel somewhere, they’d probably be traveling by horse or open carriage, not infecting hundreds of fellow travelers as they did so.
Non-farm employment was typically in small businesses rather than huge office complexes. There were no such things as shopping malls with thousands of people going in and out of them every day.
The ability of a disease to pass from person to person, within a local area, was much more restricted than now.
The Rest…HERE
