The Coronavirus Circus, A Blast from the Past

Disease sneaks into the body invisibly, cunningly, through the air, water, or even – and here she gave me a wary look – from a pair of black eyes set close to a hawk nose.  Such eyes, known as Gypsy or witches’ eyes, could bring crippling illness, plague, or death.*

                                                                                                         -Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird

The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.
   
                                                                                                         -T.H White, The Once and Future King

Once again, a virus has taken the world by storm.  Our media feeds are filled with (largely unconfirmed) footage of coronavirus victims dropping dead in the streets, convulsing under blankets in hospitals waiting rooms, and being transported in plastic tubes and boxes by medical workers in hazmat suits.  The Chinese government has taken the unprecedented step (unless you count the clampdown on the one million Uighur Muslim minorities in East Turkestan or Xinjiang– depending on who you ask – in western China, a region where the virus has also spread and could devastate the vulnerable prisoner and detainee populations) of quarantining over 40 million people in 14 different cities including Wuhan, the progenitor city of the outbreak (which just happens to be the home of the Medical Research Institute at Wuhan University, one of China’s few “biosafety level-4” labs that has been cleared to work with the most dangerous pathogens on Earth).  

Image: Train to Busan

While fumigators disinfect ghost towns, Chinese people are covering their heads, their cats, and entire domiciles and offices in plastic bags and sheets, which is not unlike what many do when they head to the beach. 

Image from Amusing Planet

#Chinese ppl maskedly playing #mahjong while there are thousands dead bcz of #Coronavirus.
وقتی #ویروس_کرونا هم نمی‌تواند جلوی بازی #چینی ها ره بگیره! 😁😁 pic.twitter.com/nnoztgGup5

— 夏金 (@AHakimNazari) January 25, 2020

This #coronavirus is definitely not a joke and I’m in the heart of Wuhan🥺 pic.twitter.com/x8jm5mSB57

— Fafa_Fadzai (@fadzai_mangwiro) January 23, 2020

My friends’ apartment complex getting disinfected in Wuhan yesterday #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/6jH3shTkOb

— mxmbt2 (@mxmbt2) January 22, 2020

But other than the supposed increased transparency and proactiveness of the Chinese government to counter the spread of the virus, the skyrocketing popularity of  app game Plague Inc. that allows players to become a virus and wipe-out humanity, and Disneyland being closed, what’s the difference between the current outbreak of Coronavirus and the various other epidemics that have emerged from China in the past?  In terms of contagion rate and incubation time, it’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before. The Sun reports that ‘Professor Neil Ferguson, an expert in mathematical biology at Imperial College London told reporters in London the death rate for the new strain of coronavirus is  "roughly the same as for the Spanish flu epidemic, at around one in 50."  The 1918 outbreak is the most severe pandemic in recent history, wiping out an estimated 50 million people across the world.’ (Peak Prosperity CEO Chris Martenson, who holds a PhD in Pathology from Duke, took a captiously rosier perspective on the crisis in an informative video update.)

As with most things, it’s helpful to put the spread of Coronavirus in perspective.  Since the year 2000, numerous viruses have surfaced, spread death and panic, only to be contained, subside, and disappear from headlines.  Such outbreak scares happen with such frequency that the average person can hardly keep track of them, let alone contextualize and compare the impact and death tolls of contemporary pandemics with those of modern and ancient history, which far outweigh any virus outbreak experienced in recent generations in terms of lives lost and duration of persistency.  Here’s a list to refresh your memory as to recent viruses and their death tolls:

1. Ebola – present – 2^nd worst Ebola outbreak in history – 350 deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
2. Yemen Cholera Epidemic – 2016 – 2019/present – 3,886 deaths.
3. Zika Virus - 2015 – 29 infant deaths and 2,400 possible cases of microcephaly.
4. Ebola crisis -  2014  - ‘worst Ebola outbreak in history’ - 11,315 people dead in five African countries plus the U.S.
5. Swine Flu – 2009 – Aka H1N1 flu pandemic in Asia – 3,787 deaths, possibly 200,000 globally 
6. Avian/Bird Flu – 2006 – around 100 dead.
7. SARS  - 2002-2003 – Aka Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus – 774 deaths, mostly in China.

With the exception of the 2009 swine-flu pandemic, considering how few people actually died as a result of the above outbreaks that were hyped since the year 2000, it appears that previous measures taken to contain and stamp-out viruses in a highly interconnected and globalized age were extremely successful if not borderline miraculous. There is no reason to think that the outcome of the Coronavirus epidemic will be any different other outbreaks in the 21^stcentury.  Furthermore, if you compare the death toll and impact of recent virus outbreaks to some of the most severe in history, it becomes clear that we should be giving ourselves a pat on the back for good hand hygiene and applauding the incredible work of the scientists and doctors who have carried the collective human species forward in a world brimming with microbes that are trying to kill us.  If it were not for their work, we could have ended up like the dinosaurs that Homer Simpson killed:

For comparion, here are few examples of other pandemic bullets that our ancestors unfortunately failed to dodge. 

1.  Hong Kong Flu – 1968-1969 – Over 1 million deaths in Asia, Australia, Africa, South America, and Europe.
2.  Asian Flu – 1956-1958 – 1.1 million deaths (116,000 in the U.S alone) – possibly originated from ducks in China, the least deadly of the 20^thcentury flu pandemics, perhaps killed as many as 4 million people.
3.  The Third Cholera Pandemic – 1852-1869 – 1 million dead – Originated in India and spread across the globe.
4.  Flu Pandemic/Spanish Flu – 1918-1920 – 50 – 100 million dead – Emerging after WWI, within months this outbreak of influenza killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.  It infected one-third of the world’s population and the death toll amount to almost three times more people killed than the 17 million soldiers and civilians who died during WWI; it killed three to five percent of the Earth’s population at the time.
5. The Black Death – 1346-1353 – 75 – 200 million deaths (bubonic plague estimated to have killed 30 – 60% of Europe’s population, and may reduced the world’s population from an estimated 475 million to 350-375 million in the 14^thcentury.)
6. The Plague of Justinian – 541-542 – 25 million dead – Bubonic plague, was killing an estimated 5,000 per day, killed half the population of Europe, 25% of the Eastern Mediterranean, and 40% of the city of Constantinople. 

Clearly, modern humans are doing much better than our medieval and ancient ancestors when it comes to riding-out epidemics and pandemics.  That’s not to say that we'll to continue this fortunate run of being able suppress or eradicate every virus outbreak that comes our way.   But our chances of continued success and survival may be greatly improved if we reduce the risk factors involved in incubating deadly viruses and spillover by not eating animals such as bats, which can host dozens of human-infecting viruses. Coronavirus is thought to have originated in a Wuhan seafood market that was illegally peddling wildlife and apparently selling bat soup.  Vendors there might as well have been shoving fish up their asses and serving them to customers. This penchant and culinary fetish that the Chinese have for soullessly devouring anything that moves, especially if it moves, even while it is moving (i.e ‘life feeding’) needs to stop. (To their credit, a nationwide ban on wildlife sales has been implemented.)  This pratice should stop for the sake of the animals (exotic or otherwise) being trafficked and eaten, for the sake of humans everywhere whom must contend with the viruses that spread from such practices, and for the sake of the backward people themsevles who think that it is okay to eat pest-ridden creatures and living, sentient animals.

*I figured I’d include this excerpt from The Painted Bird, which I recently read, since it has been reported that Coronavirus can spread “through the eyes.”