There is no known cure andit has a fatality rate of 90%.
I have never been more scared in my life!
So I goggled ‘Pandemics’ and came up with frightening literature. Pandemic is the worldwide spread of infectious disease across human population.
- Plague of Athens, 43 BC, suspected typhoid fever killed a quarter of Athenian troops and eventually a quarter of Athens population;
- Plague of Justinian, 541 AD, the 1st recorded outbreak of bubonic plague killing 40% of Constantinople. It eventually eliminated ½ of human population – in Europe – between yrs. 550-700. This is known as the 1st pandemic (of 6-8 recorded up to the present time);
- Black Death, 1347-1453 killed 75 million, 30% - 70% of population of the known world at that time – principally Europe. This was the 2nd pandemic;
- Spanish Flu, 1918, 75 million deaths worldwide;
- Asian Flu, 1957-58, 2million deaths worldwide;
- Hong Kong Flu, 1968-69, 1 million deaths; and
- HIV/AIDS, 1981 ongoing with 30 million deaths recorded.
These were just samples of the literature on plagues and pandemics. I couldn’t picture in my mind’s eye the extent of the devastation these diseases can bring upon on the human race.
So I reviewed some of the movies in my DVD collection:
- Outbreak (1995) Ebola like virus from Zaire spreading through a small town in the US. Were it not for Dustin Hoffman, the US Military would have used a nuclear bomb to arrest the spreading infection, level the town and all its inhabitants;
- The Omega Man (1971), Charlton Heston, the only human survivor of a major Eastern US city (always New York) had to create a cure for a plague that wiped out most of the human race and reduced humans to scavenging and deformed monsters;
- Contagion (2011) the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta had to investigate infected people from several countries getting at the source of the deadly virus and race against time to develop a vaccine or the spread of the virus would be catastrophic;
- World War Z (2013) Brad Pitt, a top UN disease investigator had to travel to Korea, Israel and Russia to seek a cure for a virus that turns humans into zombies; and
- The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton, a favorite of mine which was first serialized in the Playboy Magazine (Crichton’s 1st blockbuster) where a group of scientists investigates a deadly alien virus that killed humans by curdling their blood – making some commit suicide.
Hollywood has a way of explaining current dilemmas and entertains at the same time. But what is scary is yesterday’s headlines could come true and there is no director who can shout ‘cut’ – or a Dustin Hoffman or Brad Pitt to come to the rescue at the right moment.
Human extinction is unthinkable. So true but this might not be Mother Nature’s Intention to wipe out the entire human race. We are his best creation; the predator on top of the food chain. She will not destroy her ‘obra maestra’ but perhaps just intermittently warn us, humans, that we are responsible for ourselves – for each other and our environment.
Take the Ebola Virus first identified in Zaire in Africa only in 1976. It jumped from animals to man. Scientists, environmentalists and conservationists surmised that man’s encroachment into the habitats of these species is the cause for this transference of this deadly disease.
Over the millennia or maybe eons more, Mother Nature was there to ride herd on us; just to let us be until like a child we go outside the limits of our discretion. Then she steps in to discipline us.
More than a hundred plagues have been recorded in human history, in continental Europe and around the Mediterranean and even in China centers of civilization and population explosion for thousands of years.
It might be her warning us that indeed we are taxing her resources and her patience.
In July of this year, Philippine population has reached 100 million, 12th most populous nation – one of the fastest growing populations on earth. And for decades poverty and hunger stalked our land.
Would Mother Nature intervene and tell us ‘enough is enough’?
