Emotions are flying high and there is a sense of hope in the air as many people around the world are getting vaccinated through the highly infectious and deadly disease of COVID-19. As people prepare themselves to return to some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, there is a collective effort to shelf the COVID-19 pandemic as a past event. The magnitude of the pandemic might suggest that it cannot be left behind or forgotten but the human race has done this before; “the forgotten pandemic” is what World Health Organization called the epidemics and pandemics of Cholera that has been ravaging the world since 1961. The disease has 1.3 million to 4 million victims every year and permanently strikes down 21,000 to 143,000 annually.
Breeding Grounds of Global Communities
If the pages of history are to be perused in detail, it can be noted that bacterial or viral disease disasters have been plaguing mankind for a long time, the records going back to 165 A.D. for the Antonine Plague. Global connectivity has been the source of advancement of countries worldwide, all around the world but it is also a culprit for the rapid spread of viral and bacterial diseases. In this era, a person has the luxury of reaching a far-off corner of the world in around 24 hours, and if they are carrying an infectious disease, they could introduce it to a whole new population. The truth is that the growth of the species has made it more susceptible to falling prey to infectious and deadly diseases. This point was painfully proven by the rapid spread of the current COVID-19 disease that claimed the lives of 3.78 million people and infected 175 million people worldwide in the short span of 18 months.
Epidemics & Pandemics are Predictable
Frank M. Snowden, a professor at Yale, writes in his book, Epidemics, and Society: From the Black Death to the Present,
“Epidemic diseases are not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning,” he writes. “On the contrary, every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities. To study them is to understand that society’s structure, its standard of living, and its political priorities.”
Bryan Walsh of BBC wrote that he attended a simulation in 2019 that portrayed a pandemic caused by a new type of coronavirus and 65 million deaths occurred as aftermath. The notion is that there has been an outpour of literature on an upcoming pandemic for 15 years now. Experts have been voicing concerns that a flu pandemic was on its way. They were also the ones to bring the world’s attention to the fact that there are a huge number of undiscovered virus in the world as of now which is why one researcher commented,
“I think the chances that the next pandemic will be caused by a novel virus are quite good.”
What is more shocking is the pandemic exercise that was carried out in 2019 by Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services called “Crimson Contagion”. The exercise created a scenario of a flu pandemic that originated in China, encapsulating the world and killing 586,000 people in North America.
Presumed Cause of the Pandemics
In ancient times, people believed that all-natural calamities were a result of God’s anger. This notion was not only unscientific, it led to suspected but innocent people being persecuted ruthlessly. During the time of the Justinian plague, a famous Byzantine historian named Procopius of Caesarea was the one who found out that the bacteria Yersinia pestis belonged to China and Northeast India. He also deduced that the spread was made possible by sea and land trade routes from Egypt where it gained entry to the empire through the ports on the Mediterranean sea. Despite all of his brilliant deductions, he held Emperor Justinian responsible for being the reason that the empire was ravaged by the plague. The Emperor was deemed a devil or was held responsible for bringing down God’s anger owing to his evil ways. Even today, many followers of religions based on scriptures uphold this belief. In Pakistan, whenever a natural disaster strikes, the people either decree it as the will of God or His punishment. Even in the times of COVID-19, a highly viral disease, people continued to gather in large numbers to pray, satisfied that the holy power would keep them safe. A committed Muslim commented, “Our prayer leader told us that the virus can’t infect us the way it does Western people…. He said we wash our hands and we wash our face five times a day before we say our prayers, and the infidels don’t, so we need not worry. God is with us.”
Empires Brought Down
A keen observation of the history of pandemics illuminates one to the fact that they have been responsible for bringing down entire governments and even empires. One can simply track down how these epidemics or pandemics weakened powers through time. Around 430 B.C., when war was waging between the Spartans and Athenians, an epidemic spread through the lands of Athens for five years and around 100,000 people died. As Spartans were stronger, they continued their heavy attacks and at last, Athens fell to them. Some historians speculate whether the condensation of Emperor Justinian by the historian was what halted the Emperor’s efforts to reunite the remains of the Roman Empire and even brought about the Dark Ages. The plagues that destroyed the natives of the Americas were brought to the land by European invaders. There is evidence upon evidence that these were the diseases that wiped out 90% of the indigenous population and brought down the Aztec and Inca civilizations.
Serfdom’s Power Declined
Black Death caused massive destruction but it brought down the power of serfs. Due to the death of a large population of workers, demand for labor increased which resulted in higher wages for the workers. Walter Scheidel, a historian at Stanford, wrote,
“Land became more abundant relative to labour [after the death of millions of working people]. Land rents and interest rates dropped… Landowners stood to lose, and workers could hope to gain.”
It might be a bleak fact for some but Black Death provided better quality food for the laborers. It is also suggested that due to the scarce availability of cheap labor, the region saw rapid technological innovations.
COVID-19 is Shaping the Future
If any of the historical records on the previous epidemics and pandemics have shown anything, it is that such a huge scale event tends to change the entire face of the planet in every way. The people of this age are experiencing the full brunt of the pandemic which has led to a lot of uncertainty in their lives. Karestan Koenen, a professor of psychiatric epidemiology at Harvard, brought forward an important concern about the uncertainty faced by all the generations of this time,
“That ongoing uncertainty takes a big toll. That’s the basis of a traumatic stressor — unpredictability, uncontrollability — until it exceeds the ability of the organism to cope…. It’s affecting every milestone: graduation, entering school, leaving school. For the older Gen-Zers: marriages, dating, jobs — in fact, there aren’t jobs. That’s a formative period in their lives when people are figuring out: What’s important to me? What do I want my life to look like compared to my parents’ life?”
