Well, once upon a time, keeping tribes small, and being antagonistic towards folk who behave weirdly, were vital in preventing novel infectious disease from running through the population. We’ve seen recently the risk of a connected global community with COVID-19. The Spanish Flu epidemic also spread widely and killed up to fifty million people.
If your tribe gets an infection and you don’t like anyone else much, then it stays in your tribe, and the rest of the population is safe®.
If we can get past our differences, and develop large enough institutional infrastructure, then centralized disease control uses science and tracking to identify the bug and develop treatment. A good demonstration of this appears in the game Plague INC, in which you play an infectious disease, and watch how the global health sector detects you and responds.
Of course, it doesn’t work perfectly, as we’ve seen, there are vaccine naysayers. There were some during the 1918–1920 flu pandemic, as well. And as we’ve seen with the AIDS/HIV pandemic, if the initial batch of victims are not liked much, it can delay response by the scientific community. But large health institutions improve lifespan and quality of life overall.
Well, once upon a time, keeping tribes small, and being antagonistic towards folk who behave weirdly, were vital in preventing novel infectious disease from running through the population. We’ve seen recently the risk of a connected global community with COVID-19. The Spanish Flu epidemic also spread widely and killed up to fifty million people.
If your tribe gets an infection and you don’t like anyone else much, then it stays in your tribe, and the rest of the population is safe®.
If we can get past our differences, and develop large enough institutional infrastructure, then centralized disease control uses science and tracking to identify the bug and develop treatment. A good demonstration of this appears in the game Plague INC, in which you play an infectious disease, and watch how the global health sector detects you and responds.
Of course, it doesn’t work perfectly, as we’ve seen, there are vaccine naysayers. There were some during the 1918–1920 flu pandemic, as well. And as we’ve seen with the AIDS/HIV pandemic, if the initial batch of victims are not liked much, it can delay response by the scientific community. But large health institutions improve lifespan and quality of life overall.