COVID-19: Truth and Viral Consequences

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Unlike Eurasians, native populations in the New World had not spent several thousand years evolving with animals and their diseases. As a result, America's indigenous populations declined by some 90 per cent in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

In Europe, on the other hand, fighting disease was a formative element in the growth of political authority and state governance in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance period.

Lethal plagues like the Black Death led authorities in the Northern Italian city-states and elsewhere to fight back with enforced public hygiene and quarantines. Henry VIII's England and other European states established isolation hospitals. Later, the United States developed public-health services in part to fight yellow fever and other epidemics.

Military campaigns also were accompanied by disease. Napoleon's leading general, Marshal Ney, wrote that "General Famine and General Winter" cut down the French army that marched on — and subsequently retreated from — Moscow in 1812. But "General Typhus and General TB" played their parts as well.

Disease can be cunning and implacable. Despite humanity's efforts, influenza pandemics have swept the world on average three times a century for the last 500 years.

Disease can be cunning and implacable. Despite humanity's efforts, influenza pandemics have swept the world on average three times a century for the last 500 years.

The deadliest of these was the erroneously named "Spanish Flu" of 1918, the first case of which was actually recorded in Kansas. That pandemic may have killed...