Pandemics
It is interesting that, with all the advancements today in weaponry and defense, the thing that kills the most people is natural and too small to see with the naked eye. When we put so much emphasis on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, a virus that we should have prepared for is the thing that most endangers us. The emergence of COVID-19 reminds us again that, if you take on nature, you might end up on the wrong side. Humans certainly are capable of mass destruction; however, historically speaking, we are nothing when compared to disease.
Think of some of the largest events in history. World War II killed around 70 million, the Holocaust around 6 million, and the communists are estimated to have killed around 100 million. Yet, HIV/Aids has killed over 36 million, 1968’s Hong Kong flu 1 million, the Asian flu in 1956-1958 2 million, and finally the Black Plague somewhere between 75-200 million.
In most American wars the total number of deaths is larger from disease than from battlefield wounds, at least before modern medicine. The Mexican American War had 1,733 battlefield deaths and more than 11,000 from disease. The Civil War had more than 140,000 battlefield deaths but more than 224,000 from disease. The Spanish American War only saw 385 battlefield deaths but an additional 2,000 from disease.
The last of the wars where disease claimed more lives than guns is World War I. We lost more than 53,000 men in the trenches of Europe, but another 63,000 men died from disease. However, this did not include the Spanish Flu, one of the worst pandemics in world history that came right on the heels of WWI. The Spanish Flu killed 50-100 million people worldwide and at least 675,000 Americans.
The problem was that we were still a rural society. Most of our men in these wars lived on farms and in isolated communities. You put all these men together from around the country and they bring their diseases with them. For many of these early wars, it was childhood diseases like measles, chicken pox, small pox, and mumps that killed off many. Then of course a bunch of young men came together without mothers and wives and they lived in filth which brought about the greatest killer, dysentery. Finally, there was lack of any knowledge, until after the Civil War, of germs. In that bloodiest war, we could ...
