A Tiny Virus in an XXL World

Let’s assume there’s a killer virus loose as bad as the one that caused the plagues of the Middle Ages – a pestilence so bad that there was no treatment or prevention for it. How would the world’s nations react? Airports and borders would be closed, as would the gates to schools, universities and sports arenas. Such a scenario is completely realistic.

It might be realistic, but it wouldn’t be possible. The table for bacteria and viruses has been richly set. It’s a volatile, biological, super-sized cocktail of factory farming, mega-cities and slums. A gigantic deluge of air travelers transports dangerous germs around the globe in a matter of a few hours. The main carriers of these diseases are, as they are with AIDS and cholera, residents of the poorest countries. There, where no functioning health care systems exist, where the simplest rules of hygiene are unknown and, even if they are known, are seldom practiced. There, where children die on a massive scale due to lack of safe drinking water, there’s also nothing to combat pathogens such as the one causing swine flu.

It is poor people in the Mexican slums who have died from swine flu. Those Americans, Spanish and Australians who contracted the disease suffered only moderate effects from it. It’s no wonder when one considers that nutrition and medical treatment in the industrialized countries is miles ahead what’s available in the slums. But that’s no reason for complacency, because out of this mélange of poverty and suffering, new viruses may emerge; viruses against which even the most modern medical practices may be powerless.