…hardly blog worthy but so, so unusual for us. We have been up here for ten years and, not counting the somewhat frequent brushes with death by machines, blunt trauma and myriad other weird, wilderness-related accidents, we have been healthy. Disease free. We managed to dodge all the flues and colds that make the usual rounds. Isolation will do that for you. No people, no disease.
But we haven’t had a visitor in a month and yet we have classic back-to-school colds!?
Of course, we have encountered some people during that time and it was just last week we went to town on a shopping day so it is easily explainable but usually we can handle the occasional immersion in the germ pool without succumbing. Not this time. This back-to-school cold got us and is having it’s way with us like a kitten with a ball of yarn.
I mention this only because we also have an increased disease awareness these days. Ebola has a way of getting your attention, ya know? So does Enterovirus 68. Enterovirus 68 is paralyzing only a few kids so far but the disease made it all over North America pretty quickly. And people travel around the world in droves all day, every day. Even Liberians are traveling! My point: disease can attack faster than terrorists.
“Geez, Dave! You afraid of disease now?”
No more than before and, to be frank, NOT very much. Disease has been an enemy of the species since the dawn of time. We have been soundly defeated by bugs not just a few times. They estimate that as many as 100 million people died from the Spanish Flu circa 1918.
The interesting thing about the Spanish Flu was that it covered the globe in an era BEFORE the world was travel mad. AND there were fewer people in 1918. The point: something as benign sounding as ‘flu’ can take us out in swathes. Something like Ebola is much, much more deadly. Spanish flu had a death rate of about 4 per thousand people. Ebola kills 500 of 1000 people.
“So, what are you saying?”
Ebola is more important than ISIL/ISIS. REAL leaders would be way out ahead of this one.
Mind you, for all that, climate change and pollution are more important than ISIL/ISIS and our leaders haven’t done much on that score at all either.
I guess my point is about politicians – why do we call these people leaders?
Our Off the Grid Home 
Your ancestors survived Yellow Fever so that’s one for youse guy’s gene pool. As for Ebola you should be fine if you lay-off fruit bats and monkeys. Why is it always with monkeys!
LikeLike
Monkeys, about 99% human genetically speaking. In Africa “bush meat” is still considered fair game. Monkeys, bats, snakes……etc.
Dont forget pigs…..lots of flu’s come from asia and humanities close proximity to pigs, ducks, geese….
Nothing like a mutating virus to take out 100 million people.
Epidemiologists suspect that the end of WW1 hasted the spread of the swine flu virus that killed millions. It was before refrigeration. food stock( pigs, sheep, cows) were kept in close proximity to the troops to be slaughtered for meals. Troops billetted together and then quickly shipped home on crowed transports( further speading the flu) the following Spring. The flu showed up everywhere almost simultaneously and while troops may have had a bit of a resistance to it. The predominantly rural populations they went home to didnt have a natural immunity
( Canada, Australia, the U.S. were still primarily agriculturally based with the majority of the populations living outside cities)
Even urban populations were hammered. Stories of people healthy at breakfast, feverish by lunch and dead by supper were not unusual.( corpses had a bizarre “bluish tinge” to them which suggested lack of oxygen. Autopsies confirmed that people literally drowned in their own mucous).
The hand wringing, endless discussions and politically correct Orwellian doublespeak that the worlds “leaders” seem to needlessly participate in doesnt bode well for a rapid response to a Global pandemic.
JDC is lucky to be where he is as long as he has enough coffee, beans, buckshot and toilet paper( sounds like a cowboy trailride!) to ride out the storm……
LikeLike
This ‘storm’ you refer to is the storm of lore. Ever since I can remember we have been predicting the ‘storm’, the apocalypse, the end of days. And it just doesn’t happen (mind you, if it did happen, there would be no one around to say ‘I told you so’.) I have a half-belief in the ‘end of days’, myself. I think a perfect storm of sorts could effectively wipe us out. But, somehow, I see the belief as only half-full on this. I can see it happening and yet still don’t think it will. Unless it is a pandemic or a sci-fi-worthy incident, then the only way for it to happen is man-made and the bulk of humanity would immediately pull together rather than go all Mad Max on anybody. OK, some Mad Maxing, I guess. Too many guns bought and ammo stored away for NO Mad Max-ing. But kids and pretty girls will be fine. Doctors, too. I’d hate to be a lawyer, tho. Or a politician. My point? People persist. They’d hard-scrabble their way out of it. They have before.
LikeLike
A friend of mine and his wife were in vacationing in Florida about 15/20 years ago when a huge hurricane hit. They took refuge in a hotel fitness center that was also the hurricane assembly area. most of the staff were allowed to go home, which they did.
After the big blow it became apparent that emergency services were overwhelmed with calls and clean up and they would all be stuck there for a few days. Emergency power only for a few days and no cops, firemen , etc.
The people broke into two groups. The “have’s” and the “have nots”.
The “have’s” were young strong and aggressive. They broke into the candy and pop machines and took everything.
The “have nots” were elderly, parents with kids, etc.
They sat and watched the “haves” eat and drink without sharing……………
My friends left and eventually found a govt shelter. with police and army guards.Looting seemed to be a “local sport”. Apparently New Orleans was worse.
LikeLike
Yeah. I can see that happening. But it should also be noted that the have-nots were not beaten, raped or killed. They were seen as fodder and treated as fodder. Youth, on the other hand do NOT see themselves as having been sold into the system. They are not yet fodder. They have not surrendered yet so they revolt. Of course, it so much easier to be revolting when the resistance is old and sick people so those ‘haves’ are weak revolutionaries. Still, their target of choice was machines and companies and maybe even the hotel.
LikeLike
I confess to the occasional craving for a fruitbat now and then but monkeys have no appeal. Maybe with curry? Anyway, I should be OK. I am just glad nothing contagious except pregnancy is caused from drinking scotch. God knows I have tried hard enough to proselytize under the influence but it never caught on. My listeners always seem to have a natural resistance to whatever I say.
LikeLike