Re: Literature history

Walter Bushell <proto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1kczjhq.puyf6gqrk4j3N%john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (John S. Wilkins) wrote:

Walter Bushell <proto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1kczhqw.3yfw1ir57qg6N%john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (John S. Wilkins) wrote:

Michael Siemon <mlsiemon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <daGdnROLf_oczGfTnZ2dnUVZ_vUAAAAA@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Louann Miller <louann_m@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Kermit <unrestrained_hand@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:7b89efdf-5096-4af1-
89a2-4d943c474158@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Now if you want to argue that we were happier or saner in
paleolithic
times, I would agree with you. I have no evidence to support this,
but
it was a more natural environment for us, and when we weren't being
eaten by a sabertooth cat we were probably doing pretty well.

I still maintain that bearing an average of six children in quick
succession and burying an average of four of them in infancy would be
a
bit
of a downer.

That's more like early agricultural society than paleo- or neolithic
hunter/gatherer groups ... diet and habit in those tends to space out
the kids much more than sedentary agriculture (which can use all the
hands available, and then some..., starving them out in bad harvest
years).

Mind, that's in good seasons. In prolonged droughts, child death rates
among foragers are astronomical.

Ditto for agriculturalists for most of history and prehistory. This only
stopped with industrialization and only for some favored countries, when
the countries were not engaged in war (WWI & II) or major epidemics like
the Spanish Flu. Some people have made a human spreadable variant of
Bird Flu, and I suppose the terrorists (wether small group or states)
will release something along those lines sooner or later.

The researchers who made that bird flu did so to enable people to fight
a pandemic. So science may pre-empt a terrorist attack here.

The offense has an immense advantage, launch multiple plagues at various
airports (with perhaps special attention to flight crew) and the
diseases can spread around the world in a day.

Yes, but the problem is that the medically better off nations
do the best. So western Europe survives with a large death toll,
the US is reduced to humble status because of the lack of medical
facilities, and much of the rest of the world is wiped out,
including most of the nations apt to spawn terrorists of this
sort.

The problem with this situation is that the cat is already out of
the bag. Why, because the simple announcement that the virus can
be modified to infect while airborn is enough for many others around
the world to be able to develop such a virus. After all, they
now know it is possible.

The same thing happened with the atomic bomb. Hiroshima reduced
the problem from one of nuclear theory to an engineering problem.

What the US (and others) need to do is develop the facility to
produce a suitable vaccine rapidly and in quantity. Right now
the only virus that has been "suitably" modified is the N1H5
"bird flu" virus from a couple of years back. I believe that
there is already a vaccine for that.

Of course I could be wrong. I read an article in Science on it
just this afternoon, but a good dinner and some good wine seem
to have affected my memory.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

.

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