Historian William Manchester reports that during the Middle Ages half the children in Europe died, usually from disease, before reaching their 13th birthday. A young girl’s life expectancy was 24 years. Women died in childbirth.
Our recent ancestors feared bubonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, pertussis, polio, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever. Fortunately, very few young people have any acquaintance with these agents of misery and death because vaccines, medications, and public health policies have put them in abeyance.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the senior U.S. senator from Kentucky, survived a bout of polio. Former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt contracted polio at age 40 and never walked again.
Measles was considered a routine childhood disease because it was unavoidable, but before measles vaccine became available, the disease killed about a million people each year. It has the highest infection rate of any known contagious disease. Malaria, although spread by mosquito bite and not contagious, is credited by some disease specialists with having caused the death of more humans than anything else.
Modern medical science and public health measures have provided benefits to humanity that exceed all other human accomplishments. Nothing else has provided as much relief from sorrow, suffering, and premature death.
The adoption of COVID-19 preventive measures as a political wedge issue is, in my judgment, the strangest thing American politicians have done during my lifetime. The death toll from COVID-19 as of this writing is 737,526 Americans.
Why do people suddenly reject the greatest life saving advances in human history? People are berating nurses, schoolteachers, and school boards for attempting to protect children and adults. Information management is surely part of the problem. Traditional news media has always been edited. Writers and editors made diligent efforts to avoid embarrassing errors. Modern electronic media has made it possible for just about anyone to promote a notion that, without verification, can be distributed to millions of people in a matter of minutes — and sometimes, it is false information.
Some politicians are exploiting the anti-health reaction believing that it will advance their political future. This offers dim prospects for America’s future. Cultivating division is not what America needs. Cultivating resistance to effective health measures is not what America needs.
The bubonic plague, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history, visited Europe around 1350 when there was no understanding of cause or cure. People looked for something or some one to blame for the plague. Some Christians decided that bathing was causing the disease and recommended against that unnecessary practice. But, sadly, fringe elements of society were also falsely blamed for causing the plague. Some were burned at the stake or killed by other means. According to Joshua S. Loomis, a biologist who specializes in epidemic disease, tens of thousands were executed for causing the disease while millions died of the disease. The real cause of the plague would not be discovered for another 500 years.
The cause of COVID-19 was discovered in record-breaking time. Since it is a respiratory disease transmitted by just breathing, face masks were recommended while scientists developed a vaccine, again in record breaking time. But we are still afflicted by some human trait that dates to the Middle Ages or long before.
Jack Stevenson is retired. He served two years in Vietnam as an infantry officer, retired from military service and worked three years as a U.S. Civil Service employee. He also worked in Egypt as an employee of the former Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Currently, he reads history, follows issues important to Americans and writes commentary for community newspapers.