Infecting America, Then & Now

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

I was surprised to find that Columbus Day is still an official Federal holiday. Christopher Columbus was a much bigger figure in American history when I was in elementary school back in the 1970s, as our history textbooks told his same heroic story for generations. After all he discovered America, didn’t he? 

He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain

Well we have a different perspective these days. We perceive today that Columbus, and the many European explorers and settlers that followed him to the New World, brought colonization, slavery, plundering of wealth and worst of all, a host of germs that nearly obliterated the indigenous American population. No one can say for sure how many people died, but some estimates go as high as 20 million people over a period of 100-150 years or so as one epidemic after another of smallpox, measles, influenza, diphtheria, and typhus decimated a defenseless, un-immunized populace. 

October 12 their dream came true,
You never saw a happier crew!

The decimation no doubt made the absolute conquest of the New World a cakewalk. One could stretch a bit and argue that the Americas were built on the backs of lethal communicable germs. That diseases can make their way across the Atlantic and wreak havoc is indeed nothing new. In fact, we often experience new threats from across the ocean blue today. And although advances in medicine can provide us much comfort, let’s not forget, this Columbus Day, what could happen to an unprepared civilization when tiny microorganisms make their way to the New World with a power to conquer greater than any military force the world has ever amassed.

The Arakawa natives were very nice;
They gave the sailors food and spice.

Maybe they shouldn’t have been so nice...