Pandemics may be Inevitable: Ignorance is Not

"Migration of man and his maladies is the chief cause of epidemics." Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, 2003

(Image: Romanticized depiction of the arrival of Columbus in the New World)

Alfred Crosby's words were written in connection with the European discovery of the New World. In the wake of the discovery, Europeans began to migrate to the Americas, first a trickle, then a flood, then a tsunami. The same is true for Africans, although they did not come by choice. 

Both Europeans and Africans unknowingly brought their microbes along, unleashing an explosion of diseases in the New World. All suffered, but the indigenous inhabitants suffered most -- indeed catastrophically. It was like being attacked by several deadly pandemics at once. War and enslavement worsened things.

Native Americans were extremely vulnerable to Old World diseases. Having been isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years, they had no experience with or immunity to a host of Old World infections. 

Smallpox, measles, influenza, pneumonia, and many other diseases killed Native Americans in huge numbers. The microbial invasion wiped out, or nearly wiped out, many Native American cultures. It was perhaps the worst demographic disaster in world history. 

The Europeans and Africans, in contrast, grew in numbers. Unlike Native Americans, they had experience and some levels of immunity to the diseases they carried from their own regions, many of which had been around for centuries or even millennia. They suffered, too, just not as much. The only major disease that the New World gave to the Old is, possibly, syphilis. The disease exchange was heavily one-sided.

Africans were vulnerable to some European diseases, especially respiratory disorders such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. Europeans were vulnerable to some African diseases, especially tropical fevers such as falciparum malaria and yellow fever. Bad as these could be, they did not prevent population growth among the new arrivals.

As Western peoples moved around the globe during the orgy of imperialism in the 19th century, the same epidemiological patterns were repeated. Remote island peoples, for example in the South Pacific, faced an onslaught of western diseases. Westerners in some regions faced disease tsunamis of their own when they moved into Sub-Sharan Africa and parts of South Asia. 

There are many other examples of disease that spread through human migration. In the 14th century, the Second Plague Pandemic  (Black Death) migrated along trade routes such as the Silk Road and pilgrimages routes. Swift Mongol horsemen also played a role in spreading plague as they conquered much of Eurasia.  

The Cholera Pandemics of the 19th century followed a similar pattern. Originating in British India, cholera crept along trade routes and reached Western Europe and the Americas by the early 1830s, sparking panic. 

The Third Plague Pandemic, which began in China in the late 19th century, spread around the world aided by steamships and railroads. It reached San Francisco and Sydney, Australia by 1900. It was especially deadly in India, killing about ten million. (Image: Plague in Sydney, Australia, 1900: rat killing)

The mass movement of millions of soldiers in World War I famously spread the Great Influenza of 1918-20. American troops aboard crowded ships brought the influenza to Europe, where it mutated. Then they brought the more virulent mutation back to the Americas. (Image: Pandemic Incubator: US troopship returning from Europe, 1918)

That is history, ancient history for many of us. Today the world is battling against another virulent disease that has spread in part through the temporary migration we call tourism. Commercial airliners can spread microbes around the globe faster rate than even steamships and railways. 

Unprecedented numbers of people are constantly on the move, fleeing from violence, oppression, and poverty. Human migration into hitherto sparsely populated regions like rain forests and increased contact with wild animals have helped to create new deadly viruses like Ebola, SARS and now Covid-19. Unlike the first two, coronavirus is highly contagious and becoming ever more so as new strains like Delta and Omicron evolve. 

One of the main means of controlling Covid, or at least slowing its spread, is to restrict human migration, a difficult and sometimes inhumane thing to do. Countries can close their borders to prevent both in migration and out migration. Many have, but often too late. 

The perceived economic cost led most countries to avoid such restrictions for too long. Governments have mastered the art of closing the barn door after the horses have left. Economies are crashing anyway. 

"No one could have predicted this" is a common but largely false claim. Epidemiologists and public health experts have been predicting something like this for decades. WHO has been warning for decades that "disease X" will come from nowhere and we must be prepared for it. Even the film industry warned us, if often in an overly sensationalized form. Contagion (2011) was the best of these.

Those who made the predictions had science on their side, and history as well. But who pays attention to science and history nowadays?

The present combination of overpopulation, mass migration, tourism, and destruction of natural habitats makes the coming of more more "disease X's" and pandemics almost inevitable. The changes necessary to reduce their likelihood may be beyond the capabilities of the global systems we  have created, with their emphasis on maximizing GDP at all cost to the planet. 

Pandemics may be inevitable. Humans have the ability to minimize their damage if we learn the lessons that history and science can teach us. Ignorance is not inevitable, but overcoming it is a huge task. It will be especially difficult as long as sections of the media, especially social media, give free reign to the spread of false information and bizarre conspiracy theories.

 

Yellow Fever and Quarantine in Charleston, South Carolina

During the Covid pandemic, countries, states, localities faced a stark choice: should they restrict human interaction by restricting commercial activity and risk harming the economy? Or should they allow businesses to continue to operate as normal, thus endangering people's lives?

In cities heavily reliant on commerce, epidemic diseases have long posed an agonising dilemma. Closing a city to trade through strict quarantine threatens people’s livelihoods. Leaving it open, even partially open, threatens their lives. As was the case with Covid, both options had their advocates and opponents. 

Charleston, South Carolina, provides an instructive case study of this dilemma. From its foundation in 1670, this southern port was dependent on global trade. At the time of the American War for Independence in the 1770s, South Carolina was the richest of the thirteen colonies. Its wealth derived mainly from exports of rice, indigo, and after 1800, cotton. All of these crops were grown on plantations worked by thousands of enslaved Africans. The reliance on this labour source required regular imports of human cargo. [Image: Charleston Harbor, early 19th century]

As a commercial port, Charleston received unwelcome imports of another sort: diseases from Europe, from Africa, from the Caribbean, and other North American colonies. Some of these imported diseases were highly contagious and deadly, notably smallpox. One, cholera, was transmitted mainly through contaminated water. But nasty as it was, cholera did not arrive until the 1830s and was only an occasional visitor thereafter.

Other imported diseases were transmitted by insect vectors, particularly mosquitoes. The most important were malaria and yellow fever. At least two types of malaria were imported: vivax malaria from Europe and the deadlier falciparum malaria from Africa. Malaria became endemic in South Carolina from the early days of the colony. It flared up every summer and lasted into the late autumn or early winter. Malaria was generally a greater problem in the countryside than in Charleston, especially after about 1750.

Unlike malaria, smallpox and yellow fever were epidemic diseases. They were not an annual problem, but when outbreaks occurred, they could produce widespread terror and high mortality rates. Until the early 19^th century and railroads, yellow fever was largely confined to Charleston and other coastal ports because its vector, the Aedes Aegypti mosquito is a poor flier. Smallpox, by contrast spread widely into the countryside, wherever infected humans travelled. But it came less often than yellow fever.

How to prevent or minimize the effects of epidemics was always a contentious issue for the city’s leaders. It was complicated in the case of yellow fever by difficulties of diagnosis and conflicting views of how it spread. One view was that it spread through the air, through miasmas, or bad air. Another was that it was contagious, passing from person to person. Neither view was correct. The role of mosquitoes in transmitting yellow fever was not established until 1900.

Miasmatists and contagionists differed over the best way to limit the spread of yellow fever. Miasmatists generally believed that disease-causing bad air was generated locally. Closing the port would do little to control the fever, they insisted. Contagionists viewed yellow fever as imported, mainly from Africa or the Caribbean. The best way to control it, they argued, was through quarantine measures. Ships coming from places where yellow fever was common or known to be present should be inspected by physicians. If found to be harbouring the disease, the ships should be ordered into quarantine. Crew and passengers should remain on the ships just outside the harbour or be removed to the pest house or quarantine station until they were no longer considered a danger. 

South Carolina erected the first of several pest houses on nearby Sullivan’s Island around 1707. Quarantine measures were the dominant way of controlling yellow fever, smallpox, and other epidemic diseases in the 18^th century. They were supported by most doctors.

Opposition to quarantine measures for yellow fever increased markedly after 1800. The change was undoubtedly connected to economic decline in South Carolina and Charleston’s sagging importance as a trading port. Interruptions of commerce became a more serious problem than they were in the 18^th century. Acknowledgement that yellow fever was present in a port could greatly reduce its seaborne trade and sharply curtail visitors and potential immigrants.  

Merchants, city leaders, and most doctors in Charleston became increasingly reluctant to declare the presence of yellow fever. They would first deny that a problem existed. When the problem became obvious, they denied that the disease was yellow fever but rather something less dangerous. When forced to concede that yellow fever was epidemic, they argued that quarantine measures would be ineffective, because the disease was generated locally through bad air.

The solution, these Miasmatists believed, lay in sanitary improvements. Eliminating sources of bad odours, cleaning the streets, removing organic wastes and offal, and providing clean water. These measures could have improved health in other ways, but they would have done little to stem yellow fever. 

In any case the city’s sanitary condition did not improve much before the early 20^th century, when yellow fever had already ceased to be a problem. One reason is that sanitary improvement was expensive and often collided with personal and property rights.

A miasmatic explanation of yellow fever, combined with attempts to deny the presence of the disease, had a clear economic advantage. It reduced disruptions to seaborne commerce. Imposition of quarantine measures was delayed, limited, or altogether avoided. 

The fact that most of the victims of yellow fever were “strangers” -- visitors and immigrants, mainly Irish and German – may have made that choice more palatable. It also reduced the number of immigrants, which some locals did not much mind. Charleston's reputation as a yellow fever hotspot for foreigners is one reason why it did not receive as many immigrants as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

In 1840, Dr Benjamin Strobel of Charleston wrote a highly controversial essay on yellow fever. He accused commercial interests, boards of health, and the medical establishment, of endangering human lives. Worse, he charged them with "exploiting public ignorance" to rouse opposition to quarantine. The very people who would benefit from a strict quarantine were among its most vociferous opponents. [Image: Benjamin Strobel, 1803-1849]

Strobel demonstrated that yellow fever usually broke out and was heavily concentrated in areas of Charleston closest to the wharves and where sailors and immigrants lodged on arrival. He avoided the thorny issue of contagion. Instead, he argued that yellow fever was somehow transmissible. And he was sure it had been transmitted to the city from ships. He was ostracized for his efforts and left town.

In the 1850s, several lethal epidemics coincided with the opening of a steamship link with Havana, Cuba, a port notorious for endemic yellow fever. In the wake of these outbreaks, support for quarantine measures grew, with a Citadel science professor, William Hume, leading the charge. Hume had been an advocate of miasma theory, but his research convinced him that yellow fever was imported, mainly from the Caribbean. His ideas did not receive a warm welcome either. 

Yellow fever was absent from Charleston during the Civil War. Probably not coincidentally, thanks to the Union blockade, so was most seaborne trade. The last documented epidemic in the city occurred in 1877. How much the retreat of yellow fever owed to stricter quarantine is difficult to say. The decline of the port’s seaborne trade after the war may have been more important. Yellow fever continued to strike busier southern ports hard, notably New Orleans, which suffered the last epidemic in North America in 1905, and the region around Memphis, scene of the worst epidemic in the USA, in 1877. 

Yellow fever in the 19^th century South, as Margaret Humphreys has stated, “was above all, a commercial problem.” And sometimes, local authorities chose the health of commerce, as they saw it, over the health of the people. 

Further reading:

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Margaret Humphreys, Yellow Fever and the South (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)







  

Finding a Scapegoat for Pandemics: Black Death to Trump Virus

Ever since Donald Trump stopped calling Covid-19/coronavirus a hoax, he has been engaged in an age-old response to disease epidemics and pandemics: finding a scapegoat. Rather than accept his own incompetent response to the pandemic (impossible), he has engaged in blaming a host of nefarious villains. 

Trump's scapegoats have included everyone who "failed to warn him" or "created the virus." The list is long and grows longer by the day: Democrats, immigrants, the "Lamestream" Media, the Chinese, Obama, Hilary, and the World Health Organization (WHO), and Dr. Fauci. Trump, of course, is not alone in scapegoating. Some of his supporters blame all of the above, plus Bill Gates, libruls, commies, gays, single sex marriage, and Jews.

The word "scapegoat" derives from a practice described in the Bible (Leviticus 16). The original scapegoats were actual goats. A rabbi would symbolically load up a goat with all the sins of the community and send it into the wilderness. Goodbye sins.

In more modern times, a scapegoat is usually a person or group of persons blamed for a disaster. The disaster might be a famine, an earthquake, floods, or as in the current case, a deadly disease. Throughout history, people have tended to blame "others" for mysterious deaths, especially on a large scale. The scapegoats have included people of different religions and cultures, minorities, "witches," heretics, women, and the poor.

European Christians often blamed Jews for epidemics, notably during the Black Death of the 14th century. Then and in later outbreaks, Christians claimed the Jews had poisoned the wells. Mobs killed thousands of Jews. Yet the plague was never called the Jewish Disease. 

Nor was it called the Chinese Disease. The plague probably originated in China, but few Europeans were aware of that in the 14th century. In more recent times, Westerners have accused the Chinese (and Asians more generally) for epidemics and pandemics. The 1890s cartoon below, from a San Francisco newspaper, condemns the city's Chinatown and Chinese immigrants as the source of malaria, smallpox, and leprosy. 

  
In 1900, whites in Honolulu and San Francisco blamed the Chinese community for an outbreak of plague in their cities, the first ever in the United States. The entire Chinese population of the two cities was quarantined and demonized. In Honolulu, an attempt to use fires to purify the air and burn out the plague resulted in wildfires and the destruction of 7000 homes in Chinatown. (Below: Quarantine line around Chinatown, Honolulu and fire there, Jan. 1, 1900)

In the USA, many people blamed Jews for the 1892 cholera epidemic, which coincided with the arrival of a large Jewish migration from Russia. Americans also blamed Irish immigrants arriving in the 1830s and 1840s for cholera and other diseases.

In the 1980s, many people blamed gays for the AIDS epidemic. The original name for the disease, GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) did not help. Later, many Americans accused Haitians as the source.

The disease for which blame has been most shared is syphilis, which first broke out in Europe around 1500. The Spanish, who appear to have been the first to experience it, blamed Native Americans, and that remains a common view. Tahitians called it the British disease after Captain Cook's visit in 1769.

The English called it the French Disease, the French called it the Italian Disease, and the Italians reciprocated. The Dutch called it the Spanish Disease, For the Russians, syphilis was the Polish Disease.Turks called it the Christian Disease, the Japanese the Portuguese Disease. 

After the Civil War and emancipation of the enslaved, many Americans viewed syphilis as a black disease. Nearly everybody blamed "loose women" but rarely did anyone blame loose men. Everybody knew that most human troubles originated with Eve and Pandora.

Scientists (especially the mad kind) are another favorite scapegoat for diseases. They have often been accused of producing killer microbes in their labs, then releasing them on the world either intentionally or from absent-minded carelessness. Americans accused Chinese scientists of cooking up the Covid-19 virus. The Chinese government accused American scientists of the same thing. 

A popular explanation among conspiracy theorists, mainly in the US, is that the Chinese 5G network is the culprit. Another is that Bill Gates created it.

The Orange Piper of Shamelin: A Pandemic Fairy Tale

Shamelin was the richest, most powerful, most envied country on the planet Zed. Yet, somehow many of the Shamelians were discontented. The grossly rich, because they never felt rich enough. The poor, because they were poor. For some odd reason, many of the poor did not blame the grossly rich. They blamed immigrants, foreigners, "libruls," "lefties,"and other rats. "We are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and we are patriots," they said with pride. "We just need to get rid of the infestation of rats in this country, and all will be well."

"We need new leadership," the malcontents said, urged on by Uncle Rush,  Aunt Laura, and Fux News. "Someone who will make Shamelin great again. The last Leader wasn't even a Shamelian. He sure didn't look like one of us." 

The cry went up from the voices of millions of Shamelians "Make Shamelin Great Again!" Hardly had they spoken, when a voice boomed out to them from the sky, or so it seemed. It actually came from their TVs. 

"I am a famous TV star. You know me as The Boss. I'm also the world's greatest real estate developer. I'm so good at what I do I've gone bankrupt a bunch of times. How many people can say that? I will save Shamelin from its enemies within and without. I will get rid of the rats plaguing this country. Make it great again. There will be bigly changes. The best bigly changes. I will build a wall! A bigly wall. The best wall. To keep out the bad people. Bad people. Rapists, drug dealers, killers. Sad. The best things will happen to the economy. It will be so yuge you can dress in dollars."

The unhappy Shamelians cheered. They felt a sudden surge of pride in his words, even though his face had a weird orange glow. No one had spoken to them with such brilliance in decades, if ever. The Boss is our man, they thought, and we have made him possible. Because we love our country. They cried out as one: "How can we help you, Boss?"

"Vote for me in the next election for The Leader. The Dumbocrats think they have it locked up. But I have a secret weapon. Friends in very high places. Bigly places. The bigliest places." 

"Who are those friends?" asked one slightly skeptical Shamelian. The people around him grabbed and beat him, and told him to shut up.

"I can't tell you that. It's a secret. But they love you and want to help you defeat the Dumbocrats. Now, if you want me to save you, you must love me. I can't stand to be unloved. Sad! See you at the polls!"

Voting day came, and the results were close. The Dumbocrat candidate for Leader got more votes. But Shamelin had an odd clause in its constitution, which allowed the loser to win. Forgive me for not explaining it. Only three people have ever understood it. One is dead, the second went mad. I'm the third, and I forgot. 

This is how The Boss became The Leader, along with help from the people in high places. He started off his Leadership by engaging in his favorite task: firing people. Not only people from previous Leaders' administrations. He even fired his own people after a while, people he said were the best people when he hired them. He said they did not love him enough, did not appreciate his genius. He hired replacements who, he said, were also the best people, even better. 

He soon made it clear who was Boss on Zed. He told other countries that Shamelin was number one and should get all the best stuff. Other countries had some good points, if they were trying to be like Shamelin, but they were sad places compared to number one. A lot of them, he said, were shithole countries. His supporters cheered these statesmanlike words.

He insulted Shamelin's allies and refused to cooperate with them to protect the Zedian environment. To show who was Boss, he got rid of environmental protections. "We have lots of bottled water for sale. And a little polluted water won't hurt you," he said. "And smoke is good for the lungs. Makes you tough, like me." He told the leaders of certain countries that he would destroy them if they didn't do exactly what he said. When they didn't do as he said, he said he loved them and wanted to be best pals.

His supporters loved this kind of talk. They loved everything he said, because he said it. He could say one thing one day and the opposite the next. They would cheer it all. They would deny he ever lied or made an incorrect statement. He was the most honest Leader Shamelin had ever had. And he knew more than anybody, on any subject. He was, as he so often said, a stable genius. 

He was so brilliant, so perfect in every way, that some of his most enthusiastic supporters claimed he had been sent by God to save Shamelin, God's favorite country. The Boss agreed and began to do something new: he prayed, or made others pray for him. One day he proclaimed that he had done more for the true faith than God himself.

Things went along swimmingly like this for about three years. About that time, Orientia, a very large country in the Far East, reported the outbreak of a new epidemic disease. It was killing many people, mostly old. The major symptom was laughing, which ranged from a mild Ha! Ha! to a ceaseless, hysterical guffawing. When a patient cried out, "I'm going to die laughing," the doctors knew it was all over.

The Boss' medical advisors told him about the new disease. "It's so far away. It'll never get here." They told him it was caused by a virus. "What's a virus?" he asked. When they told him, he laughed. "Nothing that small could hurt a person, unless they were small, too. Like the Orientans. Nothing to worry about."

Unfortunately, the virus did not heed the Boss's words. It spread to many countries on Zed. Within a few weeks, it had arrived in Shamelin. The Boss laughed it off. "It's a hoax. Just a common garden variety bug. We might have a handful of cases, all mild, and then poof, it will be gone. It might kill a few old, useless persons, but nobody will miss them. Leeches. Sad! I know more about this virus than anyone. The doctors are amazed by my knowledge."

Once again, the brainless virus outwitted the genius. The number of cases mounted, slowly at first, then more rapidly. They included people of all ages, not only the old. The Boss blamed his political opponents. He blamed other countries, especially the Orientans. He blamed the media. "Bad reporters," he said. He blamed his medical advisors. "They're Chicken Littles. Always crying about the sky falling."

Things got worse. "No one warned me about this," he said. "It caught me by surprise." He said the whole virus thing was an underground plot to make him look bad. "They want to spoil my chances to get reelected and become Leader for Life."

As the virus spread, Shamelin's lack of preparation quickly became obvious. Those fighting the epidemic lacked the protective equipment, the testing kits, and the technology to do their job. The Leader insisted that these things could be had in plenty if health care workers weren't stealing them.

When the governors of Shamelin's hardest hit provinces asked The Leader for help, he told them they didn't love him enough to deserve it. They needed to applaud his genius. He told them to help themselves. "I have absolute authority. But the responsibility is yours."  

One day, The Leader told an astounded country, "This virus is really dangerous. It could kill a lot of people. If we can keep the number of dead under 200 million that would be a victory. And that victory will be my doing!" 

Hearing this, the Shamelians -- well, about half of them -- cheered wildly. The rest put their hands to their faces in disbelief, even though they knew that could spread the virus.

Things, as you can imagine, got worse. 

[I invite my readers to guess how this story will end.] 













   



   

"We Have Conquered Infectious Disease!" Not.

“We have conquered infectious disease!” This may sound like Donald Trump, but it wasn't. It was a Surgeon-General of the United States, Luther Terry, in 1964.

No one would make that claim today, except Trump and supporters in the case of coronavirus. Even if we discount the current pandemic of Covid-19, infectious disease is one of the greatest causes of death in the world, accounting for about 25% of deaths worldwide and over 60% of deaths among children. 

But in 1964 the Surgeon-General's claim did not seem far fetched. Mortality from infectious disease had dropped sharply during the previous decades, at least in wealthy countries, and life expectancy had risen steeply, from about 50 to 75.

Many things contributed to the drop in deaths from infectious disease: better nutrition, clothing, and housing, improved sanitation and water supplies, vaccines, and antibiotics. Unfortunately, the drop was not uniform throughout the world:  poorer nations did not see the huge gains in life-span that richer ones did.

But even in the richer nations, the claimed “conquest of infectious disease” began to look like wishful thinking by the late 1970s and 1980s. New or newly recognized infectious diseases appeared, like AIDS, Legionnaires’ Disease, and Ebola, and old ones began to re-emerge, like TB, whooping cough, yellow fever, measles, and diphtheria. 

New, more deadly strains of malaria, cholera, TB, and dengue fever emerged. Many of the new strains of bacterial disease were and are resistant to antibiotics, partly as a result of overuse and incorrect use of these lifesavers. Others were viral, for which antibiotics are useless.

Many of the deaths from infectious disease today, especially among infants and children, are the result of poor sanitation and water supplies. Ironically, we have known how to prevent these deaths for more than a century. It is lack of resources and will, not lack of knowledge, that is the problem.

But it is not always lack of money that produces poor results in terms of controlling infectious disease. The US, which spends far more than any other country on health care, lags well behind many other countries in terms of health care outcomes. The problem is that too many people cannot afford adequate medical care because they cannot pay the high premiums for private health insurance, or cannot get it at all.

Ironically, another US Surgeon-General, Rupert Blue of South Carolina, proposed a national health insurance system in 1911, a universal plan that would cover everyone. “Public health is a public utility,” he said. “We are our brother’s keeper.”

Perhaps Blue didn’t choose the best audience to deliver the message. He spoke to a convention of insurance executives. They made sure Blue's idea didn't become reality. A century later, the US remains the only developed country in the world without a system of national health insurance. Perhaps Blue was just a century or so ahead of his time -- in the case of the USA, that is.

Changing that by itself would not conquer infectious disease, but it would help combat it, especially if combined with an effective program of preventive medicine, which the USA also lacks. It would also go far to reduce anxiety about the costs of medical care in the minds of many millions of Americans. 

The Middle of Nowhere, Nevada

Looking for a romantic, exotic holiday in the Middle of Nowhere? Drive, or better yet, walk across Nevada, preferably along US Highway 50, the road that LIFE magazine in 1986 dubbed "the Loneliest Road in America."

If the Middle of Nowhere exists, I think it is somewhere on this road between Ely in the east and Virginia City in the west of the state. At first, I decided the Middle of Nowhere must be at Austin, the town closest to the geographic center of the state, population, 192. I was astounded to discover that it has an "International Hotel." 

One of Austin's great claims to fame (or infamy) is that Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear gang once did a show from there. Amazingly, they didn't get kicked out of town. Neither did we.

Austin is truly isolated, 70 miles from Eureka to the East and 110 from Fallon (of Top Gun Fame) to the West, with little but sagebrush, jack rabbits, snakes, and lizards in between. Well, to be accurate, there is another candidate for Middle of Nowhere: Middlegate Station, population 18, oops, 17.

Middlegate is too small to have a Wikipedia entry, but it does have a restaurant offering humongous hamburgers. My son Alastair tried to finish one. He managed to walk across the US, and he is a big guy, but somehow he failed this test. Had he finished the burger, he could have won a Middlegate Station t-shirt. Alas, he had to forego that treasure.

Middlegate actually claims to be the Middle of Nowhere (see photo above hamburger). It's a compelling claim, but I think it is too close to Fallon, however, a bustling metropolis of 8000 or so, to be the true Middle of Nowhere. 

To complicate matters, I later discovered that another town to the north, on I-80, Battle Mountain, claims, on a huge billboard, that it is “Halfway to Everywhere.” As advertisements never lie, especially in America, I guess that must be the Middle of Nowhere.