Easter Special: The Resurrection of The Orange God

I'm looking forward to the 250th Anniversary of US independence, to see how the God-King Trump and the red MAGAts spin his fascistic policies while celebrating a revolution against alleged tyranny and for liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness. 

I'm wondering how they will deal with the irony of such a celebration led by a president who is a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, pedophile, and insurrectionist. Can you imagine a Trump speech denouncing Benedict Arnold as a traitor? Arnold was a Boy Scout compared to Trump.

2024 was a leap year, and on November 5th, American voters took a leap into the abyss. A leap that is now producing AGONY for many of them, including his supporters. I mean, the price of eggs, FFS. 

IRONY, of course, is an enduring feature of the human condition, but the current world fairly drips with it. The world should be getting better, given our vast experience and knowledge, but it is getting worse.   

A presidential election in the USA is always a leap into The Twilight Zone, given the existence of the Electoral College and the massive fortunes spent on electing our political clowns. But this election outdid all the previous ones in its fantastically outrageous mockery of the democratic process, not to mention its sheer expense, lunacy and incompetence. 

When was the last time a convicted felon with scores of outstanding indictments against him ran for president? This snake oil salesman, father of 10,000 lies and nearly as many illicit affairs, sells bibles to the faithful to raise money for his campaign. The scenario drips with irony. Trump doesn't read and certainly doesn't heed the GOOD BOOK. He's broken virtually every commandment on a daily basis. 

"His" bibles are produced in China, a country he has repeatedly threatened and condemned. But they are cheap and profits are good. Never mind that a bible is a book you can get for free in the USA. Most churches give them away, or they did when I was an innocent kid.

Trump supporters swear that GOD sent him to save America from satanic "libtards and commies." Somehow, OUR godlike SAVIOR didn't manage to come up with a way to save a million or so Americans from the Covid pandemic. Bleach didn't work; or that horse medicine. The US, with 4% of the world population, racked up 20% of the deaths globally. How quickly we forget. 

To MAGAts, Donnie the Blessed is both savior and savvy, and most important, is opposed to gun control, their political litmus test. Trump agrees that guns are not the problem, people are. 

The solution appears to be eliminating people, because guns without people will not be a problem. With RFK, Jr. handling federal health services, that goal should be met before long.  

Another irony arises from the fact that Trump, a convicted criminal, ran against Kamala Harris, a successful former prosecutor. The felon should not have been able to run, but he won, which is all you need to know about the abject state of the USA as it heads into the 250th anniversary of its existence. 

P.S. Easter is a great time of year to test claims of Trump's divinity. Crucify him. If he comes back in three days, we will know he's the genuine article.

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The Peasants Strike Back

The people had had enough. Endless war, a deadly pandemic, and stagnant wages had pushed them to the edge of revolt. The actions of a selfish oligarchy took them over it. I could be writing about the present time in many places, but the events in question took place in 14th century England.

England had been at war with France almost continuously since King Edward III laid claim to the French throne in the 1330s. Historians call the conflict the Hundred Years War, though no one called it that at the time, obviously. 

The fighting had favoured the English in the early going. They won several lopsided victories, notably at Crecy in 1346 and at Poitiers ten years later. In a treaty of 1360, they gained control of large parts of France. In the 1370s, however, the war resumed, and the French won back what they had lost and more. (Image: Battle of Crecy, 1346. From the Chronicles of Jean Froissart)

In 1376 England's greatest warrior, Edward the Black Prince, died of a lingering disease. He was also heir to the English throne. His father Edward III died the following year. The crown passed to his son, ten-year-old Richard II. During the next few years, actual power was in the hands of councils dominated by overmighty nobles, including Richard's uncles. (Image: Richard II, portrait in Westminster Abbey, 1390s)

In order to pay for the French war, the government raised taxes. It introduced a new tax, a regressive poll tax. Attempts to collect the tax in May 1381 triggered a massive popular uprising. The causes of the revolt go far beyond hatred of the particular tax, however. Unrest and tension had been growing for decades. At its heart was the response of the ruling classes to the effects of the plague pandemic later known as the Black Death.

The plague arrived in England in 1348, having made its way along trade routes from the Far East. By 1349 it had killed between 40 and 60 per cent of the population. Plague returned in 1361, killing off another 20 per cent or so. One effect of this massive mortality was a severe shortage of labour. Peasants and other workers saw an opportunity to improve their condition. They demanded higher wages and an end to serfdom and other injustices.

The landed classes, the lords and gentry who dominated Parliament, responded with the Statute of Labourers (1351). It essentially froze wages at their pre-plague levels. Although not entirely successful, it worked well enough to arouse widespread anger at the government and the aristocrats that controlled it. The sense of injustice contributed to the popularity of egalitarian ideologies.

The revolt broke out in Essex on May 30 with an attack on tax collectors. It spread quickly to Kent and much of the Southeast. The rebels, who included artisans and local officials, burned court records and emptied the jails. Thousands of Kentish rebels marched on nearby London, led by Wat Tyler and a radical priest, John Ball, whom the rebels had released from prison.

At Blackheath, near London, Ball famously exhorted the rebels to fight for equality. "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" he asked. "From the beginning all men were by nature created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of evil men ... now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may ... cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty." (Image: John Ball encouraging the rebels; Wat Tyler is in red at front left. Chronicles of Jean Froissart)

On June 13, sympathetic citizens admitted them into the capital. Together, they destroyed the Savoy Palace, residence of the king's hated uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. They attacked the jails, burned buildings, and killed a number of government officials, including the Lord Chancellor and Lord High Treasurer. Richard II fled to the safety of the Tower of London.

On the 14th, Richard met the rebels' representatives at Mile End and granted most of their demands, including the abolition of serfdom. On the following day he met them again. On this occasion, a confused melee broke out, and a member of the king's party killed Wat Tyler. (Image: The Death of Wat Tyler, Chronicles of Jean Froissart)

In the confusion that followed, Richard managed to calm the rebels and assure them he was on their side. "I am your captain, follow me," he is alleged to have said, and led them away from the scene. Meanwhile, the Lord Mayor of London rallied a militia and confronted the rebel forces. Richard urged them to disperse to their homes, which most did.

The rebellion continued in other locales, but the king's supporters suppressed it during the next few weeks and months. Richard rescinded his promises for change, including the abolition of serfdom. Most of the rebel leaders were hunted down and executed, along with about 1500 others.

The Great Revolt, or Peasants' Revolt, as it is more conventionally known, failed to win the rebels' immediate demands. Yet, the fright it gave to the ruling orders did help bring change. The poll tax was abandoned. Nothing like it was imposed again until the premiership of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990), who forgot the lesson of 1381. It aroused mass protests, first in Scotland, then in England. It was replaced in 1993 by the Council Tax.

Subsequent Parliaments were reluctant to raise taxes, making it difficult for the government to pay for campaigns in France. Serfdom was not abolished but it gradually died out over the next few decades, as landowners commuted labour services into money rents.

Wages also rose, in spite of the Statute of Labourers. Economic laws of supply and demand proved stronger than the laws of Parliament. Between 1350 and 1450 wages nearly doubled. The 15th century has sometimes been called the Golden Age of the English Peasant. Unfortunately, these gains were largely lost by population growth in the 16th century.

The Peasants' Revolt has continued to fascinate historians, writers, artists, and musicians into our own times. In 1888, the artist, writer, and designer William Morris published a novel about the Great Revolt, A Dream of John Ball. The work centres on Ball and his egalitarian ideology. Below is one of Morris's illustrations for the novel.

In many respects the situation of the UK today resembles that of 1381. The combination of disasters: Brexit, Covid pandemic, the Ukraine war, and an out of touch government has produced economic crises and widespread industrial unrest. Will it all lead to another mass revolt? We will see. 

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 Boy Who Cried Wolf; Or, A Pandemic of Lies

The people of the village of Great Cockup were afraid of wolves. In order to protect the village against wolves, they hired a new Chief Wolf-watcher. The last one, they decided, was not tough enough for the job, which was to keep an eye out for wolves and warn the village if any were nearby. This despite the fact the last one had gotten rid of one of largest wolves they had ever seen. The villagers called the new Chief Wolf-watcher "The Boy." Truth be told, he did act like a twelve year old. An unusual choice for such a job, one might think. But when he applied for the position, he convinced the villagers with his supreme confidence in himself. "I'm not afraid of wolves," he said. "I just look at them hard and poof, they're gone, tails between their legs. You can't hire a better Chief Wolf-watcher than me. I'm the best you'll ever have." Days went by and no wolves appeared. The Boy grew bored. One day he jumped up and cried "Eureka! I have an idea," he said. "The best idea." He ran into the village green, shouting "Wolf! Mexican Wolf!" The villagers came out, holding pitchforks, clubs, and other weapons. "Where's the wolf?" they asked. The Boy laughed. "There is no wolf. I was just checking to see if you were ready. Go home." The Boy was highly pleased with himself. "What fun. I must do that again." And he did. His false warnings became routine. Sometimes he said the wolf was from Haiti or Venezuela, other times that they were migrants from far away countries like China. The villagers always came out to chase off the wolves, and the Boy laughed and told them to go home. One day, when he cried "Wolf" for fun, the villagers did not respond. They had grown tired of his false warnings. The Boy turned to go back to his post. As he walked away from the green, he was confronted by a huge, powerful wolf. The Boy looked at the wolf and said, "You are not real. You're a hoax." The wolf moved closer and growled. "OK, maybe you're real, but I can handle you. There's only one of you." The Boy made his most menacing face. Truly a marvel to behold. The wolf showed no fear. He moved closer, growling and snarling.

Meanwhile, other wolves were gathering around the edge of the village. When the Boy spied them, he cursed. "Why didn't someone warn me about this plague of wolves? The boy ran onto the village green and cried "Wolf!" But on this occasion, no one came out of their houses. The Boy ran away to his country mansion, Little Penistone. From news reports he learned that many of the villagers and sheep had been eaten by the wolves. In response, he bragged about his brilliant handling of the wolf plague. How he had never underestimated it. How his warnings had saved many lives. One day he wandered back to Great Cockup. It was eerily quiet. One by one the villagers who had survived came out. They were holding pitchforks, clubs, and axes. The Boy ran, but he was too slow....

The Orange Piper of Shamelin: A True 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," "commies," 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 a true Shamelian. He sure didn't look like one of us." 

The cry went up from the voices of millions of Shamelians "Make Us Great Again! MUGA! MUGA! MUGA!" They had hardly ejaculated this chant 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 scores 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 bigly you can dress in dollars."

The 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! vote for me and you will never have to vote again!"

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, but 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 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 contradicted himself. 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. he sold Bibles.

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. Shamelin had more deaths than any other country on Zed. 

Then evidence began to mount that the Boss had been fiddling and diddling with little kids.... 

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Plague and Imperialism: The Third Pandemic: 1890s-1920s

According to medical historians, bubonic plague has reached pandemic (global or near global) level on three occasions. The first, often called the Plague of Justinian, occurred during the 6th and 7th centuries. The second began in the 14th century (The Black Death). It lasted until the 18th century in Europe and a bit longer in some eastern and middle eastern locations.

The Third Plague Pandemic killed about 15 million people, the great majority in the Indian subcontinent. It began in Western China in the mid-1850s during the Taiping Rebellion, and gradually spread west to Russia, reaching the Ural and Caspian regions by the 1870s and 1880s. It also moved east, reaching southern China and Hong Kong by 1894. 

Modern technology played a role in its spread. Fast steamships  took it across the wide Pacific. It reached Hawaii in 1899 and San Francisco in 1900. Railways also helped to spread the disease widely, especially in India. 

Plague had minimal effect in Western Europe on this occasion but an outbreak did occur in Glasgow, Scotland in 1900, with 35 infected, of whom about half died.

By this time, medical scientists had embraced germ theory, and one of the results of the new pandemic was the discovery of the microbe responsible: yersinia pestis, named for Alexander Yersin, the Russian physician who isolated it. Yersin's vaccine was prepared from heat killed plague bacteria. (Images: the bacteria and Yersin.)

By the beginning of the 20th century many investigators also concluded that plague was spread by fleas from rats. From 1900 huge efforts were made to eliminate the rodents, as in Sydney, Australia (below). 

The rat-flea-human cycle had competition, however. Many people  argued that plague could be spread by humans and contaminated materials (fomites), which led to the quarantining of victims, mass burials, the destruction of clothing, furniture, and other property. 

These measures caused great resentment and unrest, especially in colonial possessions like Hong Kong, India, and Hawaii, where insensitive white authorities often ran roughshod over indigenous beliefs and customs and treated local people with racialistic disrespect. In Hong Kong, British officials sent gangs of soldiers to "disinfect" Chinese houses. This involved not only spraying them with strong disinfectants, but removing furniture, bedding, and other household items to be burned. 

The Chinese inhabitants saw the quarantines, searches and disinfecting as unnecessary, insulting, and intrusive. Many of them distrusted western medicine. Chinese who were found to be infected were removed to an airless hospital ship and later to a makeshift substandard hospital converted from an old factory. 

The Chinese reaction is understandable. About 90% of the infected Chinese died, versus about 66% of Europeans. The official death toll in Hong Kong was 2500, but was undoubtedly much higher, because many deaths were conealed from the authorities. The death toll in in nearby Canton, where many Hong Kong Chinese fled, was much higher. 

American officials in Hawaii used similar measures in trying to combat the spread of plague among the Chinese community, and aroused similar hostility. The same was true in San Francisco and in British India. The images below were taken at quarantine camps in Karachi (now in Pakistan). 

India suffered more from the plague than any other country or region. Plague killed as many as 12 million Indians between the 1890s and 1920s, 3 million in 1903 alone. In comparison plague killed about 7000 in Europe and about 500 in the US, mostly in San Francisco in the early 1900s. Another outbreak took place in Los Angeles in 1924-25.

A plague vaccine developed by a Russian bacteriologist, Waldemar Haffkine, was employed in India, but it was only partially effective. In any case only 4 million Indians had received the vaccine by 1900, when the population of British India was 230 million.

In 1910, another plague epidemic broke out in eastern Siberia and spread into Manchuria in northern China. It was traced to hunters who had been trapping marmots. The disease initially spread from infected marmots to humans via their fleas. 

The discovery of that link led to the realization that other rodents besides rats could spread plague via fleas, and that rats might not be the main vector. Today in the Western US, the fleas of prairie dogs and other burrowing rodents are capable of spreading the disease, and humans are ocasionally infected in this way. The disease spread in these animals after plague arrived in San Francisco in 1900.

It was soon learned that human fleas can spread plague as well, and that humans can also spread it through coughing when it takes the pneumonic form and invades the lungs. The pnuemonic form is much less common than the bubonic (lymphatic) form, but it was present in the Manchurian outbreak. The image below shows some of the victims.

Wu Liande, the Chinese doctor who directed anti-plague efforts in Manchuria in 1910-11 and again in 1920-21, had been trained in Western medicine at Cambridge University. 

Wu used many of the same measures as European and American imperialists, but met less resistance because he was Chinese and understood local customs. He also introduced the use of gauze masks and other garb to prevent the spread of pneumonic plague. The photo below shows a patient (see arm) being vaccinated with the Haffkine vaccine. Wu's measures soon brought plague under control in northern China.

None of the measures used to combat plague, however, were completely successful before the discovery of the first antibiotics in the 1940s. DDT, which began to be employed around this time, also helped by killing fleas but had harmful effects on the environment. Organisms could also adapt to the DDT. Some strains of the bacteria have already demonstrated resistance to antibiotics.  

Plague has disappeared from much of the world since the 1950s, but major outbreaks still occur, mainly in impoverished areas. In August 2017 1800 people were infected with plague in Madagascar, 1100 of them with the pneumonic form. On average about 1000-2000 cases of plague are reported globally each year. 

Could plague return again in pandemic form? Under the right circumstances, it could. Best advice: avoid burrowing rodents.

Further reading: 

J. N. Hays, Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impacts on Human History. ABC-Clio, 2005.

_________, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History. Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Christian W. McMillen, Pandemics: A Very Short History. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Marilyn Chase, The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco (New York: Random House, 2004)

"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.