Takin' on water..

[JonL]

Originally Posted by whell

You keep referring to the turn of the century. Are you stuck there? Do you honestly believe that the socio-economic conditions that existed in this country back then could be recreated in this country today? Including the circumstances that supported the propagation of flu epidemics? It's quite a different world today, even setting aside the activist government that evolved over the last 100 years.

First the general: Do you honestly believe that human nature has changed over the last 100 or even 1000 years? Do you honestly believe that the horrors man has inflicted upon his own kind throughout history "cannot" happen anymore for some magical reason? I remember being shocked to see the genocide that unfolded in Serbia recently. I remember seeing people on TV, dressed in modern Western clothes, in modern middle class surroundings... and it was so incongruous that people who didn't look or live much differently from myself could be the victims AND perpetrators of such horrors. It opened my eyes. It made me realize how important a broad, inclusive community and society is, and how dangerous people can become when their xenophobic tendencies are exploited.

Now the specific: Could there be a return to the terrible exploitation of workers and children right here in this country? Absolutely. Leave capitalism to it's unfettered devices and it'll happen in no time at all.

As for infectious disease epidemics, conditions today are probably more favorable for an epidemic than they were in 1918. There wasn't air travel in 1918 to spread germs around the country and the world nearly instantaneously. I doubt there was as much dense mass transit in the cities. I doubt that very many women were in the workplace where they can be exposed more easily.