Module 8 - Pandemic

         A tremendous amount of people perished due to diseases brought to the Americas. It is said that almost 90 percent of the native population died. One historian noted “it is as if the suffering those diseases had caused in Eurasia over the past millennia were concentrated into a span of a decade” (p.558). For instance, areas that were densely populated in the Caribbean Islands completely disappeared within fifty years of Columbus arrival. Furthermore, in Central Mexico, before Columbus arrival, there was a population estimated at 10- 20 million, and it declined about 1 million by 1650 (p.559). A very sad passage of a native Nahualt describes the social consequences of the smallpox pandemic: “A great many died from this plague, and many others died of hunger. They could not get up to search for food, and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their bed.” In North America, Native Americans also died in great numbers. When the Native American people came in contact with the European and African people, they did not have the immunity to fight  Old World diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, influenza, malaria, and later on yellow fever. Based on records reported in 1656, “the Indians...affirm that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the smallpox broke out among them, they were ten times as numerous as they are now, and that their population had melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenth of them have died”(p.559). Others interpreted this information differently, -to Governor Bradford of Plymouth colony (now is Massachusetts), it represented the “good hand of God” at work, “sweeping away great multitude of natives… that he might make room for us” (p.560), and it was until the seventeenth century that this number began to recuperate but not completely. In conclusion, pandemics have tremendous effects especially in the most vulnerable people. Native Americans died because they were put in a situation in which they were vulnerable to these diseases. What I have noted in this pandemic, among those who are the most  prone to get Covid, are the lowest socio-economic populations. They don’t have access to quality care, they are not well informed, and even if they’re sick they have to work to support themselves.