Population Bust

Population explosion

A pandemic today could be many times worse than the pandemic of 1918, the world’s greatest medical catastrophe. In 1918 we were, as a nation and as a people, much more self-sufficient.⁵⁶⁵ With the corporate triumph of free trade, just-in-time inventory management and global supply chains now characterize all major economies and business sectors.⁵⁶⁶ Economic analysts predict the pandemic would cause a global economic collapse unprecedented in modern history.⁵⁶⁷ With the global population at an historical high, this could lead to unprecedented human suffering.

A short 100,000 years ago, all members of the human race lived in eastern Africa.⁵⁶⁸ The 6.5 billion people alive today represent roughly one out of every nine people who have ever inhabited the Earth.⁵⁶⁹ In 1918, cities like London were smaller, with just over than one million residents. Today there are 26 megacities in the world, each with more than ten million people.⁵⁷⁰ With this kind of tinder, experts like the WHO’s Klaus Stöhr predict the pandemic will “explosively” hit world populations “like a flash flood.”⁵⁷¹

“The rapidity of the spread of influenza throughout a country is only limited by the rapidity of the means of transportation,” explained the 1918 New York State Health Commissioner.⁵⁷² Back then, the fastest way to cross the world was by steamship.⁵⁷³ In the past, a trip around the world took a year; today we and our viruses can circle the globe in 24 hours.⁵⁷⁴ The number of human globe-trotters now exceeds one billion people a year.⁵⁷⁵ AIDS left Africa on an aircraft. So too may H5N1 leave Asia, only a plane ride away.

Between record population levels and the unprecedented current speed, volume, and reach of global air travel, any pandemic virus could wreak unparalleled havoc.⁵⁷⁶ H5N1, though, promises to be more than just any pandemic virus. In all of his more than 40 years working with influenza viruses, Robert Webster can state unequivocally, “This is the worst flu virus I have ever seen or worked with or read about.”⁵⁷⁷ At a congressional briefing, Gregory A. Poland of the Mayo Clinic and the Infectious Diseases Society of America tried to get members of Congress to imagine the unimaginable—an H5N1 pandemic. “I want to emphasize the certainty that a pandemic will occur,” he began. “When this happens, time will be described, for those left living, as before and after the pandemic.”⁵⁷⁸ The top virologist in Russia attempted to tally the worst-case scenario potential human death count: “Up to one billion people could die around the whole world in six months…. We are half a step away from a worldwide pandemic catastrophe.”⁵⁷⁹