Coded gray.

Friday 25 April 2003


Viral decimation

Canada, which has one of the highest standards of living in the world, has proved unable to contain the spread of the SARS virus, although to their credit they have slowed it down considerably. In this perspective, there is simply no chance that third world nations will be able to mount any resistance at all. Their only hope lies in the fact that they generally have a very young population, so even if all are infected only a minority will die. The young are also at risk from the virus, but seemingly less likely to actually die. On the other hand, areas without basic health care and without good nutrition (as in the poorest countries of the world) are particularly vulnerable.

Mortality keeps slowly creeping upward as more of the severely sick patients eventually succumb. The numbers may stabilize around 5% with good hospital care for those who need it; then again, they may not. In Singapore, authorities report a possible 10% mortality rate. Certainly this is a more likely number if the hospitals eventually break down under the pressure. Doctors and nurses have been among the first to be exposed to the virus, despite all precautions. So far an almost superhuman idealism has prevailed in hospitals around the world, as health care workers have risked their life, endured quarantine and worked day and night to save as many patients as possible.

***

Do you know the word "decimate"? It is related to decimal, and comes from Latin. The ancient Romans sometimes felt the need to punish collective crimes by lining up people at random, and taking out every tenth man and kill him. Thus the number ten came to be associated with a large loss of lives. Ironically, nature may be taking a similar approach now. Even the otherwise healthy are now falling under the invisible scythe. But what will happen to the world if the virus breaks out of all attempts to contain it? What will happen to humanity if we are ... decimated?

Over the last couple days, I have reviewed various scenarios in my head. And one thing that struck me is that the only risk to society (as opposed to the individual) is psychological. If we panic, much will be lost. If we don't, if we bend under the pressure but don't break, we (or those among us who survive) will bounce back quickly.

A projected loss of 500 million human lives, over and above natural death from other causes ... more than 10 times as much as the Spanish Flu, which harried the world during World War I. It would mean that virtually every soul would know someone, and indeed more than one, who died from the disease. But it would not be the end of the world by any means.

Half a billion humans less than today ... that is approximately how many we were ten years ago. Even though the population boom is slowing down, the world is still populated mostly by young people, a large number of them in their prime years of reproduction. So even though they now only have two children each instead of six, these children live side by side with their parents, and so will their children again, as the natural lifespan has increased greatly in most of the world. So in another ten years, we should be back to our current population, even if there is no attempt to "replace" the dead by increased fertility. And there probably will be some of that too – it is in our genes, after all, and not all people can Just Say No to their instincts.

The world ten years ago was not substantially different from today. The major differences since then are political and technological, and these changes are not likely to be reversed. If anything, the period of restricted travel may hook more people on electronic communication and speed up the adoption of webcams or possibly virtual worlds as meeting places.

What else will change? In Europe, the graying population will not replenish itself after the decimation. It will either stabilize on the lower level or be supplemented by immigration. I really have no advice on which is best ... a large number of those motivated to immigrate to Europe are Muslims, and the climate for integrating a large number of Muslims in the traditionally Christian Europe is not the best at this time. Further crusades from the Bush administration may however help forge an alliance between European and Middle Eastern countries to contain American aggression overseas. Not likely, but we cannot rule it out. A result of this, most notably accepting Turkey into the European Union, would open the floodgates for replenishing the graying population in continental Europe. The long-term effects of this would change our societies forever. But this is a process already knocking on the door; we are talking about a more rapid change, but not a different one in the long term.

In the USA, the most dramatic change would probably be lower property prices as necessarily some houses would stand empty after the untimely passing of their owners. This is bad news for those who have large loans against their homes, but good news for young people looking for their own place. This, along with a higher mortality among the elderly, might herald a shift in power from the elderly to the young. Although the young seem favored in advertising, they hold less economic power than the grandparent generation. This could change to some degree.

Some small businesses would close with the death of key personnel. But the number would be so moderate that they would easily be absorbed by the surviving competitors. In this scenario, social networks remain as people route around the loss of key contacts. In a 20% death toll scenario, social networks would break down and need time to reform, throwing economy and politics and even religion into a state of temporary chaos. This may happen locally in a few cases even with a 10% death toll, but not generally. There is a lot of redundancy in both business and social life.

***

And this brings me to a final point. Most of us are replaceable. While we are extremely important to ourselves, and in some cases to someone else, we are not the hub on which the world revolves. It just feels that way.

The world's population could shrink to half what it is today with little change to everyday life, if only it happened slowly and gradually. In fact, this is likely to happen at the end of the life for those who are young today. The population boom is over, at least unless something dramatic sets it off again. At 10.5 billion people in 2050, the numbers would gradually fall over the next decades. It is unclear how far ... human behavior a hundred years from now is impossible to predict. A hundred years ago, we were still in the agrarian society and only birds could fly.

It is a bit sad that we are so easily disposed of, but for humanity as a whole it is a good thing. It takes more than a decimation to destroy us. One single rider of the apocalypse is not the end of the world.


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