How Epidemics Change History. NewsWire

NEWSWIRE: 3/16/20

• The coronavirus outbreak has governments and health officials around the world searching for lessons from history. Past pandemics had far-reaching economic and social effects on the societies they swept through—which means we should prepare for all the possibilities as we look ahead. (The Washington Post)
• NH: I first became fascinated by this topic after reading University of Chicago historian William McNeill's masterful Plagues and Peoples (1976). Many younger readers were first introduced to it by Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999). A new (if painfully progressive) primer, Epidemics and Society, was just released last year by emeritus Howard professor Frank M. Snowdon, who was just interviewed in The New Yorker.
• These authors deny that disease and epidemics are mere random accidents of history having no long-term significance. Instead, they argue, humanity has developed from the very beginning in the context of an intimate symbiosis with microscopic pathogens. That symbiosis has systematically determined the geography, growth, number, politics, and institutions of societies worldwide. And the symbiosis is still at work today. The argument should cheer any radical environmentalist who today bemoans modernity's ruthless despoliation of the earth's flora and fauna. Ready for battle, the protozoa, bacteria, viruses, and viroids remain capable of exacting revenge against homo sapiens. What could more delight the authors of the Green New Deal than a satellite photo of China in late February, showing pristine clear skies for the first time since the Great Famine under Mao?
• Clearly, epidemics have triggered most (if not nearly all) of the great die-offs that have steered the course of civilizations. The great Antonine Plague of the late 2nd century AD in Italy, probably smallpox or measles, initiated the steady depopulation of the western Roman empire which would eventually prove terminal in the late 5th century. The horrendous Plague of Justinian in the 6th century (probably Yersinia Pestis or bubonic plague) foiled Constantinople's bid to reassert Roman authority over the west and nearly caused Byzantium to succumb to the growing Islamic Caliphate two centuries later.
• Everyone is familiar with the Black or Bubonic Plague that killed one-third to one-half of Europe in the mid-14th century. Europe's population didn't recover its earlier 1346 population peak until two centuries later, in the mid-1500s. That plague led directly to the end of serfdom, the rise of the small yeoman landowner, the decline of regional nobility, and the rising power of nation states. It certainly spelled finis to medieval Christendom.
• Or what about the arrival in the New World of conquistadors and other European adventurers? They introduced the lethal diseases that ultimately killed off at least 90% of the indigenous Amerindian population by the mid-17th century. Some scientists think this die-off may have promoted such rapid re-forestation in the New World that it significantly reduced atmospheric CO2, helping to trigger the well-known "Little Ice Age" of the late 17th and 18th centuries.
• The timing of these disasters is not random. Typically, these great epidemics occur after eras of rapid population growth, of rising mobility and long-distance travel, and of growing urbanization and population density.
• Population growth tends to bring inferior land into cultivation, which in turn lowers the marginal product of agriculture, undermines living standards, depletes diets (of protein, especially), weakens people's immunity, and renders them ready for a "Malthusian shock." That was certainly the case for famine-ridden western Europe in the early 14th century.
• Rising long-distance travel matters because it transmits regional pathogens to new and unprotected populations and increases the odds of more "effective" mutations. At the height of the imperial Pax Romana, traders could safely travel from Londinium to Arabia Petra and thereafter (by sea) to India. By the late-13th century, after the Mongols had pacified the Asian steppes, traders like Marco Polo could for the first time travel safely back and forth from Venice to Cathay. These eras of flourishing "globalization" were followed by great plagues. The Black Death very specifically moved from marmots indigenous to the steppes to the rats and fleas that moved with traders west via the silk road. Eventually they ended up in galleys heading for Genoa in 1347.
• As for urbanization and population density, well, that matters because it raises the transmissibility (or R0) of any disease. Historically, death rates are nearly always higher in cities, where "social distancing" is often not possible. An insightful Fed study on "The Economic Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic" pointed out that, comparing 1918 to 2007 (when the study was published) the advantages of today's superior health technology have to be balanced against the disadvantages of much greater urbanization. The authors were unsure which way the balance would tip.
• Disease helps explain the geographic pattern behind the spread of civilization itself since the neolithic revolution--that is, the location of affluent city-centered societies . McNeill points out that the greater number, diversity, and virulence of diseases in tropical climates (which are still a scourge in sub-Saharan Africa) tilted the playing field in favor of societies in the temperate latitudes. Diamond emphasizes the importance, in regions like the fertile crescent, of the ability to domesticate large numbers of draft animals. These animals both helped to improve agricultural productivity and also, as pathogen repositories, gradually acclimated regional populations to diseases that would later wipe out other populations.
• Epidemics typically transform the social mood in a predictable direction. They tend to favor an expansion--sometimes a sudden expansion--in the power of political authorities, that is, whoever is "supposed to be in charge." That may be what happens in any crisis that triggers popular anxiety, interrupts trade and economic activity, and threatens public order. But also, in the case of epidemics, it often becomes obvious that public compliance with top-down directives is essential to any effective response.
• Today, the sweeping and centralized mobilization of citizens in Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea is being compared favorably to the slower and less coordinated response of governments in western Europe and the United States. Confucian societies respond well to epidemics because citizens sign on quickly and fully to top-down authoritarian policies. Western cultures have many strengths, but this isn't one of them. For example, it took repeated cholera epidemics in London in the 1850s to persuade Britain to institute even the most rudimentary public health regulation.
• Growing authoritarianism of course was already a prevailing trend of the late 2010s well before COVID-19 came along. So this trend will be reinforced. Isolationism, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism were also prevailing trends. And these too will be reinforced. National leaders all over the world are today in a race to "close borders." Even within nations, regions are growing suspicious of each other and rules discouraging transit from one community to another are common. Sometimes such shifts can help launch whole eras--as the Spanish Flu of 1918 (which of course wasn't "Spanish" at all) helped inspire, in America, a sudden shutdown of U.S. immigration in the early 1920s and the anti-foreign and isolationist mood of the rest of that decade.
• Finally, epidemics throughout history bring people face to face with mortality. The typical reaction, as in Albert Camus' The Plague, is first denial and then panic, but finally acceptance. Epidemics help feed populist movements insofar as they "democratize" death, showing everyone that the rich and powerful are as mortal as the poor and lowly. Microbes know no rank. Today, the news that national leaders, business titans, and Hollywood celebrities can catch the infection just like anyone else has the potential to bring people together.
• So along with xenophobia and fear, epidemics can also teach charity and compassion. The 2nd-century physician Galen (whose accounts of the Antonine Plague still survive) observed that pagans typically fled when encountering sick neighbors. But many accounts testify that the early Christians were more likely to stay with their sick friends and care for them. Some historians believe this sort of behavior enabled more Christians to survive and gave them a demographic edge over time. In 313 AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The church father Augustine wrote that there were few greater Christian miracles than the fact that such a despised religion, with so few initial followers, ever triumphed. Maybe epidemics, and the lessons they taught, had something to do with it.
• FWIW, speaking of the great and powerful, the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Justinian both fell ill to a plague epidemic. Marcus died from it while campaigning on the Danube. Justinian survive it, though maybe he wished he hadn't --since he lived to witness all his victories reversed, his treasury bankrupted, and himself as emperor hated by his people

• A new study reports that between 2004 and 2017, the average age of first use for most drugs among teens rose. Of the 18 drugs studied, 12—including alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco—saw an increase in the mean age at initiation and now hovers closer to age 17 than 16. (JAMA Pediatrics) 
• NH: Despite the media’s love for alarmist articles about teen drug use--just look at this Reuters piece--the empirical data belie the usual stories of teenage debauchery (see "Millennials Writing Themselves Fewer Prescriptions"). As this JAMA report shows, the average age for first time drug use has been increasing for everything from alcohol to opioids. I’ll spare you the laundry list of numbers, but see the first chart below.
• This study adds to the mounting evidence that teen drug use is declining. The latest Monitoring the Future survey, the gold standard for tracking teen drug use, showed that both teen drinking and prescription drug abuse has dropped for 8, 10, and 12 graders in 2019 and in nearly every year since 2003. See the second and third chart below. The 2018 SAMSHA report, which also tracks drug use, shows a similar trend: that is, declining teenage drug use.
• Second-wave Millennials and Homelanders have not participated in the opioid crisis, unlike their first-wave counterparts. (See "Overdose Mortality Falling, But Fentanyl Deaths Still Rising."). Consider this statistic from HHS: In 2003, 10.5% of high school seniors reported abusing Vicodin, a prescription neurotic; in 2018, the number had dropped to 1.7%.
• This drop suggests that first-wave Millennials' greater participation in the opioid epidemic is not just the result of simply being older when the national opioid epidemic peaked. It suggests, rather, that these two Millennial waves were different from the very beginning. First-wave to last-wave, Millennials are a generation of trends. And two of those trends are greater parental supervision and rising risk aversion.

• Fully 90% of Spain’s population lives in towns and cities that cover only 30% of the land. The other 10% of people are spread out across the remaining 70%—a vast rural expanse that government officials are struggling to supply with public services and other investments. (The Guardian)
• NH: When a society's population growth slows to zero or worse, rural areas typically feel the negative impact earliest and hardest. We have written often about this issue in Japan. See "Japan Deals With Severe Depopulation and Rural Flight," "Due to Depopulation, Nearly Half of Cities in Japan Are Disappearing," and "Population Growth Slowing Means More Animals." We've also commented on a parallel urban-rural divide emerging in the United States (See "Two Parties Representing Two Different Economies.")
• Well, it turns out that many regions in Europe are facing the same problem. These include northern England, former East Germany, the Massif Central in France, and large regions of Europe's low-fertility southern countries--Portugal, Spain, and Italy. In Spain, which is the subject of this article, the most worrisome regions are Castile y Leon and the northern mountain states.
• The main driver is lower wages and lower productivity growth in rural areas, which tends to encourage young people to migrate to large cities. This in turn makes rural areas even less desirable for economic development in a sort of vicious cycle. It is greatly accelerating the absolute depopulation and aging of rural areas, even as it maintains at least some population growth in the more youthful urban areas. See charts below.
• The exact dynamics vary by country. Typically, rural fertility remains higher than urban fertility. So in some countries where this gap is large, urban areas may be aging faster than rural areas--like Italy, for example, the affluent urban north is aging faster than the poorer rural south. And in central and eastern Europe, the aging is often more rapid even though the fertility rate is higher. And that is because young people are fleeing faster, though they aren't so much going from rural to urban as they are emigrating to other countries altogether.
• So what to do about it? A recent EU report, "Fighting Rural Population in Southern Europe," outlines the options. These range from subsidies to businesses to invest there and subsidies to the wages of people who work there to substantial public infrastructure projects. The specific public project most often discussed--as in the United States--is high-speed internet access. In Spain, as the article points out, the challenge of "la España vaciada" ("hollowed-out Spain") is gaining widespread public attention and is even prompting demonstrations in Madrid. Pedro Sanchez' socialist government has just appointed Spain's first-ever "demography minister" to address it.

• As wealthy Millennials hunt for homes, they’re most interested in finding “a sense of community.” Size and space are taking a backseat to walkable neighborhoods and being close to family. (The Wall Street Journal)
• NH: What do well-off Millennials want from their dream homes? Small, move-in-ready properties that are easy to maintain, close to cities, and a short ride from family and friends. We can see this in recent home price trends. Since 2011, prices of smaller homes in close-in areas (e.g. Evanston, 14 miles from Chicago) have risen, while prices in further-off luxury communities with longer commutes (e.g. Lake Forest, 33 miles from Chicago) have slumped.
• The latest annual report from the National Association of Realtors on home buying trends tells a similar story. It found that Millennial buyers are more likely to select a neighborhood based on proximity to friends and family, as well as the new home’s selection of amenities. While their preferences are certainly influenced, in part, by their stage of life (proximity and quality of schools will become more important as more Millennials have children, for instance), their desire to keep things simple and keep their families close will remain the same. (See “Millennials and Silent Prefer Walkable Communities.”)

• The cheeky title of FT writer Henry Mance’s op-ed says it all: “At long last, the Silent Generation’s hour has come.” The generation that never produced a president may finally get its moment with Biden or Sanders, both now in their late 70s. (Financial Times)
• NH: This is a question that Bill Strauss and I wrote about often over the decades: Why has the Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1942) never had a President? In 1993, America went directly from a G.I. Generation leader (George H.W. Bush, Sr.) who served in World War II, to a Boomer (Bill Clinton) who was born after the war was over. And we've never looked back. Apparently, like Rodney Dangerfield, this generation just "can't get no respect."
• Well, now the Silent may at last have their moment. Incredibly, though its youngest members are now 78, this generation now monopolizes the 2020 Democratic nominee line-up in the persons of Joe Biden (born, 1942) and Bernie Sanders (born, 1941).
• Why now? Mance puts it well: "On close inspection, you can see why the silent generation’s moment might have arrived. Its reputation is one of unpanicked service." He points out that the original Time Magazine essay that first described them and named them as young adults back in 1951 reported that they bear "upsetting uncertainties with extraordinary calm." They seemed tractable and well behaved and all grown up at a very young age. They shipped off to Korea, a war that could have no winners, with zero complaints. All these were traits that would later get them ridiculed as establishment yes-men. But certainly today, at a time of growing historical urgency and perhaps even of crisis, America may want such leadership. God knows that Boomers, as a generation, never earned a reputation for unpanicked service.
• But all this raises a deeper question. Why is it that some generations play such a large role in national political leadership and other generations don't. Looking across American history, Bill and I hypothesized an alternative dominant-then-recessive pattern in politics. The Missionary, G.I., Boomer, and (soon perhaps) Millennial generations have been or will be dominant. The Lost, Gen X, Silent, and Homeland generations have been or will be recessive.
• Dick Morris has reported than one big reason why Bill Clinton chose Boomer Al Gore as his running mate back in 1992, rather than an older Silent politician, was that both he and Clinton had read our book Generations, which argued even back then that the Silent were fated to play a diminished political role. So here's a case where yours truly was responsible not just for writing about history but, at least this once, changing it.
• Beyond the generational question, Americans should be curious and maybe even alarmed about the extraordinary aging of America's top leadership cadre. Is this because they're so capable? Or is it because our public institutions are so ossified and dysfunctional that younger people don't want to go near them. If the latter, the next crisis could push us into a very sudden regime change.
• I'd hate to think that COVID-19 is part of what brings about a new order. I will simply make this observation. If an effective response to this particular epidemic includes encouraging Americans past their mid-70s to self-quarantine, why is the current leadership of Congress going about their business like nothing has changed? Don't they know, at their age, how much they're at risk? Many of us want regime change, but not this way. 

• Next time you tune in to your favorite sport, it might look a lot more like a video game. The line between traditional sports and esports is getting blurrier, with broadcasters increasingly testing gaming-inspired features like live-chatting and panoramic video. (The Wall Street Journal)
• NH: In recent years, TV coverage of NFL games has increasingly acquired the look of a video game: Players are outlined with red virtual circles, stats hover over athletes like Call of Duty gamer tags, and CGI lines mark the spot of the ball. This "AR layer" has become so familiar that it’s jolting to go to a live game and find yourself missing the amenities of all the gamer detail (not to mention missing the warmth of your house and being able to actually see the game).
• For earlier generations, all the way until Boomers, the holy grail of media sports coverage was to approximate the "high fidelity" experience of actually being at the game. But starting with Xers and now even more with Millennials, just being at the game can be a disappointment. They want something better than "actually" being there. See “The New Virtual Reality.”
• The NFL would be smart to keep leaning into the model of the ESport phenomenon. While some people see competitive video games as a passing fad, we have argued that its social atmosphere is perfect for Millennials (see “Its Game On for Esports”). If sports like football start offering live polls, ways for fans to communicate, and virtual reality, Millennials will surely be attracted. See “Are You Ready for Football 2.0?”

• The dark web is home to plenty of illegal activities—but is hiring a hit man one of them? A handful of people have been arrested for commissioning murders on various hit-man-for-hire sites, but there’s little evidence that these hires have directly led to any deaths. (The New York Times)
• NH: No longer does the criminal underbelly operate in smoke-filled rooms or dark alleyways. Now, they communicate through the supposedly untraceable “dark web,” trading Bitcoin instead of cash. And while you can acquire almost any nefarious item through this virtual black market, can you really hire an assassin as is often advertised?
• University of Michigan professor Tom Holt, whose paper is under review, asked the same question. He found that no, you really can’t hire an assassin. Many of the known cases of people who have paid for the service only came to light because the murder never happened. Although they paid the services never came through, so the buyers took the killing into their own hands and were subsequently caught.
• A fundamental problem with transacting on the "dark web" is well known to game theorists: How can you trust an unidentifiable counterparty in a one-time transaction? Drugs? OK, that might work because if one transaction works you can go on the next. Buy a hired killing? Apparently, according to emails of assassin-site operators obtained by hackers, many of them have no intention of actually killing anybody. They just hope to scam some customer into giving them a lot Bitcoin up front to do the job. They know that they are untraceable.
• But are they really? After all, if a professor and some hackers can cut through the secrecy of the dark web, should we really consider it untraceable?
• The answer is yes and no. It is true that it's almost impossible to track someone’s IP address and physical location. The network software used to access the sites sends user data through a labyrinth of different servers, the trail is so complicated that it can rarely if ever be untangled.
• But still there are ways. Searching through Bitcoin transactions can sometimes reveal a user's identity. If investigators can match the block chain transactions from a Bitcoin account with a transaction on the "dark web" they can triangulate the information. Sometimes they can use this information to catch the criminal in the real world, but this method is time-consuming and acquires a bit of luck (or bad luck for the operator).  
• But while the tech may be (nearly) fool proof, no system is damn fool proof. Because there will always be some damn fool to mess it up. In other words, it's typically human stupidity that enables investigators to lift the vale of secrecy. The founder of The Silk Road, the largest and most popular virtual drug market, is serving life in prison after accidentally posting his personal email.
• As this Vice article points out, there are many ways the police can catch “dark web” users. Despite their use of high tech software, sellers and buyers still rely on the mail for product delivery. Their biggest enemy? The Postmaster General.  (See “How the Deadly Drug Fentanyl Is Making Its Way to the US.”) At some point the dark-web contract requires the seller to do something in the "real world"--like mail a physical package. That's where the veil of secrecy can be penetrated.

• In the latest Newsweek cover story, op-ed columnist Sam Hill makes the case that “Boomers Are the Greatest Generation in History.” Directed at Millennials, it’s meant to be optimistic rather than dismissive, but the nature of the essay ends up downplaying many of the issues young people are concerned about. (Newsweek)
• NH: This piece is better than its title. But I have to comment on the title, which is part of a long media tradition of comparing generations to one another and thereby judging them. One generation is the best, another the greatest, and yet another the worst. This doesn’t really make sense.
• Generations are like children. There’s no “best” or “worst." They’re just different. Each has good qualities and bad qualities. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Yet they do come in distinct personality types--or, as we call them, archetypes. And to understand a generation's archetype is to understand that each generation tends to develop in opposition to the archetype that raised it.
• Thus, you simply can't explain Boomers without understanding the G.I. Generation that shaped their childhood and (later) sent them to war. Ditto for Gen Xers. To explain them, you need to look at the Silent Generation. And likewise for Millennials. They too are a direct result of Boomer nurture
• OK. So the title isn’t great. How’s the essay? Flawed, but still worth a read in its scope. It isn’t, as I expected, a paean to Boomers that trashes Millennials. It’s more of an examination of how the world has changed for the better from the 1960s and ‘70s to now. Hill’s right about many of them, including safer streets, a richer culture, more tolerance for diverse lifestyles, and progress on human rights and the environment. I imagine, however, that many Millennial readers will balk at his underlying message: “It’s not that bad.” Sure, you’re drowning in student debt and can’t afford health insurance or a home. But at least you’re more educated and have a lot more TV shows to choose from. 

DID YOU KNOW?

Worried about Coronavirus? Trust the Boss, not the Man. When it comes to information about the coronavirus, Americans are more likely to trust their employers over government websites. That’s according to a new Edelman Trust Barometer survey about the virus. Fully 51% of Americans say that they trust their employer is well-prepared, versus 43% who say that their country is well-prepared. Most want to receive updates about the outbreak through company-wide e-mails or newsletters. And Americans are not alone: In most countries surveyed, including those with major early outbreaks like South Korea and Italy, respondents place more faith in their companies over their governments to handle the virus. This mirrors findings from Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer studies, which have found that respondents globally have become less likely to trust government leaders to address societal challenges. Yet even though employers outrank government leaders in trust, they’re not the most trusted source for information about the virus. That would be health professionals, such as scientists, doctors, and hospitals.