11 March, 2020 – Episode 764 – What Does Pandemic Mean?

What is in the This Week in Science Podcast?

COVID QUIZ TIME!!!, Arctic Chlamydia, Old Flu, Glowing Amphibians, Scorpion Glow, Crabs Can’t Camo, Dark Genes, Solar Sytem Minor Leagues, Violent Farmers, Tiny Old Bird, Pillow Talk, Follow The Worker, Don’t Feed The Monkeys, And Much More…

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Disclaimer, Disclaimer, Disclaimer!!!

Pandemics are nothing new.

Actually, while common, they are a rather new phenomenon for humans because for most of human history

humans preferred not to hang out where large groups of other humans were hanging out.

Our nomadic hunter gathering, frequent foraging forbears didn’t hang out in any one location long enough to catch a seasonal flu… If something really deadly came along it killed maybe 10 or 20 people in a group and that was it, it went no further.

Then at some point we began returning to the same places year after year,

then staying all year in the same location.

Farming, animal domestication took over foraging, and populations blossomed

Humans living closely with other humans and goats, and cows and pigs and chickens and wild dogs and everyone pooping all the time, and never far enough away from town, or water supplies.

With greater and greater frequency, and less and less surprise humans have been riddled with one form of communicable illness or another.

As the world now faces a truly comprehensible threat in the form of a virus

One that is quite possibly going to infect every one of us eventually.

Societies are choosing to commit suicide as a solution.

Corona canceling conferences, music, and social gatherings,

Viral Vacating vacation plans, political gatherings, and school classes

Pandemically postponing political rallies, public transportation

Symptomatically surrendering stock markets,