AHC: Virulent American disease devastates the Old World

Despite the fact that no New World diseases devastated the Old World on the same scale as various Old World diseases, it is not true that the New World lacked virulent diseases altogether.

The balance of evidence (do read this article) suggests that a disease called cocoliztli, which caused 12 epidemics between 1545 and 1642, was an indigenous disease. The Spanish appear to have considered it so, since they were accustomed with various Old World diseases but simply called this new disease "cocolistle" or "the great pandemic."

However, it appears that cocoliztli was primarily a rural phenomenon, which helped protect the primarily urban Spanish although the Spanish and Africans still were affected. And thankfully it was unable to make the leap across the Atlantic that many Old World diseases did (overall it seems a very localized disease that only struck Mexico's highlands under specific environmental circumstances).

There is some evidence that a cocoliztli-like phenomenon may have contributed to the Classic collapse several centuries before European contact.

Your AHC is to make cocoliztli, or a similarly virulent American disease (cocoliztli may have killed as many as 80% of the population in one epidemic), spread and devastate the Old World. Bonus if you can sum up the consequences in various parts of the world.
 
Wasn't syphilis from Americas? It could develope even worse disease.

Another option is that natives domesticate their own version of cattle (not sure if in New World is such suitable animal) and it could develope American version of small pox.
 
Another option is that natives domesticate their own version of cattle (not sure if in New World is such suitable animal) and it could develope American version of small pox.
JAred Diamond or some other popular author seems to have perpetuated the myth that variola comes from cows. Despite the name, cowpox "is endemic to rodents and rarely infects cows" and the virus itself comes from an "ancestral African rodent-borne variola-like virus" long, long before cattle domestication.
 
Wasn't syphilis from Americas? It could develope even worse disease.

Another option is that natives domesticate their own version of cattle (not sure if in New World is such suitable animal) and it could develope American version of small pox.

Syphilis seems to have surfaced around this time, and it seems a fact that it existed in America before Columbus, but its highly uncertain if it also appeared other places before hand, and the first indisputable recognized time of a disease outbreak was in 1494 in Naples. which seems a somewhat odd place for it to spring up and not on Iberia if it was brought across by Columbus, even accounting for the fact that Aragon and Naples was in a Personal Union at this time
 

I'm not able to watch the video right now, so it would be appreciated if you could sum up the points. But two key points:

As I said, there was indeed at least one extremely virulent and probably indigenous disease. It was a localized one, but then viruses can change a lot.

Most diseases do not come from domestic animals so their reduced presence in the Americas is irrelevant.
 
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