Sounds simple enough, but how do you implement it? How do you get the resources not only across the Atlantic but also across the continents fast enough to be effective? Even today, WHO would be hard pressed to handle a widespread outbreak of smallpox in a under developed country. I don't see how an early modern European state could do it.




Even with modern medicine, treatment for measles and smallpox is primarily supportive -- assisting the person to survive the symptoms while their immune system fights the cause. The American Natives' immune systems have no experience with these diseases (or even similar ones). It's not clear that any amount of supportive care could prevent a massive number of deaths.

With modern medicine, there is no smallpox.
 
Gurps AE 1 had a Carthaginian ship blown to Cuba / Suradast in 508 BC(E) where they establish colonies. Mass dying still happens, but two millennia later the natives have full immunity and manage to expand beyond the Americas. Yay?
 
Gurps AE 1 had a Carthaginian ship blown to Cuba / Suradast in 508 BC(E) where they establish colonies. Mass dying still happens, but two millennia later the natives have full immunity and manage to expand beyond the Americas. Yay?

Seems to me that its continued exposure to the full Eurasian ecoysystem of disease that is needed. Otherwise, all that will happen is that they’ll be immune to mutations that no longer exist in Eurasia, and they might have their own mutations of the diseases (if they maintain a large enough population to feed the diseases) to have a more even population decline on both sides.

In other words, both sides could have massive smallpox epidemics, just two different types of smallpox.
 
With modern medicine, there is no smallpox.

The modern elimination of smallpox required both the vaccination and the bureaucratic and technological means to disperse it across the entire Old World. If they don't vaccinate across the entire Old World than it will just flair up again when traders move along trade routes.
 
The modern elimination of smallpox required both the vaccination and the bureaucratic and technological means to disperse it across the entire Old World. If they don't vaccinate across the entire Old World than it will just flair up again when traders move along trade routes.

That certainly is one possibility.
 

Lusitania

Donor
This will be a tough cookie to crack in the story I'm already writing.

Do you think either natives or Europeans could inadvertently come up with the idea of quarantine, moving away from any infected parts of the population, to protect themselves ?

Ok Europeans did recognize and implemented quarantine what they had no idea was how disease was transmitted. They had no idea mosquitos were transmitting disease or what confinantes water. People were getting sick from waterborne disease into the late 19th century. I read that Queen Victoria husband died due to disease carried in the palaces plumbing /sewer.
 
Gurps AE 1 had a Carthaginian ship blown to Cuba / Suradast in 508 BC(E) where they establish colonies. Mass dying still happens, but two millennia later the natives have full immunity and manage to expand beyond the Americas. Yay?

Europeans had smallpox for thousands years. Smallpox still killed fifteen million people in 1967. Four hundred thousand people per year through the 18th century just in Europe. And that was after thousands of years, with a much better starting position than the Americans.

Native American immunity after only two thousand years isn't in the cards.
 

Lusitania

Donor
OK, but I guess that at least diseases like measles and chickenpox shouldn't lead to death anymore.
No the issue is that due to America’s natives not being exposed to them they do lead to death. Today some parents are deciding not to vaccinate their kids and at times their kids are dying or becoming crippled due to exposure to them. So unfortunately people will die as result of exposure to them.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Anti-vacc is stupid, I agree on that, but I don't think that they all (or almost all) die from it.

No I am not stating that but some do. But that is due to modern medicine. We talking about native populations though so their mortality rate be higher.


Let’s say a “virgen” native population area is hit by European diseases resulting in 30% death rate. Then in most cases the area residents suffer an additional 20-30% loss due to starvation and other diseases.

Ad to that a weaker native population is succetable to attacks by rival groups or even wildlife. So we get 50-70% drop over a generation or two.
 
OK, but I guess that at least diseases like measles and chickenpox shouldn't lead to death anymore.

Measles is currently one of the primary killers of young children in the world. In 2016, it killed 90 000. And that was the first year in history deaths dropped below a 100 000. Before vaccination, there were millions of deaths yearly. And we've lived with measles for thousands of years as well.

Immunity takes a long time normally. Although resistance to very severe diseases can build over centuries. Because you are elimination the genetically vulnerable quickly from the population. A good example is Cocoliztli in Mexico, a European disease in a virgin field:

iu
 
You can't just look at the deaths without considering the position the natives were under due to the Spanish. An unconquered Mexico would still be ravaged by disease, but not to as significant a degree.
 
You can't just look at the deaths without considering the position the natives were under due to the Spanish. An unconquered Mexico would still be ravaged by disease, but not to as significant a degree.

But why wouldn't a European colonial power take advantage of the massive chaos and disruption caused by such huge outbreaks. And it would still be devastating to natives that aren't under European control. Most of North America was devastated by diseases before they even encountered Europeans. This is what gave the impression that the continent was almost empty and just waiting to be colonized by Europeans.
 
You can't just look at the deaths without considering the position the natives were under due to the Spanish. An unconquered Mexico would still be ravaged by disease, but not to as significant a degree.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JAM2210.1

Mexico suffered many droughts during this time, it's hard for the casualties to be any lower than than the Black Death and the recurrence of both diseases and droughts would keep the population low like it did under the Spanish.
 
You can't just look at the deaths without considering the position the natives were under due to the Spanish. An unconquered Mexico would still be ravaged by disease, but not to as significant a degree.

I am not sure about that.

It is certainly true that epidemics and diseases hit harder and are more severe when populations have insufficient nutrition or are otherwise weakened.

However... when de Orellana traveled up the Amazon as the first European, he wrote that he was never out of sight of a village. The population density of the basin was just immense. And when the next Europeans came, all that was there was jungle, because the diseases had wiped out the inhabitants before other Europeans go there. The same thing happened when De Soto traveled through North America. Native tribes, realms and civilizations collapsed in his wake due to diseases, such as the Mississippian civilization. With no Europeans near at the time.

Whatever the effects of European abuse of the natives, it seems clear that the virgin field epidemics were by themselves severe enough to eradicate nations utterly, without needing the natives to be weakened.
 

Lusitania

Donor
I am not sure about that.

It is certainly true that epidemics and diseases hit harder and are more severe when populations have insufficient nutrition or are otherwise weakened.

However... when de Orellana traveled up the Amazon as the first European, he wrote that he was never out of sight of a village. The population density of the basin was just immense. And when the next Europeans came, all that was there was jungle, because the diseases had wiped out the inhabitants before other Europeans go there. The same thing happened when De Soto traveled through North America. Native tribes, realms and civilizations collapsed in his wake due to diseases, such as the Mississippian civilization. With no Europeans near at the time.

Whatever the effects of European abuse of the natives, it seems clear that the virgin field epidemics were by themselves severe enough to eradicate nations utterly, without needing the natives to be weakened.
Correct European knew of diseases since they were part of everyday life but had no idea about virgen field epidemics or about how they were the carriers. They just went about their business be it exploring, conquest or just trying to live in the new world.
 
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