A dozen COVID-19-infected people are sent back in time to January 1, 1850; what happens next?
- Thread starter WolfBear
- Start date
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Hmm... well this doesn't specify where the Alien Space Bats drop them off so...
70/100 they wind up in the oceans and drown.
8/100 they land on an icecap, frozen tundra, or mountaintop and freeze.
10/100 they are deposited in a desert and die of dehydration or heatstroke.
Several more percentage, unsure, they land in an undeveloped area away from other humans and starve trying to find civilization.
Earth is a surprisingly deadly planet for humans.
More seriously and ignoring that, probably not much happens. It's plausible to me that COVID will be more lethal to people in 1850 than modern humans, due to us having numerous previous exposures to various strains that would have let our bodies develop better antibodies. I'm not 100% sure there, but plausible. However, it's equally plausible to me that the much higher level of physical work and lack of unhealthy corn syrup infused everything to eat makes the average citizen a much tougher target, able to squash COVID just by flexing their leukocytes.
The population is much more widespread and international travel is ridiculously slow and rare compared to modern-day. COVID is likely to eventually infect an entire town but spread only very slowly even there, and probably take a long time to leave town and hit another. A number of elderly people die, possibly a sickly child or two. It may hit a couple of vulnerable adults, the rest have a bad flu day. On a national scale, it barely qualifies as statistical noise. For the town in question it may be a somewhat bad year.
COVID will spread slowly. Over the course of a year infected people from the initial town may spread it to a dozen more. Due to the California Gold Rush it almost certainly travels there with some miner or another if it starts in any area remotely able to reach California. The wet cold conditions of many of those mines mean it will have a fairly fertile field for infection, however, miners are also not known for their exceptional desire to intermingle and socialize around their mines. Again, some will die but overall it's likely to just be statistical noise compared to the normal causes of death at the time. We may see comparable total COVID deaths but they will be spread over 20 years instead of 2.
Overall unless there's a serious butterfly effect in place, I'd say nothing in the history books changes significantly.
70/100 they wind up in the oceans and drown.
8/100 they land on an icecap, frozen tundra, or mountaintop and freeze.
10/100 they are deposited in a desert and die of dehydration or heatstroke.
Several more percentage, unsure, they land in an undeveloped area away from other humans and starve trying to find civilization.
Earth is a surprisingly deadly planet for humans.
More seriously and ignoring that, probably not much happens. It's plausible to me that COVID will be more lethal to people in 1850 than modern humans, due to us having numerous previous exposures to various strains that would have let our bodies develop better antibodies. I'm not 100% sure there, but plausible. However, it's equally plausible to me that the much higher level of physical work and lack of unhealthy corn syrup infused everything to eat makes the average citizen a much tougher target, able to squash COVID just by flexing their leukocytes.
The population is much more widespread and international travel is ridiculously slow and rare compared to modern-day. COVID is likely to eventually infect an entire town but spread only very slowly even there, and probably take a long time to leave town and hit another. A number of elderly people die, possibly a sickly child or two. It may hit a couple of vulnerable adults, the rest have a bad flu day. On a national scale, it barely qualifies as statistical noise. For the town in question it may be a somewhat bad year.
COVID will spread slowly. Over the course of a year infected people from the initial town may spread it to a dozen more. Due to the California Gold Rush it almost certainly travels there with some miner or another if it starts in any area remotely able to reach California. The wet cold conditions of many of those mines mean it will have a fairly fertile field for infection, however, miners are also not known for their exceptional desire to intermingle and socialize around their mines. Again, some will die but overall it's likely to just be statistical noise compared to the normal causes of death at the time. We may see comparable total COVID deaths but they will be spread over 20 years instead of 2.
Overall unless there's a serious butterfly effect in place, I'd say nothing in the history books changes significantly.
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Buba
A total creep
What he said.
With no WHO and health authorities on an ego trip, with no Big Pharma selling their snake oil through corrupt politicians , with no social media whipping up the frenzy, with no crazy billionaires like Gates fueling the hysteria, COVID-19 passes through history without even a whimper, simply unnoticed.
Some place gets "bad flu" and that's all.
With no WHO and health authorities on an ego trip, with no Big Pharma selling their snake oil through corrupt politicians , with no social media whipping up the frenzy, with no crazy billionaires like Gates fueling the hysteria, COVID-19 passes through history without even a whimper, simply unnoticed.
Some place gets "bad flu" and that's all.
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What makes you think that the COVID-19 vaccine is snake oil?
Buba
A total creep
Vaccinated people are just as likely - if not more, to get Covid.
Do some research - the pandemic is a LIE. According to official hysterics about masks, social distancing and vaccination countries not implementing those measures should look like a Black Death medieval town - only they don't. Something the MSM failed to cover ...
BTW - I sometimes wonder about identical scenario but with AIDS - without modern medicine keeping the Plaguebearers alive, nor mobility awarded by modern tech as pointed out by @Bear Ribs in his post above, would it manage to spread? Or would those contracting HIV get sick and die before passing Nurgle's Blessing outside their communities?
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Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Of the two ways AIDS is primarily spread, both are going to be heavily nerfed.
Blood Transfusions were an early super-spreader, especially in Africa, before they started rigorously testing donated blood and even today a certain amount slips through the tests. Without that medical process existing the early spread of AIDs is going to be extremely reduced.
The other is sex and, in particular, promiscuous sex with multiple partners. While this certainly happened, it wasn't as prevalent as in modern times and this will slow the spread of AIDs, a lot. This is, of course, going to be extremely "Depending on the culture." AIDs spreads more easily from men than women so it went through the Gay community very quickly, the Hetero community significantly slower, and really didn't hit the Lesbian community very hard at all. Cultures more accepting of Homosexuality are going to have a significantly faster spread than cultures that rejected it. There's a fair chance this will lead to cultural changes in which Homosexual behavior is particularly stigmatized and AIDs is seen as a punishment for sin wherever it spreads, but again spread is going to be hard for AIDs.
AIDs may overall make an even poorer showing than COVID, as it's harder to spread and also more lethal causing it to kill its host more often and spread less.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
I probably should have specified all needles instead of just blood transfusions, I got ahead of myself moving on to sex as the only viable means of spread when the re-use of drug needles was also a major spreader event that won't happen in the past. Limiting it to just sex means AIDs can basically be completely beaten by practicing monogamy, and I wouldn't be surprised if similar diseases are part of why monogamy is so stressed by so many ancient civilizations.
It is just slight worst flu.People would not even notice.Becouse those weak enough to die from that would die anyway from other illness.
Um we are sending sick people from the Future to the past. Most sick people have more than just the illness they are afflicted with in their system. Many of us who got vaccinated as children against diseases we have gotten under control. Still carry a small amount of said germs on us. Said germs just can't get us sick. But those same germs entering a population of people who have no such immunity is a recipe for disaster on a global level. This is gonna cause a few million people to die. Not just from Covid but from all the other shit they are carrying that no cures exist for yet.
If they land in a populated area or one connected to a city or something, yeah.
Even though the world wasn't as interconnected as it is now, travel still did happen -- every single one of those ten people are not just Typhoid Mary's but walking, talking incarnations of Pestilence (of Four Horsemen fame).
However, they still wouldn't have the impact that modern globalization had with COVID's spread. Even if a pandemic of one type or another decimated a continent or two, as did smallpox did in the Americas with the native population of the Black Death waves from Asia and into Europe, other continents survived unscathed (e.g. Australia, Africa).
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
First time I have heard about that.
Vaccines work on viruses, and viruses can not reproduce in an organism that has gained immunity through natural or unnatural means.
With bacteria you might have something, but most of the bacterial diseases that existed back then exist now as well, and we really haven't found any new germs in between now and 1850 aside for Ebola and AIDS and a few very rare geographically specific diseases and one-hit wonders like swine and bird flu.
If what you are saying was true then quarantines as practiced since the Dark Ages wouldn't work.
hepatitis and variola for example have probably been around infecting humans since before Christ.
Also, the fact that a particular virus becomes vaccine-resistant, or that a particular bacteria stops responding to antibiotics doesn't mean that it is more dangerous overall.
Evolution favors adaptability, not necessarily hostility, so tha majority of viruses and bacterial in your organism are causing zero harm, with a number of bacteria even turning symbiotic over their evolution.
You can literally have Flu and Cold Virus in your body at the same time. Not to mention the Flus we have now that don't affect us much is due to herd immunity. Immunity that took decades to come about. Now send said people back to a time before such immunity developed. Do you see the problem yet. Also do I have to point out what happened when Europeans first entered the Americas with diseases that had never been seen on the continents. It didn't go well. And we are doing the same in this scenario. All you need is one person with a mild version of some tropical disease to also have Covid and be sent back. That leads to disaster.
Now the OP should have stated that the ROB took away all other infectious diseases from this time period they could be carrying . But he didn't and not the past is fucked.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Yes you can catch two diseases at the same time.
Then hopefully your organism will get its act together and cure you, or at least suppress the virus load to a level where transmission is highly unlikely.
In any case the only thing that could do real damage is a disease with a high R0, and I doubt there are that many of them out there that weren't around before 1850.
You are kinda-sorta speculating here, can you provide a few real examples?
Yes but many of those diseases were in remote jungles. Now you have some of those diseases entering non jungle settings in people from this time period. Congrats Great Great Grandma gets to die from the mild version of Ebola.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
The "mild" ebola has done what most viruses do, adapt to the environment.
Viruses are programmed to reproduce, and killing the host doesn't help.
As Ron Paul saud, viruses naturally become less lethal in contact with humans.
Did the cliffs become less steep as the Mountain Goat evolved?
Did the wind become less powerful as the first birds gradually evolved into eagles?
Did a population that has never had any exposure to Ebola magically get an immunity to it. No no it didn't
The same way Native Americans didn't get a magical immunity to Old World diseases when they were first exposed. Million died from those diseases.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
A lot of people were dying of them already in Europe, too.It just happened more gradually.
The average life expectancy in pre-industrial Europe was about 30 for a reason.
Massive child and infant mortality, and somewhat better medicine and diet.
I think one big point of contention were some smallpox diseased blankets that the colonists allegedly gave to the natives as a means to infect them with smallpox?
Well, smallpox was something that killed lots of Europeans as well, 30% of all infected died from it.
Some antibodies do pass through the womb, but not in the quantity that would make massive difference.
We are all humans, our immune systems all work the same if we are fit.
But if you have some diseases early in life, like smallpox, you are more likely to survive.
Similarly, familiarity with the disease makes symptomatic treatment and quarantining easier.
And we have never seen anything comparable to smallpox arising since 1850 IMHO.
Ixian
Well-known member
Probably all the promises that fell flat on their faces once we actually started getting data on the effectiveness of the vaccines.