THREAD: As I think about #Coronavirus, I’m re-reading William McNeill’s classic “Plagues and Peoples.” McNeill shows how the native Indians in the Americas died in very large numbers due to diseases, brought by the white man, for which they had no immunities (1)
This of course refutes the crude “genocide” theory perpetrated by progressive historians like David Stannard and Tzvetan Todorov. Genocide implies an intention to exterminate a population. Viruses aren’t racist, nor do they exhibit intention in this sense (2)
Interestingly, McNeill shows, the white man himself got these diseases, including the ones hat caused the Black Plague, which decimated a third of Europe, from Mongolia and northern Asia. Remarkably progressives never accuse the Asians of causing “genocide” in Europe (3)
As far as I know we haven’t faced a pandemic of this sort in a long while. This #Coronavirus surprised us. But as humans, we’ve been here before and endured worse. And we are in a better position now, in terms of medicine, technology and information, to get through this one (4)
