Mexico, Central, and South America — Turn off your air conditioning! Polynesians too! In public and private buildings. (Including shopping malls and stores.)
I have a manuscript I abandoned in 2009 on the Native American Disease Holocaust. At the bottom, I am releasing my citation notes. There are records from the earliest colonies of 95% die-off of Native Americans from exposure to influenza, and what appeared to be likely cold viruses that just made the settlers ill without killing anyone. Note that most coronaviruses have cold-like symptoms.
The Americas have a high fraction of native Americans and it gets much higher as you go south. Native Americans died in the 1917–18 pandemic at much higher rates. One village in northern Canada had 50% total population loss with the best supportive care of the time. I read, and then lost a report that an island in the Pacific had 100% death of Polynesians from influenza — 700 altogether.
In the continental USA, there are few Native Americans without some Caucasian/Asian/African HLA genes to confer resistance. As you go south of the US border, and way out into the northern parts of Canada and Alaska, this becomes less the case. The deserts, the altiplano and very moist and warm jungle environments helped protect them from enveloped aerosol viruses.
But now, air conditioning is ubiquitous in the south. So that protection by heat and humidity is no longer present.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2893155/
Whether there is a correlation between native American genetic heritage (e.g. Latinos) and influenza mortality is an open question. Records weren’t kept, and literature mostly attributes mortality differentials to poverty. I don’t believe that is the only reason for it.
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2009.161505
Manuscript Citation Notes.
Web sites:
http://influenza.sph.unimelb.edu.au/MOH_TOC.php#
http://ykalaska.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/bulletin_of_the_history_of_medicine/v076/76.1johnson.pdf
http://www.virology.ws/influenza-101/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/02/aborigine.swine.flu/index.html — Manitoba, more swine flu in aboriginals. 10% of population & 2/3 of total cases.
Of Plymouth Plantation(1)
Pg 65 — Chap x
Discovery of stores of corn, no people in houses.
Pg 72 — Found fields of corn planted
Pg 81 — “He was a native … scarce any left alive besides himself.” — 1620, June 30.
Pg 87 — “People not many … 3 years prior (1617) thousands died. Not able to bury one another.” Plague. (See: Mourts Relation.)
Pg 99 — Squanto made Indians believe colony kept plague in the ground. This terrified the other Indians.
Pg 177 — Plague in London 1625 — Get stats on that.
Pg 260 — Disease swept away many Indians 1633. 20 Plymouth dead from all the places near adjoining.
Pg 270 — (1634) Indians — Out of a thousand, above 9 and a half hundred of them had died, and many of them did rot above ground fro want of burial. (3–4 Dutch went to live the winter with them.)
Those Indians that lived about their trading house there fell sick of smallpox. .. they fear it more than plague. Very fewy of them escaped. (What is plague? Common term for respiratory infection of the time.)
Smallpox has worse manifestation in Indians.
American Indian Holocaust and Survival(2).
Pg xvi — Introduction. Fig P-1 Population curve.
Pg 5 — Origins in Asia
Pg 9 — Best estimate of isolation period.
Pg 11 — tens of millions of Indians developed over 25,000 years in the Americas.
Tens of thousands of Eskimos and Aleuts
Pg 15 Size of populations range of estimates — 100 to 120 thousand(3). 7–8 MM(4).
10 MM in Mexico(5).
Pg 17 — Catlin — 16 MM in north America(6).
500,000 in 1894 — US Census(7).
16 million maximum in 1492.
Pg 23 — Twentieth Century Estimation Table 2–1
Pg25 — Denevan. 43–72 MM in Hemisphere.
Pg 26 — N. Am. Range of estimates 2–5 MM.
Pg 29 — Ubelaker’s revised Table 2–7. also, he finds a straight line in 19th century for decline.
Pg 30 — Nadir population 250K 1890–1900(7, 8).
Pg 31 — N. Am. Population table 2–8.
Pg 32–33 Tribal population totals(9, 10).
Pg 37 — Skeletal remains show estimated life expectancy.
Pg 39 — Table 2–10.
Note that New England’s Prospect(11) discusses long life span, table shows short. Perhaps evidence of child mortality? Perhaps Wood was selling and not fully aware? Clearly, Squanto lived far longer than the expectancy.
Pg 40 — List of diseases already present.
Bacillary and amoebic dysentery; viral influenza and pneumonia, arthritides, rickettsial fevers, viral fevers, American Leishmaniasis, Am. Trypanosomiasis, roundworms and other endoparasites, non venereal syphilis and pinta, pellagra, misc bacterial pathogens, salmonella, Hanta virus(12). May include a mild typhus.
I doubt very much influenza should be in that list.
Pg 41 — However, Butlin says Europeans introduced influenza to Australians. His list of introductions is: venereal syphilis, gonorrhea, measles, whooping cough, influenza and smallpox(13).
43–1800 the total population was 600,000 Indians in the USA(7).
Pg 47 — Ashburn — “Conquest of America … the most striking example of the influence of disease upon history…”
Pg 49 — War deaths. 45K direct. 500K indirect.
Mooney:286 Northern California destruction of Indians. 250K people 20K people from massacres by miners and settlers(14).
Pg 54 — Smallpox, measles, influenza, TB affect fertility(15).
TB has strong effect on coitus & fertility.
Indians could cut their infection rate by dispersing, but only on the open plains where they would not run into others(16).
There is a dangling reference here from residence patterns preservation(17).
Pg 55 — Genetic drift from depopulation. (I think it only appears to be drift because it is actually strong evolution of immunity that randomly selects other characteristics.)
Pg 63 — The most spectactular period of mortality among Am. Indians … the first 100 years of contact.
Pg 64–75% smallpox mortality?
Pg 66 — Roanoke epidemic(18). — Strong candidate for respiratory virus.
“The people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some townes about 20; in some 40; in some 60, in some 6 score, which in trueth was very manie in respect of their numbers. … The disease also so strange …” None of the English colonizers died or got especially sick. Not typhus.
Pg 71 — First great smallpox plague 1616–1617. It was intense around Boston Bay(19).
1617–1619. 90% mortality. “Died in heaps.”(20)
Post 1630–1640 smallpox endemic. Multiple waves attacking susceptibles(21).
Pg 74–50–66% mortality of hurons believed to be smallpox. In a three year period.
Pg 75 — Increase Mather. Entire towns w/ no survivors of smallpox.
Pg 76 — Smallpox and other diseas up from Mexico in 152–25.
Pg 78 — Smallpox every 7 years in the 18th Century(19).
Pg 82–3 epidemics of influenza per Dobyns. 18th Century.
TB epidemic with 222/256 infected acute mortality in a 358 person population. 1763–1764.
Pg 91 — Dobyns records 27 19th century epidemics of O.W. pathogens. 13 smallpox, 5 measles, 3 cholera, 2 influenza.
Pg 103 — The intermittent Fever of lower Columbia River(22). 75% mortality in those infected. Can’t be malaria.
Pg 103 — Extreme manifestations in population at first exposure of an acute generalized illness(23). By third generation, had gone to the normal type. A later author claims TB in Indians is the same as in Whites, just more of it, based on economic conditions(24).
Pg 104 — Sioux and Kiowa winter counts. Mallery 1877b:15, 1886:108, 1893:276 from 1813–1814. Decline from smallpox.
Mallery 1886: 109–10, 1893:277, from 1818–1819. Measles, cholera, smallpox.
Mallery, 1893:322 foro 1845–56 & 1860–61. Reasonable to assume nutritional compromise and general stress during this period.
Cholera killed ½, worse than smallpox in 1849. Kiow remember 1849 cholera as worst disease that killed hundreds. Measles killed over 200 Kiowa in 1892.
114–1738–1739 Cherokee population reduced by 50% from 22,000 to 13,000.
Pg 124–19th century undernourishment.
Pg 124–125 Kalapuya in Oregaon’s Willamette Valley. See table.
1830–31 Possible influenza, per Ratcliff. 1973: 27(25). Greater losses than smallpox in 1780.
Pg 126 — Tables of population decline. Not very useful, because they don’t show epidemics.
Pg 130–131 — Epidemics among Texas Indians. 1528–1892(26)
Pg 243 — Years of various epidemics.
South American Indians : a case study in evolution
/ Francisco M.
Salzano and Sidia M. Callegari-Jac
Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1988.
Chapter 4 — Disease patterns
Miranda, J.A.N 1985 Trabalho que vem sando realizado
Hurtado-Hurtado-Hill-Public Health and Adaptive Immunity Among Natives of South America-2003 .pdf
Pg 103 — Table 5.9 Infectious agents found in isolated Amazonian Indian populations.
Pg 102 — Weir & Pereira — Studies of influenza antibodies.
Pg 104 Para 3. Claims of normal response to vaccine meaning that Indians high mortality not genetically related. (This is not correct. Because vaccination is quite different than illness.)
Infectious Disease Patterns in the Waorani, an Isolated Amerindian Population*
Jonathan E. Kaplan, James W. Larrick, James Yost, Larry Farrell, Harry B. Greenberg, Kenneth L. Herrmann, Alexander J. Sulzer, Kenneth W. Walls AND Lois Pederson
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7369449
The Ongoing evolution of Latin American populations. Edited by
Francisco M. Salzano.
Springfield, Ill., Thomas (1971)
James V. Neel — 100% of Yanomama w/ malaria in a remote village indicates that it was a recent introduction. 406 sera w/ 155 w/ Ab to 1 or more yellow fever antigens.
Page 577 — Village attack rates = 100%
~ 50% of Yanomama aborted or infanticide.
NOTES ON THE EFFECT OF MEASLES AND MEASLES VACCINE IN A VIRGIN-SOIL POPULATION OF SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS
JAMES V. NEEL, WILLARD R. CENTERWALIA, NAPOLEON A. CHAGNON and HELEN L. CASEY — 1970 (1968)
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/4/418
Infectious Diseases in Primitive Societies.
Intensified Reactions to Measles Vaccine in Unexposed Populations of American Indians
F. L. Black, W. Hierholzer, J. P. Woodall and F. Pinhiero
The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol. 124, №3 (Sep., 1971), pp. 306–317
(article consists of 12 pages)
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30108455
Confounder — Indian’s expect to die per Neel.
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