Q: Do you think that the plague is the crucial but random factor in our own future? A: The epidemiologists think so, which is why they’re on red alert most of the time. We think we know how to deal with what’s there now. We almost know. Somebody lets smallpox out—and don’t think they didn’t keep stores of it—a lot of people are going to be in trouble, because they stopped vaccinating people for smallpox some time ago. Some of the old diseases that we think are gone—case in point, measles—are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we’re getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you’re going to get outbreaks and you’re going to get death. In my generation, diphtheria and polio were still big killers. You heard awful stories about polio, and several of my cousins died of diphtheria. Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars. Margaret Atwood macleans.ca/culture/books/margaret-atwood-on-plague-comic-end-times-and-human-nature/
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 03:46:11 +0000