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The Extinction of Irena Rey

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Jennifer Croft

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“...the disease killed eight thousand...between its first appearance in October 1635 and its eventual disappearance in July 1637...The appalling impact of the plague had two significant consequences. One was that it created a shortage of labor and thus resulted in a rise in wages as employers competed for man-power.”

“All these forms are viral - fascinating, indiscriminate - and their virulence is reinforced by their images, for the modern media have a viral force of their own, and their virulence is contagious. Ours is a culture in which bodies and minds are irradiated by signals and images; little wonder, then, that for all its marvels this culture also produces the most murderous viruses. The nuclearization of our bodies began with Hiroshima, but it continues endemically, incessantly, in the shape of our irradiation by media, signs, programs, networks.”

“Studies show that epidemics caused by viruses began when the human lifestyle changed from hunter-gatherer to agriculture over eleven thousand years ago. Due to a newfound ability to live in one place, humans began investing energy into their homes and land — activities that required many people to work in close proximity to each other.”

“As epidemiologists, we are interested in equilibria because stable equilibria tell us when a system has attained stability -- or where it will, eventually, attain stability. Epidemics are 'extraordinary events'. The term 'outbreak', beloved of the popular media when commenting on epidemics, emphasises that we are dealing with a phenomenon that goes counter to 'business as usual'. Stable equilibria are nothing more than mathematical descriptions of states in which the system can settle again and attain a measure of normalcy.”

“The world came uncomfortably close to a pandemic in late 1989, when – largely overshadowed by the sweeping political changes and the end of the Cold War –, cynomolgus monkeys (crab-eating macaques, Macaca fascicularis) at a quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia, began to succumb with rather frightening rapidity to an outbreak of a haemorrhagic fever.”