Pandemics

Infectious diseases have wreaked havoc for thousands of years. A plague affected the Greeks during their siege of Troy during the Trojan War c1200BC. Pandemics spread along trade routes and unravel civilizations. Chronology of pandemics from 3000BC.

Yellow Fever Death

Zoonosis

An infectious disease caused by a pathogen (infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, fungi, parasite or prion) that can be transmitted from an animal to a human and the reverse.

Plague of Athens 430BC

Thucydides describes the symptoms of the Plague. He knew that those who recovered were never attacked twice – never at least fatally.

Plague of Athens, Thucydides Peloponnesian War

Black Death

Killed 75 – 200m in Asia, Europe & North Africa. • In October 1347, 12 Genoese ships from the Black Sea arrived in Messina, Sicily, but were refused (“quarantine”) entry because of the presence of illness. Black rats escaped from the ships and spread the plague through Sicily and into Europe and Africa.

Elite Activity

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron: He was a writer who lived in Florence when the Black Death ravaged the city in 1348. His father was a banker who went bankrupt during the financial crisis of 1340s. He wrote a collection of 100 intimate tales, in the Decameron, told by ten young rich people at a villa retreat to escape the Black Death. Their slogan was; “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.”

Black Death Spread, Silk Road

Black Death & Social Stress

The Black Death was one of the greatest tragedies in recorded human history that psychologically affected the population for hundreds of years. Europe lost from 25% to over 60% of its population. Poor districts in crowded towns had the highest mortality rate. England, with a population of 4.2m, lost 1.4m. The population of Europe only recovered by the 17th c. The plague struck a population that was weakened by the Mini-Ice famine (1315+), agricultural collapse, epidemic of 1340, and banking collapse of the1340s.

Plague Warning Sept. 2020

The US Forest Service issued a “plague warning” that fleas, on ground squirrels, chipmunks, and other wild rodents, have tested positive for the bubonic plague. The bubonic plague still breaks out in Mongolia, India, and parts of the California/Sierra Nevada area.

Great Plague of London 1665-1666

Worst outbreak of plague in England, since the Black Death of 1348. Officially 68,000 people died, but it is estimated that over 100,000 people died. London’s population was around 460,000. The National Archives of Britain say; “rats were attracted by streets filled with rubbish and waste, especially in the poorest areas. ” The elite fled the city and only trickled back by February 1666. The king, Charles II, was absent for two years..

Plague of London, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Pepys, Charles II, Newton

Cholera – Hamburg 1892

In 1817, there was a Cholera outbreak in Bengal (India). It spread worldwide by way of British colonial trade (globalism) and reached Europe by the 1820s. By 1831, it spread into the newly industrialized northeast of England and the port cities of northern Europe. There were six cholera pandemics in the 19th c that killed millions worldwide. The outbreak in Hamburg is highlighted.

Cholera, Hamburg

Social Unrest

People rioted because they suspected that the ruling elite were poisoning them, cholera mainly affected poor areas. This was a period of the rise of socialism and political agitation. Fearing a socialist revolution the elite started to finance research into the origins of cholera. Mary Shelley’s popular novel, Frankenstein (1818), sewed fear because it had a destructive man-like monster.

Yellow Fever

A tropical viral disease spread by mosquitoes. It causes chills, aches, vomiting, and sometimes jaundice that gives yellow fever its name. It affects the liver and kidneys. Half of the victims, of the virus, develop severe symptoms and die within 7 to 10 days.

American Red Cross WWI

The ARC was active during the Spanish Flu outbreak and the Cholera epidemic in China and eastern Russia. It helped spread the concept of hygiene around the world.

Yellow Fever, Spanish Flu, Face Mask

Spanish Flu (1918-1920)

Emerged in the spring of 1918 in the American Midwest. It went unnoticed and traveled with the US troops to Europe to infect many allied troops in WWI. The flu’s first wave was mild, followed by a deadly second wave, and a milder third wave. It killed 20-50m people worldwide and 675,000 people in the US. There were major “anti-mask” protests.

Coronavirus… Covid-19

Information on the virus was affected by the spread of “fake news,” which questioned its danger, spread, and mutations.

In 1998, US Department of Defense warned… “Historians in the next millennium may find that the 20th century’s greatest fallacy was the belief that infectious diseases were nearing elimination. The resultant complacency has actually increased the threat.” Bacterial and viral infections can lay dormant for thousands of years or be transmitted by zoonosis.

Coronavirus, Covid-19, Bronchial Tree, Trump, Hydroxychloroquine, Bleach

Covid-19 & The Elite

Wealthy individuals left large cities to self-isolate in comfort when the pandemic broke out. They bid up the price of rental properties. Some luxury rental units charged over $20,000 per-week. These off-season migrants disrupted local services and spread the virus by partying. This was when New York City had mass burials. Machiavelli, who witnessed the plague in Florence of 1527, felt it was the direct result of misrule by the elite class.

Pandemic State of the Union

Historically Pandemics…

Changed the course of history that was not immediately obvious to the survivors. The Justinian Plague (541-549) helped the spread of Christianity because people looked for divine intervention while the loss of population weakened the Byzantium’s military power against the rival Sassanian Empire and future Arab incursions. The Black Death (1347-1351) resulted in a scarcity of labor that increased wages that had to be paid in coin and not produce. It weakened the feudal system that had existed since Roman times. There were uprisings by labor all over Europe and Henry IV nearly lost power during the Peasants Revolt of 1381. This unrest strengthened towns, the guild system, industrialization, and capitalism, which led to the Renaissance.

Pandemic 2020, V-shaped, U-shaped, W-shaped, L-shaped, K-shaped, Bernanke
Modern Monetary Theory, MMT, Printing Money, MAGA, China

Printing Money – Modern Monetary Theory

An economic idea tried by John Law, in France, by which, fiat money was printed to boost the economy (1719). It produced a massive inflation. MMTers feel that printing notes does not cause inflation but helps economic expansion. Printing money initially boosts the economy, which happened with John Law’s first printing. Benjamin Franklin felt that; “A plentiful Currency will occasion Interest to be low…” …“We have already experienced how much the increase of our Currency by what Paper Money has been made, has encouraged our Commerce…”

Modern Monetary Theory, MMT, Printing Money, MAGA, China

FDR & Depression

FDR, in 1935, gave people jobs to make national parks, etc. instead of printing money for corporate bailouts. Keynes said workers should be given jobs to build up capital in the nation.

Modern Monetary Theory, MMT, Printing Money, MAGA, China

Gold Price Manipulation by Banks

Banks pay fines; promise not to offend but do not go to jail.

Ben Bernanke’s famous quote of 2002 “US dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply.

The Fed “printed” over THREE TRILLION DOLLARS in 2020 to bail-out companies and the elite. This led to a stock market boom.

Progressive & Robber Baron Era (1890s-1920s)

The excesses of the Robber Barons led to social unrest, assassination of President McKinley, bombings on Wall Street, and the establishment of the bank owned Federal Reserve.

Why Gold?, Manipulation, Fed, Ann Rand

Government Bailouts

Greenspan “the Fed Guru” sees the Light after the Panic of 2007

Greenspan told Congress that he was in “shocked disbelief” that his “whole intellectual edifice” had “collapsed.”

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) followed up: “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working.”

Alan Greenspan, Banking & Financial Services Committee

Greenspan replied; “Absolutely, precisely,” “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

Bailout, Money Transfusion, Uncle Sam, Monopoly
Corporate Money Buys, Wall Street, Champagne, Mistress

Phases of Empire

Inflation adjusted wages have not increased since the 1970s. Families have survived by assuming debt in the form of student debt, etc. and became slaves to perpetual credit card debt.

Clean up the Swamp, Uncle Sam, Mosquitoes
Rise & Fall of Empires, End of Empire, Mercury Coin

Post Pandemic Social Strife

Inflation adjusted wages have not increased since the 1970s. Families have survived by assuming debt in the form of student debt, etc. and became slaves to perpetual credit card debt.

Serf, Credit Card, Wall Street, The Iron Heel, Jack London, Benjamin Franklin, Bankers

Debasement of Paper Money

People want money to be: stable, secure, and have a continuity of usage. All paper money, because of excessive printing and of QE, over time becomes worthless. Gold and Silver coins always retain their intrinsic value.

Worthless Paper Money, Gold & Silver Coins, Intrinsic Value

Empires & Money: Gold, Paper Money, Crypto – Money & Fall of Empires • Paul Tawrell • ISBN 978 1 896713 02 1 • Format: 8.375” x 10.875” • Page Count: 384 pages • Four Color: 16 pages & Duotone: 368 pages • US Price: $39.95 • OVER 4000 Images © 2020/2021 Leonard Paul Tawrell