16 May

Sorry if you’ve just eaten. This is the Black Plague (it really is black), alive and well in the 21st century. This man had removed a mouse from his cat’s mouth, to stop the cat from choking. The reason I posted this is my passion for microbes, and I suspect seeing something like this is one reason we approach microbes the wrong ways. Plagues destroy all social distinctions. It doesn’t matter how rich or poor or powerful you are, plague will get you. They’re great levellers. But we think plagues are a problem with microbes, and lose sight of the fact it’s the social distinctions that are mostly responsible. Microbes are living things, in fact the only living things (we are just colonies of microbes). The reason they become virulent it’s now thought is not because they’re nasty - they NEED us as hosts - but because we give them the social conditions that favour virulence. Like hospitals or aged care facilities, if a microbe sees many other potential hosts nearby, it will become more virulent because it doesn’t lose much if it kills you, it can easily skip to a new host. Outside those crowded conditions, the same microbes don’t have virulent strains, and cause few problems. So poor social conditions - crowding etc. - create virulent microbes. And then we get epidemics, pandemics and even plagues, which smash those restrictive social conditions; they’re actually a corrective, though you won’t think that if you’re one of the poor victims.