Globalism's Pale Green Steed

Antiquity from Persia to Rome was a proto globalised system with a core stretching from India to the mediterranean and a far-flung periphery reaching as far as Cornwall and perhaps. See tin isotopes placing Cornish tin all over and the theory of the Semitic (Punic) etymology of pfennig and shilling.

Evidence for the much higher industrial activity and wealth of this period is evident in shipwreck counts, and leaded ice cores. Paradoxically we find that skeletons are noticeably smaller in this more prosperous period.

What is the reason for smaller skeletons during wealthier times? Were they wealthy and more productive but eating less food? No, one of the advantages of globalisation is that periodic local famines have a reduced impact because food surpluses can be brought in from elsewhere, or population can more easily move to where there is food. I reject the idea that barbarians feasted on meat, berries, and cream, while farmers ate porridge for every meal - carrying capacity is not just for farmers. No, the most likely explanation is the interconnected community led to an increase in disease burden, which stunted health and growth.

A disease will spread until the population develops immunity, then it dies out without a reservoir. In a large, civilized population, unimmunized children are born at a sufficient rate that the population never quite develops herd immunity, and the disease will cycle endlessly. Plagues and People suggest the required population pool begins around 300k. A population is defined as having continuous inter-contact amongst itself and thus reliably transmits any disease.

These endemic diseases have ample opportunity to evolve to their host and match their defenses. Most diseases in these circumstances will evolve towards high infectiousness and generally innocuous (incapacitating your victim makes them a poor vector). But not all.

Can disease load lead to long term poor health and stunted growth? I believe it does. My notes:

Discovery that recent spike in colorectal cancer is linked to the bacteria colibactin.

Shingles vaccine - improves several longevity markers. See also Hepatitis, and others which require constant suppression.

The absolutely massive blind spot that longevity experts like Sinclair have is metagenomics: Once you realize that the “diseases of aging” almost all share microbes as an accelerant (heart disease, arthritis, periodontal disease, neurodegeneration, cancer) and that mouse longevity studies are conducted in ‘germ free’ environments, you can’t unsee it. For example, NAD is depleted by CD38 in humans to restrain intracellular microbial growth but we supplement it (and NMN, etc because it extends lifespan in germ free mice in a wet lab. Quote from Zedzies @Zedzies on X.com

Antibiotics are still the greatest longevity intervention ever developed. x.com/agingbiology/s…

H. Pylori - how many other health conditions and symptoms of ‘aging’ will turn out to be caused by a pathogen? Pylori shows decreasing genetic diversity with distance from E. Asia, i.e. its spread was recent and rapid, certainly since 1492.

There is evidence that birth order effects (on things like income and educational attainment) are in part respiratory pathogen effects: younger kids get more of them from their older siblings. Estimated at 70% responsible for the birth order effects.

Diseases going global since 1492: Pretty much all of them. Some highlights: Megadeath in the new world from the old world diseases, Syphilis, Moctezuma’s revenge, influenza, cholera, smallpox, malaria. The substantial death toll of these is well known and high. What we don’t know is how much human flourishing was inhibited among the survivors.

But that’s all in the past, right? We’ve beaten disease with sanitation and antibiotics, and with more targeted but weaker interventions (vaccines, drugs) mopping up or at least containing the last holdouts not beaten by the big two.

That’s only true for most major diseases. But what if the minors also have a cumulative effect, and count towards disease load? How many rhinoviruses are now circulating? How many different strains of flu does a person encounter in their lifetime? How much has this number increased as the world has gotten smaller?

Should we not expect in the increasingly food rich, safe and stable world that we live in that height, athleticism, intelligence, &c., &c. should keep on increasing? Instead, we see a rise in obesity, a plague of poor mental health, unhappiness, and

Objection: Everyone knows obesity and poor mental health are caused by modern conditions. How sure are we? The body has systems in place to prevent overeating and maintain a stable weight, leptin, ghrelin, &c. That shows us, if we didn’t already know by observing real life hunter-gatherers, that conditions of food abundance are a common event in our evolutionary past. I find it hard to believe that our modern world is more stressful and traumatic than the past. Remember, everyone “knew” ulcers were caused by diet and stress, until the actual cause was discovered.

Keep in mind also that the “innocuous” pathogen is only for the short-term sense - until the host has infected others. Endemicity also selects for lurking inside the hosts tissues and re-emerging at opportune (stressed and run down) times. And the pathogen has no selection pressures against long term damage.

Most likely globalism is around to stay for the next few generations, lurching from crisis to crisis, while steadily declining in population, and other resources underlying the system. In other words, a long decline before the fall - a Roman Empire type scenario. These mitigations should be read as brainstorms, and with half an eye to incorporating them into a punk Byzantine or punk gunpowder worldbuilding, rather than well thought out policy proposals for the here and now.

Childhood exposure (Age) - Interesting notes from the Napoleonic French army that conscripts from Paris and other cities tended to be weak and scrawny compared to the rural recruits. But the rural recruits got sick and died at alarming rates, presumably because of a differential in disease exposure. The question is what is the best age to expose children to diseases? This is assuming that for some period of time you are willing to keep kids isolated in the home or neighborhood. Ages 10-12 seem best, between the vulnerable childhood growth periods and when the delicate reproductive system is stood up. These ages are when all-cause mortality is the lowest, confirming the general robustness of this age.

I’m lumping vaccines in with disease exposure because while I assume that vaccines are far less dangerous than disease exposure they still have some dangers - the rationale for including mercury in vaccines is you have to cause some damage to reliably activate the immune system, and vaccine testing is usually against a ‘placebo’ that has the same provoking agent. And poking the bear of the immune system occasionally causes overreactions.

This is probably not practical, for example how do we keep older siblings from exposing younger. Boarding schools for this age, and quarantine before they go home?

Quaranta - 40 days of the year when travel is reduced to a minimum and people stay home. I’m assuming this would be during winter, and the time best designed to disrupt the onset of winter diseases such as flu. Travel restrictions are onerous so this is probably best if it were something like an extended holiday season. We might be able to reduce this to two weeks.

Reduce Travel. Something as simple as requiring international flights to have larger seats. Anathema to the core of our system though. And I’m not sure if ‘slow the spread’ by reducing the level of interpopulation contact without abolishing it would actually accomplish anything useful.

Air sanitation - UV light incorporated into air circulation systems and designed to pull air from people to filters. Routinely incorporate into heating systems, cooling systems, and air flow designs, especially in public places.

Voluntary sanitation procedures. Something like this seems to have already happened in places with a long history of lots of people living close together. Things like washing hands, sneezing is impolite, stay home if you are sick, and mask up.

Contrarian - Lean into disease to develop a competitive edge. Have lots of kids, expose them early and often. Avoid basic sanitation, swim in sewage. Live with livestock. Don’t wash hands, and shake hands often. Live in close quarters with strangers.

It occurs to me that research on birth order and disease could help us calculate how big the impact of disease load (for childhood development) is. The article is Germs in the Family: The Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Intra-Household Disease Spread

Disease load = (birth order effect) x 70% x (nth born children disease exposure)/(1st born disease exposure)

The last two terms are a ratio. How much more are nth born children exposed to disease than first born? From the article these later born children are 2-3 times more likely to be hospitalized than first borns for respiratory conditions. But they have the same disease exposure when school age (approx half their childhoods). But the developmental window is more sensitive when younger. From the article the negative lifelong effects of exposure is roughly double in the first six months so less than the rough magnitudes we are considering here.

Assumption - nth born children have twice the exposure to disease (in childhood)

The birth order effect due to disease is about 1 percent less lifetime earnings, academic attainment, &c.

So we calculate a two percent effect. For comparison, first cousing inbreeding leads to approximately 8% lower life time earnings, so childhood disease exposure is about a quarter. We are not worrying about adolescent disease exposure or adult exposure which has direct and long term effects. It’s not unreasonable that modern disease load has an effect similar to common first cousin marriages in ancient times. I suppose that answers the question of how these societies kept on functioning in those conditions - their inbreeding depression may have been partially offset by not having our disease load. Of couse when a disease did show up, it really wrecked them.