Disease and colonialism

History is written by the victors

Quotes from this article How Europeans bought disease to the New World my comments in brackets and italics.

‘When the Taino gathered on the shores of San Salvador Island to welcome a small party of foreign sailors on 12 October 1492, they had little idea what lay in store (so true). They laid down their weapons willingly and brought the foreign sailors—Christopher Columbus and his crewmen—tokens of friendship: parrots, bits of cotton thread, and other presents. Columbus later wrote that the Taino "remained so much our friends that it was a marvel."

‘In April 1520, Spanish forces landed in what is now Veracruz, Mexico, unwittingly bringing along an African slave (they are trying to blame an enslaved African person) infected with smallpox (why did the slave traders not get smallpox as there was no vaccine until 1796? Why was a vaccine then necessary if Europeans already had immunity, though there is no evidence that having it or cowpox once gives immunity for a second time?). Two months later, Spanish troops entered the capital of the Aztec Empire (they invaded, terrified, pillaged and possibly restricted the Aztec’s access to fresh water or even deliberately contaminated it) and by mid-October the virus was sweeping through the city (depicted above in images from the Florentine codex, a document written by a 16th century Spanish friar), killing nearly half of the population, which scholars today estimate at 50,000 to 300,000 people. The dead (not necessarily with impressive pustules as in the Friar’s picture; the diagnosis of so-called smallpox was based on the presence of fever, headache, tiredness, muscle pain, back pain and vomiting, not unexpected when your city and resources have been taken from you and your children, family and life threatened) included the Aztec ruler, Cuitláhuac, and many of his senior advisers. By the time Hernán Cortés and his troops began their final assault (massacre) on Tenochtitlán, bodies lay scattered over the city, allowing the small Spanish force to overwhelm the shocked defenders.’ (End of quotation from above article). Thousands of people do tend to die suddenly when they are invaded and killed.

Europeans who arrived in the Americas also brought alcohol which they happily gave to indigenous people, to make them addicted and drunk, in exchange for their land. Europeans also burnt their villages and murdered millions, excusing themselves with unwittingly bringing diseases they had natural immunity to. This was way before vaccination had begun so how come Westerners were already immune to these diseases? Or rather how come Westerners stopped having immunity to smallpox by the time the lethal vaccination was being marketed?

Now Gates et al ‘donate’ part of the funding for unnecessary and toxic vaccines to be given to people in developing countries; sometimes making their governments bankrupt in paying the difference. This extorted money from poor countries goes straight into Gates’ companies and fortune. At the same time these vaccines cause death and devastating illness.

There is still no evidence that smallpox is a separate disease rather that a collection of detox symptoms. There is no specific and calibrated test for it; the genetic fragments and proteins used have never been shown to come from a virus, nor that the virus causes the disease.

The indigenous populations were not devastated by viruses but by the toxic vaccines which were forced upon them, such as by the 1832 Indian Vaccination Act for example, which allowed invaders to control them and take their land.

It’s still happening.

Jo

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Jo