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All of the Indians, generally speaking, have such a horror and fear of hospitals, that it is not possible to persuade them to go to them to be healed, because they respond that they will die.

Paul F. Ramirez (2018): Enlightened Immunity: Mexico's Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason. Standford: Stanford University Press, p. 12

Spanish priest in Oaxaca, Mexico.

According to Ramirez (2018: 12), many speeches condemned indigenous people who opposed the epidemic measures taken by the Spaniards as “superstitious”. However, their fear was not unfounded, as the first Europeans brought smallpox, measles, flu and typhus with them, against which the indigenous population had no defences. Thus most indigenous people fell victim not to the Europeans’ superior weapons, but to their epidemics. According to scientific estimates, up to 95 percent of the population in large parts of the double continent was killed within just 100 years (Wagner 2020). Today, argues the epidemiologist Rob Wallace, new pathogens in the form of diseases for humans, other fauna and flora are constantly being created, thanks in part to the destruction of nature and habitats, factory farming‚ and the capitalist economy’s promotion of profit over nature, people and health (Wallace 2020).

*Der Freitag (Thomas Wagner, 28.09.2020): Der Viren-WirtPandemie Hinter Covid-19 stehen Massentierhaltung und Raubbau, also der Neoliberalismus, erklärt Rob Wallace. Der Freitag 38/2020. *Rob Wallace (2020): Competing with Nature: COVID-19 as a Capitalist Virus (Interview by Ashley Smith). Spectre Journal 16.10.2020.

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