[blackdog]

Donald Trump’s great, great, great, great, great grandfather was the cause. Both times.

[FreedomOfExpression]

Answer from testing of teeth from 11 victims: Salmonella enterica. The bacteria that causes paratyphoid fever.
This was in the decades after Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico in the 1500s.

[miss marmelstein]

Why does the world blame Americans for genocide when it was clearly the Spaniards!

[Red Badger]

Climate change.....................

[libertylover]

Paratyphoid fever spreads through food or water contaminated with the feces of a sick person.

So you might be a "shithole" country if your people eat or drink food or water contaminated with feces.

[WayneS]

Paratyphoid fever spreads through food or water contaminated with the feces of a sick person. Today, it usually breaks out when people live in poor, crowded conditions. It’s possible that the Spanish, in addition to bringing the bacteria, relocated people and instituted agricultural practices that exacerbated its spread.

It is also "possible" that the existing culture and agricultural practices of the native peoples served to exacerbate the spread of the virus - assuming this particular virus is even the culprit.

[RegulatorCountry]

European colonization is always the implied causation but are there any accounts that would lend credence to the notion of Europeans being somehow immune or less affected by this than the native population(s)? Was salmonella not present in the Americas prior to Spanish colonization?

[null and void]

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

[anton]

I had a bad feeling after eating a taco in Sonora.

[Varda]

Well that was a weak argument for Salmonella. They also don’t know if it’s indigenous. There are all sorts of reasons you might find a bacteria on one corpse and not another.

So far the best bet is it was an indigenous hemoragic fever. I give a lot of credence to the evidence that the natives identified the killer themselves, “cocolitzli”. Meso-american health had been on a decline for centuries, they were sometimes struck with massive epidemics.

[freefdny]

Does Neil Young have to change the song tfrom Cortez the Killer to Cocolitzli the Killer?

[Wuli]

Of the 2 million residents remaining in Mexico, after the epidemics killed off 90% of the population, then what portion were true NATIVES - ethnically - of Mexico and what portion were Spanish colonialists and their descendants? You’d think the sources of the population figures given in the report would contain that answer. Curious minds want to know what it is.