A horrible plague sweeps across eastern North America. Few are spared. Mortality rates are almost incomprehensibly to modern Americans. 50%. 90%. 95%. 100%. What were once thriving communities are left as little more than collections of the dead. Recovery -- what they call recovery, anyway -- takes decades, if not longer. But calling it a recovery rings hollow; things will never be the same. And for smaller, more vulnerable groups, there can be no recovery at all.
It sounds like something out of an overblown drama. But in the 16th and 17th centuries (further west, into the 18th), it was the reality of smallpox among Native Americans. Whole cultures, like the Gaunches of the Canary Islands, were extinguished. By any metric, the loss is virtually impossible to measure. It was one of the worst pandemics in human history, rivaled only by the great plagues of European antiquity: the Antonine Plague, the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death.
It is a tragic chapter of human history, and worthy of further examination ... but not here. Because this diary series isn't about human tragedy. Eastern North America is again bearing witness to a horrible plague, from the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, down to the American Upland South -- so far. As before, the mortality rates are almost so high as to be unbelievable. 90%. 95%. 100%. Communities of thousands have been wiped out in a single season. For less populous groups, the specter of complete elimination looms.
But this plague has not become the news story to end all news stories, or an impetus for widespread panic. It has only barely entered the media's attention at all. Because this isn't a human pandemic.
It is killing bats.
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