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Each epidemic has followed a more-or-less predictable sequence: Sudden introduction and rapid spread in “virgin soil” populations, death and suffering, social disruption and culture change.

The third “virgin soil” epidemic was measles in 1847-48.

And it started with a “virgin soil” epidemic of a deadly “new” disease spread by droplet infection which had no immediate cure — like the coronavirus.

He goes on, “When I think of this familiar technology in that way, a lightsail tumbling in sunlight resembles nothing so much as the wings of a dandelion seed sent off by the wind to fertilize virgin soil.”

In the years preceding the Pilgrims’ arrival, the Native inhabitants of southern New England had been ravaged by what some scientists refer to as a “virgin soil” epidemic.