I can’t help but think if we didn’t live in such a dense agrarian techno-industrial globalised world a pandemic like this would never have happened. It only spread quickly because of extreme globalisation. COVID has lead to so much preventable disability and death.
Edit: Maybe I have a different definition of anaracho primitivism to you all but I’m reading through the lense of James C Scott’s Against the Grain, and the problems with the agricultural revolution.
Remember back in 1665, when globalization was not yet a thing? When people lived in the land, hardly moving more than a days walk from their birth place in their whole life? And still the black death came and took half the population.
Please read my edit and the first thread of comments. My intention was to discuss pre-agricultural revolution.
Pre-agricutural revolution, i.e. when people were nomadic? Guess what, they had pandemics even back then. They took a little longer to travel, they did not cross from Europe to the Americas or vice versa, but as long as people move from one point of the world to another, diseases travel with them. And spread.
Read against the grain by James C Scott. It was exceedingly rare. And the modalities of covid wouldn’t have allowed it, given the group dynamics of hunter gatherer society.
As Science put it, that theory is “fascinating” and “speculative”. Which mirrors my impression of the book.