eli5: Why Weren’t European Colonizers As Impacted By New World Diseases as The Natives were by European Diseases?
In: Biology
The New World didn’t have any pandemic style diseases. The only major one might have been syphillis.
CGP Grey does a good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk) about it.
In short, to create a pandemic sized disease, it needs to come from animals, and needs a large and dense population to survive. The New World lacked domesticated animals, and they lack dense cities. The absence of these two factors made diseases in the New World rare, and if they occur, they would have burn out rather quick.
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