Why people don’t die or get serious flu or infection when they travel to different continent? Won’t our immune system get exposed to altogether different kinds of bacteria and viruses?

Question

There had been many incidents in history when people from other continents brought outbreak of diseases along with them (for eg, diseases brought by the Spaniards to the Incas), why such things doesn’t happen today, atleast not on a large scale?

Also I’m not from science background, so sorry if the question was dumb.

In: Biology

Answer 1

You can and many people do get sick while traveling. But its not like when we were discovering new countries. Back then, people were seperated, so one group in a far land would have their own bacterial culture than another.

Now we travel wide and far frequently. People from other countries come to our own and expose us to those baceria and viruses.

So basicly, on a global scale, the mixture of bacteria is more uniform today than it was in the past. We now have more exposure to a wider array of bacteria that helps boost our immune system against them.