Mobile Microbes:

There's a good chance the corona virus had infiltrated the human herd effectively long before we became aware of its presence. It is a modern microbe, taking full advantage of modern technology.

Its ancestors in no way would have been able to launch such an assault on a global scale. Like everybody else, they had to operate locally. There were no high-powered passenger jets moving globe-trotting human carriers to the far corners of the planet.

Think of the poor microbes of ages past, including bacteria, assigned to thin the human herd in densely populated areas. These included cities, large parishes, or just places with too many people.

Those microbes at first had no means of transit other than ox cart or footsmobile. Horses came later when people discovered they were more useful for transit than for food. Microbes carrying cholera, the Black Death, and the Bubonic Plague were unlikely to cross oceans and reduce human surpluses in other cultures.. 

As human technology grew, there came a time when microbes were able to hitch rides on trains and ships. That was during the steam era.

The microbes that introduced the Spanish flu took advantage of the sharp rise in technology that appeared in the course of the first World War 100 years ago.

There's little doubt that hydrocarbon-fuelled transportation and early aerial transit contributed something to the Spanish Flu's mobility. Those microbes took more lives around the planet than the war that facilitated it.

Curiously, the elders were not targeted. It was the youth who had not yet developed enough natural immunity who were decimated.

Of course, 100 years ago the elders were not as old nor in such a vulnerable condition as the elders are today. 

The human species did not have such sophisticated medicine a hundred years ago. No doubt there were very few if any long-term care facilities full of ailing elders.

The Covid 19 microbes are not missing many opportunities. While the politicians posture heroically for the cameras and the medical authorities offer endless advice on how to avoid infection, it's all rather futile.

The rules and regulations launched almost daily to flatten the infection curve result only in extending the time it takes for the plague to do its job and disappear.. 

There's a real possibility they are slamming the gates shut long after the horses have run off..