or why we don’t know what day it is.
We are 5 cycles into the 14th Pandemic of the Modern Era.
Or Pan25, using the old method, counting from Pan-zero, the Justain Plague.
There can be some debate as to the actual number of plagues. Not just those caused by Yersina pestis but other bacteria, viruses, parasites, insects, and in some cases, just a plague of invasive Homo sapiens.
Decimal year counting seems to have fallen into disuse. It’s not that calendars do not mean anything anymore; it’s just that they have little relevance to the everyday life of humans.
You might wonder how we got here, in this modern era, living in Pan14.
In the distant ancient days, before the first large cities, outbreaks would do their damage, decimate a population, and all would return to the earth as jungle, forest, ocean or sand. A few of the smarter genetic invaders would roll up into a ball and wait, for years, decades or even centuries for an opportune moment to make their presence known. This often caused surprise and chagrin to the local host organism. Injury and death could also be part of the package.
Things were going well for the humans and their domesticated foods after finding, some 80 years ago, that mold pee could kill the simple gram-negative bacteria, Escherichia coli. Once the humans found that it could also kill Treponema pallidum, commonly known as our friend syphilis, there was no stopping the antibiotic revolution. With wide distribution of these antibiotics, the decimal based years ticked along on a regular basis.
The know-nothing, vaccine-fearful, low-wattage dominant species, living on this wet space ball they called home, expanded the ignorance of their actions and pushed Pan Year counting forward.
Genetic pressures on bacteria, spurred along by distribution problems, practically guaranteed antibiotics resistance and re-vitalization of the prokaryotes as the driving force of evolution. Viruses did not directly benefit, nor were they harmed from these anti-life drugs.
Not respiring, ever, proved to be good protection against attack.
Our evil, to us, prokaryotic organisms have never really left, but have bubbled along quietly in the living soup of our planet.
During the antibiotic age, every time a dangerous genetic pattern popped its tiny head above the bubbling soup-life, scientists would identify, search and find another prokaryotic, plant, or method to exploit for its killing power.
Pandemics were kept in their place, with these native or designed anti-prokaryotes. The found or manufactured weapons were often tweaked to be more deadly, and occasionally more specific. Outbreaks were held to a low boil, swatted down as soon as they appeared. Constant surveillance, tracking, and action were the keys, rarely needing to resort to quarantine or the dreaded hand-washing with soap and water.
Sexually transmitted pandemics were shamed and poisoned into submission. Wars would bring out sexual disease spikes, but enteric and zoonotic diseases, washed into the trenches, made the sexual disease outbreaks appear as a humorous side effect.
Infected rodents always gave a thrill to an active PanYear, both in war and peacetime, but cats, plant extracts or pied pipers would rapidly knock down those little shockers and the fleas they carried.
This constant battle between the single-celled, multi-homed and the encapsulated multi-cellular organisms never seems to end. Darwinian selection from both sides drives change and adaptations, keeping the living world in an adversarial balance.
It isn’t all Strum und Drang between the single and multi-cells organisms. Many species adapt and became symbiotic with their hosts, the single-celled colonies quietly living and even helping, changing the chemistry with their pee and dead cells to ward off newcomers.
We all become populated with our families’ selected colony population, through the birth canal or the environment. Mostly good, sometimes bad, and occasionally interesting when alcohol-based yeast colonizes and pees in some poor souls’ stomach.
The fight continues, each seeking a balance on this wet, salty planet. There are still a few billion years to continue this battle. One can only imagine the outcomes.