“It’s quite clear that there is a potential for this virus to become a pandemic and threaten globally,” said World Health Organization spokesman Peter Cordingly, advising caution. “We don’t know enough yet about how this virus operates. More work needs to be done,” he said.

Russia, China and Taiwan have already moved to quarantine visitors to those nations. The European Union has advised against nonessential travel. The U.S. has begun “passive screening” at its borders.  Cases of swine flu have been reported by New Zealand and Spain in travelers recently returned from Mexico. Yet, as this is being written on Monday, April 27, the government of Mexico has not yet closed the airport in Mexico City, one of the areas hardest hit by the swine flu outbreak. 

Travelers can quickly spread infectious diseases across national borders. Even before they realize they are ill, airline passengers can spread viruses all around the world. One infected person can transmit the disease organism to fellow passengers, breathing the same recirculated air inside a plane for hours en route to connecting flights or final destinations. Within days of an outbreak in one remote city, disease carriers can be walking the streets of cities on every continent.

History relates the disastrous effects of plague spread by travelers. In 430 BC, typhoid fever killed one-quarter of Athens’ troops fighting in the Peloponnesian War, as well as a quarter of the city-state’s population. Soldiers returning from the Near East brought the “Antonine Plague” (possibly smallpox) to the Italian peninsula from 165-180 AD, where it killed one out of four who contracted it.  An estimated five million people lost their lives in the first round of the outbreak, and in the second round 5,000 per day are said to have died in just the city of Rome alone.

Bubonic plague was first recorded in the time of the Roman Emperor Justinian, and it spread from 541-750 AD. At its height, according to the Byzantine chronicler Procopius, 10,000 people daily were dying in Constantinople, and the disease wiped out 40 percent of the city’s population. Somewhere between one-quarter and one-half of the known world’s human population died of the bubonic plague during these years! Between 550 and 700 AD, Europe’s population was cut in half! Later, when merchant seamen reintroduced bubonic plague to the continent in 1348, 20-30 million Europeans died within six years!  

Other pandemics, including outbreaks of cholera, typhus and influenza, have slain millions down through the centuries. If you believe that such a tragedy cannot happen in our day of modern medical “miracles,” then think again! Right now, the scourge of HIV and AIDS is raging around the world, and its death toll in Africa alone may reach 90-100 million in just 16 years. For a startling in-depth review of the current state of the world’s health, visit the World Health Organization website. 

God warned us, centuries ago: "If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD, then the LORD will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues—great and prolonged plagues—and serious and prolonged sicknesses.  Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in this Book of the Law, will the LORD bring upon you until you are destroyed” (Deuteronomy 28:58-61).

In a few short years, when medical facilities are overrun with the sick and dying, to whom will you turn to save your life—and the lives of your loved ones? Read Does God Heal Today?  For additional insights into what to expect just before Christ returns, see our booklet Fourteen Signs Announcing Christ's Return. Those who are prepared spiritually will have protection far beyond what medicine can offer!

See Also:
Is there a solution to the health care crisis?
Worthquake Rocks California
Hunger Stalks the Planet
The Indian Sub-Continent: On the Edge of Chaos
Swine Flu and You!
America No Longer a Christian Nation? But Was It Ever?
Australia, Way Down Under!
The Death and Resurrection of the European Union?
Another War America Won’t Win
U.S. Bailout: Too Little, Too Late?
Australians mourn as fire death count rises