Recurring outbreaks of infectious disease have been a feature of human existence for millennia. Epidemics have played a critical role in, among other things, the transformation from a planet inhabited by multiple species of human to one in which Homo sapiens reigned supreme; the replacement of nomadic foraging with sedentary agriculture; the decline of the great empires of antiquity; the rise of new world religions; the transition from feudalism to capitalism; European colonialism; and the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. In other words, bacteria and viruses have been instrumental in
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