Historicising the nexus between transportation and pandemics with reference to major pandemics of the world

Abstract

Though the world has witnessed many pandemics so far, this article historicizes the nexus between transportation and pandemics by taking four major pandemics human history has faced so far as representatives. Historically, the means of transportation are rapidly changing; from legs being the only kings on our streets to the fastest trains and aeroplanes, which have not only altered the world scenario but also have worked as the fastest vectors of pathogens. In this research, we have taken the ancient pandemic of Antonine Plague, the fourteenth-century pandemic of Black Death, the twentieth-century pandemic of Spanish Flu, and the most recent as well as the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 as the representative pandemics the human civilization has faced, and we have analyzed them in conversation with some insights from globalization vis-à-vis transportation and pandemics and some discourses from kinesthetic rhetoric keeping the issues of health and medicine in consideration. Our article concludes that with ever-growing means of transportation, it does not take a long time for a disease to become a pandemic. Therefore, it is an urgent call for human beings to understand the material persuasion of vehicular technologies and to work accordingly.

Keywords:

• Black death
• Covid-19
• globalization
• pandemic
• pathogen
• transportation
• kinesthetic rhetoric

Reviewing Editor:

• Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology College of Arts and Social Science, Kumasi, Ashanti, Ghana

Subjects:

• Technology; Anthropology - Soc Sci; Sociology & Social Policy; History; Cultural Studies

Introduction

From our legs as the only means of transportation to animal carts, boats, and other traditional means of transportation to aeroplanes and high-speed trains at present, we have come a long way from ancient time to the contemporary period. We must thank science and technology because now no land is a far-away land. At present, we are enjoying easy accessibility and convenience to travel to almost any part of the world. To use Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) words, “technoscape,” or the movement of technology “both high and low, both mechanical and informational, now moves at high speed across various kinds of previously impervious boundaries” (p. 34), has squeezed the world and has largely increased cross-border movements. With the increasing speed of transportation and mobility, it will be more challenging to restrict any disease to a limited area. When the world had/has different modes of transportation, from traditional to modern, travelling at different speeds with highter accessibility affects the speed and spread of humans and pathogens differently. And importantly, this mobility, for Pflugfelder (2017), is rhetorical with persuasive intent that “occurs in … material interactions, both with and without human engagement” (p. 26). That is why our effort in this article is to analyze how transportation has participated in pandemics and how historical perspectives can help us shape more resilient infrastructures.

Literature review

History witnesses the relationship between transportation and diseases. Bashford (2007) observes, “… the transborder nature of microbes and disease, has been, without question, augmented with the frequency of travel” (p. 11). The advanced means of transportation have increased the speed of spatial transmission of the pathogens to the extent that the pandemic has reached most of the isolated parts of the earth where it was impossible for any pandemic to reach in the past with traditional means of transportation and less human mobility. Vis-à-vis this concern, Mann (1994), in the “Preface” of Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague, views, “The world has rapidly become much more vulnerable to the eruption and, most critically, to the widespread and even global spread of both new and old infectious diseases…. The dramatic increases in the worldwide movement of people, goods, and ideas is the driving force behind the globalization of disease” (para. 4). He further states, “… a health problem in any part of the world can rapidly become a health threat to many or all” (para. 7) as “microbes, and their vectors, recognize none of the artificial boundaries erected by human beings” (Garrett, 1994, p. 618).

Even with advanced knowledge and research in virology and medicine our world in the twenty-first century has been affected by different viruses. As for COVID-19, the average incubation period among symptomatic patients is about 4–5 days and 97.5% of the people carrying the disease show symptoms within 11.5 days after exposure and also, “… most infectious diseases have an incubation period exceeding 36 hours …” (Saker et al., 2004, p. 47). With such a long incubation period in the present age, vectors will have already travelled around the world transmitting diseases to a large part of the world before identifying the disease and getting any hint of it being contagious. It indicates that the modern means of transportation “has accelerated the spread of new diseases in an unprecedented speed and put more people at risk” (Zhang et al. 2020, p. 35).

Deepti Muley et al. (2020) come up a conclusion that “… during the outbreak of infectious diseases …” (p. 1), transport sector has a significant role in “… controlling the spread of infection …” (p. 1). Rodrigue et al. (2006) also support when they state, “The more efficient transportation, the more efficient is the vector that can transmit an infectious disease” (p. 300). Further, public transportation is a significant place for the transmission of Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI); as Troko et al. (2011) claim, “use of public buses and trams is a significant individual risk factor for the acquisition of ARI” (p. 5). When transportation used to be slow and less accessible, the transmission of diseases was also slow and limited to a small area. But at present, with swift and ubiquitous transport and network, vectors can travel across the world without even having a hint of carrying a disease. As the world at present has become “village-like,” and is highly connected, “travel times between human groups or clusters are short, these local thresholds break down. As a result, highly virulent diseases can jump between clusters before local extinctions occur” (Welford, 2018, p. 38).

Moreover, expanding exploration of unexplored lands, human encroachment on wilds, increased contact with wild species, deforestation, population increment, urbanization, and global warming, which are at a rapid pace in the present world, continue (to cause) the emergence of infectious diseases (Weiss & McMichael, 2004, p. S73). So, it is likely that we will encounter an increased number and forms of contagious pathogens in the future.

Globalization, supported by advancement in transportation, has made the spread of viruses easier. Rodrigue et al. (2006) explain, “The unique purpose of transportation is to overcome space, which is shaped by a variety of human and physical constraints such as distance, time, administrative divisions and topography” (p. 1). Global travel network has turned the world into a “global village,” a small village where there is increasing connection and communication between the lands that people did not know existed a few centuries before.

Griffiths & O’Callaghan (2002), define globalization as, “a term that refers to the acceleration and intensification of mechanisms, processes, and activities that are allegedly promoting global interdependence and perhaps, ultimately, global political and economic integration” (pp. 126–127). With the deepening global interdependence and integration, “… some authors have associated contemporary globalization with a tendency towards deterritorialization so that social space can no longer be wholly mapped in terms of territorial places, territorial distances and territorial borders” (Scholte, 2005, p. 17). The mass movement of people and goods every day across the globe has necessarily made people determined to continuously keep escalating the speed of transportation. Revolutionary advancement of transportation technology is one of the “… products and the crucial driving forces of globalization” (Saker et al., 2004, p. 45). It is truly remarkable that “Globalization has tended to shift the ontology of time from a link with distance to a connection with speed. For example, air passengers are usually more conscious of how fast they are travelling than how far they are going” (Scholte, 2005, p. 268).

Nevertheless, along with the benefits we are enjoying, transportation is also significantly associated with the dispersion of pathogens. The speed of human travel and the transmission of contagious diseases has been tremendously affected by transportation and its network throughout history. In the early days of civilization, “new infectious diseases could spread only as fast and far as people could walk. Then as fast and far as horses could gallop and ships could sail” (Tatem et al., 2006, p. 294). But now, diseases have travelled as fast and far as aeroplanes can fly, high-speed trains can run, and fast ferries can navigate. We have just passed two decades in the twenty-first century, but the world has already been hit with a series of pandemics; three major pandemics to be precise: SARS, Swine flu and COVID-19.

Moreover, the spread of these pandemics is primarily associated with the increasing availability and affordability of air travel that carries vectors to new lands and diffuses pathogens to the large area rapidly (Zhang et al., 2020, p. 35). In this way, the processes of “globalization are often linked to the diffusion of pathogens in the modern era, as trade is directly associated with the inter-continental diffusion of pathogens and with their vectors of transmission” (Price-Smith, 2009, p. 5). In fact, upon a discussion on the “globalization of infectious disease,” in a book entitled The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control, the Institute of Medicine (2006) claims, “Indeed, the emergence and spread of infectious disease are, in a sense, the epitome of globalization” (p. 2).

Further, a vector does not necessarily have to be human to spread disease. Even the infected animals, birds, insects, goods, and objects carried by transportation to different places can spread diseases to a great extent. Rodrigue et al. (2006) consider “transportation as a vector” as transportation carries pathogens and accelerates… extensive diffusion of a communicable disease” (p. 300). As they state, with easy accessibility and convenience in transportation to travel almost to any part of the world, the outbreak of any contagious disease at any place can quickly spread at the global level (p. 300). Thus, transportation facilitates the potential of a contagious disease to become a pandemic. The faster the transport, the quicker and wider the virus diffuses. Hardt and Negri (2000) present a similar view in Empire where they opine, “The age of globalization is the age of universal contagion” (p. 136), which seems to be true in the sense that interdependence and interconnectivity of the nations worldwide have made it easy for pathogens to penetrate through the borders with the omnipresent transportation system.

Methods of study

This article employs secondary data collected from different databases to see how pandemics are spreading. It surveys existing literature and analyzes them using qualitative meta-analysis for an objective appraisal of evidence. By utilizing some insights from globalization vis-à-vis transportation and diseases in conversation with the issue of health and medicine and kinesthetic rhetoric, we have selected representative pandemics in terms of their impact on human civilization and that of coverage from ancient times to the present. On this background, through purposeful selection, we have analyzed the ancient pandemic of Antonine Plague, the fourteenth-century pandemic of Black Death, the twentieth-century pandemic of Spanish Flu, and the most recent and ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 to meet the criteria as mentioned above.

Antonine plague and the role of transportation and mobility to diffuse it

Price-Smith (2009) informs, “The emergence and diffusion of infectious disease on a global scale is a process that originated during the earliest years of inter-continental trade” (p. 5). If we look at history since the Roman period, “world trade routes had effectively joined Europe, Asia, and North America into one giant breeding ground for microbes” (Institute of Medicine, 2006, pp. 2–3). The ancient pandemic, Antonine Plague, caused massive devastation in the Roman Empire by claiming the lives of over 5 million people while affecting 50 million in 15 years, from 165 to 180 AD. Characterized with black exanthema, fever, diarrhoea, black excrement, vomiting, and cough-catarrh, etc., the disease was suspected of being either smallpox or measles.

Price-Smith (2009) notes that the travel for “conquest and trade,” an “ethnoscape” in Appadurian sense, was the early form of globalization, which efficiently spread contagion globally (p. 47). Many historians believe that this plague emerged in China, which travelled through the Silk Road route and spread among the Romans in late 165 AD while besieging Seleucia. Historian Crespigny (2007) speculates that the plague outbreaks “… under Emperor Huan in 151 and 161” along “with outbreaks recorded in 171, 173, 179, 182 and 185” were related to the Antonine plague in the Roman Empire (p. 514). Historian Raoul McLaughlin (2010) assumes, “The infection seems to have started somewhere deep in Central Asia, perhaps when traders or nomadic horsemen came into contact with previously isolated population groups who were carriers of this disease. Distance commerce then provided the chain of infection that brought the disease to the frontier regions of the Chinese and Roman Empires” (p. 59).

Seleucia, a Mesopotamian city in Parthian Empire, was one of the major trade centres on the Silk Road route that linked the Han Dynasty of China with the Roman Empire. So, we can infer that the plague first entered Parthian Empire through the traders travelling in trade ships or caravans from China and caught the Roman military in Seleucia during the war between the Romans and the Parthians. After their victory, the Romans marched back to Rome, carrying and spreading the disease along their route. As McLaughlin (2010) postulates, “The strongest vectors in the propagation of the disease were the movement of army personnel and the maritime trade connections that sustained Roman prosperity” (p. 59). After the Roman military got infected, they took the disease to Asia Minor, Greece and Rome along with them, and the Roman maritime and land trades further diffused this highly contagious plague to several countries and provinces in Asia, Europe and North Africa.

While there was the plague outbreak in China during Eastern Han Empire in 161 AD, the major outbreak in the Roman military was observed only in late 165 AD, and it reached Rome in 166 AD. As explored by John Thorley (1971) in “The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at Its Height, ‘Circa’ A. D. 90-130,” there was indirect trade between the Roman Empire and the Han China, with Parthians and Kushans acting as intermediaries (pp. 71–80). Here, along with indirect communication, the geographical distance of around 8000 km between the two empires, and the mode of transportation through the Silk Road route, being camel on land and sailing vessels on marine, caused the vector to travel slow, making the disease take almost four years to reach the Roman Empire from the Han Empire.

Rome, being a crowded and busy city, saw a rapid spread of plague within its urban spaces, but it crawled slowly outside it. The outbreak of the Antonine plague in the troops of Aquileia was observed only in the late 168 and early 169 AD (Littman & Littman, 1973, p. 244). Rodrigue et al. assert, “To improve the travelling speed [during Roman Empire] posthouses with fresh horses were laid every 15 kilometres along the route and lodgings for travellers could be found about every 40 kilometres. This 40 km corresponded to the average distance a traveller could cross each day” (p. 45). The pace of human vectors and diseases was delayed by traditional means of transportation like horses, camels, carriages, slow sailing vessels, etc.

Moreover, people then travelled only for military purpose, land extension and trade. During the days of the Roman Empire, “There were … no transportation companies, no lines of boat or vehicles, that is, running between certain places and prepared to carry passengers at a fixed price on a regular schedule” (Johnston, 1903, p. 181). So, the mobility was scant and limited to a few people and areas. These factors, thus, made the plague take around three years to travel from Rome to Aquileia, which is at a distance of just around 450 km. Also, less mobility and traditional means of transportation did not allow the pandemic to afflict a large part of the world during the second century.

Black death: transportation as the cause of the pandemic

Black Death, “the greatest human tragedy in history” (Scott & Duncan, 2004, p. 299), which occurred in the fourteenth century, has some unresolved issues on its cause and vector. The pandemic peaked from 1346 to 1353 and is supposed to have killed around 200 million people. It was claimed and believed to have been caused by bubonic plague, and its vectors to have been rats and fleas till the late twentieth century. History was also written accordingly. However, this case was debunked for the first time by Graham Twigg (1984) when he concluded in his book The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal that bubonic plague did not cause Black Death, and Scott and Duncan researched and claimed in their book Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer in 2004 that the real vectors appeared to have been human travellers. Since then, the long-held belief has been under a question mark.

Whatever the cause and vector might have been, the catalyst to make the disease a pandemic was transportation, as the disease followed land and sea routes to travel across countries and continents through transport routes along with human and goods mobility. As Byrne informs, “The pestilence travelled with merchants, caravans, armies, pilgrims, and diplomatic missions, and on ships loaded with goods and passenger from plague-struck ports” (p. 5). During the fourteenth century, while “… the Old World was rapidly transitioning to a small world environment, one that was increasingly highly connected and spatially integrated along the trade axis of the older overland Silk Road and the newly expanded maritime Silk Network of shipping lanes,” it was also transforming itself into the world with “… greater disease transmissibility and greater disease virulence” (Welford, 2018, p. 36). Even though the term ‘globalization’ and its concept were brought up centuries later, its features of transcontinental trade and human movement have a long history and those were observed during this era too. Moreover, with the mass movement, virulent diseases moved along in parallel.

Black Death was afflicting Central Asia, China, and India, accompanied by deaths for around 10 years before reaching the Khanate of the Golden Horde in southern Russia in 1346 (Horrox, 1994, p. 9) along trading routes (Welford, 2018, p. 37). Then “the Black Death boarded ships sailing from ports in Asia, along the trade routes through the Middle East and Turkey, and finally making landfall in Messina, Sicily” (Quinlan, 2020, p. 43), thus entering Europe in October 1347. As Rodrigue et al. (2006) affirm, “By the fourteenth-century galleys were finally replaced by full-fledged sailships (the caravel and then the galleon) that were faster …” (p. 46), Black Death swiftly travelled a large part of Europe following regular and fast trading and “By December 1348, much of Western Europe was in the grip of the disease” (Welford, 2018, p. 43).

Rodrigue et al. (2006) argue, “By medieval times, an extensive maritime trade network … was established, centered along the navigable rivers, canals, and coastal waters of Europe (and also China). Shipping was extensive and sophisticated using the English Channel, the North Sea, the Baltic and the Mediterranean” (p. 46). As a result, in the same year, in September, 1 month before entering Europe, Black Death had entered Africa too. In the fall of 1347, “it [Black Death] leapt from the Byzantine capital to Alexandria, Egypt, by ship, a single merchant/slave ship …” (Byrne, 2012, p. 51). Then the disease diffused to several parts of Africa.

Before the 1800s, “Waterways were the most efficient transport systems available, and cities next to rivers were able to trade over longer distances and maintain political, economic and cultural cohesion over a larger territory” (Rodrigue et al., 2006, p.43). During the medieval period, the marine route was favoured for trade as it was much cheaper than overland trade. So, the ports being the more accessible gateway for pathogens, Black Death travelled across continents and most of the affected countries through ports.

In geographical sense, “the medieval Black Death marked the beginning of a smaller, more highly connected, spatially integrated world where ideas, goods, and diseases could be rapidly transported to all corners of the globe” (Welford, 2018, p. 37). Although there is no precise record of the number of countries affected by different pandemics, it can be speculated that Black Death was diffused in more than 50 countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa within the seven years. Following the busyness of travel, trade and mobility, Black Death “… first spread to seaports, cities, and commercial hubs, then moved along navigable rivers, then radiated to regional towns, then reached smaller local market towns, and finally travelled into the countryside” (Welford, 2018, p. 43).

Westward and north-westward diffusion of Black Death in Europe had the pace of up to 6 kilometres per day while on the isolated communities away from main roads, and that had a low connection to ports, the velocity dropped up to 0.66 km per/day. Disease transmission accelerated in the area with dense road and trading network that “… connected many large urban centres and a substantial number of ports” (Welford, 2018, pp. 43–44). For instance, “… mBD [medieval Black Death] swept across England in less than a year … because England had the densest Roman network … [and] western European trade was dominated by local and international shipping” (p. 45). Welford further writes, “… the most connected urban locations were the first infected, while the least connected locations in northern and eastern Europe were the last to suffer the scourge of the medieval Black Death” (p. 46).

At that time, the ships were the only advanced and faster means of transport; other means of transportation of the fourteenth century like carts, wagons, camels, horses, etc., were similar to those of the second century. However, the extended travel routes and networks on both land and water carried the pathogens comparatively quicker and to larger space. Scott and Duncan (2004) also support it arguing that “The plague was covering vast distances in Eurasia during the three years from 1345 to 1348 and by 1350 it had arrived at the Arctic Circle” (p. 242). In other words, with “ethnoscapes,” virulent diseases moved along in parallel.

Spanish flu: faster vehicles as the root cause of transmission

The Spanish Flu quickly and easily grew into a pandemic affected by the globally extended travel network and modern means of transportation during the Mobility Era. The Flu originated when the world was in the havoc of the World War I, and thus tourism had declined. Economic trade and large military movement in different parts of the world, via ships and trains, dispersed it across the world.

Spanish Flu, the first and the deadliest influenza pandemic of the twentieth century, infected 500 million people and caused around 50 million deaths worldwide from 1918 to 1920 in its three waves. The Flu, as widely cited, was caused by H1N1 virus and was transmitted from person to person through the droplets coming out of the infected person while coughing, sneezing, and speaking.

There have been different speculations regarding the origin of the disease. However, the first known outbreak was recorded in early March in the United States, among military recruits at Camp Funston in Kansas. Then the wide range of infected military movement helped diffuse the Flu across countries and continents. Quinlan (2020) quotes James Harris in Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses from The Plague of Athens to Covid 19, “The rapid movement of soldiers around the globe was a major spreader of the disease” (p. 271). The infected US troops carried the pathogens and spread the Flu to England, France, Spain, and Italy within May 1918 and soon to several other parts of the world (p. 268).

The world had already entered the modern era with modern means of transportation like train, aeroplane, steamship, automobile, bicycle, truck and trams. So, the Flu did not take a long time to spread within and across borders as in the past. The main factor behind such a quick spread of Spanish Flu was through “modern transportation, which at the beginning of the twentieth century offered a global coverage. The virus was spread worldwide by infected crews and passengers of ships and trains, and severe epidemics occurred in the shipyard and railway personnel” (Rodrigue et al., 2006, p. 300).

Even though the first scheduled passenger commercial flight took off in 1914, aviation service took decades thereafter to run regularly as the service in its early days was expensive, and it had yet to prove itself as a safe means of transport. So, during Spanish Flu, aviation had not become a common means of public transportation. Also, motor cars were being adopted only in some parts of the US and not in the other parts of the world during this pandemic. So, trains and steamships were the common and fastest means to carry people and the Flu to long distances.

The Flu that was first recorded in the US in early March 1918 had already reached Western Europe through the port of Brest in France along with the American troops by early April (Kupperberg, 2008, p. 60). It had also reached China by April, India by May, and northern Europe, Australia, and Southeast Asia by June. The same year in August, when the second wave struck France, the Flu rapidly sailed across the Atlantic, hitting Boston in the US and Freetown in Sierra Leone—the west coast of Africa—in the same month. It was carried to the Mediterranean lands and coastal areas mainly through ships. Till September, it had already spread throughout Europe, the United States and West Africa. By the next month, it had afflicted most of Europe and South Asia. By November, it had reached Siberia and even the remote islands of the Pacific via the ships carrying infected human vectors (Hays, 2005, pp. 385–386).

Yet, some inhabited places recorded either none or low cases. Northern portions of Iceland, the islands of American Samoa (Hays, 2005, p. 386), an island in San Francisco, several remote towns in the US, the island of Tasmania in Australia and others implemented quick and strict quarantine that stopped infected ships from entering their lands. Many remote places, villages, and rural towns worldwide, along with Lau, Yasawa and Marajo islands in Brazil, which had scarce transportation, network, and visitors, also escaped the pandemic. Other places, where borders were quickly closed and public gatherings were avoided, evaded it as well (Gray, 2018). So, due to insufficient transportation network, several places could avoid the deadly Spanish Flu.

Sea and railway transport had significant roles in accelerating the transmission of the Spanish Flu to distant lands as it jumped across continents and most countries through seaports, and overland, it was primarily dispersed via trains. Till the early twentieth century, a significant development was seen in the speed of transportation and its network, which contributed to diffusing the Flu rapidly in all six inhabited continents and their several countries. Patterson and Pyle (1991) inform “The 1918 influenza pandemic spread over the entire world in less than six months …” (p. 4).

COVID-19: speeder the vehicles, faster the transmission

Globalization and applaudable achievement in transportation technology have made the world seem smaller in the twenty-first century. Increased speed in travel with aeroplane, high-speed train, modern automobiles, and fast ferries has made travel, both long and short distance, expeditious and common. But the high velocity of trade and human mobility has evidently increased the transmission of contagions (Davis & Kimball, 2001, p. 60), and at present, pathogens are also travelling at a speed higher than ever. COVID-19, which caused the ongoing pandemic until the date this is written, spread in all six inhabited continents within 2 months of its first reported case on 31 December 2019. And now, it has even hit the last seventh continent, uninhabitable Antarctica, due to transportation access.

The cause of the disease was later found to be a novel coronavirus that travels from person to person. In less than 3 months, when WHO declared it as a pandemic on 11 March 2020, it had already spread in 114 countries globally. The reason is the fastest transportation technology. As informed by the Institute of Medicine (2006), “A century and a half ago, it took about 365 days to circumnavigate the globe by ship; today, it takes less than 36 hours. Thus, the incubation period of many infectious diseases is now longer than the time it takes the infected to travel from one location to another” (p. 23).

Wuhan, where the first outbreak of COVID-19 was observed, is one of the important transportation hubs in China with three main railway stations, an international airport that is the largest in Central China, and a major inland port. Just before January 24, 2020, when lock-down began in Wuhan, an estimated five million people left the city through different transport mediums (Zhang et al. 2020, p. 35), many of whom had overseas destinations (Honigsbaum, 2020).

COVID-19, according to WHO, had officially diffused out of China when a woman in Thailand, who had flown from Wuhan, confirmed the virus on 13 January 2020. In a week, on 20 January, a person who had returned to the US from Wuhan was reported to be COVID-19 positive. With this, it was confirmed that the disease had flown out of Asia. After a few days, with the confirmation of three positive cases of COVID-19 on January 24 in France, the disease had officially entered Europe; one patient had flown back to Bordeaux and other two to Paris from China (Stoecklin et al., 2020, p. 4). According to a research by Ke et al. (2020), the early outbreaks of the pandemic in the US and major European countries grew at the rate of 0.19–0.29/day with the doubling time of 2.4–3.7 days (p. 5). It was observed that by March 17, all European countries had reported COVID-19 case.

As travelling has been much easier and more convenient these day, human mobility has increased to a great extent, and people travel for various purposes like trade, work, education, exploration, entertainment and many more. This has increased human mobility taking people even to exotic places. In addition, modern high-speed transportation and its affordability have increased the desire for travel. These reasons have facilitated the speed of COVID-19 to be startling in the twenty-first century. As stated by NASA, the fastest means of commercial transportation, the aeroplane, has a speed of approximately 926 km/h. Its global network, connecting lands across continents, assisted the spread of the novel coronavirus over more expansive space quickly. Further, cruise ships helped diffuse COVID-19 into several countries and even to isolated islands through seaports. Till March 2020, at least 25 cruise ships, including Diamond Princess and Grand Princess, were confirmed with the pandemic cases (Mallapaty, 2020, p. 18). And by May 2, more than 40 cruise ships had confirmed cases of the virus.

Due to the remarkable interconnectivity of lands across the world created by globalization, and with Brazil reporting its first COVID-19 cases on February 26, it was confirmed that the disease had reached all six inhabited continents in just 4 months of Wuhan’s first official report. On 21 December 2020, Chile announced 36 confirmed COVID-19 cases among the Chilean army and navy on Base General Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme in Antarctica. With this, the pandemic hit all corners of the earth, reaching all continents on the globe, even the uninhabitable Antarctica. Though uninhabitable, the continent has seasonal tourists and researchers. However, according to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, it has comparatively lower visitors than other destinations and employs strict precautionary measures. As a result, the pandemic took a long time to hit this isolated continent. According to Worldometer (as of 19 February 2022), the pandemic has already hit 224 countries and territories, with only four countries (North Korea, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu and Nauru) countries remaining in the world (as of 15 January 2022).

Out of the four countries, two—authoritarian states, North Korea and Turkmenistan—have disputed records of hiding accurate reports. However, North Korea is among the first countries to shut its borders and has always been isolated from most parts of the world (McCarthy, 2020). Turkmenistan had also cancelled all flights of China and many other flights in early February (Stephens, 2021). Early cancellation of international connectivity and transportation helped the countries to have no COVID-19 case to date (McCarthy, 2020). Other two countries are the islands in South Pacific: Nauru, and Tuvalu (Stephens, 2021). These other two countries have a low population, with the highest being 120,100 in Kiribati. These are also among the least visited countries with only a few thousand visitors every year, giving them enough time to prepare for the pandemic. Besides, temporary bans implemented on international travel also benefited the islands. And other isolated islands in South Pacific that reported pandemic cases were among the last to be caught by the virus.

The history of all four major pandemics witnessed by human civilization has shown that the mobility of the means of transportation, either slow or fast, has something to tell us about our future. It tells us how “nonhuman materials can be persuasive on their own terms” (Pflugfelder, 2017, p. 17) and the importance of “persuasion [that] also emerges in the many unintentional, material interactions humans and nonhumans have with each other” (p. 22).

Conclusion

Though Appadurai’s scapes (ethnoscape, technoscape, ideoscope, financesope, and mediascape) are intertwined and disjunctive in nature, the technological flow has made the world a global village. As the pace of technological innovation increases, so does the flow of technology, and it has tremendously affected the world of health and medicine ⸻”techno-medicalscape”⸻a word that may fuse these two spaces.

Human beings’ craving for exploring new exotic places, global networks, the fastest means of transportation and ever-growing inventions make it easier for a contagious disease to become a pandemic. The consequence is thatit has covered an even larger part of the world than ever in the past, and probably it will create more havoc in the future. It means that with ever-growing means of transportation, diseases spread throughout the world or beyond within a short time; the closer the history, the faster the spread of the pathogen. As we are speeding, pathogens are speeding in parallel, and in future, the speed will be even faster, expanding the threat to an even larger area. It indicates that progress coalesces with its other side.

Moreover, the possibility is that next time if a pandemic breaks out, it may diffuse to an even wider space and at an even faster speed. Along with the modern development, one day flying to the outer space will be a more regular and accessible activity perhaps. In that case, diseases might reach out of this world as well. Additionally, with the ever-developing transportation and its network and our activities, we should not be surprised if we, the human beings, encounter frequent pandemics in the future. So, it is imperative for us to contemplate and save ourselves from our own (mis)deeds. Learning from history, we have to work timely in shaping more resilient infrastructure to safeguard our future. Failure to understand material persuasion that the history of vehicular technologies in relation to health and medicine has taught us could be counterproductive for human civilization because, as Pflugfelder suggests, persuasion can take place through other than anthropocentric symbolic identification.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Heena Shrestha

Heena Shrestha completed her Master’s degree in English literature from Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. As a freelance researcher, her research interests include language, literature, and cultural studies.

Raj K. Baral*

Raj Kumar Baral is an Assistant Professor at Tribhuvan University, Nepal. His research interests include non-western rhetoric, literature and language, academic integrity, cultural studies, online learning, and higher education/policy. He has been published in Distance Education, Cogent Arts and Humanities, Journal of Academic Ethics among others. Currently, is pursuing PhD in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso, USA.