COVID-19 and Malthusian theory

The number of worldwide COVID-19 deaths had risen to 1,117,641 by Monday. There is no sign of a vaccine being found to permanently control it. 

It was in 1798 that Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus laid out in his writings “An essay of the principle of population” that there were two types of ever present checks that are continuously at work limiting food supply at a given time. It is based on a theory that population growth outpaces the resources available for sustaining lives of man. Although technological advances could increases a society’s supply resources such as food, thereby improving the standard of living, the population growth would eventually bring the per capital supply of resources back to the original level. Some economists contend that since the Industrial Revolution, mankind has broken free from the trap. Others argue that continuation of extreme poverty indicates that Malthusian trap continues to operate.

Others argue that lack of food availability as well as excessive pollution levels in developing countries shows more evidence of the trap.

Malthus said: “Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of earth to produce subsistence for man, the premature death in some shape or other should visit man ….”

What I am trying to stress here is that the validity of a theory expounded by a scholar 222 years ago is valid if the COVID-19 pandemic is anything to go by.

The Bubonic plague occurred between 1346-1353 in Eurasia and parts of Africa. It was in large part spread by fleas living in black rats in ships and caravans. This caused humans to die due to pneumonic plague and person- to -person contact with aerosols .The estimated number of deaths is between 75 million to 200 million.

In April 1918 Sumo wrestlers from Japan while on a tour of Taiwan mysteriously fell ill. Three died including the highly popular Tokyo wrestler Masagoishi. It was influenza. First it came to be known as Japan flu.

This was the first indication of the pandemic called Spanish flue which killed 50 million around the world. 500 million or one third of the world’s population was infected.

In 1918 most governments were happy to blame the Spanish, just like President Trump always calling Covid 19 “China virus”. In the same manner Spanish flu was given that name simply because Spain opted to remain neutral in World War 1. Western countries historically have the habit of blaming Asia for pandemics.

Then we come to wars. During the past 3,500 years, humans have been at peace only 268 of them, just 8% of the period.

World War I death toll was between 15 and 20 million while World War 11 was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated 70 to 85 million people perished in it. These war deaths slowed down the global birth rate. There are natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, storms, tornados and mudslides.

Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Yangtze-Huai floods in 1931 in China. The Bhola cyclone in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) killed about 500,000 in 1970. It remains the deadliest tropical cyclones ever recorded in history. The Haiti earthquake in 2010 killed tens of thousands of people.

The Boxing Day Tsunami in Asia in 2004 killed 230,000 people in a single day. In Sri Lanka, 22,000 died. One should note that only 13 deaths have occurred in Sri Lanka so far due to COVID-19. Praise should go to our health services and the military for this.

On the whole are we are seeing the Malthusian theory in practice even today.

Upali Cooray

Battaramulla