011 Do all pandemics end?

Even though little was known about the immaterial nekomemetic disease, we assumed that it behaved like  other known infectious diseases, so here, too, agents of various kinds intervened to blunt its severity, spread, and development.

A few times before, there had been crazy or even violent reactions against technology, seen as sorcery or demonic intervention as perpetrators of evil and spreaders of epidemics. In certain circles, this happened most virulently when the nekomemetic disease was discovered. On the surface, these suspicions seemed justified.

But, once again, appearances were deceiving: even when technologies acquired the semblance of generative and autonomous artificial intelligence, were never autonomous enough to spark pandemics or other major phenomena concerning the species. In the decade after the birth of the Internet, the beginning of a phase of universal connection among humans, people were nearly overwhelmed by an avalanche of opinions and conspiracies about technological power.  One went so far as to fear autonomous robots capable of dominating those who had invented them. But this was probably a ploy by the techno-tycoons to create a fuss around the functions of their mega-machines, all the while able to keep techné in the service of profit by practicing and extending their tried and tested neural control. Wielding technology, the Ecofin AltaSphere undoubtedly assumed the admonition of China's revolutionary president: politics first!

Politics created and used techné and not vice versa but, despite this, politicians were always just around the corner and, under transhumanist influence, were ready to make people believe otherwise, implicitly claiming its consubstantiality with religion.

Behind all this, however, were often hidden complexities that, if overlooked, risked distorting people's perception of the situation.

Could the nekomemetic disease follow a similar pattern to all other pandemics?

Following their natural course, epidemics and their pathogens usually developed and peaked and then declined and sometimes died out. Often the deadliest viruses weren't the ones that spread rapidly.

The nekomemetic disease indirectly had this function: by turning humans into pathogens of Gaia's septicaemia, it helped destroy them en masse. But, even if a drastic reduction in human presence wiped out the Gov Neolib civilization, would not everything have begun again in a new cycle? Wouldn't an augmented sapiens be resurrected sooner or later thanks to gene editing technologies?

Epidemic diseases were common in the animal kingdom. History indicated that the Chinese were the first to adopt preventative measures. Perhaps like never before were humans helpless in the face of the uncontrolled spread of an unknown, never imagined, and therefore always existing endemic disease.

The situation was leading humans in a direction that resembled controlled depressive chaos which, after all, wasn't frowned upon by the Ecofin AltaSphere. Some were beginning to realize that the crazed antibodies ravaging Gaia were their own. As early as the beginning of the 21st century, some Anthropocene theorists who had helped revitalize the concept of Gaia pointed out the responsibility of (self-styled) sapiens in the deterioration of their environment.  But a dose of vagueness remained. Even then, it made sense to denounce the worsening situation and to look for causes in human behavior, exacerbated by the population growth that was just about to culminate, before entering the final decline. But did this exempt the Ecofin AltaSphere and the ruling spheres of the PoSt/ates from their responsibilities in accelerating the pandemic by diluting them in a generic condemnation of all humans? Even if you didn't want to acknowledge these political aspects, should not the pathological origin of the behavior of the Big Sick and their close connection with the Ecofin AltaSphere have already been investigated?

Be that as it may, if nothing else the facts seemed to confirm the inevitability of forced degrowth. The situation had reached a point where first growth stopped and then the demographic, economic and social organization decline of humans began.

Due to deteriorating living conditions on the planet, collective stress was aggravated by signs of hostility from other species. Not that this was anything objectively serious, but this aggression was exacerbated with the intensification of widespread violence beyond the usual interhuman savagery. The brutality against peoples managed, first and foremost from above by the intangible values of income and debt, to the very material and repressive ferocity practiced by the ubiquitous SecurServ forces. However, even in the face of the multiplication of local conflicts, the need or even the possibility of global revolution never emerged.

The general stress increased when research appeared documenting how population decline and systemic displacement would not be enough to cure Gaia's sepsis. Though inaccurate and unreliable, predictions of the disappearance of three-quarters of mammals and many other species at the end of the sepsis cycle abound.