Those individuals who survive, showing that they are resistant to the disease, are also slaughtered – there is no survival of the fittest, no evolution of a resistant strain under their remedy.

Way back in 1858, a prophetess of the Xhosa Tribe in Southern Africa, named Nongqause, had a vision.

SLAUGHTERED

She was “told” that all cattle of the tribe would have to be slaughtered, having been reared by contaminated hands.

She said that she had met the spirits of three of her ancestors who had told her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle.

In return, the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea. Then their granaries would fill again and their kraals would have more and better cattle.

In the cattle-killing frenzy that followed, they killed between 300,000 and 400,000 head of cattle.

In the resulting famine, the population of the province dropped from 105,000 to fewer than 27,000.

Neither the cattle nor the Xhosa tribe recovered from this deadly cure.

Every species has its lurking danger waiting to pounce – Hendra virus for horses, Johne’s disease in sheep, veroa mites attacking bees, bird flu, swine fever, mad cow disease, monkey pox, wooden tongue, myxomatosis – even the plant kingdom has its rusts and blights.

The spirit of Nongqause lives on in today’s bureaucracy.

For example, a disease was detected in Australian beehives – it is being managed by a scorched earth policy of isolating and exterminating all nearby bees.

Naturally honey supplies are dwindling and there are fears for the pollination of fruit trees and crops.

In our local Woolworths, the long shelves usually devoted to eggs were empty last week. Why?

Followers of Nongqause found some sick hens on some farms and then murdered every hen in every flock where “bird flu” was detected.

Entire flocks are culled when even one bird tests positive.

They are forever seeking more efficient ways to select the flocks to slaughter.

DISEASE

In the sad but moving Australian film Rams, modern flock exterminators go after sheep, killing every sheep in the district to eliminate a few with Ovine Johne’s disease.

But one cunning old sheepman, distraught that they planned to destroy his life’s work in breeding better sheep, refused to accept their Nongqause solution.

He hid a few ewes and his top-class ram in his cellar, sprouting grass for them in his bathroom. He let them out onto the grass at night.

But a diligent visiting inspector noticed fresh sheep poo on his lawn. When discovery threatened, he fled to the hills with his remnant sheep.

They all survived (in real life the bureaucrats would probably have pursued the refugees with drones and marksmen in helicopters).

“Foot and Mouth” is used by politicians everywhere with hidden agendas to crush live exports or local meat consumption.

And in America now, an outbreak of measles is being used to bludgeon Amish people into vaccinations they normally refuse. One recalcitrant Amish parent was fined US$118,000.

We need to learn from wild populations – they get disease too, and the weakest die but the herd survives and becomes stronger.

Look at wildlife crowded around the shrinking polluted water holes at the end of a dry season in the Serengeti grasslands in Southern Africa.

There can be hundreds of animals and many species all drinking from contaminated puddles of water and all adding their germs to the muddy soup via their solid and liquid wastes.

All “germs” get spread around – the weak may die but the fittest survive and pass their genes to the next generation.

Herd immunity is strengthened without the pain of a single vaccine needle or the scorched earth policy of the bureaucrats – would surround the waterhole, shoot every animal and then have a huge bonfire.