Some of us have made it through but I wouldn't classify it as "seem to have done just fine."
"Seem to have done fine" to me = a cure or successful treatment. It's just a numbers game until that happens where the higher the population is, the more likely you'll have survivors from that population.
Small pox:
On average, 3 out of every 10 people who got it died. the disease accounted for nearly 400,000 deaths each year, including five kings. Of those surviving, one-third were blinded. The worldwide death toll was staggering and continued well into the twentieth century, where mortality has been estimated at 300 to 500 million.
Historical Highlights:
- 6th Century – Increased trade with China and Korea introduces smallpox into Japan.
- 7th Century – Arab expansion spreads smallpox into northern Africa, Spain, and Portugal.
- 11th Century – Crusades further spread smallpox in Europe.
- 15th Century – Portuguese occupation introduces smallpox into part of western Africa.
- 16th Century – European colonization and the African slave trade import smallpox into the Caribbean and Central and South America.
- 17th Century – European colonization imports smallpox into North America.
- 18th Century – Exploration by Great Britain introduces smallpox into Australia.
The Black Plague
the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe – almost one-third of the continent’s population.
The Spanish flu
The great flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919 is estimated to have killed between 30 million and 50 million people worldwide.
Measles:
n 2012, approximately 122,000 people worldwide died from the measles
Typhoid fever kills around 216,000 people a year. Tuberculosis, an infectious bacterial disease, killed an estimated 1.3 million in 2012.
These are just some of the numbers of some of the illnesses that we people had to deal with in the past or in the present.
I don't think viruses care if they kill alot or kill a few. I don't think they operate on a self-awareness like that. When you look at the size of a virus, then an adult body is more than enough real estate for reproduction and thriving. The fact that viruses spread as fast as they shows the efficiency of it's ability to thrive. Even if the host dies, there is still risk of spreading. Just because the host is dead doesn't mean the virus is dead. Many viruses don't kill there host right away. They always stay long enough for another host to arrive. Some have the ability to jump from Species to Species. So to me it seems like viruses are evolutionary sound.
A virus that can be transmitted from animal human may not kill or even affect the animal but may have devastating effects on human hosts. I think people put a human logic on other life forms. If killing the host is bad, then killing the predator that kills your host is good. The more predators the virus can kill then, the more likely the host can survive. While I personally don't believe virus can plan something like that, if I were to take your statement "because virus that kill a significant number of host are self limiting their exposure to new hosts so are not evolutionary sound." Then I would have to entertain the possibility that a virus that kills, only does so with the goal that it's killing the predator of it's original host. (which may be an animal). The more predators that die, the more likely their original host will survive.
