Oh damn, just learned that TierZoo has done some controversial stuff. I always disliked his content out of principles (never watched it, but the gamification of zoology seemed annoying). Turns out my spite was somehow well reasoned.
The virgin soil hypothesis becomes stranger the more you think about it:
1. It's wrong.
2. It is largely spread by a desire to downplay the genocide of native Americans (more complicated than this but it is a large factor)
3. Disease (syphilis) spread FROM the Americas TO Europe
I wonder if the occurrence of the black death also plays a role in its persistence. Europeans and our descendants can believe in a continent wide apocalyptic epidemic because we experienced something somewhat similar