> the available evidence clearly indicates that the demographic collapse was not uniform in either timing or magnitude and may have been caused by factors other than epidemic disease. ... Despite the trauma of conquest, Native Americans continued to have their own histories, intertwined with but not entirely determined by Europeans and their pathogens.
Since that was written, the evidence has swung even more strongly towards the idea that disease was intimately associated with the close, persistent contacts needed for the "conquest" and missionary activities of colonial powers.
Not to mention, similar epidemics were observed among indigenous southern africans and siberians during their respective colonizations. The Americas were unique in the scale and completeness of their disruption, but not in the mechanisms.