Pandemics, etc

Paul Krugman:

If you look at the long sweep of history, global integration has tended to bring mass pandemics in its wake. My understanding is that you basically got waves of major plagues in the ancient world, pretty much whenever somebody controlled the steppes of Central Asia well enough that substantial commerce between China and the West could take place. Pretty soon afterwards, lots of people died. In the opening of the New World, it wasn't the conquistadors, it was the microbes that really did it here.

Now we have this very integrated world with very uneven levels of public health. You have to think that a pandemic is at least a possibility.

Ebola Relapses Could Be Contagious

Pauline Cafferkey, 39, was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow last Tuesday after feeling unwell.

Today NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde confirmed all close contacts of the nurse since she became symptomatic again have now been identified and 40 of the 58 people offered vaccinations as a precaution.

We were first told that the relapse will not be contagious, and yet they are offering to vaccinate first degree contacts. We have also been told vaccination is effective, but I could see that not being entirely correct.


http://www.anonymous...-be-contagious/

Paul Krugman:

Now we have this very integrated world with very uneven levels of public health. You have to think that a pandemic is at least a possibility.

The most predictable disaster in the history of the human race

How human beings have helped to spread infectious diseases

Behind Gates's fear of pandemic disease is an algorithmic model of how disease moves through the modern world. He used it to look into how a disease that acted like the Spanish flu of 1918 would work in today's world.

The results were shocking. "Within 60 days it's basically in all urban centers around the entire globe," he says. "That didn't happen with the Spanish flu."

The basic reason the disease could spread so fast is that human beings now move around so fast. Gates's modelers found that about 50 times more people cross borders today than did so in 1918.

Gates's model showed that a Spanish flu–like disease unleashed on the modern world would kill more than 33 million people in 250 days.

"We've created, in terms of spread, the most dangerous environment that we've ever had in the history of mankind," Gates says.

Underdeveloped health systems threaten developed countries

If Ebola had made its first appearance in the United States, it likely would have been caught, and contained, quickly. But the countries where the 2014 outbreak began "happen to be three of the poorest in the world, and it took them at least three months to even realize they were harboring an Ebola outbreak." By the time Ebola was recognized, it was already out of control — and so, for the first time, it made its way to American shores.


http://www.vox.com/2...es-flu-pandemic

Paul Krugman:

Now we have this very integrated world with very uneven levels of public health. You have to think that a pandemic is at least a possibility.

The most predictable disaster in the history of the human race

How human beings have helped to spread infectious diseases

Behind Gates's fear of pandemic disease is an algorithmic model of how disease moves through the modern world. He used it to look into how a disease that acted like the Spanish flu of 1918 would work in today's world.

Germany: Migration Crisis Becomes Public Health Crisis

Diseases are reappearing that have not been seen in Germany for years. German public health officials are now on the lookout for Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever, diphtheria, Ebola, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, malaria, measles, meningitis, mumps, polio, scabies, tetanus, tuberculosis, typhus and whooping cough. As refugee shelters fill to overflowing, doctors are also on high alert for mass outbreaks of influenza and Norovirus.

German media outlets are downplaying the extent of the healthcare problem, apparently to avoid spreading fear or provoking anti-immigrant sentiments.

Roughly 5% of asylum seekers are carrying resistant germs. In real numbers, this works out to around 75,000 newcomers with highly infectious diseases. — Dr. Jan-Thorsten Gräsner, director of the Institute for Rescue and Emergency Medicine.

Twenty types of vaccines are now in short supply, and 16 others are no longer available at all. Because of production bottlenecks, some vaccines will not become available until 2017.

Muslim women refuse to be treated by male doctors, and many Muslim men refuse to be treated by females. — Max Kaplan, director of the Bavarian Medical Board.


http://www.gatestone...n-health-crisis

Why are so many diseases back?

 

An E. coli epidemic in Seattle and Kansas City and 19 other states? TB in New York and Manassas, Virginia? Leprosy in New Hampshire? Dengue Fever in Laredo? What’s going on here?

 

 

http://www.breitbart...out-in-the-u-s/

Why are so many diseases back?

 

An E. coli epidemic in Seattle and Kansas City and 19 other states? TB in New York and Manassas, Virginia? Leprosy in New Hampshire? Dengue Fever in Laredo? What’s going on here?

 

 

http://www.breitbart...out-in-the-u-s/

 

Any excuse to blame illegal immigrants for everything?  Given how widespread the Chipotle outbreak is, it's absurd to think its being spread by illegals. More likely a corporate decision on some item being served, some supplier not carefully scrutinized.  Dengue fever in Laredo, Tx?  It's also on the big island in Hawaii.  Yeah, it must be illegal immigrants.  Just how stupid is this?

 

And blaming public health officials for slow responses is an easy diatribe for Breitbart. 

 

Dig deeper and it'll more likely be tax cuts by Republican-dominated legislatures that have no idea they are cutting exactly those things governments need to do (like protecting public health).  With not enough budget to go around, it's politically expedient to cut those bureaucrats we never hear about because they do their jobs.  I always remember when Prop. 13 years ago shocked California into drastic budget cuts one of the first to go was varmint control since that was a government agency never heard from that hardly anyone knew it existed, but then the plague broke out in San Francisco since there was now no one to control the rats. 

Health scare in Denmark as refugees bring back diphtheria after 20 yr absence

 

 

https://www.rt.com/n...eases-refugees/

The Zika virus is spread by mosquito bites, but the CDC is now warning of transmission through a blood transfusion and sexual contact.

 

Symptoms include fever, rash, joint and muscle pain, and headache.

 

The horror show part of this scourge is it can also apparently cause brain damage in the fetuses of pregnant women.

 

We now have cases of the Zika virus in Texas, Illinois and Florida. “Travelers” went “overseas” and contracted the virus there, bringing it back to the United States. The virus made its first appearance in South America in May 2015, just as we were in the middle of the continuing “surge” of illegal immigrants into this nation.

 

The virus is spreading like wildfire throughout Latin America, specifically, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Venezuela, according to The New York Times.

 

The three countries most of the 230,000 “surge” immigrant minors are coming from? Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

 

Breitbart London reports how “London is now the tuberculosis capital of Europe thanks to mass migration. In 2014, for example, the city saw 2,500 new cases, a higher rate than most nations’ totals, including Iraq, Rwanda and Algeria.”

 

 

http://www.washingto...e=all#pagebreak

dont take the subway!

For humans, as large complex animals, invasion and colonisation by infectious parasitic agents is the basic problem in life

Americas, the New World

Eurasian diseases such as smallpox, influenza, bubonic plague and pneumonic plagues devastated the Native Americans who did not have immunity.

Africa, diseases prevented European colonization

The colonists in areas of the tropics in Africa, without immunity from Malaria, Yellow Fever, parasites, etc. could face mortality rates upwards of 80-90%.

Panama, France and the canal

Yellow fever and malaria make building the canal impossible.

More Recent

1914 flu, AIDS, 20th century heart disease

 

 

Native Americans were wiped out by PLAGUES brought to their homes by European missionaries

• New research suggests population decline occurred dramatically after 1620
• This coincides with establishment of missionary churches in Southwest US
• Depopulation spurred forest regrowth and led to spread of forest fires
• European settlers brought infectious diseases including smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough

In North America, the Native population is estimated to range from two to 18 million during the time Columbus arrived.

By the end of the 19th century, it had fallen to roughly 530,000.

 

http://www.dailymail...ssionaries.html

Zika

 

DDT could stop the horrific disease.

 

The world is facing a public-health emergency. According to the World Health Organization, the Zika virus, a horrific disease that causes malformation of infants, is now “spreading explosively.” If decisive action is not taken quickly, Zika will proliferate to every continent, become widely and deeply embedded in populations, and cause millions of babies to be born brain-damaged every year for generations to come.

Read more at: http://www.nationalr...a-virus-epa-ddt