Posts Tagged ‘epidemic’
“When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic.”*…
Noting that, technically, all pandemic flus start as bird flus, the estimable “Scott Alexander” addresses three all-too-timely questions: What is the H5N1 bird flu? Will it cause the next big pandemic? If so, how bad would that pandemic be?
The entire post is eminently worth reading; here, the summary:
Conclusions / Predictions
All discussed earlier in the piece, but putting them here for easy reference – see above for justifications and qualifications.
- H5N1 is already pandemic in birds and cows and will likely continue to increase the price of meat and milk.
- 5% chance that H5N1 starts a sustained pandemic in humans in the next year.
- 50% chance that H5N1 starts a sustained pandemic in humans in the next twenty years, assuming no dramatic changes to the world (eg human extinction) during that time.
- If H5N1 does start a sustained pandemic in the next few years, 30% chance it’s about as bad as a normal seasonal flu, 63% chance it’s between 2 – 10x as bad (eg Asian Flu), 6% chance it’s between 10 – 100x as bad (eg Spanish flu), and <1% chance it’s >100x as bad (unprecedented). The 1% chance is Outside View based on other people’s claims, and I don’t really understand how this could happen.
Don’t give your true love a partridge, a turtledove, or (especially) a French hen: “H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know,” from @astralcodexten.com.web.brid.gy
See also: “How America Lost Control of the Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic” from Kaiser Health News.
As Larry Brilliant once said, “outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional.”
* Barack Obama
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As we prioritize preparation, we might spare a thought for Pierre-Joseph van Beneden; he died on this date in 1894. A zoologist and paleontologist, he specialized in parasitic worms and discovered the life cycle of tapeworms (Cestoda).
He is credited with introducing the term mutualism in biology– naming a phenomenon akin to the invader-host relationship central to the development of flus– in 1875.
“It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it”*…
Still, some species “do it” differently than others…
It is well known that somatic mutations — mutations in our body’s genetic code that accumulate over time — can cause cancer, but their broader role in ageing is less clear.
Now a team of researchers have measured the somatic mutation rates of a range of mammals and discovered a striking correlation between mutation rate and lifespan. Lending evidence to the theory that somatic mutations are a cause of ageing rather than a result of it…
Ageing is linked to accumulated mutations: “The lifespan secret: why giraffes live longer than ferrets,” from @Nature.
* Mark Twain, on aging
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As we grow old gracefully, we might send carefully-deduced birthday greetings to William Ian Beardmore (WIB) Beveridge; he was born on this date in 1908. A veterinarian who served as director of the Institute of Animal Pathology at Cambridge, he identified the origin of the Great Influenza (the Spanish Flu pandemic, 1918-19)– a strain of swine flu.
“The threat of a pandemic is different from that of a nerve agent, in that a disease can spread uncontrollably, long after the first carrier has succumbed”*…
We were, of course, warned. As we do our best to digest the news of emergent new strains of the COVID-19 virus, a look back at Annie Sparrow‘s 2016 New York Review of Books essay on pandemics…
Pandemics—the uncontrolled spread of highly contagious diseases across countries and continents—are a modern phenomenon. The word itself, a neologism from Greek words for “all” and “people,” has been used only since the mid-nineteenth century. Epidemics—localized outbreaks of diseases—have always been part of human history, but pandemics require a minimum density of population and an effective means of transport. Since “Spanish” flu burst from the trenches of World War I in 1918, infecting 20 percent of the world’s population and killing upward of 50 million people, fears of a similar pandemic have preoccupied public health practitioners, politicians, and philanthropists. World War II, in which the German army deliberately caused malaria epidemics and the Japanese experimented with anthrax and plague as biological weapons, created new fears…
According to the doctor, writer, and philanthropist Larry Brilliant, “outbreaks are inevitable, pandemics are optional.”
…
Much of human history can be seen as a struggle for survival between humans and microbes. Pandemics are microbe offensives; public health measures are human defenses. Water purification, sanitation, and vaccination are crucial to our living longer, better, even taller lives. But these measures of mass salvation are not sexy. While we know prevention is better and considerably cheaper than cure, there is little financial reward or glory in it. Philanthropists prefer to build hospitals rather than pay community health workers. Pharmaceutical companies prefer the Western market to the distant and poor Global South where people cannot afford to buy treatments. Education is a powerful social vaccine against the ignorance that enables pathogens to flourish, but insufficient to overcome the corruption of public goods by private interests. The current enthusiasm for detecting the next panic-inducing pathogen should not divert resources and research from the perennial threats that we already have. We must resist the tendency of familiarity and past failures to encourage contempt and indifference…
An important (and in its time, sadly, prescient) read: “The Awful Diseases on the Way,” from @annie_sparrow in @nybooks.
See also “6 of the Worst Pandemics in History” (source of the image above) and “A history of pandemics.”
[TotH to MK]
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As we prioritize preparation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1935 that physicist Erwin Schrödinger published his famous thought experiment– now known as “Schrödinger’s cat“– a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
“Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.”*…
Frank M. Snowden, a professor emeritus of history and the history of medicine at Yale, examines the ways in which disease outbreaks have shaped politics, crushed revolutions, and entrenched racial and economic discrimination. Epidemics have also altered the societies they have spread through, affecting personal relationships, the work of artists and intellectuals, and the man-made and natural environments. Gigantic in scope, stretching across centuries and continents, Snowden’s account seeks to explain, too, the ways in which social structures have allowed diseases to flourish. “Epidemic diseases are not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning,” he writes. “On the contrary, every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities. To study them is to understand that society’s structure, its standard of living, and its political priorities.”…
Epidemics as a mirror for humanity- Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) interviews Frank Snowden: “How Pandemics Change History,” conducted on the occasion of the publication of Snowden’s new book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present.
See also: “Late-Stage Pandemic Is Messing With Your Brain.”
And for thoughts on addressing the issues raised, see “Governing In The Planetary Age.”
* Wallace Stevens
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As we reflect, we might spare thought for August Paul von Wassermann; he died on this date in 1925. A bacteriologist and hygienist, he was director of the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin, where he developed (in 1906) a universal blood-serum test for syphilis that helped extend the basic tenets of immunology to diagnosis. “The Wassermann reaction,” in combination with other diagnostic procedures, is still employed as a reliable indicator for the disease. He also he developed inoculations against cholera, typhoid, and tetanus.
“Not with a bang, but with a whimper”*…
Death Table from Tuberculosis in the United States, prepared for the International Congress on Tuberculosis, September 21 to October 12, 1908. Image: U.S. National Library of Medicine
Recent history tells us a lot about how epidemics unfold, how outbreaks spread, and how they are controlled. We also know a good deal about beginnings—those first cases of pneumonia in Guangdong marking the SARS outbreak of 2002–3, the earliest instances of influenza in Veracruz leading to the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009–10, the outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in Guinea sparking the Ebola pandemic of 2014–16. But these stories of rising action and a dramatic denouement only get us so far in coming to terms with the global crisis of COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic has blown past many efforts at containment, snapped the reins of case detection and surveillance across the world, and saturated all inhabited continents. To understand possible endings for this epidemic, we must look elsewhere than the neat pattern of beginning and end—and reconsider what we mean by the talk of “ending” epidemics to begin with…
Contrary to hopes for a tidy conclusion to the COVID-19 pandemic, history shows that outbreaks of infectious disease often have much murkier outcomes—including simply being forgotten about, or dismissed as someone else’s problem: “How Epidemics End.”
* T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
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As we contemplate the end, we might send insightful birthday greetings to Nettie Maria Stevens; she was born on this date in 1861. A geneticist– and one of the first American women to achieve recognition for her contributions to scientific research– she built on the rediscovery of Mendel‘s paper on genetics (in 1900) with work that identified the mechanism of sexual selection: its determination by the single difference between two classes of sperm—the presence or absence of (what we now call) an X chromosome.
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