Contents
In Short
Even though The Coming Plague was initially released in 1994, its relevance today is arguably greater than ever in my opinion. AIDS, Marburg, Ebola, and Legionnaires’ disease are just a few of the diseases covered in this book, which clocks in at close to 800 pages. Furthermore, the devastation of natural ecosystems and wildlife in The Coming Plague vividly demonstrates how our changing climate poses a significant threat to future disease outbreaks and pandemics. The fact that Laurie Garrett possessed a crystal ball for the coronavirus and pandemic makes this book even more extraordinary.
Rather than seeing ourselves as part of the fabric of history, we choose to assume that it occurred to “them,” “in the past,” and that we are somehow separate from it. The fall of the Berlin Wall is a recent example of a historical event that was predicted only in retrospect. While new infectious diseases are still being discovered and disseminated, we can already see the future and it is a threat to us all.
Introduction
At that time, the Army doctors were so thrilled with the efficacy of penicillin that they collected the urine of patients being treated with the medicine and crystallized the voided penicillin for reuse on other GIs.”
When Lederberg opened the conference, he observed, “Nature isn’t harmless.” In the end, the units of natural selection—DNA and sometimes RNA elements—are not neatly packaged in distinct creatures. The biosphere is a shared resource for all of us. Species survival is not a pre-determined evolutionary plan. Viruses can learn new tricks from a wide range of sources, not just those that occur regularly or even often.
The disease is more likely to spread among those who have more to eat, McNeill argued. Being aware of our limitations is something that McNeill believes is well worth pursuing. We should keep in mind that the more we win, the more we drive illnesses to the periphery, and the more we open a path for possible catastrophic infection.” We’ll never be able to go beyond the boundaries of the natural world.. Whether we like it or not, we are all part of the food chain.
In the developing world, “[m]egacities were springing up, creating niches from which “virtually anything could arise”; rain forests were being destroyed, forcing disease-carrying animals and insects into human habitation areas and raising the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious microbes would, for the first time, infect humanity on a large scale and endanger human survival.”
Health Transition
If we hadn’t disobeyed every single WHO rules many times over, we wouldn’t have defeated smallpox. Science suffers from bureaucracy,” said Arita later. Never.”
“It took eleven years, involving around a hundred highly-trained specialists and thousands of local health workers and personnel around the world, to eradicate the disease. At a price tag of $300 million, it was a triumph. 29 “The world and all of its peoples have won freedom from smallpox,” the most devastating disease that had been sweeping through many countries in epidemic form since ancient times and left death, blindness, and disfigurement in its wake and which was rampant only a decade ago in Africa, Asia, and South America,” declared the World Health Assembly on May 8, 1980.
Iatrogenic means caused by medical therapy. A new global iatrogenic form of malaria was on the horizon.” A new pandemic was started by humanity’s well-meaning efforts to combat the malaria plague.
Yambuku
As far as we know, Marburg and Ebola have no known source. ‘It’s a complete mystery.’
The American Bicentennial
Throughout recorded history, pandemics were a common feature of influenza. In the year 876, a flu epidemic killed a lot of Charlemagne’s army and made it harder for him to take over Europe. After that, there were a lot of things that might have been flu epidemics, but history isn’t good at telling the difference between flu and other respiratory diseases. In 1580, however, there was a major pandemic that spread through Africa, Europe, and the Americas along with trade and early colonization routes. “Some Spanish cities were said to be almost empty” because of how bad the disease was.
“Panic and epidemics don’t always go together, and the level of panic doesn’t always match how bad things are. History shows that people’s reactions to disease are rarely predictable, often strange, and always a source of frustration for disease detectives who have to sift through public reports to figure out where and what caused an epidemic.
“After talking about the Black Death plague of medieval Europe, Hudson said, “When we admit that we don’t know enough about microscopic pathogens, we have to admit at least the possibility of a return of the great epidemics of the past.” He also said, “It is possible that a deadly and common organism could emerge that is easy to spread from person to person and might not respond to any of the current treatments or prevention methods.”
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Zara
“The microbe doesn’t matter; the environment does.” — Louis Pasteur
“McNeill said that over a long period, pathogenic microbes have tried to find stability in their relationships with hosts. It wasn’t in their best interest to kill off millions of healthy people in a single decade, as happened to the Amerindians after Columbus and Cortez arrived. With the Europeans came microbes that the people of the Americas had no natural defense against. McNeill said, “Overall, the disaster for Amerindian populations was on a scale that is hard for us to imagine.” Ratios of 20:1 or even 25:1 between the size of the pre-Columbian population and the size of the Amerindian population at the bottom of the curves seem about right.
Microbes Magnets
“In short, cities were paradise for microbes, or, as British biochemist John Cairns put it, “graveyards of humanity.” In the past, the worst plagues got bad only when the microbes got to cities, where the high population density made any small disease that might have started in the countryside spread quickly. And microbes were able to take advantage of the new urban ecosystems to create new disease threats.
“William McNeill and other medical historians of the 1970s thought that the urban ecology of the past 2,000 years had helped four diseases in particular: pneumonic plague, leprosy (Hansen’s disease), tuberculosis, and syphilis. From what we can tell from history, these were rarely, if ever, seen before urban societies were created, and all four took advantage of things about people that were only found in cities.
“Houses where both men and women worked as prostitutes were common in the ancient cities of Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, and the Hindu empires, as well as among the Aztecs and the Mayans. These were places where people did things like homosexuality, orgies, and even religiously sanctioned sexual activity, which most societies consider to be “deviant.” Since the beginning of written history, there has been a difference between what is acceptable at home and what is acceptable in the city at night.
Hatari: Vinidogodogo (Danger: A Very Little Thing)
When it came to medical research funding in the United States, the issue was rarely politicized. Democrat Johnson and Republican Carter increased money for cancer and heart disease research, and in times of crisis — such as with Legionnaires’ Disease, Swine Flu, and Ebola fever — resources were promptly found regardless of which party controlled Congress and the White House. AIDS, on the other hand, was distinct. Sex, homosexuality, race (Haitian), family values (Christian), drug addiction, and personal vs collective rights and security” were all addressed by the film.
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