#epidemics and outbreaks

[worldspotlightnews]

CDC to warn some travelers to watch for Marburg virus symptoms as it investigates outbreaks in Africa | CNN

CNN  —  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending personnel to Africa to help stop outbreaks of Marburg virus disease and is urging travelers to certain countries to take precautions. The CDC is also taking steps to keep infections from spreading to the United States. Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania are facing their first known outbreaks of Marburg virus, a viral fever with…

[cookiep-cat]

Chapter 3 aftermath:

[vyorei]

Michael Ryan of the World Health Organisation speaking on the dire conditions civilians in Gaza face as the genocide continues

[winter-jay-official]

!!!! Got totally normal things for Christmas sooo normal I am so normal trust me

[quotesfrommyreading]

We know a remarkable amount about the quotidian drinking habits of the Golden Square neighborhood on those oppressive days of August 1854. We know that the Eley brothers dispatched a bottle to their mother on Monday, and that she shared it with her visiting niece later that week. We know that a young man visiting his chemist father enjoyed a glass of pump water with his pudding at a restaurant on Wardour Street. We know of an army officer who visited a friend on Wardour Street for dinner and drank a glass of Broad Street water with his meal. We know that the tailor Mr. G sent his wife several times to grab a pitcher of water from the pump outside his workplace.

We also know of the holdouts who did not drink water from the pump that week, for a variety of reasons: the laborers at the Lion Brewery who had their malt liquor supplemented by water supplied by the popular New River Company; a family who normally relied on their ten-year-old girl to fetch water from the pump went dry for a few days as the little girl recovered in bed from a cold. A regular pump-water drinker – and noted ornithologist – named John Gould had declined a glass on that Saturday, complaining that it had a repulsive smell. Despite living a few feet from the pump, Thomas Lewis had never favored its water.

There is something remarkable about the minutiae of all these ordinary lives in a seemingly ordinary week persisting in the human record for almost two centuries. When that chemist's son spooned out his sweet pudding, he couldn't possibly have imagined that the details of his meal would be a matter of interest to anyone else in Victorian London, much less citizens of the twenty-first century. This is one of the ways that disease, and particularly epidemic disease, plays havoc with traditional histories. Most world-historic events – great military battles, political revolutions – are self-consciously historic to the participants living through them. They act knowing that their decisions will be chronicled and dissected for decades or centuries to come. But epidemics create a kind of history from below: they can be world-changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines, not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for posterity. And of course, if they do recognize that they are living through a historical crisis, it's often too late – because, like it or not, the primary way that ordinary people create this distinct genre of history is by dying.

Yet something has been lost in the record as well, something more intimate and experiential than stories of pudding and malt liquor – namely, what it felt like to contract cholera in that teeming, fraught city, at a time when so little was understood about the disease. We have remarkably detailed accounts of the movements of dozens of individuals during that late-summer week; we have charts and tables of lives and deaths. But if we want to re-create the inner experience of the outbreak – the physical and emotional torment involved – the historical record comes up wanting. We have to use our imaginations.

  —  The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World (Steven Johnson)

[canthandlethishit]

its been 5 years?????

Last year… on this day…

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Plague Doctor Mask

On display at the German Museum of Medical History in Ingolstadt is a rare 16th-century AD, plague doctor mask — a haunting artifact from one of history's darkest periods.

These distinctive masks, with their long, curved beaks, became an enduring symbol of the bubonic plague outbreaks that ravaged Europe.

Designed to protect physicians from what was believed to be contaminated air, or "miasma," the beak was often stuffed with aromatic herbs, spices, and flowers thought to purify the air before it reached the wearer’s lungs.

Crafted from leather or waxed fabric, the mask's grotesque design combined fearsome aesthetics with rudimentary medical theory.

Circular glass eye openings protected the wearer’s eyes, while the beak's length was intended to keep the perceived toxins at bay.

Worn alongside a long overcoat, gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat, the full plague doctor outfit created an almost otherworldly figure — both protector and omen of death.

Though the masks offered some protection against splashes or close contact, they were largely ineffective against the plague itself, as the true cause of the disease — bacteria spread by fleas and rodents — remained unknown at the time.

Today, this preserved mask serves as a powerful reminder of the intersection between medicine, superstition, and fear in the face of devastating epidemics.

Visitors to the museum can glimpse the fragile line between science and belief that shaped early public health practices, offering a chilling testament to humanity's ongoing battle against infectious disease.

[nepalniceties]

China Reports Five Cases of New Mpox Strain, Outbreak “Effectively Handled”

China announced on Thursday that it has identified five cases of a new mpox strain, but assured that the “outbreak has been effectively handled.” Mpox, a virus transmitted to humans through animals and close physical contact, can cause fever, muscle pain, and boil-like skin lesions, with potentially fatal outcomes. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency over mpox…

[epidemicpreparednessday]

A Call for Early Detection, Swift Action, and Healthier Communities.

The IFRC network is actively working to bridge these gaps, ensuring communities are equipped to face future health emergencies. However, this vital work requires significantly more investment to fortify health systems worldwide. The time to act is now, as the challenges of an increasingly hazardous world demand robust and coordinated global action to protect humanity from the next inevitable pandemic.

[ricisidro]

Presently, the CDC states that MPox is not airborne. However, as with all viruses, they have the ability to mutate. It is unknown if this has occurred with the current outbreak of MPox. Further information and testing on the spread of this illness is necessary.

#MPoxTransmission #Mpox #Mpox2024 #epidemic #MpoxOutbreak #CDC

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/0509-monkeypox-transmission.html

[worldspotlightnews]

The US helped prevent AIDS from being a death sentence in Africa. Now the epidemic is at a crossroads | CNN

Tembisa, South Africa CNN  —  Fourteen-year-old Philasande Dayimani carries a burden that no child should carry. Last year, she started getting sores in her mouth and struggled to breathe. She says a clinic doctor told her to test for HIV. “It wasn’t easy for me to accept. Many people cry when they hear about their status. I also cried,” she says, seated in her small shack in Tembisa, an…

[theonion]

Addressing the ongoing outbreak in Texas that has infected at least 124 state residents and killed one child, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed Thursday to make measles deaths so common that they wouldn’t be upsetting anymore. “When President Trump appointed me, I pledged to desensitize Americans to preventable death by making it such a normal, everyday occurrence that people would just shrug it off,” said Kennedy, who added that the current epidemic, which is considered Texas’ largest in 30 years, was the first step to one day fully numbing citizens to the experience of watching each other die painful measles-related deaths.

Full Story

[ecomehdi]

Uncovering the Hidden Threat: Typhus Outbreak Strikes LA After 30 Years

Introduction to the Typhus Outbreak in Los Angeles Los Angeles, a vibrant city known for its glitz and glamour, is now facing a hidden threat that has taken everyone by surprise – a typhus outbreak. After three decades of relative calm, the city is grappling with a resurgence of this dangerous bacterial infection. As the number of cases continues to rise, it is crucial to understand the causes,…

[transmutationisms]

ive been saying this for Literally Years Now but the most direct medical comparison to covid probably is never going to be HIV on any metric, overall it's probably the SARS outbreak of the early aughts (related viruses, similar transmission, what appear thus far to be similar rates/experiences of post-viral conditions and disability) and politically i do understand why people reach for HIV but like you really need to understand that our current situation is similar to how EVERY SINGLE pandemic / epidemic / outbreak has 'ended' in recent / capitalist history. these are political designations, that tend to get made once the ruling class considers itself safe, and it is typical that workers, global southerners, racialised people, &c continue to bear the brunt of diseases that would be treatable or preventable, were imperial countries and their ruling classes to care. we should be furious every time this happens and in every case where it is still happening: flu, TB, malaria, ebola, zika, plague, on and on, even the smallpox eradication campaign championed as a definitive triumph for public health occurred unevenly and the US and europe allowed the disease to continue to exact its most brutal toll on people in the Horn of Africa and southeast Asia until it was finally eradicated. covid is not unique in its medical OR political properties or ramifications, if you think it is you sorely need to do some more reading and this is why it is both unhelpful and yes, often homophobic to see how often 'covid communicators' jump straight to making alarmist and poorly contextualised comparisons to HIV, Specifically.

[byjove]

One thing people often forget about the Black Death is that the plague was still a major problem after the initial epidemic. There was a time before it and then there was a time after it. And it was always a concern. The last major urban outbreak was in Los Angeles in 1925. Only 100 years ago.

[eluminium]

sometimes i think about how absolutely BANGER Gem's villain aesthetic was in Secret Life. Like, she's got this whole vibe of infection and disease around her and it slaps so hard. First you got the End portal stuff with her arm and eye when she goes Yellow (alongside the implication of her ripping out her own eye to use for the End Portal) and later you have her as Patient Zero for the boogeyman/zombie outbreak. And she kills just as indiscriminately as an epidemic would, including her own allies when they offer themselves to her. Hell, she kills Scott TWICE and technically kills Impulse twice too, once by her own hands and once when Bdubs kills him right in front of her to continue the spread of the curse.

And then you combine all this with the idea of her being a deer and it just gets better. Not only are deer prone to uncanny valley vibes, but they're also extremely susceptible to Chronic Wasting Disease, aka Zombie Deer Disease. Which is scary as shit, like all prion diseases. It literally eats away at the brain and leaves the animal a husk. And it's completely incurable, 100% fatal, and spreads easily (not to humans though, thank fuck.)

Now imagine this diseased horned prey creature hunting and killing whatever gets in its way while infections far beyond its ability to comprehend ravage its body and mind. And everything it kills comes back just as screwed up and terrifying. Very few can fight back against it, let alone slay it. No one is safe, the ones who survive either do so because they're Something Not Human (Grian the Watcher), Already Biologically Dead (ZOMBIECleo) or just got lucky and never got caught (Scott). However, there is one last piece of horror unaccounted for. The carrier, no matter how thin, no matter how much drool leaks from her mouth, no matter how erratic and unholy her behavior, is still aware. Still in control.

There's an independent will behind the spread.