Voted less than 20, but HIV is an anomaly and I don’t really know how to assess something like that. I guess my definition of “as severe as COVID” includes not just death on that scale but equivalent disruption to daily life and the global economy.
Only voting less than 20 because I think readiness will improve.
Just in my lifetime we’ve had COVID, AIDS, MRSA, and probably other horrifying pandemics I’ve forgotten. And my lifetime has been kind of a historical outlier, most of history was far worse. My parents got to watch polio cripple and kill their classmates.
MRSA is nowhere near those other things.
Not yet…
Anyone know the history of these things well enough to tell me if, when, and how long polio and small pox reached pandemic status. Or were they just endemic. I’m not motivated to do a deep dive at the moment. Maybe one of you all already has?
How exactly do you imagine an MRSA pandemic going? Specifically, how are you envisioning that it is transmitted among people.
Well, they can be both endemic and go pandemic now and then. idk much about the history but I know there was a huge polio outbreak in the US in the 1940s-50s. This Podcast Will Kill You has episodes about the history of this kind of thing if you’re interested.
It’s already ongoing and killing 20,000 a year in the US. The real nightmare is if we completely run out of antibiotics that work.
Is anyone officially defining it as pandemic now? I don’t know, I’m asking. I’m not really sure how these things are defined and who defines them (pun not intended).
I think that ship has sailed on basically all major African cities except Addis Ababa and the desert/temperate places. Addis certainly could slide into the danger zone in the near future.
I thought the deliberate placement of cities at high elevations was more of a Latin American thing (CDMX, Guatemala, Quito, Bogotá, etc etc).
Nairobi is pretty high up, isn’t it?
The problem with those numbers is that the true Covid death total is almost certainly much much higher. AIDS is probably not much higher than the reported number (since HIV is a lengthy illness and unlikely to go undiagnosed). That seems to make Covid worse.
Nah, both of those numbers are estimates.
True, and they’ve managed to get malaria pretty low there. A few other cities fit this mold, like Harare, Lusaka, Windhoek.
But basically the entire western part of Africa has its main cities on the coasts. Or, if inland, most countries don’t have highlands with enough elevation to stop mosquitoes.
Bird flu is what worries me the most. It’s been ripping across the globe recently jumping from one species to another. Human CFR estimates for H5N1 range from pretty bad to apocalyptic.
In its latest update, the WHO said some countries were reporting that new cases were appearing beyond known contacts of previously confirmed cases, which it said suggested chains of transmission were being “missed through undetected circulation of the virus”.
“It is highly likely that other countries will identify cases and there will be further spread of the virus,” it added.
The global health body said most, but not all, of the reported cases so far have involved men who have sex with men. There is no evidence that monkeypox is sexually transmitted, but it is passed on through close contact.
Your morning laugh/cry:
Oh cool. So we learned nothing
Maybe the next pandemic.
SEEMS AWFULLY SUSPICIOUS
https://twitter.com/joeygilbertinc/status/1533593306797686788?s=21&t=piMzEMu3l25z25t-lkLJEQ
As Talleyrand said of the restored Bourbons, “They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.”