Why Are Diseases Spreading Faster Now?

OneEyedDiva

OneEyedDiva

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Here are seven reasons why.
1. More close contact between humans and animals
2. More global travel and migrations
3. Worsening climate crisis
4. Not enough routine vaccinations for children
5. World is paying the price for neglecting disease outbreaks in developing countries
6. Our shifting perception of disease threats
7. We're still not sure how COVID affects our immune systems
For details on each of these reasons, read on:
https://www.insider.com/many-diseases-making-a-comeback-pandemic-reasons-why-2022-8
Your thoughts?
 

My only thought is that humans are animals, too. To point this out is an annoying trait of mine since 5th grade, when I said to the class and all the students disagreed. The teacher set them straight. I have to say it! Adults disagree with me about that quite often (when it comes up), to my displeasure.

Aside from that, the article sounds reasonable to me.

I do not have contact with wildlife. It's not because of diseases, though, it's because of parasites and fleas and lice and such. I have never had an opportunity to handle wildlife. If I get close to a wild animal, it's already dead. Except for once.

A blue jay flew into my window one day. I went outside, and it was alive, but lying on its back. I gently flipped it over using something to do it, not my bare hands. When it got back on its feet, it flew away.

I wonder if birds can flip themselves over?
 
If you think back to the times of what we call 'plague', diseases spread rapidly because of the trade between countries. People have always travelled the globe, there's nothing new about that. It's just the mode of travel which has changed.
What I should like to know if why so many diseases seem to originate in Eastern countries.
 
I think that diseases are more prevalent in younger
people, because when they were children, their parents
protected them more than in my day, they were kept in
to play, watch TV, play with tablets, or phones, but not
outside.

When I was young we were never indoors, TV was a dream
that only the wealthy had, outside from dawn till dark and
sometimes later, in the 90s, I watched my granddaughters
playing in a puddle of mud and the younger one was tasting
it.

Now we live in hermetically sealed houses with heating and
air conditioning, vacuum cleaners, keep the floors safe for
children, then there are the dishwashers, every time you wash
your crockery etc., in one, all the cups and plates are sterilised,
so children really don't get a chance to build a robust immune
system, as they age they might boost it a little, but modern life
doesn't really help.

If you could break down the diseases to the age of those who
are suffering, you might find that it is starting in younger people.

At least that is how I see it, alongside the points listed at the start
of this thread.

Mike.
 
Mike said:
I think that diseases are more prevalent in younger
people, because when they were children, their parents
protected them more than in my day, they were kept in
to play, watch TV, play with tablets, or phones, but not
outside.

When I was young we were never indoors, TV was a dream
that only the wealthy had, outside from dawn till dark and
sometimes later, in the 90s, I watched my granddaughters
playing in a puddle of mud and the younger one was tasting
it.

Now we live in hermetically sealed houses with heating and
air conditioning, vacuum cleaners, keep the floors safe for
children, then there are the dishwashers, every time you wash
your crockery etc., in one, all the cups and plates are sterilised,
so children really don't get a chance to build a robust immune
system, as they age they might boost it a little, but modern life
doesn't really help.

If you could break down the diseases to the age of those who
are suffering, you might find that it is starting in younger people.

At least that is how I see it, alongside the points listed at the start
of this thread.

Mike.
Click to expand...
^^^ Agreed. Too much sterilization causes weakened immune systems.
 
Lavinia said:
If you think back to the times of what we call 'plague', diseases spread rapidly because of the trade between countries. People have always travelled the globe, there's nothing new about that. It's just the mode of travel which has changed.
What I should like to know if why so many diseases seem to originate in Eastern countries.
Click to expand...
This got me thinking...have any diseases originated in the U.S.? I can't think of any.
 
OneEyedDiva said:
Your thoughts?
Click to expand...
@OneEyedDiva This is an interesting topic and an interesting thread, thanks for it.

I think a lot of it comes down to population growth, particularly in the poorer regions of the world, and increased travel. What I find impressive is that our medical knowledge and sanitary practices have lead to so little disease. Plagues throughout history killed a much larger portion of the world's population than they do today. I fear this won't always be the case, imagine the effect had the HIV virus been as effectively transmitted as Covid... This is a very well done and interesting article related to the subject:

Pandemics Throughout History​

If we want our civilization to continue we need to better respond to pandemics than we did to Covid. We were lucky that Covid was not nearly so deadly as other diseases. That won't always be the case.
Lavinia said:
What I should like to know if why so many diseases seem to originate in Eastern countries.
Click to expand...
Good question, this is a good related article:

Why so many epidemics originate in Asia and Africa – and why we can expect more​

win231 said:
Too much sterilization causes weakened immune systems
Click to expand...
I think there is truth to this, it's called the "Hygiene Hypothesis" and it does have some sound scientific basis. However remains controversial, and I think needs more good research.

Too clean, or not too clean: the Hygiene Hypothesis and home hygiene​

 
My dad always said he blamed many of our ills on the jet airplane. I said HUH? . But, being fair to him & his opinions , he did spend six years in Europe & Asia...together. Fighting in two wars. He said too me, more than once .... those folks live differently & see things in a different manner than we do. And thanks to the airplane [perticularly the jet] they sent & brought their way to us .... The U.S.

Fast fowarrd to today ..... I agree.
 
rgp said:
How can we be so certain ? Wasn't the Spanish/American war just ten or so years previous ?
Click to expand...
As @Flarbalard said the first known and reported cases were in 1918 in the US. The reason we call it the Spanish Flu is that WWI was on and sensors in most participating countries suppressed news of it. The world became aware of the pandemic through the Spanish press, without such censorship.

The article cited in #13 above gives a pretty good analysis of what we know about its possible origin, but basically concludes we don't know. So I probably overstated when I said we are certain it did not originate in Spain, we can only really be certain that the "Spanish" name has nothing to do with where it originated. The article says there is evidence of a precursor virus circulating as early as 1915, but not as early as the Spanish/American war. And not in Spain.
 

"58% of human infectious diseases can be worsened by climate change – we scoured 77,000 studies to map the pathways ​

Climate change can exacerbate a full 58% of the infectious diseases that humans come in contact with worldwide, from common waterborne viruses to deadly diseases like plague, our new research shows.
Our team of environment and health scientists reviewed decades of scientific papers on all known pathogenic disease pathogens to create a map of the human risks aggravated by climate-related hazards.
The numbers were jarring. Of 375 human diseases, we found that 218 of them, well over half, can be affected by climate change.
Flooding, for example, can spread hepatitis. Rising temperatures can expand the life of mosquitoes carrying malaria. Droughts can bring rodents infected with hantavirus into communities as they search for food.
With climate change influencing more than 1,000 transmission pathways like those and climate hazards increasingly globally, we concluded that expecting societies to successfully adapt to all of them isn’t a realistic option. The world will need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change to reduce these risks."

4 min read

https://theconversation.com/58-of-h...red-77-000-studies-to-map-the-pathways-188256
 
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