The fact is Worldwide true virus pandemics were stopped in the twentieth century when we started building cities with running water, sewage systems, and garbage pickup. It had little do do with vaccines and more to do with cleanliness.
The fact is Worldwide true virus pandemics were stopped in the twentieth century when we started building cities with running water, sewage systems, and garbage pickup. It had little do do with vaccines and more to do with cleanliness.
The counter to this is that we also reduced our exposure to pathogens, meaning our immune system becomes pathogen naive, which actually weakens it.
Which is fine until a pathogen comes along that gets past the running water, sewage systems and garbage pickup, then we need to deal with it using an immune system that is not necessarily any longer evolving with the evolving pathogen landscape.
All this is moot, of course, when Fauci starts funding GoF research but uh... fck that guy.
That might be true for waterborne diseases. But I'll have to call bullshit on you for one major pandemic: the Spanish Flu of ~1918. Millions dead. Unless I'm horribly mistaken, most of the civilized world's towns and cities had modern infrastructure well before then.
тАЬInitially, the American medical community minimized the scale and scope of the influenza pandemic to create a false sense of security in the countryтАЩs largest cities, including Philadelphia [11]. Yet, this was an issue beyond the medical community; this was a public health crisis that brought to light urban environment deficiencies, namely the proliferation of municipal waste and unsanitary living conditions [51]. While not always well understood, the presence and threat of infectious diseases has shaped urban planning in the United States. During this early 20th century pandemic, urban environments in New York City, Chicago and other American cities were densely populated and characterized by crowded tenement housing in proximity to factories, animal yards, and slaughterhouses with little airflow or light [4,52]. Even before the 1918 influenza outbreak, cities were plagued with cholera, tuberculosis and typhoid epidemics [4]. Medical models, specifically the miasma theory, an idea that diseases were caused by a noxious form of тАЬbad airтАЭ, prevailed, but there was also a sense that the congestion, pollution, lack of sunshine and poor airflow contributed to illness [4,52]. In response, urban planning efforts introduced zoning to spatially segregate residential, commercial and industrial uses and housing regulations to require light and airflow in order to improve overcrowding and unsanitary urban living conditions тАЬ
The fact is Worldwide true virus pandemics were stopped in the twentieth century when we started building cities with running water, sewage systems, and garbage pickup. It had little do do with vaccines and more to do with cleanliness.
The counter to this is that we also reduced our exposure to pathogens, meaning our immune system becomes pathogen naive, which actually weakens it.
Which is fine until a pathogen comes along that gets past the running water, sewage systems and garbage pickup, then we need to deal with it using an immune system that is not necessarily any longer evolving with the evolving pathogen landscape.
All this is moot, of course, when Fauci starts funding GoF research but uh... fck that guy.
That might be true for waterborne diseases. But I'll have to call bullshit on you for one major pandemic: the Spanish Flu of ~1918. Millions dead. Unless I'm horribly mistaken, most of the civilized world's towns and cities had modern infrastructure well before then.
I wish they still taught history in school......:>)
тАЬInitially, the American medical community minimized the scale and scope of the influenza pandemic to create a false sense of security in the countryтАЩs largest cities, including Philadelphia [11]. Yet, this was an issue beyond the medical community; this was a public health crisis that brought to light urban environment deficiencies, namely the proliferation of municipal waste and unsanitary living conditions [51]. While not always well understood, the presence and threat of infectious diseases has shaped urban planning in the United States. During this early 20th century pandemic, urban environments in New York City, Chicago and other American cities were densely populated and characterized by crowded tenement housing in proximity to factories, animal yards, and slaughterhouses with little airflow or light [4,52]. Even before the 1918 influenza outbreak, cities were plagued with cholera, tuberculosis and typhoid epidemics [4]. Medical models, specifically the miasma theory, an idea that diseases were caused by a noxious form of тАЬbad airтАЭ, prevailed, but there was also a sense that the congestion, pollution, lack of sunshine and poor airflow contributed to illness [4,52]. In response, urban planning efforts introduced zoning to spatially segregate residential, commercial and industrial uses and housing regulations to require light and airflow in order to improve overcrowding and unsanitary urban living conditions тАЬ