TeaAtTrianon has a link to an article on the Sweating Sickness, an epidemic during the early Tudor era in England, that might have killed Prince Arthur, and almost killed Ann Boleyn.
it killed people within 24 hours.
There are only a few known diseases that will do this: Among them cholera, Meningococcal meningitis, and the pneumonic form of bubonic plague.
unlike other epidemic disease, the historians still haven't identified the cause, but it may have been a virus related to the Picardy Sweat (a similar outbreak 100 years later in France).. Some historians think the outbreak, which hit mainly young adults, might have been a form of Hanta virus. However, the actual cause has never been found.
estimates of deaths might be exaggerated, since the article notes that unlike the Black Death/bubonic plague, there was no drop in the population.
I am familiar with the Hanta virus only because when I was working in the IHS, there was an outbreak in the nearby Navajo reservation. The medical epidemiologists found that native healers remembered previous outbreaks.
the preventive measures to stop outbreaks was about getting rid of rodent droppings (and using a mask when you clean up the house) since the way you get the disease from rodents is by inhaling or injesting the droppings of the vector.
We had posters and pamphlets on how to do this correctly,
the article notes
The earliest description of hantavirus infection dates back to China, around the year 900 AD.
although various forms of Hanta Virus have been found on all continents, it also is a public health problem in China: LINK
From Wikipedia:
It is estimated that about 1.5 million cases and 46,000 deaths occurred in China from 1950 to 2007. The number of cases is estimated at 32,000 in Finland from 2005 to 2010 and 90,000 in Russia from 1996 to 2006.
and then the big question: Were the Cocoliztli epidemics in the 1500s that depopulated Mexico a variation of the Hanta virus?
Although the major way to stop the spread is control of the vector (usually a rodent) there is a vaccine that has been developed for some strains of the virus, including the strain found in China and Korea.
This article (2019) goes into the complications of making a vaccine for this virus, and also has a technical discussion of various anti viral drugs and monoclonal antibodies being used to treat cases.
However, so far there are no anti viral medicines that seem to work definitely (i.e. there are studies that say they worked, but no good double blind study. See my earlier blogpost with Dr. C's video on placebo and double blind studies).
Hanta virus is serious, but since it is a vector spread disease, and not person to person as in Covid, there are various ways to stop the spread once the cause is identified.
My worry is that, with the huge increase in rodent population among the homeless, especially in California, that rodent spread disease might cause outbreaks in the near future. LINK2
In some ways the world is lucky that the covid epidemic was so mild: yes it killed millions but mainly high risk folks.
What will kill more people in the next few years is hunger. The price of fertilizer is going up, the price of growing food is up due to increase in oil prices, and the danger of war is very real here in Asia.
________________
update: From Instapudit:
LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: The rat problem in D.C. is so bad, two people got hantavirus.
Luckily it is the weaker Seole strain.
No comments:
Post a Comment