Living Lab from WCAI   /     Four Lessons from a Century of Pandemics

Description

The Spanish flu infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, and killed tens of millions. A century later, we have vaccines, antibiotics, advanced life support, and high-tech monitoring networks. And, yet, disease outbreaks - from Ebola, to Zika, to measles - continue to surprise even experts. Medical historian Mark Honigsbaum has chronicled the outbreaks and epidemics of the twentieth century in his new book, The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris . He says there are three lessons we should have learned, but haven’t, necessarily. Biomedical advances are only part of the story: “I don't think we should necessarily be reassured by the fact that we have medical technologies that weren't available in 1918 because everything that scientists have discovered about the Spanish Flu tell them this was an unusually virulent virus and we might find that it's just as hard to contain it now as it was then.” Think big picture: “If you narrowly focus on the

Summary

The Spanish flu infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, and killed tens of millions. A century later, we have vaccines, antibiotics, advanced life support, and high-tech monitoring networks. And, yet, disease outbreaks - from Ebola, to Zika, to measles - continue to surprise even experts. Medical historian Mark Honigsbaum has chronicled the outbreaks and epidemics of the twentieth century in his new book, The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris . He

Subtitle
The Spanish flu infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, and killed tens of millions. A century later, we have vaccines, antibiotics, advanced life support, and high-tech monitoring networks. And, yet, disease outbreaks - from Ebola, to Zika,
Duration
831
Publishing date
2019-04-28 16:22
Link
https://www.capeandislands.org/post/four-lessons-century-pandemics
Contributors
  Heather Goldstone
author  
Enclosures
https://cpa.ds.npr.org/wcai/audio/2019/04/LL042919b1.mp3
audio/mpeg