The environment shapes human societies, and as populations grow and change, these populations in turn shape their environments.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain how environmental factors affected human populations over time.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

KC-6.1.III Diseases, as well as medical and scientific developments, had significant effects on populations around the world. 

KC-6.1.III.A Diseases associated with poverty persisted while other diseases emerged as new epidemics and threats to human populations, in some cases leading to social disruption. These outbreaks spurred technological and medical advances. Some diseases occurred at higher incidence merely because of increased longevity.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Diseases associated with poverty: 

§ Malaria 

§ Tuberculosis 

§ Cholera 

Emergent epidemic diseases: 

§ 1918 influenza pandemic 

§ Ebola 

§ HIV/AIDS 

Diseases associated with increased longevity: 

§ Heart disease 

§ Alzheimer’s disease

  The United Nations in 1978 called for the elimination of all infectious diseases by the year 2000. 

• That goal was unrealistic, and in the meantime ancient diseases once thought under control, such as malaria and tuberculosis, are on the rise again. 

§ 1918 influenza pandemic

• an influenza pandemic that swept the globe in 1918 and 1919 killed between twenty and forty million people (estimates do go as high as 100 million dead)

  • • far more than died as the result of the Great War that had just ended 

    • may have impacted the course of WWI

    • April 1919-- President Wilson came close to dying at the end of the pandemics third wave

    • Influenza 

    • 1918 influenza pandemic 

• First Wave--according to records, the disease was first recorded:

  • • March-April, 1918 --  United States

      • • disrupting the operation of some military camps and a few factories 

    • April, 1918 -- France 

    • May 1918 -- North Africa

    • June 1918-- Bombay and Calcutta

    • summer, 1918 -- effecting troops indiscriminately on both sides and interfering with military operations. 

      • • General Erich von Ludendorff blamed the flu, among other factors, for the halting of Germany's last victory drive in July 1918

    • July, 1918 -- neutral Switzerland (53,000 killed in one month)

    • end of July, 1918 -- Chungking (southwest China), Phgilippines, New Zealand, and Hawaii

    • It had spread around the world in less than 5 months of identification

• Second wave (late August 1918-Fall 1919)

  • • the most dangerous strain of the influenza virus ever recorded

    • more dangerous to young adults than any strain before

    • American forces only full scale attack of the war (Meuse-Argonne) stalled as 69,000 medical cases flooded the military hospital system already overtaxed with 93,000 wounded and gassed.

• Third Wave (Winter 1919-Spring 1919)

  • • less virulent and deadly

    • more hospitalized, but death rate was about half of the second wave

    • Mask debate

      • • Governments like the city of San Francisco required masks to be worn in public (October 1918)

        • resistance from Christian Scientists, civil libertarians, various public health departments, and merchants (worried about what impact masks would have on Christmas shopping season)

        • public pressure resulted in a repeal of the compulsory mask law in San Francisco on February 1, 1919

• Factors for spread

  • • WWI

      • • summer 1918: 200,000-300,000 Americans a month were going from an influenza free America to a European continent rife with the disease

        • colonial soldiers guaranteed a global pandemic would occur

        • the war resulted in governments concealing information

        • poor nutrition and conditions in the trenches contributed to high mortality rates among young adults 

§ Ebola

• Ebola virus disease (EVD) first discovered in 1976 

• spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids 

• The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%.

  • • Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks 

• 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa 

  • • more cases and deaths in this outbreak than all others combined to that date

    • spread between countries, starting in Guinea then moving across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia 

      • • Guinea -- 2543 (67% case fatality)

        • Sierra Leone 3956 (28% case fatality)

        •  Liberia 4809 (45% case fatality)

• Ebola is not eradicated and the D.R. Congo is in the midst of the 11th outbreak of Ebola which began in 2018 with cases on the rise as of the summer of 2020.

§ HIV/AIDS

• One of the most serious epidemic threat in contemporary society comes from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) 

  • • fatal disorder of the immune system is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which slowly attacks and destroys the immune system, leaving the infected individual vulnerable to diseases that eventually cause death 

    • AIDS is the last stage of HIV infection, during which time these diseases arise 

• Medical experts identified AIDS for the first time in 1981 among homosexual men and intravenous drug users in New York and San Francisco 

• Subsequently, evidence for an epidemic appeared among heterosexual men, women, and children in sub-Saharan Africa 

• AIDS developed into a worldwide epidemic that affected virtually every nation 

  • • At the end of 2005, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS was 38.6 million, and over 20 million AIDS deaths had occurred since the beginning of the epidemic. 

Transmission

• The HIV infection is spread through sexual contact with an infected person

• contact with contaminated blood

• transmission from mother to child during pregnancy and, after birth, through breast feeding. 

• Factors contributing to the spread of AIDS include poverty, ignorance, the prohibitive cost of drugs, and, some say, sexual promiscuity

AIDS in Africa and beyond

•  the disease has struck the developing world hardest, especially sub-Saharan Africa 

  • • Of the 38.6 million people identified with HIV/AIDS worldwide, 24.5 million of them currently live in sub-Saharan Africa 

    • Between 2005 and 2010, the life expectancy in the region declined from fifty-nine years to forty-five 

    • Africa is also home to 80 percent of the children who are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide 

    • the epidemic has orphaned more than 10 million children 

• the epidemic in India has begun to dwarf the problems seen in Africa 

Hope

• 1995 -- researchers succeeded in developing a new class of drugs known as protase inhibitors and, in combination with some of the older drugs, they produced what is now known as highly active anti-retroviral therapy or HAART 

  • • In most cases, HAART can prolong life indefinitely 

    • The high cost of these sophisticated drugs initially prevented poor people from sharing in their benefits, but this too is changing 

    • By 2007 over one million people in sub-Saharan Africa routinely received anti-AIDS drugs 

• prevention techniques are widely known

  • • condom use 

CCoT Activity 

1.) Identify the main idea of the passage below

2.) Identify TWO other examples of epidemic diseases that have occurred before the 20th century

3.) Create a paragraph using the main idea you identified and support it with the examples you identified from before the 20th century.

Source: Mark Honigsbaum. The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris.  2019.  Mark Honigsbaum is a medical historian, journalist, and author and is currently a lecturer at City, University of London  

Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet, despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu and the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles, to the 1930 'parrot fever' pandemic and the more recent SARS, Ebola, Zika and – now – COVID-19 epidemics, the last 100 years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. 

…’nature’ is the greatest bioterrorist of them all 

Key Takeaways

A.) Diseases associated with poverty continues to impact developing nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

B.) Better nutrition, education, political stability, and medical treatments in the developed world have enabled humans to live longer resulting in increased in prevalence of diseases associated with aging. 

C.) Emergent epidemic diseases continues to be a regional and global threat despite the presence of the WHO and new medical technology.