Dangerous Diseases & Epidemics

This is such a great book!

It's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dangerous Diseases & Epidemics and it is really quite fascinating! I can read this stuff and not get wigged out. Why, you ask, would this make you wig out? I'm sure you're thinking, so what, you can read. You're right. That is not so amazing and impressive. However, the fact that reading about fifty million heinous diseases doesn't bother me or turn me into a germophobe is pretty cool.

There are a lot of germophobic people out there (and you really can't blame them if they are a bit OCD about invisible things that can, potentially, kill you), and there are many people who prefer to live blinded to certain realities.

I prefer to learn. Sure, learning can make you a little freaked out over things, you'll eventually return to your more normal self, and maybe a little safer. I am still pretty much me, although after a call with someone with Hepatitis C, I felt better about double gloving (I have more than one healing papercut and a bit of poison ivy) and if the patient knew I'd poison ivy, they'd feel better. (Let's be serious, here, folks - poison ivy is only contagious from person-to-person contact if the vesicles were actively leaking at the time of contact. Otherwise it is harmless and annoying strictly to its owner - me!)

When I run into someone who has "pink eye", the medical disease called conjunctivitis, I try to remember to wash my hands before touching my face. However, it is rare that I won't contract it... sadly, rubbing my eyes when I'm tired is an unconscious movement and I'm almost always going to get it.

Know anyone who's died from conjunctivitis? I thought not.

I've been fascinated with all of this book, so far... the epidemics of the past (smallpox, bubonic plague and influenza), mordern scourges (HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, turberculosis, malaria), other kinds of things (fungal diseases, water-bourne, blood-bourne, vector-transmitted - think mosquitoes, among other things, childhood maladies, tropical, food-bourne, rare and scary diseases), and soon I'll move onto Part 4, which focusses on bioterrorism, drug-sensitive infections, hospital infections (can anyone say staphococcus? I thought so...), and the future.

The history of scourges like smallpox, bubonic plague (also referred to as the Black Death) and influenza, which is still regularly moving through communities, was fascinating, but too short. I found reading about the bubonic plague fascinating, as it not only brought about leaps in medicine (if you could call it that in the 1300s) but mainly because of the socio-economic changes it brought about. Seriously, as an employer, this makes a lot of sense! Think about this: 2/3 of the populace is wiped out due to a pandemic disease. The remaining third is either hiding or recovering from this terrible sickness. If 50% of the remaining third (which is likely too generous) survives the plague, you know that this viable and valuable source is there and looking for work. And you, with your now-fallow fields that haven't been worked in ages, need that workforce.

Guess what... they know it, too.

Suddenly, serfdom came to a screeching halt and you needed to woo people to come work for you. Who do you think got them? The old blow-hard down the road still carrying a whip or you, a smart employer who will pay a wage that will at least allow the employees to survive?

When you think about it, a good scourge is maybe what we need. Famines and pestilence will be a problem for a little while, but then you will end up with a stronger society for it. Look at the amount of unemployment that abounds. Say what you want, but it all boils down to one very simple and obvious problem: overpopulation.

Yes, it's me, the childless wonder (I prefer childfree, since this is exactly what I want out of life), haroing yet again on the many, many people who are just popping out babies in that mindless fashion that is so terribly disturbing. More mouths to feed, more costs incurred, more taxes I'm paying for others' mistakes. How does that happen? In a world full of solutions that allow people to have price-tag free sex how is this such a problem?

Well. There is religion, which refuses to modernise at all. Or this is their idea of world domination? Certainly Mormons think this way (the gods help us if they can succeed - yikes!).

I'm sure that this is why the Catholic church hasn't dropped like a hot potato the very antiquated attitude go forth and multiply. You don't think this is a poor approach to anything at this point?

So that was disease history.

Some of the current diseases floating around were interesting to read about in more detail. Sure, I remember when AIDS came on the scene, but I'd forgotten about or did not know all of its history. It became prevalent in the late, late 70s or more closer to 1980. And it was originally connected to homosexuality almost exclusively - very stupid thinking, of course. It's a blood-bourne pathogen - it cares not whose blood it infects.

There is a lot in life to be learned. This is just another part.