The Next Pandemic May Come From Meat Farms

 Almost all the meat we eat today comes from industrialized factory farms, AKA Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs. Globally, 90 percent of the world’s meat supply comes from CAFOs, and in the US, it’s close to 99 percent. CAFOs may be tough on farm animals, but they’re ideal for breeding virus and bacteria mutations new to human immune systems. A Vox video.

___________________________
Short Link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-vuc

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Disease Tracing in 1854

Using data analysis and interviews, Dr. John Snow figured out how a cholera outbreak was speading in mid-nineteenth century London. A Vox video by Phil Edwards.

_____________
Shortlink: https://wp.me/p6sb6-veq

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

How COVID-19 Swept Across America

See in one minute how Covid-19 has torn across the U.S. since March in this one-minute video developed by Microsoft AI for Health, Brown School of Public Health, and Harvard Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

_____________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-vND

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

How South Korea Slowed Coronavirus

South Korea slowed the spread of COVID-19 through testing and tracing. A Vox video by Christina Thornell, Danush Parvaneh, Ranjani Chakraborty and Mac Schneider.

______________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-uOi

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Spanish Flu Wasn’t Spanish

The 1918 influenza pandemic did not start in Spain. Europe’s WWI censors forbade discussion of the widespread disease, but neutral Spain’s press reported freely, so the illness became known as the Spanish Flu. A 2018 Cambridge University video

_____________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-uL4

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Social Distancing Works

Courtesy of the Ohio Department of Health. No ping pong balls were hurt in making this video.

Don’t get it? Read this.

_____________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-uLG

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

New Diseases Come In From the Wild

COVID-19 was bound to happen. A Vox video.

Related:

“From Bats to Human Lungs, the Evolution of a Coronavirus,” Carolyn Kormann, The New Yorker

_____________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-uEt

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Prevent Coronavirus: Wash Your Hands. With Soap.

Wash your hands. Use soap.

_____________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-uC2

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Larry Kudlow Leads Trump Administration Coronavirus Fight

The Trump Administration’s rapid response to the Coronavirus threat was led by National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, who announced on Tuesday that the COVID-19 epidemic has been “contained” in the United States. “We have contained this, I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight,” he diagnosed on CNBC. Mr. Kudlow’s concern, like that of his master, Donald Trump, was with one major disease symptom, a severe decline in the Dow Jones Index.

Larry Kudlow, while not a physician, is as qualified to advise on the disease epidemic as he is to be National Economic Council Director. He isn’t an economist either, and his financial prognoses are consistently wrong. In the case of the COVID-19 epidemic, epidemiologists at the CDC warn that its spread in the US is imminent. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,”said National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Dr. Nancy Messonnier.

What a Pair

Foot fetishes flourish during epidemics of sexually-transmitted diseases, according to a 1998 study. The paper, published in the PubMed database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), was unearthed by the Discovery Magazine Discoblog: