A Brief Timeline of Major American Epidemics:
The 1600s
 |
| Native American Smallpox |
1878
In the Southern States, near the lower Mississippi Valley, over 13,000 people died from yellow fever.
1916
Over 7,000 people died from a nationwide polio outbreak in America.
1918
Spanish influenza had a catastrophic effect on American society. It killed more people than WW1- around 20-40 million people globally; approximately 675,000 Americans died. It infected around a third of the world’s population. The disease was heavily prevalent in society, as the American life-expectancy dropped by ten years during this time, and children would even sing a specific flu-related song while jump roping:
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.
Due to the Spanish flu, the deadly pandemic in history, the first flu vaccine was developed and marketed to all Americans. |
| The Spanish Influenza |
2020
Though other diseases, like HIV and AIDS, have been extremely prevalent in American society recently, they pale in comparison to the coronavirus, as it is much more contagious and more difficult to prevent. To date, 100 Americans have died from the coronavirus, and over 7,000 cases have been reported.
How did these epidemics end?
In all of these epidemics, infected Americans either died, stopping the spread of the disease, or they developed an immunity to it. Vaccines were useful in preventing later versions of the disease, especially with the Spanish flu, but they weren’t used to end the most devastating times of the epidemic. This isn’t to say that the coronavirus can’t be ended with a vaccine; with today’s technology and knowledge, it’s likely that we won’t have to repeat the past.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/pandemics-end-plague-cholera-black-death-smallpox
https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
https://www.healthline.com/health/worst-disease-outbreaks-history#1
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=228841
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
I found your overview of the epidemics America faced really informative and especially interesting when comparing it to the current situation with the coronavirus. Another period of epidemic I know of in America was with polio later in the 20th century from the 1940s to roughly 1950s. With its start with the epidemic in 1916, and it's largest damage being done from the 40s to 50s. The disease killed thousands of people, 3,145 people in 1952. As well as there were 57,638 reported cases. The development of a vaccine by Jonas Salk, prevented even greater damage by the disease, but between 1937 and 1997, a total of 457,000 people in the US were infected by the disease. And certainly, this number would have been much worse were it not for the development of a vaccine by Jonas Salk and others after him.
ReplyDeleteSources:
https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/04/10/398515228/defeating-the-disease-that-paralyzed-america
https://www.healthline.com/health/worst-disease-outbreaks-history#9
I like how you set up your blog as a timeline to clearly organize the various diseases that affected Americans throughout history. You mentioned that even though the Europeans brought smallpox, the Native American deaths due to the disease were much greater than those of European. I found this odd and decided to research into it. I found that certain cultural and biological traits in Native Americans made them more susceptible to becoming infected by the disease. Additionally, their tradition of visiting the sick increased the spread of disease through face-to-face contact.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12003378
https://www.historylink.org/File/5100