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The Black Death and Other Pandemics
Published in Scott M. Jackson, Skin Disease and the History of Dermatology, 2023
Perhaps this debate can be finally put to rest. In 2010, Yersinia DNA was discovered in the tooth sockets of the remains of fourteenth-century plague victims from mass graves all over Europe; they offered this as proof that Y. pestis was indeed the cause of the Black Death.49 Perhaps the rat and its flea played a limited role in the transmission of the Black Death. Perhaps other vectors like the human flea (Pulex irritans) or the body louse (Pediculus humanus) actually transmitted the disease.50 Perhaps Y. pestis was more virulent and deadlier in the fourteenth century. Perhaps comparing the Second and Third Pandemics is misguided when considering the contextual differences of individual and public health, hygiene, nutrition, medicine, and living conditions of periods that are 500 years apart in time.
Fleas
Published in Jerome Goddard, Public Health Entomology, 2022
Plague. Plague, sometimes called black death, a zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, has been associated with humans since recorded history, causing devastating effects on human civilization. For example, in the 14th century approximately 25 million people died of plague in Europe.4 Even though treatable with antibiotics, to this day, there are still hundreds of cases occurring annually over much of the world (Figure 11.4). In the United States, from 1970 to 1994 a total of 334 cases of indigenous plague were reported; the peak years were 1983 and 1984, in which there were 40 and 31 cases, respectively.5 In 2015, 16 cases of plague were reported to the CDC from Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah.6 Sylvatic plague, sometimes also called camp-estral plague, is ever present in endemic areas, circulating among rock and ground squirrels, deer mice, voles, chipmunks, and others (Figure 11.5). Transmission from wild rodents to humans can occur by direct contact with sick or dead animals, but is rare. For example, in 2012 a 7-year-old girl contracted plague after playing with a dead ground squirrel in Colorado.7
Tracking, Modelling, and Understanding of Pandemic Outbreak with Artificial Intelligence and IoT
Published in Ram Shringar Raw, Vishal Jain, Sanjoy Das, Meenakshi Sharma, Pandemic Detection and Analysis Through Smart Computing Technologies, 2022
Sapna Kataria, Anjali Chaudhary, Neeta Sharma
Pandemics are also responsible for a long-term modification in people’s choice of food-choices. After the pandemic caused by avian influenza, the intake of non-vegetarian food products drops by almost 80% in the marketplace of China [22, 23], which in turn affected the source of income of farm helpers. Pandemics also leave an impact on the mental and physical health of people in various ways and changes the way of living. One more case of such pandemics is Zika-virus which left a generation with neurological disorders; the same disorder was detected in new-born children in Brazil that has imposed critical lifelong boundaries [24]. It has happened many times when pandemics lead to an increase in the death rate. Similarly, the ‘Black Death’ pandemic in fourteenth-century destroyed almost half of the population of Europe [25]. These types of cases were more in the twentieth century, three main pandemics were Spanish-flu (1919–1920), this pandemic caused around 40-million losses of life [26]; Asian-flu pandemic (1957–1958) killed almost 2-million inhabitants, Hong Kongflu pandemic (1968–1969) killed approx. 1-million population [27]. And then SARS-pandemic outbreak (2003), 8000 plus infected cases were reported with 700 plus deaths all over the world in just some 6–7 months (approx. 9%) [28].
Mucormycosis medications: a patent review
Published in Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents, 2021
Mohd. Imran, Alshrari A.S., Mohammad Tauseef, Shah Alam Khan, Shuaibu Abdullahi Hudu
Mucormycosis (phycomycosis or zygomycosis) is a noninfectious fungal disease caused by different genera of zygomycetes. The mucormycosis term is widely used because members of the Mucoraceae family cause most of these infections [1]. The Mucoraceae family members are present worldwide and are known to start the decay of organic materials [2]. Rhizopus arrhizus is the most common cause of mucormycosis in humans. Other fungi reported causing mucormycosis to include Mucor sp., Saksenaea sp., Absidia sp., Entomophthora sp., Basidiobolus sp., Conidiobolus sp., Apophysomyces elegans, Cunninghamella bertholletiae, and Rhizomucor pusillus [1,3]. This uncommon infection occurs when a healthy individual’s mouth, nose, eyes, cracked skin and wound come in direct contact with contaminated soil or water. After the illness, the fungi rapidly multiply at the blood vessel walls and stop the tissue/organ’s blood supply. This results in tissue destruction, and if not treated on time, leads to infection of the different parts of the body, followed by death [1–4]. This illness is also termed as ‘Black Death’ and ‘Zombie disease’ in layman’s language. However, these terms are not be used by a responsible individual to avoid misunderstanding between the patient and the public [5].
Introduction to the Special Issue: In Dialogue with Fanonian and Southern Thought
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2021
Kopano Ratele, Shahnaaz Suffla, Mohamed Seedat, Mireille Fanon Mendès France, Nelson Maldonado-Torres
Drawing a line from Black men dehumanized by racism to radical political love, in his contribution, “Biko’s Black Conscious Thought Is Useful for Extirpating the Fear of Whites Deposited in Black Masculinity,” Kopano Ratele opens up about his experience of racism-induced fear of white people, that is, “a fear of horrible bodily death as much as social nonexistence.” He interprets this as a fear of Black death. Revolving around Steve Biko, a leader in the Black Consciousness Movement that flourished in South Africa during the late 1960s and 1970s, and who is regarded as an eminent psychopolitical activist, the article is an effort to work out how the fear of white people deposited by racism inside of Black people might be extirpated. Black Conscious thought, it is contended, carries the possibility of (politically and psychologically) loving masculinity, enabling individuals to stamp out racism-induced fear. Ratele writes that “I see the process that Biko speaks of regarding outgrowing the imprisoning Black identity permitted under segregationist ideology as a process that involves becoming more loving of Blackness.”
Biko’s Black Conscious Thought Is Useful for Extirpating the Fear of Whites Deposited in Black Masculinity
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2021
The fear of Black death has markedly decreased since my days when I was growing up in Maboloka, a village in the North West Province of South Africa. My fear was implanted in me during my Christian upbringing. The people of my village were devout independent Christians, and until just before my teenage years when I lived in Maboloka, they would attend church twice a day, and on Sundays for hours on end. Growing up in the Apostolic Faith Mission Church that my forebears had established, along with settling a new village, means that my forefathers, including my own grandfather, the head priest and king of the Bataung,1The lion people. had adopted and adapted the religion brought to the country by colonial missionaries. I barely recall seeing a White person in the village and was immune to the effects of direct White racism up until I had left the village of my ancestors. However, it may be that my fear of death was mixed with vivid images of a fear of dying an awful death in the fires of Satan’s Hell. The fear of death was therefore the fear that was attached to colonial and apartheid racist power, a power that was simultaneously religious, patriarchal, and political. It is this kind of fear against which one must go on a pilgrimage, spiritually, psychically, and socially.