Covid-19 disease, caused by the SARS-Cov2 virus, which is the only agenda in the world nowadays, and which brings fear, panic and death, has started in December 2019 in China, and has reached 115 countries so far.
Map of countries with Covid-19 disease on March 11
This outbreak, which started as an “epidemic”, was taken into the “pandemic” class by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. If we explain these two concepts, the epidemic; While it means the spread of the disease in a particular community or region, pandemic; it means spreading the disease to different geographic regions. Therefore, states need to cooperate scientifically and administratively with each other in order to control an epidemic that is included in the pandemic class. Regarding this, IMF announced that it has allocated $ 50 billion resource against Covid-19 disease, while in some countries they have started working on drug and vaccine development efforts to eliminate the outbreak.
Both vaccination and other studies will take a certain time, but the risk of contamination can be minimized by simple measures that can be taken to protect from Covid-19 during this period.
So why do these outbreaks occur? Why are people so affected? The answers to these questions are hidden in evolution… From the discovery of the first living fossils dating back 3.5 billion years, living things have adapted to the environment they live in, and have increased their chances of survival. For evolution, we can observe similar features today without going back so many years. For example, we can closely monitor the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics (you can find the relevant article here), or the fact that viruses have mutated and acquired different properties thanks to the developing technology.
Scientists agree that an epidemic that will wreak havoc in the world over time will surely happen one day. However, there is a much more important issue than the epidemic, which is the possibility that the panic wave that will arise in such a situation will cause the management to be completely out of control when the effectiveness of the measures to be taken decreases and this turns into a massive chaos. In fact, it is known that these predictions, which we consider as probabilities today, have come true in the past. Let’s take a closer look at the major epidemics that ravaged the world.
BLACK PLAGUE
At the top of the list is the extremely deadly epidemic called black plague and caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis. This epidemic was so out of control that it destroyed about 1/3 of the European population. With the chaos that emerged, especially poor people were exposed to violence, and those who were seen as suspicious were burned alive. While the church interpreted the cause of the disease as a punishment of God, some segments blamed the Jews for the disease and this situation turned into a genocide, bringing the Jewish population to an end point in Europe. It is assumed today that this disease occurs in rodents and is transmitted and spread through fleas.
The epidemic first started in China in 1331 (it is thought to be around the city of Wuhan today), it reached Constantinople in 1347 and Sicily in the same year and spread to the European continent. While the epidemic has surrounded the whole world, some countries have also been less affected by this disease (by limiting trade to where the disease is seen) and Spain (Finland, Galicia). While the consumption of meat is good in combating the disease and the widespread use of similar applications do not contribute to the solution of the problem, Italy has managed to prevent the increase in the spread of quarantine by closing the people showing signs of disease in a closed area (quarantine).
Spread map of the Black Plague
The effects of the epidemic lasted until the 1700s and even reappeared in certain periods. Italian outbreak in 1629-1631, the Great London outbreak in 1665-1666, the Vienna outbreak in 1679, the Great Marseille outbreak in 1720-1722 and the Moscow outbreak in 1771 can examplify In other words, there is a 400-year period between the beginning and the end of the outbreak.
HAEMORRHAGIC FEVER OUTBREAKS
Partly outbreaks emerged in current Mexico between 1520 and 1576 cost about 20 million lives. The population, which was 22 million before these outbreaks, decreased to 2 million. 8 million people died from smallpox in 1520, 12-15 million people from the cocoolitz epidemic in 1545, and 2 million people died in the second cocoolitz epidemic in 1576. A new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution has shown that this disease can be caused by the Salmonella bacteria. In the DNA analysis of 10 people who were performed in the area where people were buried after the epidemic and estimated to die from this disease, traces of Salmonella paratyphi C bacteria were found. However, the exact cause is still unknown.
Salmonella is a bacterium that causes food poisoning in humans as a result of consumption of poultry, especially today.
CHOLERA OUTBREAK
Another outbreak that driven to large-scale deaths in the 19th and 20th centuries was Cholera. This disease is caused by a bacteria called Vibrio cholerea. This disease, which brought about pandemics 7 times in the world, first appeared in India in 1817, and then spread to Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It came to Iraq in 1821 and caused the death of more than 18 thousand people in Basra within three weeks. Afterwards it reached Turkey and spread from there to the Mediterranean region.
Microscope image of bacteria causing cholera disease
The epidemic, called the second cholera pandemic, reached the continent of Europe and America in 1829, and Canada in 1832 and then to America. It is estimated that 5,000 people died in New Orleans alone.
The last pandemic appeared in Tanzania in 2016.
Cholera is the only person carrying it because it cannot live in environments other than human for a long time. This bacteria, especially found in human feces, is transmitted to water and food and other people due to poor hygiene conditions. This disease manifests itself with severe diarrhea and vomiting and affects people with its toxins by settling and multiplying in the small intestine.
According to the studies carried out;
- 110 thousand people in 1817-1823,
- 200 thousand people in 1817-1823,
- 700 thousand people in 1817-1823,
- 1 millon of people in 1817-1823,
- 1,5 millons of people in 1817-1823,
- 550 thousand people in 1817-1823,
- it is assumed that 6 thousand people died in 2011
SPANISH FLU
Another of the largest known outbreaks in human history is Spanish flu. This epidemic, which occurred in 1918-1920, is assumed to be controversial, killing 15% of the world’s population and infecting 30% of the world’s population. The reason for the so-called Spanish flu was not because the disease started in Spain, but because the first debates began in Spain due to preventing panic from a new outbreak and censorship by countries. The first place where the disease was detected was the military base in America.
It is thought that a virus mutated, which firstly affected waterfowl, causes the disease and infects humans. This disease created by the H1N1 virus has accounted for high mortality rates in people between the ages of 20 and 40. It has been surprising for scientists that the mortality rate in healthy individuals is high and the elderly population is less, but later researches found that people of that period were immune to the H1 or N1 antigen in flu outbreaks in the 1830s.
The Spanish flu, which has been recorded as the deadliest flu virus in history, has the potential to kill people it has infected in the first few days and is said to have ended World War I earlier.
Studies are still going on today to fully understand the causes of this flu, which has changed the history significantly.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT FLU OUTBREAKS
1957 Asia (H2N2) and 1968 Hong Kong (H3N3) viruses have also been influenza outbreaks that put the world in panic. 2 million people died in Asian flu and 1 million in Hong Kong flu. Outbreaks have been brought under control with the vaccination studies.
As a result, humanity have encountered significant outbreaks at various times in history, and it will continue to face it.
Another important point is that many of the major epidemics in history are zoonotic (which can be transmitted from animals to humans).
In parallel with the increase in the world population in the coming period, we can say that the probability of encountering with serious outbreaks of humanbeing, when we calculate the factors that increase the demand for the livestock sector, will increase What’s more, the microorganisms acquire different characteristics under the inadequate hygiene conditions brought by industrial production, and excessive use of antibiotics causes the emergence of more resistant bacteria.
References
