COVID-19 Deaths Before A Vaccine?
By Joseph ChamieNEW YORK, May 4 2020 (IPS) How many COVID-19 deaths will occur before a vaccine becomes available worldwide? As with many seemingly simple questions about an uncertain future, the proper answer to that important query is: “it depends”. The total worldwide number of deaths from COVID-19 before a vaccine, reported to be nearly a quarter-million at the end of April and amounting to a five-fold increase since the start of April, is hard to predict. It depends on a host of critical factors, many of which are not well understood and are changing rapidly. In the absence of a vaccine and limited success in limi...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - May 4, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Joseph Chamie Tags: Featured Global Headlines Health TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news

Nigeria: Tension As Experts Warn of 'Second Spike' of COVID-19
[Vanguard] 'If you follow other pandemics, they have different waves; for example, the flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920, the greatest number of cases came with the second spike' (Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine)
Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine - May 3, 2020 Category: African Health Source Type: news

We forget that flu once plagued the economy as coronavirus does today
The epidemic of 1918-21 is overshadowed by war and the Great Depression. But it holds lessons for us stillIt is a sobering thought that, according to the many well-researched accounts to have appeared in recent weeks, this Johnson/Cummings government seems to have been prepared to risk 250,000 deaths from the policy of “herd immunity”. This approach was, mercifully, laid to rest after theintervention of Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, on 16 March. There followed the introduction of lockdown and what some of us prefer to call “physical distancing.”Commentators have been putting the 27,000 or mor...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - May 3, 2020 Category: Science Authors: William Keegan Tags: Economics Business Coronavirus outbreak Science Infectious diseases World news Flu Society Brexit UK news Boris Johnson European Union Foreign policy Source Type: news

Public Health and Epidemics
By Jan LundiusSTOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 30 2020 (IPS) For some time Wuhan in China and Lombardy in Italy were epicentres of the COVID-19 virus, something that has changed when the contagion is spreading fast in the US. A Lombardy in the grip of a deadly epidemic might among several Italians give rise to memories of their school days. For almost a century, Alessando Manzoni’s massive novel The Betrothed (I promessi sposi) from 1842 has been obligatory reading for all Italians during their last primary school year. A quite impressive endeavour considering that the novel is more than 700 pages long. I assume almost every adult...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - April 30, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Jan Lundius Tags: Arts Economy & Trade Global Headlines Health Human Rights Humanitarian Emergencies TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news

The TB epidemic teaches us that the battle against Covid-19 won't be won in hospitals alone | Salmaan Keshavjee, Aaron Shakow and Tom Nicholson
A community approach of ‘search, treat and prevent’ was crucial to stopping the spread of tuberculosis in the developed worldThere were three great pandemics in the 20th century. The influenza pandemic of 1918 and the HIV pandemic during the 1980s and 1990s get the most attention. But the third, tuberculosis, was the deadliest by far and in many communities, it ’s not yet over.TB has much to teach us about the tools that can help to eradicate the current pandemic, and what happens when those tools aren ’t even tried. The disease killed more thanone billion people between 1800 and 2000. Although it is caused by a ba...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - April 30, 2020 Category: Science Authors: Salmaan Keshavjee, Aaron Shakow and Tom Nicholson Tags: Coronavirus outbreak Infectious diseases World news Tuberculosis Health Medical research Microbiology Science Society Drugs Antibiotics US news Source Type: news