ferv, you have not seen my face so don't count that out as a reason for my always seeming to be wrong!!

Of course it is fun. I am pleased that you know that. It's just that I have to take on dictators. On the home front  have never quarreled with anyone - ever; if you discount the small grand-fry who have got a heap of very defiant genes from somewhere. Perhaps, yes, the Greek husband of a friend of mine is an exception - our spats were legendary .......and oh how we loved them. It never seemed to bother my husband nor  the Greek's English wife. They knew it was how we  two 'discussed' things. Am I a begrduger? Do I get to wear a  Begrudger Hat (with tassles even?) What a thrilling day! And pancakes as well! Gosh! Shriven in a hat!
Someone close the cellar hatch - quietly,now.

I don't appreciate being classed as a "dictator", whatever it says on the avatar. In fact I'm going to change that now. Thanks for the heads up.

There's a little catchy/locky thing on the wall just beside the trapdoor, Priscilla. Be a little dote and be sure to lock it after me. Thanks.

Splash.

Gotcha! Would ye needing anything, down there? Lead weights?

nordmann wrote:

It's nice and quiet down in the basement, ID. Must be the flooding the landlord is telling us about. Come down and join me for a swim amongst the gannets, pandas and body parts if the begrudgers are getting the better of you ...

You might live to regret that offer Nordmann.

All we need is a good thick trapdoor above us to stop the bile seeping through.  Oh,  and bring your own snorkel.  Mine's barbaric 

Swimming in the cellar? Not for me, I wouldn't think of going down there without a full NBC suit and a big stick to beat off the denizens. There can't be many body parts left, sorry Uncle, what with no-one feeding the meerkats or the merkins and I fear the pandas may have reverted to their ancestral carnivorous habit.  
Don't catch your feet on any submerged trebuchets either and if you happen across Ms Frobisher  then good luck, I can visualise those teeth gleaming yellow in the darkness.  

Since Frobisher went nuptial she says she feels like a different woman. So far she hasn't apparently found one. 

The trapdoor thing seems to be working so far. ID,  pass me the underwater glue thingy. I'm going after Titus!

nordmann wrote:

It is good that the mass media alerts people to worrying transmission trends of certain diseases.

One reason why the World Health Organisation and the mass media get so exercised when a new virus emerges is that they are much more difficult to treat than bacteria. Viruses reproduce more quickly than bacteria and also mutate faster. Viruses are difficult to kill and antiviral medication normally only neutralises the organism (i.e. stops it reproducing) while the host’s own antibodies then still have to do the job of killing it off. Admittedly, the advent of antibiotic resistant super-bacteria is cause for concern there but generally bacterial infections are much more strait-forward to deal with than viral ones. For this reason, when it comes to viruses, prevention is 10 times better than cure – hence the public information overkill regarding travel to and within affected areas and accompanying quarantine measures etc.
   
The roll call of major historical diseases and pathogens is a long one and includes cholera, typhoid, dysentery, meningitis, tetanus, salmonella, anthrax, pneumonia, leprosy, typhus, scarlet fever, malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis, rabies and plague etc. The epidemiology makes for interesting reading with some being deadlier than others. It’s almost as though bacteria and viruses are in some sort of see-saw competition with each other to see who can kill most humans. It’s a grim arm-wrestle and tug-of-war to the tune of Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better veering from bacterium to virus and then back again.

Let’s start with a bacterium – salmonella. It was a major contributor to the devastation of the Aztec population of Mexico which dropped from an estimated 25 million to just 1 million in 100 years. An outbreak of salmonella in the 1540s is believed to have accounted for around half of those deaths.

Next a virus - the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to be precise. Since first emerging in the 1950s it is now believed to have been responsible for over 30 million deaths worldwide including biochemist Isaac Azimov and actor Rock Hudson.

Back to bacteria – this time cholera, which was the cause of so many headlines in the 19th Century. It has been responsible for the deaths of about 40 million people including president James Polk of America and composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It still kills around 30,000 people each year.

Not to be outdone, the viruses blew us influenza. This has killed around 50 million people (mostly during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918) among them were president Louis Botha of South Africa and painter Gustav Klimt.

Bacteria now take the gloves off – plague! This killed around 250 million people during its various outbreaks in history, about half of those during the Black Death of the 1340s including king Alfonso XI of Castile and princess Joan of England.

Well, say the viruses – then try smallpox for size. It’s believed to have killed around 500 million people since ancient times including Rameses V of Egypt and Mary II of England.

But bacteria aren’t done yet. Bring on tuberculosis, which is estimated to have killed 1000 million people over the millennia including queen Nefertiti of Egypt and writer Anton Chekhov. It still kills over 1 million people each year.

So it seems that bacteria win the dismal contest. But wait - the story doesn’t end there. The worst killer of all is neither a bacterium nor a virus. It’s malaria which is delivered by a mosquito-born parasite and is believed to be responsible for over 2000 million human deaths since the dawn of man including Oliver Cromwell and explorer Vasco da Gama.




(A cartoon by James Gillray from the 1800s poking fun at Dr Edward Jenner’s smallpox inoculation drive.)

Don't forget the other protozoan killers - sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, amoebic dysentery. They too are among the most potent pathogens of humasns.

Edward Jenner was the subject of BBC Radio 4's The Long View series today:

The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement

One aspect raised in the program which I hadn't realised, was that Jenner's inoculation breakthrough was quickly taken up on mainland Europe and in North America but was initially resisted by the medical establishment in Britain itself.

Vizzer wrote:

One aspect raised in the program which I hadn't realised, was that Jenner's inoculation breakthrough was quickly taken up on mainland Europe and in North America but was initially resisted by the medical establishment in Britain itself.

Furthermore with the support of the Spanish monarchy vaccination was rapidly introduced to South American populations too, most notably by the Balmis Expedition, (officially called the Real Expedición Filantrópica de la Vacuna - the Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition) led by Dr. Francisco Javier de Balmis. This was a three-year mission from 1803 to 1806, to Spanish America and Asia with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox. As well as Dr Balmis and his team of surgeons and nurses, the expedition sailed with 22 orphan boys to act as successive carriers of the virus, and took the vaccine to the Canary Islands, Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Viceroyalty of Peru (Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia). Then, taking a further 25 orphans to maintain the infection during the crossing of the Pacific, they worked through the Philipines, Macau and Canton. Finally, on his way back to Spain, Balmis even managed to convince the reluctant British authorities of Saint Helena to allow the island's population to be vaccinated.

Edward Jenner himself wrote of the mission, "I don't imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this."

The Balmis-Salvany Smallpox Expedition: The First Public Health Vaccination Campaign in South America