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The amount of information and medicine that has changed over the years is crazy. Some have changed for the better and some have changed for the worst even the smallest things such as washing your hands before and after holding a baby, performing surgery or even after sneezing just goes to show that you can catch any sickness from anywhere. I personally believe that once vaccines are updated and actually work will be the day America has succeeded.

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I found the same information when reading the chapter. What is crazy to me is that we have been less successful in extending the span of life because of infant mortality and childhood mortality rates.

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It's actually very comical that something like this today would probably not cause as much harm as then. However, most of the causes for the diseases/ epidemics were easily fixed with simple hygiene tweaks.

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Yes! as well as different I find it that the causes of diseases/ epidemics started off with things that present day wouldn't even cause a common cold.

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At first glance I thought I was going to just skim over the first chapter, however it was a lot more interesting than expected. It was very intriguing to learn about all the different types of diseases that have been formed and took place within the past few centuries. To name a few we have small pox, cholera and one that is less commonly known as the childbed disease. You would think that it would take a lot for an epidemic to arise but that wasn't the cased back then as it only took simple things such as not washing hands to cause epidemics.

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Shadazia Birchette Reflection 1:An impression I got from the first chapter is that in the past in general health was at an all time low. I only say this because it was quite easy for an epidemic to start and they all started on the basis of bad hygiene. But because the epidemics were so easily started it led to the vaccinations of them being easily discovered. Key contributors like Semmelweiss and Jenner play a big part in the world as though the epidemics could potentially be risks for everyone.

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Shadazia Birchette Reflection 1:An impression I got from the first chapter is that in the past in general health was at an all time low. I only say this because it was quite easy for an epidemic to start and they all started on the basis of bad hygiene. But because the epidemics were so easily started it led to the vaccinations of them being easily discovered. Key contributors like Semmelweiss and Jenner play a big part in the world as though the epidemics could potentially be risks for everyone.

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I agree on herd immunity being an important subject. The number of people opposing to get their children vaccinated is increasing. High levels of herd immunity protects the entire population from potentially getting the disease.

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I also have never heard the Far's miasmatic theory as the cause of Cholera until reading chapter 1. It sounds quite silly how Farr believed Cholera was caused by a cloud, but after actually reading about his theory it makes since. He did have actual data/evidence to prove his theory.

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Chapter 1 discussed so many interesting topics. The one that amazes me is childbed fever. This occurred all due to the fact that Physicians were not washing their hands when going to one patient to another. Some physicians did not want to wash their hands because they considered it too time consuming. Life's should be more important than time. Semmeleweis could have prevented many deaths if he had shared his finding of childbed fever.

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Week one was all about getting familiar with the syllabus and how class was going to work for the first month since our Professor was away in Bolivia. I thought that was pretty great because he is gathering data about HIV. Professor Sorensen shared with us how chronic diseases are higher in the U.S where as infectious diseases are higher in Bolivia. This gives us incite to the  epidemiological transition theory that was discussed in chapter 1.

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I think we could possibly in multiple stages because yes we have vaccines that can handle infectious diseases however some parents choose not to vaccinate children so it leaves the population in greater risk to be more susceptible to potent diseases along with the chronic diseases that you mentioned above.

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Yes I agree that we have reached this stage since we have had vast improvement in health and medicine in comparison from about a hundred years ago. Which is why the infectious diseases have declined over the years since 1900's.

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I also found this from reading the book. The 3 major causes of death in the US in 2009 were heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease. We are in the stage of epidemiology transition, specifically degenerative disease.

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I thinks its incredible to see how far we've come since Semmelweis discovered the cause of childbed fever. Washing your hands is all medical student had to do to keep from transferring the disease. It is also astonishing to see how advanced with vaccines we've become along with technology and medicine in general.

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In chapter 2 herd immunity was brought up which I think is an important subject, especially lately with the immunization rate dropping and the current measles outbreak. In the chapter it asks: "What percentage of a population must be immune for herd immunity to operate?" and the answer is that it varies from disease to disease and for measles it is estimated that 94% of the population must be immune before the chain of transmission is interrupted.

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When reading about cholera I found it really interesting that William Farr stuck to the miasmatic theory of disease which was that diseases were transmitted by a cloud that was low on earth. I had never heard of this theory prior to reading about William Farr and John Snow's disagreement on the transmission of cholera.

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The epidemiological transition has changed drastically. It went through the pestilence and famine phase where infectious disease and famine were a huge problem. Then moved to receding pandemics where medical care and sanitation were improved leaving less room for infectious disease in most places. Lastly, we are in degenerative disease meaning we have vaccines for infectious disease but now have chronic disease partially caused from a sedentary lifestyle.

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I found out that Semmelweis discovered the cause of childbed fever. He discovered that the physicians and medical students that were treating pregnant mothers were not washing their hands after doing autopsy's on patients who died of childbed fever. This cause the transfer of the disease to the mothers giving birth.

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I found from reading the book how between the 1900's up until 2009 the causes of death were quite different. During the 1900's the infectious diseases were the leading cause of death however in 2009 100 years later it seems that chronic diseases have increased and are the main causes of death.

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Double click on the padlet in order to open your post- Those in MERS Madness: Write your reflections or impressions about anything covered during these first TWO WEEKS (2 original posts each person). Those in MERS Malnutrition: Respond to any of the original postings (2 responses each) by drawing a connection to the original post (you do this by clicking on the three dots "..." in the upper right hand corner of your post; then it will prompt you to connect to another post).