New stuff.....

So, now I'm interested in finding a relationship between invention of certain kinds of mass travel and serious disease outbreaks. It's looking like this could be pretty difficult to find today, so I'll just write about what I am finding. I've found a cool website that details inventions in travel from wheeled carts in 3500 BC to the first jumbo jet in 1970 (crazy to think that this wasn't even 40 years ago!) http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_history_of_transportation.htm. I also found a good website that provides a detailed description of various infectious diseases from anthrax to typhus. It provides information on the origination of the disease, means of spread, effects on the human body, and a historic profile . This may be helpful in my research, but I doubt it will be what I need to show the relationship that I would like to show.

If I am not successful in showing this relationship by the end of the week then I will most likely look into existing research to make the correlation for me. Up to this point my research has been 100 % web-based (not sure I should admit that, but I have a feeling I'm not alone!). I'll be hitting off the library soon to research the history of diseases and hopefully find a timeline that shows outbreaks in different parts of the world. I can find timelines online, but they are usually specific to a particular disease. maybe then I should pick a couple of specific diseases and detail their spread along with advances in transportation that affected the same geographic area in the same time frame? I guess I should explore this a bit. I don't need a detailed history of all infectious disease spread in order to show correlation, a small sample would do that fine.

So, then I need to pick specific diseases to track. I would probably want to avoid diseases like AIDS that are only transmittable through close intimate contact of specific sorts and instead focus on diseases like TB or SARS that are easily transmitted through the air or through casual contact. SARS would probably be a good example since the outbreak was recent and there was a huge concern over air travel and in spreading the disease across the world. A disease like SARS wouldn't have had such a serious impact on the entire world without air travel. Today I also found more recent episodes of large scale fear related to diseases entering the US with impoverished immigrants (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=422).

So now I'm thinking about bird flu. Although human migration doesn't play a large role in spreading this disease, bird migration plays a huge role! So, now I’m feeling a bit lost again. I wish I had more time to research today, but my son has other things in mind and he always wins this battle! But here are a couple of questions to answer:
What makes certain populations vulnerable to infectious diseases? I learned today that there have been 3 influenza pandemics in the US in the 20th century. Each time it was caused by genetic mutation of the flu various to a form that left a huge amount of the population extremely vulnerable since they had never before been exposed in order to develop immunity (http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2004/hsc-planning-scenarios-jul04_03.htm). This is usually the case in widespread pandemics… they are so deadly b/c the population’s immune system is not capable of handling the disease.
The website above references homeland security which would probably be a good resource for me to see what existing scenarios are in place to predict and prevent disease spread across populations.