Content tagged with “public-health” under “The Interesting List”

“ A detailed history of how a destructive pest was neutralized through sicence and geography. ”

“ For decades, the United States has regularly dropped hundreds of millions of sterilized insects from planes over Central America to prevent a scourge from migrating north. ”

“ The act of preparing for or mitigating a disaster or pandemic sometimes reduces the effects to the point where we’re convinced the threat never existed or that we overreacted. ”

“ Throughout the 20th century, leaded gasoline additives likely have caused more deaths, crime, and intellectual disabilities than almost any other invention. ”

“ In 1987, thieves in Brazil stole a radioactive capsule from an abandoned medical facility. A week later, four people were dead and 250 were contaminated. ”

“ A decade ago, a radiation source was detected inside a shipping container. No one knew what to do about it. ”

“ The US government has a long history of wanting to be able to get in touch with you in an emergency. ”

“ There are still a tiny handful of polio survivors across the USA living significant portions of their lives in iron lungs which are slowly deteriorating. ”

“ Researchers have tracked almost a quarter-million cases of COVID back to a single conference in February 2020 which was attended by 200 people. ”

“ Using anonymized cell phone tower data, watch how software can track all the Sturgis attendees as they move across the country. ”

“ The pandemic closed gyms but gave birth to ‘fitness speakeasies.’ Prohibition of anything has a long history of doing this. ”

“ Japan escaped serious effects from both SARS and COVID. There’s a theory that this is because speaking Japanese outputs less air from the speaker’s mouth. ”

“ Morbidly, auto crashes are a good source of healthy organs for transplantation. Pandemic lockdown means fewer crash deaths, and therefore fewer organs for transplant. ”

“ It turns out that counting up a death toll for anything is more complicated than you think. Many deaths are very indirect. ”

“ The Coronavirus might be the thing that tips us into a vastly expanded world of remote work, where physical contact is deemed to be largely unnecessary. The long-term effects on society – both good and bad – might be considerable. ”

“ Lots of novel viruses keep coming out of China because of unique factors that cause a wide variety of animal species to come into close physical contact. ”

“ A graphical look at how the stock markets reacted during the expansion and contraction phases of various pandemics. ”

“ The biggest problem with the American health care system might be, well, Americans. We are terrible at safeguarding our own health and terrible at interacting with health care providers. ”

“ The internet will actually make the next pandemic worse because of the propensity for fake news and misinformation that comes at the intersection of world politics and health. ”

“ An incredible interactive feature article about diffusion among networks, such as illnesses or innovations. It has some wonderful JavaScript visualizations. ”