1. The 3 Rules of Epidemics

Dated Jul 8, 2016; last modified on Mon, 05 Sep 2022

The Law of the Few

From 1995 to 1996, the # of children born in Baltimore with syphillis increased 500%. CDC blamed it on cocaine and reduction in clinics.

In 100k+ Colorado Springs town, the gonorrhoea epidemic tipped because of the activities of 168 people living in 4 small neighbourhoods, frequenting the same 6 bars.

Gaëtan Dugas, an Air-Canada flight attendant, is [mis?]regarded as “Patient Zero” for AIDS in the US. It’s claimed he had \(\approx\) 2,500 sexual partners over North America, and linked to 40 of the earliest cases of AIDS in CA and NY.

The Stickiness Factor

There are specific ways of making a contagious phenomenon stick.

With cutbacks in public clinics, syphillis carriers had 3 to 5 times longer to pass their infection. In winter months, syphillis rates dropped, presumably because people stayed home.

Most people have PCP and it’s usually harmless (unless you get something like HIV). In 1955 - 1958, 81 infants in a training hopital came down with PCP (nurses reusing needles), but two-thirds recovered. Fast forward to the 80s when HIV carried a death sentence. A stickier strain was making the rounds.

The Power of Context

We are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem.

The Bystander Problem: Kitty Genovese was chased and attacked on the street, over the course of 30min, as 38 of her neighbors watched from their windows. Had there only been one witness, they might have called the police.

References

  1. Outbreak of primary and secondary syphilis - Baltimore City, Maryland, 1995. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 45, No. 8. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov . 1996.
  2. Gonorrhea as a social disease. Potterat, John J; Rothenberg, Richard B; Woodhouse, Donald E; Muth, John B; Pratts, Christopher I; Fogle 2nd, JS. Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Vol. 12, No. 1. europepmc.org . 1985.
  3. And the Band played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. Shilts, Randy. www.google.com . 2011 (Originally 1987). ISBN: 9780285640764 .
  4. Gaëtan Dugas. en.wikipedia.org .
  5. Viral Sex: The Nature of AIDS. Goudsmit, Jaap. www.google.com . 1997. ISBN: 9780195357066 .
  6. Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case. Rosenthal, Abraham Michael. www.amazon.com . 2015 (Originally 1964). ISBN: 9781504026437 .