#epidemics

Rory Carroll and Sam Jones at The Guardian:

Authorities around the world are racing to trace dozens of passengers who disembarked from the cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak before isolation measures were implemented. It emerged for the first time on Thursday that at least 29 passengers of 12 nationalities left the MV Hondius on 24 April after the first fatality, prompting a scramble to identify and track their movements since then. However, the World Health Organization ruled out any Covid-scale crisis. “This is not the start of an epidemic. This is not the start of a pandemic. This is not Covid,” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the agency’s director for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told reporters. The WHO said that five of the eight suspected cases linked to the ship had been confirmed and that other cases may be identified.

“Given the incubation period of the Andes virus, which can be up to six weeks, it’s possible that more cases may be reported,” the organisation’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a news conference. “While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk low.”

The outbreak has killed three people and caused global alarm.

Hantaviruses are a group of viruses primarily found in rodents but which can infect humans and cause flu-like symptoms, pulmonary syndrome and respiratory failure. The Andes hantavirus can spread among humans through very close contact, but is less contagious than Covid. There are no vaccines.

Get to the epilogue where the Johnson is talking about urbanization and factors that could cause it's destruction or problems caused with having tens of thousands of people in one place. Read the following passage:

"In all the speech-making, posturing, and sober analysis about avian flu that has swept the globe in the past decade, one utterly amazing fact stands out: as far as we know, the virus that has caused such international panic does not exist yet."

Before colonization turned violent, before land was stolen, before forced labor systems were built — disease arrived first. And it changed everything.

European diseases like smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus swept through Indigenous nations with a speed and brutality the world had never seen. These weren’t ordinary outbreaks. They were catastrophic epidemics that wiped out entire communities, destabilized nations, and reshaped the continent long before most Europeans ever set foot inland.

This wasn’t because Indigenous people were “weak” or “primitive.” It was because they had no biological immunity to diseases that had circulated in Europe for centuries. The result was the largest population collapse in human history — an estimated 90% decline in some regions.

Imagine losing nine out of every ten people you love. Imagine the grief, the chaos, the cultural rupture. Imagine trying to defend your homeland while your population is collapsing around you.

This chapter is about that truth — the epidemics that softened the ground for colonization, the devastation that textbooks gloss over, and the way disease became one of the most powerful weapons of empire, even without a single shot fired.

If you want to read the full chapter — the history, the evidence, the scale of the loss — it’s here: https://lifewithsevence7.blogspot.com/2026/01/chapter-3-epidemics-that-shaped-america.html

Emergency Response Plan Launched in Taiz to Combat Epidemics In a decisive move, Taiz Governor Nabil Shamsan has initiated an emergency response plan to tackle the spread of epidemics in the province. The plan primarily focuses on combating cholera, dengue fever, and malaria. Urgent Implementation of Health Measures During a comprehensive meeting attended by health sector leaders, district…