Curated playlist
Vaccine-preventable diseases
- TuberculosisIn 19th-century New England, tuberculosis deaths were blamed on vampires. Sick families seemed to fade one by one.
- SmallpoxA hospital cook in Somalia had the world's last naturally occurring smallpox case in 1977.
- MeaslesMeasles doesn't just make you sick, it can erase your immune memory. It typically lasts 2-3 years.
- CholeraCholera can kill an untreated person within hours. A healthy adult can lose ten to twenty litres of fluid in a day.
- Typhoid feverTyphoid may have helped launch aviation. Orville Wright, sick in 1896, heard his brother read about Otto Lilienthal.
- MalariaMalaria has reshaped human blood more than any other disease in recent history.
- DiphtheriaIn 1735, diphtheria killed 32 percent of children under ten in one New Hampshire town.
- Whooping coughBabies with whooping cough may barely cough at all. Instead they have periods when they simply cannot breathe.
- InfluenzaPigs let bird and mammal flu viruses mix, which produced the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
- TyphusTyphus killed more French soldiers in 1812 than Russian bullets did.
- Yellow feverYellow fever helped push Napoleon's army out of Saint-Domingue. It also shaped the sale of Louisiana in 1803.
- PolioPolio epidemics grew worse in the West as sanitation improved. Fewer babies met the virus early, when it was mild.
- ChickenpoxThe chickenpox virus stays in the body after the rash heals. It hides in nerve tissue for about fifty years.
- ChlamydiaChlamydia is nicknamed the silent epidemic because most cases show no symptoms.
- Dengue feverSurviving dengue once can make a second infection far more dangerous. Antibodies can help the virus in.
- EbolaEbola kills, on average, half of the people it infects. In the worst recorded outbreak, 90 percent died.
- COVID-19COVID-19 entered the public record on the 31st of December 2019, when the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announced a pneumonia outbreak of unknown cause. The announcement confirmed 27 cases, and that was enough to trigger an…
- RabiesRabies kills about 59,000 people around the world every year. About 40% of them are children under the age of 15. Once symptoms appear, the result is virtually always death, even with intensive care. The disease passes from animals to…
- ShinglesShingles gets its everyday name from cingulus, a Latin word for a girdle. The name fits. The rash typically forms a stripe or belt on one side of the body and stops at the midline. About a third of people develop the disease at some point…