The return of the white plague. Panedemics come in colors: Black Death, Red Death, and White Plague.
In 1660, John Bunyan (1628—88), an English Christian writer and preacher, described tuberculosis as “The Captain among these men of death” when tuberculosis case rates in London had reached a phenomenal 1000 per 100 000 population per year. The Lancet
And it is back, in a large way, in London, 350 years later...
TB, known as the white plague in Victorian Britain because of the pallor of the patients, who were often confined to sanatoriums and usually died, was thought to have been conquered by the early 1980s. Antibiotic drugs, improved health services and the BCG vaccination brought it firmly under control.
In recent years, however, it has undergone a resurgence, worsened by the prevalence of HIV, which damages the body's defensive immune system. Currently 1.7 million people die of TB every year around the world. Because of the difficulties in complying with a six-month regime of antibiotic treatment, strains of TB bacteria have become resistant to the commonly used drugs. Tuberculosis thriving in 'Victorian' London
This is follows outbreaks of resistant hardy strains in New York and California.
2 comments:
"Panedemics come in colors: Black Death, Red Death, and White Plague."
Hmmm. What historical flag from the mid-20th century was red, black, and white? They certainly were into death.
Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen?
http://www.photius.com/flags/horizontal_red_white_black_stripes.html
But I presume you are referring to the Nazis. Supposedly the Black-White-Red came from the flag of the original German Empire, and came to be symbolic colors to the right wing (in the true sense of the word) German groups. The Nazi's would make for an odd group of "right-wingers" by U.S. standards, but that is where they fit in the German pantheon. Particularly so with their ideas of returning back to a more agrarian values. Not so much in some of their other economic ideas.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/de%7Dns_or.html
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