People caught and died from plague long before it caused major epidemics like the Black Death in the middle ages. Could what scientists call cultural resistance be what kept the disease under control?
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organisation Director-General, speaking on Ebola at the UN’s Geneva headquarters.
EPA/Martial Trezzinni
Hernán Cortés owed his conquest of the Aztecs to his expedition's unknown, unseen secret weapon: the smallpox virus. Disease epidemics can set the course of human history.
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, responsible for transmitting Zika.
AP Photo/Felipe Dana
In January, measles returned to the Pacific Northwest, while Ebola resurged in the Congo. It would take a lot more research for scientists to be able to stop threats like these in their tracks.
Lots of positive pregnancy tests this time of year.
Kristina Kokhanova/Shutterstock.com
Did you ever consider that human beings might have a breeding season? Birth seasonality exists – and has interesting implications for childhood disease outbreaks.
Thanks to nonmedical exemptions, vaccination rates are falling in some states.
Zodiacphoto/shutterstock.com
The obesity epidemic, the flu epidemic, the opioid epidemic... in the 21st century, everything seems to be an "epidemic". But what does the term actually mean?
It can be difficult to find records from epidemics long past.
U.S. National Library of Medicine
In a series of experiments, we showed the high value we place on happiness is not only associated with increased levels of depression, it may actually be the underlying factor.
When a man was diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas in 2014, workers cleared out the apartment unit where he had been staying.
Reuters/Jim Young
President Trump wants to slash global health funding at a time when more investment is needed, not less. This spending can protect Americans – as well as foreigners – from deadly diseases.
When governments delay releasing information about disease outbreaks, algorithms come to the rescue.
Revellers at a carnival in Sao Paulo wear mosquito masks in a reference to the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can spread dengue and Zika on February 4, 2016.
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
A computer model suggests that while more cases of Zika can be expected in the continental U.S. outbreaks will probably be small and are not projected to spread.