Human Infectious Diseases Through the Lens of Social Ecology

Excerpt

In 1787, a traveler voyaging by sailing vessel from England to Australia could expect the voyage to take about a year. Virulent infections like measles rarely reached the destination port on such trips because the length of the trip itself guaranteed that passengers were either dead or immune upon arrival. In contrast, in the 21st century, pathogens can be transported from almost anywhere on earth to almost anywhere else in less than 24 hours, a length of time shorter than the incubation period of most infectious diseases. This comparison, by authors Mary Wilson and Lin Chen, made in the second chapter of The Social Ecology of Infectious Diseases, nicely captures the central theme of the book. As the book’s editors, Kenneth H. Mayer and H.F. Pizer, argue in their introduction, human behaviors can have a strong effect on pathogen transmission. The chapters in their book illustrate a diversity of ways in which this can happen, and how these effects have accelerated in recent decades. …