Follow Up on Ecology and Disease Spread
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
We have discussed in prior posts the relationship between climate change, environmental alterations, and species and vector adaptation, producing endemic to epidemic disease with the threat of pandemic outcomes. We have used measles and Ebola as prime examples but mentioned avian flu, swine flu and a combination of the two as well. In a recent edition of NBC news (Nov. 7), Denise Chow tells us how Phocine distemper virus was identified as the killer of thousands of European harbor seals in the Northern Atlantic Ocean in 2002. With a deadly march in the Northern Pacific Ocean which killed sea lions, seals and otters, presenting the question "How did it get there?"
Chow reports that Tracey Goldstein, Associate Director of the One Health Institute at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, examined 15 years of data including that from tagged animals (by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and others which studied migration patterns. The conclusion was that melting Arctic Sea ice in 2002 allowed infected animals to migrate sufficiently into contact with other species to create a new reservoir for disease promulgation. Never mind that these ocean ways can and did refreeze later on; new waterways were and are opening up due to global warming and it's local representative, climate change. Phocine distemper virus affects only marine life and apparently cannot be contracted by humans but it belongs, according to Chow, to the same family of highly virulent viruses as does measles and the opportunity for the viruses to interact may be inadvertently produced somewhere on earth.
The Nov. 7 LA Times Business Beat Bloomberg News feature reports on chronic health problems among millennial's including depression, hypertension, hypercholesteremia, hyperactivity and type 2 diabetes. Blue Cross/Blue Shield reported a 32% increase in depression, a hyperactivity (agitated state) increase of 29%, hypertension increased 16% with increases in hypercholesteremia and nicotine usage all occurring between 2014 and 2017. Alcoholism, opioid addiction and vaping we know independently have increased across most demographic divides. It is the economic impact on the nation that was the point of the article. However, the loss of world leadership is at stake. We cannot afford the loss of a generation and the infectious spread to other generations X,Y and Z are not immunized.
