Bubonic Plague Disease Analysis

There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon for someone to die from smallpox, polio, bubonic plague, pertussis, measles, or diphtheria. Bubonic plague wiped out approximately one third of the population of Europe between the years 1347 and 1351, leaving whole towns abandoned and causing mass hysteria. In the year 1520, Spanish conquistadors brought Old World diseases to the Americas, and smallpox decimated the native population to the point of near-extinction. During the 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of iron lungs were in use at hospitals as polio ravaged the modern world, and the survivors were often left crippled and unable to walk because of the disease. The devastation was immense during these outbreaks. People buried friends and family, and were left …show more content…
As the number of hosts immune to a disease go up, so does the chance of eradicating the pathogen the host is immune to. Having a high percentage of immune hosts within a population is called, herd immunity (Plotkin MD). Herd immunity keeps disease from spreading from person to person, and helps to protect people who are unable to receive vaccinations, or those that are immunocompromised and could be killed from a disease that may cause only a minor inconvenience to an otherwise healthy person (Plotkin MD, Mass Vaccination: Global Aspects- Progress and Obstacles). For herd immunity to work, a large percentage of the population must be immune. Herd immunity benefits those who have allergies to vaccine components, cancer patients whose immune systems cannot fight disease (oftentimes despite being vaccinated), and those who are too young to be vaccinated. As vaccination rates in the general population decrease, the risk to these individuals grows. Pertussis rarely kills healthy adults, but for infants too young to receive their TDap vaccination, Pertussis can be deadly (Vitek, Charles R. MD Pediatric Infectious Disease