01-01 General - John Bulloch

We know how influenza hits us in the winter and is spread by person to person contact. Well we all have to prepare for a whole range of diseases getting new life as our weather warms and changes.

Understanding how changing temperatures will impact infectious diseases is a technical subject. But it is not the intention here to get into the science of pathogens (viruses and bacteria).
Instead, a simpler approach is to study the different ways diseases are transmitted. And then to examine the major diseases we know will be impacted by changing weather patterns.
We are all familiar with influenza and how it is not only transmitted from person to person, but occurs in the mid-winter. So how nice it is to spend the winter in Arizona or Barbados to stay healthy.
Things like mosquitoes or ticks that spread disease are referred to as vectors. Other vectors can be things like bats or mice. The fancy term for diseases spread by animals is zoonotic.
Recent reports that Dengue Fever, something you hear about in Puerto Rico has been showing up in Miami, means that the mosquito that carries this virus is moving north.
The world has been preoccupied with the Covid-19 virus which is spread person to person and has hit all areas of the world with modern plane travel. It does not seem to be temperature sensitive. But it has been mutating with the new variants more deadly.
This also happens to viruses and bacteria spread by mosquitoes and other vectors. There will be so much we just do not know as our temperatures heat up. Viruses and bacteria evolve. And so do mosquitoes.
One of the great worries as water systems, such as rivers and lakes, shrink is a greater incidence of diseases spreading in pools of relatively stagnant water. The most dangerous of these is cholera.
The reality of infectious diseases and climate change is that the warming climate has different impacts everywhere. It might mean less flu in Canada. But malaria spreading north to the United States.
What about surprises such as new viruses and bacteria being uncovered by the melting permafrost in the Arctic?
And, how about the developing nations developing new factories for producing vaccines. It not just about Covid-19 variants. Its about future pandemics created by our warming climate.