Pandemics have always existed, since the world is world. New diseases that appeared and in a short time, attacked an entire population, were capable of crossing borders and producing changes in the places and people that were affected.
History reminds us, among the most important:
The Plague of Justinian, from the 6th century, which affected the Byzantine Empire, and claimed 40% of the population of Constantinople.
The Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century, which produced a shocking balance: the Iberian Peninsula lost between 60 and 65% of the population, and in Tuscany between 50 and 60%.
Smallpox in Europe had a period of dramatic expansion during the 18th century, infecting and disfiguring millions of people.
The “Spanish Flu” began in March 1918, during the last months of the First World War, where the first case of Spanish flu was registered, paradoxically, in a hospital in the United States. It is estimated that the global death rate was worldwide, between 20 or 50 million people.
There were also:
The Asian Flu, which in 1957 registered the first case of the influenza A (H2N2) virus of avian origin, in the Yunnan peninsula, China, and in less than a year it had spread throughout the world.
The Hong Kong Flu, which was a variation of the influenza A (H3N2) virus, was registered in that city in 1968 and spread around the world in a pattern very similar to that of the Asian flu. One million people were the victims caused by this new strain.
One of the most recent and serious pandemics known was the Acquired Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV, better known as AIDS. It is estimated that HIV has caused around 25 million deaths worldwide.
Today we have among us Covid-19, which despite the efforts of science, continues to claim the lives of thousands of people around the world.
The situation in the region is very worrying. Chile and Uruguay are at the forefront of vaccination. Argentina vaccinated 18.5% (with full dose only 4.7%) and Brazil 17.8 (full dose 8.4%). Mexico at 13% and below 6% are Ecuador and Peru.
The countries with the highest fatality due to the Coronavirus are: Mexico (9.2%), Ecuador (4.8%) and Bolivia (4%). The fatality in Argentina and Chile is 2.1% and Brazil 2.7%.
In vaccine production, Brazil is leading the way with CoronaVac, with almost 50 million doses under the Chinese Sinovac license. Cuba, for its part, is completing the clinical trials of the national vaccines Soberana 02 and Abdala.
This is our reality today. For this reason, Pope Francis, on May 8, began his Vax Live video message, to raise awareness of the importance of Covid-19 vaccines reaching all corners of the planet and also trying to exhort world leaders to commit to ensure that vaccines are available to everyone.
That is why he spoke of the “virus of individualism”, and assured that there are several variants: “a variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents – he said – an internationalism of vaccines. Another variant is when we put the laws of the market or of intellectual property over the laws of love and the health of humanity ”.
Latin America continues to be the backyard of the United States and also of Europe. Our country is in debt with vaccination, something that has to pay off very soon. Although the reality is that the 21st century continues to show that there are “first” and “second” citizens in the world.
Ignacio Cloppet is a historian, member of the Argentine Academy of History
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#Vaccines #health #mankind
source https://pledgetimes.com/vaccines-and-the-health-of-mankind/
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