On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that reported cases of three sexually transmitted diseases in the United States had reached an all-time high in 2017. Rates of gonorrhea rose by 67 percent, syphilis by 76 percent, and chlamydia by 21 percent, to a total of almost 2.3 million cases nationwide. According to the CDC, 2017 surpassed 2016 as the year with the most reported STD cases on record—and marked the fourth year in a row that STDs increased steeply in the U.S.

It might seem logical that higher STD rates would go hand in hand with increased sexual activity, but a flurry of recent research indicated American adults are actually having less sex on average than they have in decades.

In the decades after Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico, one of the worst epidemics in human history swept through the new Spanish colony. A mysterious disease called “cocolitzli” appeared first in 1545 and then again in 1576

...

In less than a century, the number of people living in Mexico fell from an estimated 20 million to 2 million.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified county authorities about three weeks ago of several cases of the disease among people who had traveled to Orange County in September. County epidemiologists discovered that a cluster of people diagnosed with the disease had recently visited, lived or worked in Anaheim and contacted Disney after learning that several of them had gone to the theme park.

...

It takes two to 10 days for symptoms of Legionnaires’ to appear.

The American businessmen . . . invested $7 million in the ongoing vaccine research, according to the U.S. company behind it. Southern Illinois University also trumpeted the research and the study’s lead researcher, even though he did not rely on traditional U.S. safety oversight in the first trial, held on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts.

Neither the Food and Drug Administration nor a safety panel known as an institutional review board, or IRB, monitored the testing of a vaccine its creators say prevents herpes outbreaks. Most of the 20 participants were Americans with herpes who were flown to the island several times to be vaccinated, according to Rational Vaccines, the company that oversaw the trial.

The DRC has had eight run-ins with Ebola since 1976, and has proven to be remarkably successful at controlling the virus. In 2014, for example, while West Africa was struggling with its historically unprecedented epidemic, the DRC managed to contain its own separate outbreak after just 66 cases and 49 deaths. “In the West Africa outbreak, nobody was looking for Ebola. It wasn’t on a list of things that people were worried about, or even among the top suspects at the time,” says Rimoin. “But in the DRC, when you see something that resembles Ebola, it’s one of the first things that come to mind.”

The symptoms of Ebola are greatly exaggerated in the popular press.

Between 1545 and 1548, an epidemic swept through the indigenous people of Mexico that is unlike anything else described in the medical literature. People bled from their face while suffering high fevers, black tongue, vertigo, and severe abdominal pain. Large nodules sometimes appeared behind their ears, which then spread to cover the rest of their face. After several days of hemorrhage, most who had been infected died.

The disease was named cocoliztli, after the Nahautl word for “pest.” By contemporary population estimates, cocoliztli killed 15 million people in the 1540s alone—about 80 percent of the local population. On a demographic basis, it was worse than either the Black Death or the Plague of Justinian. For several centuries, its origin remained a mystery.

Then, about two decades ago, researchers began to compare the known cocoliztli outbreaks with clues etched in the tree rings of modern-day Mexico.

“I was supposed to start Georgetown Law School like last week,” Powers tells me. But shortly before her May graduation, she received a LinkedIn message from a man asking if she would help him enlist interns for a Republican political campaign.

Messages of this sort were nothing unusual to Powers, who was finishing a year-and-a-half stint as vice president of the NYU College Republicans. But unlike other campaign officials, the man behind this message refused to disclose his candidate’s name over email.

This is the story — kept secret at the time, still largely unreported today — of how the most infamous disease in history broke into New York City in the midst of World War II. This is the story of the ominously-named “Wyoming matter,” and how it took me months to track down evidence it ever happened.

...

For 22 years, Dr. Olesen explained, the Quarantine Station staff regularly carried out these guinea pig plague injections and no bubonic plague turned up. They felt their work was “routine and futile.” Olesen’s description of how things went pear-shaped probably had quarantine station workers wishing for their usual tedium.

The accidental release of 45 litres of concentrated live polio virus solution into the environment - Belgium 

As reported to ECDC by Belgian authorities, on 2 September 2014, following a human error, 45 litres of concentrated live polio virus solution were released into the environment by the pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), in Rixensart city, Belgium. The liquid was conducted directly to a water-treatment plant (Rosieres) and released after treatment in river Lasne affluent of river Dyle which is affluent of the Escaut/Scheldt river. Belgium’s High Council of Public Health conducted a risk assessment that concluded that the risk of infection for the population exposed to the contaminated water is extremely low due to the high level of dilution and the high vaccination coverage (95%) in Belgium.

The Nile actually runs through 11 countries, and therein lies Egypt’s problem. One of those countries, Ethiopia, is planning to dam the mighty Nile. The dam, which will eventually be Africa’s largest, is already under construction, and several days ago Ethiopia began diverting water from the Nile’s normal course. Downstream in Egypt, outrage is gaining momentum.

In July, millions of people will travel to Saudi Arabia to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. When they do that, they might be at risk of contracting MERS — Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome — a coronavirus, similar to SARS. They could also be at risk of carrying MERS back to their home countries. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabian authorities have released so little information about MERS that global public health experts don't know how to advise these pilgrims as they prepare for travel.

I was not embarrassed or worried she would think I was a dork. I AM a dork! What I was worried about was being rude. I feel like walking around with a camera pointed at people even if it’s not recording is just not polite. It’s a very strange feeling that I’m only just now trying to get my head around. I think the technology is incredibly cool but I wonder if socially we are ready for Glass. I’m starting to think the Google Glass Explorer program might be less about testing hardware, and more about testing people.

The German army purposely triggered malaria epidemics, such as in Italy in 1944. Drainage pumps on the Roman marshes ordinarily pumped excess water out to sea, desiccating the land enough to make it malaria-free and thus habitable for thriving cities and towns. By stilling the pumps, the Germans could have flooded the region and effectively impeded the Allies' progress. But German malariologist Erich Martini had studied the habits of the local malaria vector, Anopheles labranchiae, in depth, and he knew that inundating the region with the Mediterranean's salty waters would allow A. labranchiae, which can thrive in brackish water, to flourish. And so rather than simply stopping the pumps, they reversed them, salinating some ninety-eight thousand acres. Then they confiscated local stockpiles of antimalarial drugs. As the German soldiers departed, they left behind "clever sketches," The New York Times reported in 1944, "of the plague of mosquitoes that would follow the flooding of the farmlands." More than 100,000 of the 245,000 locals sickened with malaria.

After the shuttle returned, mice were given varying oral doses of the salmonella and then were watched.

After 25 days, 40% of the mice given the Earth-bound salmonella were still alive, compared with just 10% of those dosed with the germs from space. And the researchers found it took about one-third as much of the space germs to kill half the mice, compared with the germs that had been on Earth.