Influenza Pandemics Past and Future

¶ … Future:

For many centuries, the influenza virus has been a threat to the health of humans as strains of this virus continue to spread quickly worldwide, especially during the flu season i.e. from late fall through winter. It's estimated that between 5% to 20% of America's population contact the flu and exhibit symptoms like headaches, digestive and breathing difficulties, muscle aches, and high fever. As a result, an estimated 36,000 people in America die from influenza annually because of the high rate of infections. Therefore, the virus has continued to be a major health challenge to many people to an extent that its one of the major pandemics throughout the world.

Human Activities Contributing to Environmental Problems:

Similar to other communicable diseases, many people continue to suffer from the devastating effects of the influenza virus. In the past few years, numerous attempts have been made to understand the science underlying these infections in order to help in controlling the spread of the infectious virus. This understanding has also contributed to the realization that several human activities have had accidental consequences for communicable diseases while contributing to numerous environmental problems. These human activities have originated from the changes in human behavior and society that offers new opportunities for microbes to develop and cause diseases ("Chapter One -- Unintended Consequences," n.d.).

Some of these unintended consequences of human activities contributing to environmental problems and causing various diseases include population changes like overcrowding as well as changes in hygiene. Others include changing sexual networks and medical practices such as intravenous drug use and antibiotic use. These activities have accidental consequences on the spread of some diseases, especially communicable diseases because they drive a microbe into a new development niche where it becomes more virulent and transmissible for humans.

When humans lived in small hunter-gatherer societies, there were few vulnerable individuals to permit disease-causing microbes to survive and evolve on a long-term basis within the community. During this period, the microbes could not survive for long as individuals were either immune or died, which made them unlikely to pass the microbe to several other individuals. Moreover, microbes that could survive for long in these environments such as E.coli basically developed as commensals that rarely caused harm. Nonetheless, severe human infections in the recent past are mainly attributed to human activities with accidental consequences. The ecology of infectious diseases changed with the rise of agricultural, horticultural, and domestication activities by humans.

The evidence that domestication of animals has unintended outcomes lead to environmental problems that may cause the influenza virus is the recent concern that the disease is spread from birds, pigs, or other species. For instance, avian influenza is a strain commonly found in birds that can be transferred from bird to human and swine flu that can be transferred from pigs to humans and human to human.

Scientific and Technological Activities Exacerbating the Problem:

Many environmental concerns and problems have been exacerbated by human scientific and technological activities. Scientific activities like development of nuclear weapons and burning of fossil fuels have resulted in global warming or climate change. Climate changes because of these scientific activities brought by technological developments have affected precipitation events, heat waves, and storminess. As the activities lead to natural disasters and extreme events, they largely contribute to spread of infectious diseases, especially in the aftermath of such events.

Scientific Method and Non-scientific Solutions:

As the world continues to experience challenging times that have resulted in huge environmental problems, there is an increased demand for changing approaches in order to address the issues. The changing approaches towards solving the problems include both the scientific and non-scientific methods. However, there is no single scientific method that can be applied to solve environmental issues since every problem requires a specific scientific approach for achieving a solution. Generally, the scientific method to achieving a solution to the environmental problem is a means of doing research involving three major stages i.e. problem definition, seeking for explanations or solutions, and evaluating and experimenting ("Research: The Scientific Method," n.d.).