Abstract
From the 1990s onwards, there was an exponential increase in the media coverage of emerging infectious diseases. In the USA, there were several media scares following localized outbreaks of infectious diseases previously seen very rarely, or not at all. For instance, in 1993, the largest-known cryptosporidiosis outbreak occurred at water treatment plants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with an estimated 403,000 people affected and 54 deaths (Hewitt & Schmid, 2002). In 1995, several Texan youths contracted Dengue fever after a camping trip in a Mexican border town (Holtzclaw, 2002). In 1996, an outbreak of food poisoning caused by Guatemalan raspberries contaminated with Cyclospora cayetanesis affected 1,465 people in the USA and Canada (Lashley, 2002). Most famously, in 1999, an outbreak of West Nile virus occurred in New York, the first identification of the disease in the Western hemisphere.
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Keywords
- European Union
- West Nile Virus
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© 2010 Peter Washer
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Washer, P. (2010). Mad Cows, Modern Plagues and Superbugs. In: Emerging Infectious Diseases and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277182_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277182_5
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