Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.
Thaxted - Leaving Old England, from Station House by Kerr Fagan Harbron
Library of Comgress Railroad Maps 1828 to 1900
Unusual Climate Conditions Influenced WW1Mortality and Subsequent Spanish Flu Pandemic
Warren Buffett Says 4 Choices in Life Seperate the Does from the Dreamers
The world is designed for men – but smart energy systems don’t have to be
Thanks to this week's contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, BT, Carol, Judy Lynn, Mike More, Nancy Cutway, Rick Roberts, Unknown.
The paper by More et al that you found, on the impact of climate on the Spanish Flu pandemic, is interesting, but I also thought it contained a number of unsubstantiated ideas and was rather shallow in its analyses. I will read it in more detail to see how they came to their conclusions.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was that the environmental conditions they describe were not unlike those experienced during the early decades of the Little Ice Age: cold and wet. That the H1N1 virus was extremely infectiousness is unarguable. What the authors fail to comment on, though, is that under such miserable physical conditions, people would have gathered in groups and/or stayed indoors to stay as warm as possible, and that this may have been a prime explanation of how and why the disease spread so quickly. I am not sure we can say that the virus would have propagated solely because of wet conditions.
Coincidence is not causality. In addition, weather, in this case events occurring during just a few years, is not climate.
I enjoy the Sunday Sundries and look forward to them every weekend.
ReplyDeleteHowever, today, I found that one of the links was broken. It is: Library of Congress Railroad Maps 1828 - 1900.
Just wanted to let you know.
Btyclk