School Paper: Infectious Diseases and Global Warming: If The Bugs Don’t Get You, the Heat Sure Will

I finished my undergraduate education in the winter of 2003. It was a very cold and snowy winter in Massachusetts, and I remember my drive home from Amherst to my house near Boston, which took five hours due to an intense blizzard. I was lucky, because I –only- skidded my car into two snowbanks, and avoided any serious accidents. I had handed in my graduation thesis and defended it successfully, and was about to enjoy my graduation present--- my parents had offered to buy me a car, but I felt that such a gift would exceed my need, so I made a counter-offer: I wanted a ticket to China. I had previously studied in Fudan University in Shanghai, China during the millennial school year, and greatly missed the energy of life in the bustling port city of 16 million people. Looking at my passport, I can see from the border stamp that I entered China on 29 March, 2003. My timing could scarcely have been better- I was just in time to catch the peak of the 2003 outbreak of SARS.

As I prepared for my trip in February, I noted news reports of a new disease that had spread across East Asia. The disease had originated in Guangdong province in Southeast China , and had spread to Hong Kong through a mainland Chinese doctor who stayed at the Metropole Hotel. The disease spread rapidly, but muzzling of media sources by face-conscious mainland Chinese government officials eventually led to near-hysteria: formerly jam-packed subways and buses emptied of commuters, buildings required body temperature checks on entry, the surgical face mask became an ubiquitous health accessory, and taxicabs boasted of being disinfected ‘multiple times daily’ for the safety of passengers.

The final death totals from SARS were not great, with only approximately 775 deaths , quite low in comparison with such causes of death as cancer or road traffic accidents, which killed 7.4 million people and 1.3 million people in 2004, respectively . However, the Asian Development Bank estimated that economic losses from disruption of trade and tourism by SARS would reach at least US$12.3 billion . Furthermore, the SARS epidemic led to problems for overseas Chinese in North America- such an outbreak represented a global problem. Had it not been contained in time, SARS could have caused significant casualties- in the past, for example, various influenza pandemics have killed up to 50 million people in a matter of years , an amount of deaths which might be expected to be produced by the outbreak of a major war. Anytime such an international health problem occurs, countries should work together to prevent its spread, as failure to check the spread of such diseases would lead to obviously catastrophic consequences.

On the other hand, the United States has certain domestic health problems which do not have strong prima facie global implications. For example, the United States spent a total of $75 billion on obesity-related medical costs in 2004 ; however, while obesity and heart disease are major heath issues in the United States, there is no chance that a business traveler on an international trip to Europe could spread his obesity or heart disease to the general population of a European country in the same manner in which he could spread SARS, or to a lesser extent AIDS.
Moving away from simple human-related issues the menace of a continuing trend of global warming currently threatens the continued existence of modern civilization as we know it, with probable results including a higher sea level, increasing desertification, and disruption of weather patterns and agricultural yields. The combined problems brought on by the projected climate change will greatly affect nearly everyone on Earth, an amount of people at least an order of magnitude higher than the usual amount of people who feel strong effects of an infectious disease. Furthermore, because issues of climate change are caused by and affect all nations worldwide, the framework for countering climate change will need to contain all nations. In comparison, an outbreak of a disease may be fought mainly by those countries who have been hit most severely by the disease- China, in the case of SARS. People often have difficulty prioritizing issues, and the problem of resource allocation of resources to such diverse projects as medical research, energy research, and military research is one that perennially occupies the United States Congress. Perhaps what the United States needs more than anything is to take stock of what is actually required for survival in the world today, followed by a reconsideration of national policies in light of the findings of such an investigation.