Dear Editor,

A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across the world. Throughout human history there have been a number of pandemics of disease, such as smallpox and tuberculosis, and the most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the black death, also known as the plague. The plague killed over 75 million people in the 14th century. History has the nasty habit of repeating itself. Our longevity in the present century is mainly due to the successes of public health. The most scientific and technological advances have added only 6 to 8 years to our life. Such is the paramount importance of public health, that even in the era of exponential scientific and bioengineering advancements, the impact of basic health protections from the 1900s cannot be underestimated.  Let us recollect Charles Edward Winslow’s quote from 1842, “The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical and mental health and efficiency through organized community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control of community infections, the education of the individual in principles of personal hygiene… will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health.”Obviously, we missed many of these fundamentals during our present epidemic.

Concern for future pandemics includes antibiotic resistant microorganisms called“super bugs” and may contribute to the reemergence of diseases that were thought to be under control.  A tuberculosis pandemic???

One of my very religious Indian patients asked me recently, “Dr. Raju, so many people died so sadly, is it their karma?” I said instantaneously “Some others failed their Dharma, and these people suffered their karma”.

Dr. V.K. Raju

Morgantown, WV

vkraju@comcast.net