Microbiologist Rita R. Colwell addressed today’s APS meeting on “Oceans, Climate, and Health: The Cholera Paradigm.” Epidemic diseases now fly over the global travel networks “almost as fast as money.”
Although cholera outbreaks rise, and fast, in response to rising ocean surface temperatures, the US isn’t likely to be hit severely because we have good infrastructure delivering tapwater.
But mosquito-borne diseases may be another story. As air temperatures rise (spring flowers come two weeks earlier in DC than they did a decade ago), disease vector mosquitos travel north, adapting in realtime to shift their reproduction to shorter days and earlier spring seasons.
Scary stuff, fascinating talk. Just one of many, this year at the APS meeting.