World of Disease

Zusammenfassung

In this chapter, we shall look at nonlinear models for the spread and growth of diseases. We shall begin by looking at the spread of infectious diseases. An infectious disease such as influenza, for example, is of concern when an epidemic of a new flu strain breaks out. The fear is that the new strain might mimic the horrific Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918. It should be noted that the naming of the 1918 flu outbreak as the Spanish flu is a misnomer, the flu having also created large numbers of deaths in other countries such as the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany. However, these countries had imposed media censorship on these deaths because they were at war and did not want to reveal the information to their enemies. The deaths from flu of millions of Spaniards was first reported in the uncensored Spanish newspapers, and the rest of the world media picked up on it and called it the Spanish flu.