History shows why people should listen to doctors in a pandemic
Nearly 80 years ago, the herculean efforts of doctors brought a deadly typhus epidemic to a screeching and unexpected halt in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, new Australian-led research has found.
More than 450,000 people were crammed into the 3.4km2, walled-off ghetto created by the Nazis, offering up a perfect breeding ground for disease and perverse justification by the Nazis to liquidate ghettos to contain infection.
By 1941, after residents were starved after receiving just 200 calories per day, the conditions were set for an outbreak of disease, according to the RMIT University-led research published in Science Advances.
The human louse that spreads the bacterium multiplied prolifically in conditions of poor hygiene, filth and overcrowding and typhus ripped through the community like a “forest fire”, they said.
