While reading the book Revenge of the Tipping Point by the one of the greatest thinkers and writers of our generation Malcolm Gladwell, I came across one of the most interesting health phenomena ever!
It was first explained by talking about a technology made to measure the emissions of cars which was invented by Donald Stedman. All one had to do was place the machine by the roadside and it gives you the level of emission every car that passes by gives off.
Cars with bad emissions turned out to be a very rare occurrence, but the very few with bad emissions were the cause of all the pollution problems. These few produced carbon monoxide emissions that were over 100 times the average!
Stedman said in order to tackle carbon monoxide pollution only very few cars have to be taken of the road because the emit more than all the other millions of cars put together.
Next explanation was that of aerosols, which are:
tiny particles that float through the air. There are billions of them. Some are natural. Others are man-made.
Smoke releases these particles, your breath, perfumes, almost everything. But they release different types of it, for example, cars release carbon monoxide particles, tuberculosis patients release (among other particles) tuberculosis particles, etc.
When it comes to man and animals, though, the amount of aerosols you release depends on your vocal cords, some people's vocal cords, by their nature, release way more aerosols than hundreds of people combined.
So, say there's an airborne disease like covid, some people are naturally equipped to spread more than hundreds of people combined.
Many cases were examined, one was about a guy who caught covid in China at the start of the pandemic, still he flew into the US, went through all the routes and got home but on investigation he didn't infect anyone.
After a British study realized how few Superspreaders are, they had this to say:
Predicting or identifying people who might be high virus emitters, perhaps even before they are infected, is of interest because they could be prioritized for interventions to block transmission.
Which means it might become important to find Superspreaders during the next epidemic and simply detaining/containing them can ensure the disease stops spreading.
Further, wouldn't it be nice for us not to wait for the next pandemic? The same way people do tests for their blood group, genotype, shouldn't everyone be subject to doing test to find how much or a natural Superspreader they are?
Shouldn't everyone now have it attached to their identity like eye colour, height, age? And these information would be with the government and as soon as there is an airborne epidemic all the Superspreaders would be contacted and give medical attention so they don't contribute their super power to the transmission of the disease?
This should really be implemented all over the world. I wonder why this is not a popular clamour that scientists and medical practitioners are pushing and asking people to campaign for 🤔.
The End
[All little pieces of art used here was created by myself]
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