epidemiology

Zoonotic spillover explained: how viruses like SARS-CoV-2, HIV, Ebola, and MERS crossed from animals to humans — and why it keeps happening.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is caused by coxsackievirus A16, EV-A71 and others. How it spreads, why EV-A71 can reach the brain, and which vaccines exist.

SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV came from animals, spread in hospitals, and differ sharply in lethality. How each emerged, why SARS ended, and why MERS persists.

Smallpox and the variola virus explained: how it spread, why it killed up to 30% of cases, how eradication worked by 1980, and where the stocks remain.

Machine learning can scan news and travel data for outbreak signals, forecast cases weeks ahead, and track viral genomes. It cannot say when the next pandemic starts.

What decides how fast a disease spreads, how many people it kills, and which defenses work? The epidemiology of pandemics, from reproduction numbers to vaccines, with the 1918 flu and COVID-19 as test cases.

The human brain evolved to grasp linear change. Exponential growth — doubling, tripling, compounding — reliably fools us. This one cognitive blind spot shapes pandemics, wealth, technology, and climate change.

Vaccine safety is one of the most studied topics in medicine. Here's a clear, science-based examination of what the evidence really shows.