Professional Documents
Culture Documents
3
Gittleman, J. (n.d.). Adaptation. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/adaptation-biology-and-
physiology
4
“Quasi-biennial oscillation” (n.d.). Met Office.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/atmosphere/quasi-biennial-oscillation
for vectors, such as excessive rainfall might be catastrophic to the mosquito
population because it would destroy their breeding sites.
c. Changes in humidity also impacts the pathogens of specifically airborne
infectious diseases, such as influenza, as well as the survival of water-borne
viruses and virus of vector-borne diseases. Furthermore, many disease hosts
tend to strongly respond to humidity change, such as the malaria transmission
through impacting the activity and survival of mosquitoes.
d. Sunlight may also affect pathogens in terms of providing favorable conditions for
the multiplication of a certain cholera. It can also affect disease hosts through
the synergistic function.
e. Wind, in essence, is also a crucial variable impacting the pathogens of airborne
diseases in terms of the positive correlation between dust particles and virus
survival/transporting. In addition, it has dual effects on disease vectors/hosts, like
how it can influence the malaria cycle both negatively (reduce the biting
opportunities for mosquitoes) and positively (mosquitoes can extend their flight
distance).
f. Different extreme weather events such as El Niño, La Niña, drought, quasi-
biennial oscillation (QBO), heatwaves, drought, flood, and hurricane cyclone may
produce several disease types like vector-borne, water-borne, airborne, and even
food-borne diseases that could gravely affect the health of a human being.
Throughout the journal article, the group has definitely agreed at almost all points
that the authors have raised and discussed, including the correlation between sudden
shifts in weather patterns and human infectious diseases. We have also understood
how social and economic factors play a vital role in predicting the changing risk for
infectious diseases caused by climate change (Semenza and Menne, 2009, as cited in
Wu, Lu, et al., 2016)5. Moreover, we also strongly agree that a society’s vulnerability to
climate change induced health risk of infectious diseases is further related to its existing
public health system and infrastructure. Therefore, to combat these risks, communities,
organizations, and governments must step up and take proactive and proper adaptation
measures, such as enforcing strong policies or laws which would increase the
knowledge and awareness of people regarding climate change and infectious diseases
and sufficiently funding public healthcare systems so that potential epidemics or
pandemics would be curbed. For countries in the Global South which are termed by the
World Bank (WB) as “developing countries), they should increase funding in basic social
services intended to serve the needs of the people and avoid implementing anti-people
and anti-environment policies. Countries in the Global North (middle to high income
countries) should stop meddling with the Global South’s affairs, such as exploiting their
natural resources and environment to gain super profit.
On the other hand, we do not see any information or data in the journal article that
are contradictory in our beliefs because all of them are backed up by abundant related
5
Semenza, J.C. & Menne, B. (2009). Climate change and infectious diseases in Europe. The Lancet,
9(6), 365-375. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(09)70104-5
literatures and relevant evidence. However, our group suggests that the authors should
highlight more about the biggest root of climate change and human infectious diseases
—capitalism—that capitalism is the primary problem and climate change/infectious
diseases are only secondary. Since we have an existing world capitalism system and
the superpower/imperialist countries such as the United States and China have
capitalist economies, their existence threatens the whole world because of their
significant contribution of greenhouse gases and carbon emissions to satisfy private
profits that, of course, greatly impact our environment at large. As a matter of fact,
Reyes (2019)6 emphasized that “while the entirety of the capitalist economy that treats
the consumption of goods as the center of everything—with its production of plastic,
massive industrial waste, pollution of rivers, deforestation, irrational water use, and so
much more—is harmful to the environment, what generates the greenhouse gases
responsible for global climate change is the use of fossil fuels, primarily oil and gas.”
That is why if capitalism will be eradicated, then it is logical to say that the risk of climate
change will also greatly decrease. Hence, we believe that socialism is the only
solution and the authors of the journal article should highlight this in their future studies
because it would put the people and environment in the center over private profits; it is
the only solution to climate change (Molyneux, 2019) 7.
6
Reyes, F. (2019, September 2017). Capitalism is Responsible for Climate Change. Left Voice.
https://www.leftvoice.org/capitalism-is-responsible-for-climate-change
7
Molyneux, J. (2019, October 1). Socialism is the only realistic solution to climate change. Climate &
Capitalism. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/why-socialism-is-the-only-realistic-solution-to-
climate-change/