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Preparing for Pandemic Influenza: The Global 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the Role of World Historical Information
Get PDFThe 1918 “Spanish Influenza” was one of the three most devastating epidemics known to humankind. Today it is taken as a model of possible future pandemics by health authorities in many countries. This study reviews and assesses the qualitative and quantitative studies of the 1918 pandemic. It shows that the qualitative studies, while wide-ranging, are neither consistent nor comprehensive at the global level. The quantitative studies, in turn, are limited to the national level and have yet to be combined into a picture of the global dynamics of the pandemic.Existing studies have considered such issues as mortality waves (from one to three waves for each region of the epidemic), patterns of global diffusion, and the age profile of mortality (often noting high mortality among young adults). Nevertheless, studies of these factors need to be pursued in greater depth. Additional questions, identified by the authors as worthy of analysis, include lingering effects (such as impact on fertility), the relationship between population and mortality, and the relationship between climate and mortality.It is argued that preparation for pandemic influenza is now a security issue, and that historical studies need to be organized on a more systematic and global level in order to prepare a thorough picture of the 1918 pandemic, in order to anticipate the possible character of any future infections. The study concludes with practical suggestions for creating a global picture of the pandemic from its unfolding in 1918 to its expiration in 1921
Silver Circulation Worldwide: Initial Steps in Comprehensive Research
Get PDFPublished data on silver flows and stocks, gathered in volumes published by Moneta, provide a basis for initial steps in documenting flows of silver production and commerce from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Collection and publication of comprehensive data on silver flows will generate the first comprehensive study of flows of a commodity in the world economy of recent centuries, and will facilitate advances in global economic history. This article presents estimates from 1400 through 1900, showing annual flows of production, cumulative stocks (accounting for various levels of wear and tear), and the long-term rate of growth in silver stocks.Recent economic historical study of silver in the world economy, from the 15th century onward, has stopped short of comprehensive quantitative analysis. This group uses recently published date from the nineteenth-century silver boom and the international meetings associated with the gold standard to begin such comprehensive analysis. Results indicate that, while world population grew at an annual rate of 0.45% per year, 1700– 1900, silver stock rose at an approximate 0.7% per year in the same period. To support this confirmation of rapid monetization of the world economy, the article describes the procedure of estimating global flows and stocks out of competing estimates of silver flows
Comments on Manning, Zhang, and Yi’s "Volume and Direction of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1650-1870”
Get PDFPatrick Manning, Yun Zhang and Bowen Yi’s essay is, to our knowledge, the first since Slavevoyages went live in late 2008 to address the question of the size and direction of the largest coerced migration in global history. Given that the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methodology that they employ has moved to center stage of statistical inquiry in this eight-year interval, their work is indeed timely. Our commentary has three parts. First we point out several problems in their use of data from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (hereafter TASTDB) on which their estimates are based; second we call attention to our own estimates of the volume of the slave trade which are higher than those mentioned in the essay; and third we argue that, as currently constituted, their work is broadly supportive of the statistical picture that we drew in 2008 albeit without the benefit of MCMC
Volume and Direction of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1650-1870: Estimates by Markov Chain Carlo Analysis
Get PDFThis article presents methods and results in the application of the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis to a problem in missing data. The data used here are from The Atlantic Slave Trade Database (TASTD), 2010 version, available online. Of the currently known 35,000 slaving voyages, original data on the size of the cargo of captives exist for some 25 percent of voyage embarkations in Africa and for about 50 percent of arrivals in the Americas. Previous efforts to estimate the missing data (and project the to- tal number of captives who made the transatlantic migration) have proceeded through eclectic projections of maximum likelihood estimates of captives per voyage, without error margins. This paper creates new estimates of total mi- grant flow through two methods: one is a formally frequentist set of multiple methods, and the other is through Markov Chain Monte Carlo methodology. Comparison of the three methods, all based on the same raw data, show that the results of the two new methods are fairly close to one another and they yield total flows of migrant captives of more than 20 percent higher than the previous estimates. Quantitative results, presented in simplified graphs and tables within the text and in detailed spreadsheets available online, provide a new estimate of the volume of African embarkations and American arrivals in the transatlantic slave trade for the period from 1650 to 1870, by decade, for eleven African regions of embarkation and seven American and European regions of arrival