EBOLA IS grabbing all the headlines, but throughout American history plenty of other diseases have been just as alarming. For more than 125 years U.S. public health officials have reported on a weekly basis any cases of serious infectious disease, creating a rich data diary of medical worry going back to 1888.
The chart below shows the years medical professionals were legally required to report incidents of 58 different diseases–and, intriguingly, when the mandate stopped. Of particular note: AIDS, a terrifying plague just a generation ago, no longer needs to be reported.
Today’s two most worrisome killers, Ebola and enterovirus D68, which infects young children, are too new to be reflected in the data.
Original article from Forbes Health
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