The most recent Flea Markets in New York, London, and Amsterdam all feature the same theme: “Be the first to see the latest products at the flea markets.”
But while these urban centers may be home to the most popular flea species, their residents are also the most likely to die.
That’s because fleas are a parasitic life form, which means they feed on the blood of humans, and humans are the largest reservoir of the bacteria that make them thrive.
Fleas have adapted to live in crowded urban environments for generations, so the bacteria living in humans are easy to get in the wrong hands.
The bacteria also have a habit of infecting other fleas, so if a human flea gets infected with a human-friendly flea, the two fleas could multiply and become a significant problem.
The number of people in the city that could be at risk of contracting a disease from a human parasite is staggering, as is the chance that they could infect other people and spread it.
In New York City, there are about 7,000 people in quarantine due to the virus, and a recent study estimated that a similar number of infected people could have contracted the virus from a single human parasite.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 70 percent of the people in New Orleans have been infected by a human parasitic infection.
“We’re really at the tipping point in terms of how many people in our city are exposed,” says Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the scientist who first coined the term flea.
“In New York and London, we’re still seeing a lot of infections, and people are still dying.”
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has warned that “the public is not going to get over it in a few years.”
In the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of humans infected with the parasite in New England, where the number has skyrocketed.
According to the Centers for Diseases Control and the American Association of Poison Control Centers, a new human infection of the fleas in the United States was detected in the state in March 2017.
A total of 11,539 cases of the parasite were reported in New Hampshire and 7,739 cases in Massachusetts.
That number is nearly double the number reported in the rest of the country.
In Connecticut, an additional 7,919 cases were reported, which is nearly triple the number in New Jersey.
As of June, there were 5,928 confirmed cases in the U.S., according to the CDC.
“The fact that we are seeing this huge uptick is a huge concern,” says Andrew Wakestein, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a leading authority on human parasitic infections.
“What we need to be very concerned about is the rate of transmission, and what happens when we get to that point, which we’re not seeing yet.”
The New York Times reported that, at the peak of the pandemic, it took around 1,000 cases to kill an infected person.
But with more than two million people being vaccinated, the number dropped to less than 200 cases a month by August, which has not yet reached the 2 million people who need to get tested to determine if they are at risk for contracting the disease.
In London, the numbers of confirmed cases of fleas have fallen dramatically, but the number still outpaces the number killed.
“It’s a lot more difficult to do this in cities with so many people,” says Michael Filippi, a public health scientist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Filipps research suggests that the rate at which the virus spreads is much lower in London than it is in New New York.
“When you see a pandemic with large numbers of people, there is less opportunity to get it in your area,” he says.
“So the more people you have, the more likely it is that it will spread.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been working to encourage people to vaccinate, but even though there is no new virus circulating in the world, there still seems to be a lot people in London who are still at risk.
“There is still a lot that we need done,” says Filippis.
“But this is not just a London problem.
It is a global problem.
We’re all a target.
We are all part of the problem.
I can’t imagine that we will see this stop in the foreseeable future.”
It may take decades for the numbers to fall.
In the meantime, people around the world are still facing the most serious consequences of the disease, even though the disease is now widely known.
“This is something that’s going to last for a long time,” says Wakefield.
“If it doesn’t stop soon, we will be back to square one.”
Read more about the world’s most contagious viral disease here.
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