Final Thoughts

When I started this blog three months ago, my idea of how climate change could affect disease was very simple; as regions warmed, they would become more suitable for creatures such as mosquitos to thrive in, exposing local residents to a host of new diseases. Now, I realise the picture is a great deal more complicated than that.

One of the most striking things I learned from writing this blog is that the situation won't become uniformly worse for everyone. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, this actually makes sense; a changing climate will make some areas more hospitable to disease vectors, and others less. Of course, climate change will have many other negative implications which should not be underestimated, but the idea that some areas could actually see a lower rate of disease incidence hadn't occurred to me. This emphasised the idea that while climate change is a global issue, to plan effective mitigation efforts, we need to understand what's happening at a regional level.

So many of my other assumptions about climate change and disease spread were overturned, too. I hadn't realised what an important role land-use change has in creating more habitats for disease vectors (increasing urbanisation is good for mosquitos). It also hadn't occurred to me that in addition to changing where outbreaks occur, climate change affects the intensity of those outbreaks, too. Also, before working on this blog, the idea that the warming Arctic could reawaken old threats seemed like it could only be the plot of a horror film.

Previously only used to writing about science for scientists, keeping this blog has tested my communication skills. Climate change, modelling and epidemiology all involve some tricky concepts and figuring out how to write about these ideas without losing the essence of the message was challenging. Learning how to incorporate media, such as videos, podcasts, or 'sliding maps' helped me communicate my ideas, but also challenged my digital skills.

An early attempt at one of my maps... Climate change really could turn the world upside down.

Choosing what topics to cover in my blog was another unexpected challenge. There were many areas I wished to cover but simply didn't have space to; how climate change is halting progress towards the Millenium Development Goals or how past disease outbreaks, such as the Black Death in Europe, may have been climate-driven. Reading comments on the blogs helped me focus my writing on my readers' interests. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of keeping this blog, and have learned how invaluable blogs are as tools for scientific communication.

Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned is that while there are uncertainties surrounding how climate change will impact disease, there is huge potential for some extremely negative outcomes. Although we are living in a politically fraught time, we need to come together to address this critically important problem.

While we are fast entering the danger zone, with real action and enough resources, it is not too late to escape.