Measles flourishes in conditions of extreme poverty like refugee camps or following wars. It is one of the diseases that people are expecting to crop up in the expected refigees in Iraq. In 1891 the small newly established town of Broomehill in Western Australia had it's first show Agricultural Show - a great success for the otherwise remote commuinty on the eastern edge of the high rainfall area of the south west. An unfortunate consequence was the ferocity f the inffluenza epidemic that killed several people in the white community (none of whom had been in the area for more than thirty years). The effect of influenza on the black community was not noticed.
Whooping cough spreads explosively through communities being very infectious when the herd immunity from the previous epidemic is reduced. These affects have nothing to do with race, ethnicity or any other distinguishing feature of the people involved. They are function of the environmental factors such as population density, health, nutrition and hygeine and the dynamics of herd resistance (that is the percentage of teh population immune at a particular time. Genetic variability is irrelevant.
Mike Elvin
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