Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
M.G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS Biol. 2020 Dec 21;18(12):e3000506. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000506. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Smallpox is unique among infectious diseases in the degree to which it devastated human populations, its long history of control interventions, and the fact that it has been successfully eradicated. Mortality from smallpox in London, England was carefully documented, weekly, for nearly 300 years, providing a rare and valuable source for the study of ecology and evolution of infectious disease. We describe and analyze smallpox mortality in London from 1664 to 1930. We digitized the weekly records published in the London Bills of Mortality (LBoM) and the Registrar General's Weekly Returns (RGWRs). We annotated the resulting time series with a sequence of historical events that might have influenced smallpox dynamics in London. We present a spectral analysis that reveals how periodicities in reported smallpox mortality changed over decades and centuries; many of these changes in epidemic patterns are correlated with changes in control interventions and public health policies. We also examine how the seasonality of reported smallpox mortality changed from the 17th to 20th centuries in London.
天花在传染病中具有独特的地位，它在人类中的破坏性极大，有着长期的控制干预历史，并且已经被成功根除。英格兰伦敦的天花死亡率被仔细记录，每周记录一次，时间长达近 300 年，为传染病的生态学和进化研究提供了难得而有价值的资料来源。我们描述和分析了 1664 年至 1930 年伦敦的天花死亡率。我们对在伦敦死亡统计表（London Bills of Mortality，LBoM）和总登记官每周报告（Registrar General's Weekly Returns，RGWRs）中公布的每周记录进行了数字化处理。我们用可能影响伦敦天花动态的一系列历史事件对所得的时间序列进行注释。我们展示了一个频谱分析，揭示了报告的天花死亡率在几十年和几个世纪中周期性的变化；这些流行模式的许多变化都与控制干预措施和公共卫生政策的变化有关。我们还研究了伦敦报告的天花死亡率从 17 世纪到 20 世纪的季节性变化。
