A professor of epidemiology, Abdel Omran, has divided humanity’s relationship with mortality into three major successive stages:11 1. The Age of Pestilence and Famine. In this era, which was in place for most of humanity’s history, mortality is high and fluctuating, as a result of chronic malnutrition and endemic diseases and sudden disasters like famines and war. Life expectancy is vacillating between twenty and forty years. 2. The Age of Receding Pandemics. Now mortality begins to decline as epidemics recede. Life expectancy increases steadily from about thirty to about fifty years. As a
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