USA Infectious Disease Transmission Data (corrected)

This is a correction to the data published in Thornhill and Fincher (2014) in Appendix 3 of Section 5.25, pages 163-165. We redid the calculation of the nonzoonotic in the following way. We determined the population-adjusted case rate for the different transmission categories: human specific, multi-host, and zoonotic. Then we summed the case rates for the human specific and multi-host diseases to represent “nonzoonotic”. Then we standardised this new ’nonzoonotic’ value for each year and then averaged this z-score across the years for each state. The error in the prior, published data found in Thornhill and Fincher (Appendix 3 of section 5.25) was that we standardised the human specific and multi-host and then summed the z-scores which gives the multi-host scores too much undue influence. E.g., let’s say the human specific diseases had something like 2000 cases for a state and the multihost diseases had only 20 cases, if you z-score them separately you could have the same z-score for the human specific and the multihost for that state (e.g., each could get 1.2). If you then add these two together (2.4) you get a different score than if you added all the cases together (human specific cases + multi-host cases) and then z-scored the state values. In this new data file (USA_Transmission_Data_corrected.xlsx), we standardised the values after we summed them, correcting the problem. The human specific, multi-host, and zoonotic values in this 'USA_Transmission_Data_corrected.xlsx' file are identical to that published in Thornhill and Fincher (2014). Also, this spreadsheet includes both “with DC” and “without DC” data. We tend to use the “without DC” data unless there’s a strong reason to include it.
Thornhill, R., & Fincher, C. L. (2014). The parasite-stress theory of values and sociality: Infectious disease, history and human values worldwide. Springer.