New dangerous virus

I am no longer working as a virologist and so I have not been following the new virus closely. But I was right in the middle of the SARS epidemic in 2003 and it was truly frightening at that time. Our city was like a ghost city where restaurants and shops were empty. Everybody wore masks while going outside and many doctors did not go home but stayed in a hotel because they were afraid that they may infect their families. We also had a complete block of flats quarantined under police supervision and the residents forcibly moved to a camp. At the height of that epidemic, every one thought the virus would never disappear but it did eventually.

The reasons why that SARS virus disappeared and never reappeared again are not really known. This new virus does not seem to be anywhere as dangerous as the one in 2003. What is interesting was that the Saudi authorities accused pharmaceutical companies of withholding information for profit and which led to a delay in diagnosing and controlling the virus.

^^ What city you from derek?

Thinking of the AMA locking me up in a camp in a virus pandemic scares me more than facing the virus. At least at home I'd be able to fight it off. No chance in a camp. Not in the US.

They say that when the Spanish Lady flu went around more people died from pneumonia complications than that flu. They had just invented aspirin and everyone was taking it for the flu......not realizing that it would cause water build up in the lungs and cause pneumonia. Today in a major pandemic, Americans are toast. The average person in this country has about zilch of an immune system left.

With hindsight, lots of mistakes were made during that period that probably resulted in more deaths than otherwise. There was an engineering fault in the building concerned so that sewage sometimes mixed with water for showers. Basically, occupants there were breathing in other people's faeces and that was how the virus spread. In order to protect the community, an order was issued to quarantine the building. What that meant was that the occupants would have been locked with any virus that was still there and were put at extra risk. That was why they were moved to a camp eventually.

The official in charge of all this was Margaret Chan who was the Director of Health. There was widespread dissatisfaction with her performance and she soon resigned afterwards. But that didn't mean the end of her career. She is now the Director General of the World Health Organisation, which makes her the top health official in the world.

This is very terrifying, I just hope it will not spread worldwide.

The scariest news is, we do not really know a lot about this virus.

This is why I stopped going to the gym years ago and now work out in the woods.

That's right baby.

Caveman style.

Throw me a log!

(Or a small boulder).

There are actually hundreds if not thousands of different viruses that can have cause a mortality rate of 10-60% in humans. However, all are animal viruses that are not adapted for human to human transmission. Ebola is probably the scariest one around but they are others like Lassa Fever and Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic fever. There are lots of other unclassified animal viruses as well. Rabies have a near 100% mortality in humans but the infection is relatively rare. The AIDS virus probably originated from Monkeys and that has a near 100% mortality if untreated. It certainly had the capability to wipe out large percentages of the population in a number of African countries before treatment was available.

SARS itself is an animal that got transmitted to humans. The early cases had a mortality of 30% and there was substantial human to human transmission as well. The fear was that the human to human transmission could not be stopped and the infection would be around permanently. However, it did die down eventually probably because of the onset of summer and also of the huge range of measures taken by the public against it. As far as the Black Death is concerned, the bacteris is still around in a completely unchanged form. It still cause much smaller outbreaks from time to time in poor countries with unhygienic conditions. However, effective antibiotic treatment is available and so are measures to control the rat population.