New Killer Respiratory Virus Endangers Human Kind

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31 May 2013, 5:48 pm

In the civilized industrial countries of the world, clean water is available to all. We can wash our hands and avoid exposure to other people's illnesses. The chance of a world killer plague is fairly small.

If we stay clean, eat properly and avoid exposure there should be no mass deaths.

Even during the Spanish flue epidemic of 1917, some 50 million out of a billion and a half last their lives. That is about 3.5 percent.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 01 Jun 2013, 7:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

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31 May 2013, 6:41 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Thousands of people die from infectious diseases every day of the year and yet the human race goes on.

Even the dreaded Black Death did not kill everyone in Europe after the disease was carried to Europe. Nor did the disease kill everyone in the near east, where it originated.

There will always be a fraction of the population, which for genetic reasons, is able to muster enough resistance to an infection to survive. In the entire 250,000 year history of the human race (homo sapien) disease has not caused its extinction.
Also the predecessors of humanity did not all die from disease (which is why we are here).

ruveyn

All good things . . .

I think it'll be zombies though.

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01 Jun 2013, 7:39 am

Tollorin wrote:

visagrunt wrote:

Tollorin wrote:

Why do no one take this seriously? Virus can be very dangerous...

I am a physician working in infectious disease--specifically respiratory diseases. So you can be damned sure that I am taking this seriously.

But in taking it seriously, I take a realistic assessment of the gravity of the situation.

If I see a patient with a respiratory complaint who has recently travelled to the Middle East, or who has been in contact with someone who has, then I will give MERS the attention that it merits. But I am not going to run around like Chicken Little proclaiming that the sky is falling until the clinical evidence suggests that I should.

I was not aiming it at you, more are those who don't take this as a serious potential threat in this thread. Maybe they should be reminded of the spanish flu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
Sure humankind survived, but 100 millions death is a LOT!! !

Less than ten percent of the human population at the time. That means 90 percent or more survived. The Spanish flu pandemic was NOT an extinction level event. If medical science had been as advanced then as it is now, even fewer would have died from the Spanish flu.

Tens of millions dead in a day is a rough hit, but it is not the end of the human race by any means.

The human race came within a whisker width of extinction about 75,000 years ago when a super volcano near Sumatra blew out. It may happen again when (not if) the Yellowstone super volcano blows.

ruveyn

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02 Jun 2013, 3:04 pm

Just nature thinning the herd,the resistant will survive.

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02 Jun 2013, 5:00 pm

Many parasites, viruses and bacteria will not kill their host population off because then they will cease to exist. If they do kill off their hosts it is because they merely use the hosts to replicate or mutate and spread to others. The microbe world is immensely fascinating.

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02 Jun 2013, 5:56 pm

mikassyna wrote:

Since the less lethal pathogens are likely to have more effective living hosts to spread their number, there is a tendency for pathogens to evolve from very lethal (killing the host before it can spread the pathogen) to somewhat less lethal.

ruveyn

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02 Jun 2013, 6:33 pm

OH MY GOD! 27 people died since October! 27 deaths in 8 months! 3,4 deaths per month! At this rate, mankind will be extinct in... let's see... 7,000,000,000 : 3,4 = 2,058,823,529 months, which equals to... WE ONLY HAVE 171,500 MILLENIA TO LIVE!

Actually, there are other things to consider, like the exponential increase in the speed of the pandemic's spread as it affects more people around the world and the constant births and deaths happening all over the world.

Even so, we probably have a few million years to figure out a cure, supposing this is not a joke like H1N1 (yeah, yeah... It killed a few people. So what? We survived). And supposing our species live that long (future people love to interbreed with those damn aliens: they are destroying our species with them space genes!).

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05 Jun 2013, 6:38 am

How is this new bird flu any more dangerous than the emergence of multiply resistant micro-organism that can thwart just about any anti-biotic? We are almost back to where we were at the end of the 19th century, totally at the mercy of infectious disease and ultimately reliant only on our natural ability to fight off the bugs and be immune to disease?

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06 Jun 2013, 11:26 am

Tollorin wrote:

In my view, you are overstating the case. Spanish flu is not an analog for MERS, because there is no evidence to suggest that MERS is as readily transmissible. While early cases have had a higher mortality rate than SARS, there is insufficient clinical data to demonstrate whether that is because the disease caused by the virus is inherently more lethal, or whether because a significant number of people are able to fight the infection with minimal clinically significant symptoms.

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08 Jun 2013, 4:15 pm

A few people die from H1N1 and everyone wants to wear a mask.
Millions of people die from AIDS and no one wants to wear a condom. :roll:

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09 Jun 2013, 4:21 am

We are doing much worse on our own. Feeding antibiotics to our food, anti bacterial hand soap, we are driving an evolution of the most resistant being the majority of survivors.

Our sewer systems do not breakdown antibiotics, those and our other drugs are in the water, and just like DDT, PCBs, they migrate up the life chain.

Flesh eating bacteria used to be a hospital problem, now the girl on the cable ride caught it from a creek.

Evolution is forever.

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09 Jun 2013, 9:55 am

lostonearth35 wrote:

A few people die from H1N1 and everyone wants to wear a mask.
Millions of people die from AIDS and no one wants to wear a condom. :roll:

Saw on a beer cosy,"A tisket,a tasket, a condom or a casket."

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