Coronavirus - Is this the killer flu that will wipe us out?
Discussion
otolith said:
I'm very glad that people are closely monitoring these threats, because one day something really nasty will emerge and unless we are on the ball it will be catastrophic. But there is no need to panic at every threat.
They are and it’s called Disease X, whether or not we’re prepared it remains to be seen. Personally, I’m not very optimistic given a very lax attitude to the personal hygiene ie washing hands and common infections like cold or upset stomach where it’s considered normal to turn up for work while sneezing and coughing like a sick dog (no offence to dogs) so half of the office is off sick in the next couple of weeks.
Alucidnation said:
Odd question but how do these things even begin to start 'forming'?
Is it a normal strain that someone has caught and for whatever reasons, it's mutated into something stronger and then been passed on?
Or is it something that is man made and released into the air for population control?
Mostly, they are viruses which are circulating (and mutating) within populations of wild or domesticated animals. Occasionally they jump species. They tend to be less well adapted to humans than to their normal host. One important aspect of being well adapted is that it’s inconvenient if your host snuffs it, so it’s good not to completely destroy it before it can spread you around.Is it a normal strain that someone has caught and for whatever reasons, it's mutated into something stronger and then been passed on?
Or is it something that is man made and released into the air for population control?
TTmonkey said:
Over the last five hundred years or so there have been a number of global pandemics that have killed many millions, and we are very overdue one. And as we now have total global travel, it will surely happen quicker than we can deal with.
Yes but our medical r&d has come on so much in that time period that a global pandemic type illness would be extremely unlikely now (unfortunately)mike74 said:
TTmonkey said:
Over the last five hundred years or so there have been a number of global pandemics that have killed many millions, and we are very overdue one. And as we now have total global travel, it will surely happen quicker than we can deal with.
Yes but our medical r&d has come on so much in that time period that a global pandemic type illness would be extremely unlikely now (unfortunately)If you want to seriously scare yourself watch Contagion, which is a reasonably realistic portrayal of what would happen in the event of a new flu pandemic similar to Spanish Flu.
Even when they found out what it was and could develop a vaccine it was still months before it could be given to everyone, so no magic wands once the doctors figure out what is going on.
That is why preppers make more sense than most will admit. The chances of an apocalypse might be very low but the chances of needing to survive for a few months mainly on what you have to hand are higher than you might think. Do you want to be heading down to the supermarket if something as deadly as Spanish Flu is going around?
Even when they found out what it was and could develop a vaccine it was still months before it could be given to everyone, so no magic wands once the doctors figure out what is going on.
That is why preppers make more sense than most will admit. The chances of an apocalypse might be very low but the chances of needing to survive for a few months mainly on what you have to hand are higher than you might think. Do you want to be heading down to the supermarket if something as deadly as Spanish Flu is going around?
Edited by JagLover on Sunday 19th January 10:49
We have monitoring, we have protocols to contain outbreaks, we understand the mechanisms of contagion, we can treat secondary infections with antibiotics, we have good supportive medicine. However. If mistakes are made and the s
t really hits the fan, for all our medical technology we are still pretty vulnerable to viruses. Our main weapon is vaccination, and vaccines for novel threats take time to create, manufacture, distribute and are not usually useful once you are symptomatic. We have excellent health service provision, but it struggles with a bad winter flu season, let alone mass sickness and death. Something that is survivable with intensive care becomes lethal when the hospitals are overrun with cases. Then you have to look at the social effects, the interconnectedness of our economies, our supply chains... If something really contagious and nasty got loose in a modern city of millions, you'd have to shut down the public transport, the schools, workplaces... How do you get food to people? What happens if they riot? How do you quarantine areas? Martial law?
We are conditioned to think that pestilence is something that happens in other places and other times, because mostly it does - ebola killing dirt-poor Africans, plague killing medieval peasants. The closest we have come in living memory is the 1918 flu pandemic, which infected a third of the world's population and killed 5%-10% of those it infected - but the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% of the population of Europe, with the death toll being twice that in badly affected cities. We've seen nothing like that in modern first world countries, plague itself couldn't do it now we have effective antibiotics against it but a highly lethal, highly contagious virus could emerge and do it again.
I don't think it's likely that the ball would be dropped and something really nasty would get a grip in the first world, but it's certainly possible.
t really hits the fan, for all our medical technology we are still pretty vulnerable to viruses. Our main weapon is vaccination, and vaccines for novel threats take time to create, manufacture, distribute and are not usually useful once you are symptomatic. We have excellent health service provision, but it struggles with a bad winter flu season, let alone mass sickness and death. Something that is survivable with intensive care becomes lethal when the hospitals are overrun with cases. Then you have to look at the social effects, the interconnectedness of our economies, our supply chains... If something really contagious and nasty got loose in a modern city of millions, you'd have to shut down the public transport, the schools, workplaces... How do you get food to people? What happens if they riot? How do you quarantine areas? Martial law? We are conditioned to think that pestilence is something that happens in other places and other times, because mostly it does - ebola killing dirt-poor Africans, plague killing medieval peasants. The closest we have come in living memory is the 1918 flu pandemic, which infected a third of the world's population and killed 5%-10% of those it infected - but the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% of the population of Europe, with the death toll being twice that in badly affected cities. We've seen nothing like that in modern first world countries, plague itself couldn't do it now we have effective antibiotics against it but a highly lethal, highly contagious virus could emerge and do it again.
I don't think it's likely that the ball would be dropped and something really nasty would get a grip in the first world, but it's certainly possible.
And, in the longer term, unless new antibiotics are developed and/or the world gets better at using the current ones in order to retain their effectiveness, then we might have a much reduced armoury against infections that are quite easily treated today, but that without treatment would kill plenty of people
otolith said:
Alucidnation said:
Odd question but how do these things even begin to start 'forming'?
Is it a normal strain that someone has caught and for whatever reasons, it's mutated into something stronger and then been passed on?
Or is it something that is man made and released into the air for population control?
Mostly, they are viruses which are circulating (and mutating) within populations of wild or domesticated animals. Occasionally they jump species. They tend to be less well adapted to humans than to their normal host. One important aspect of being well adapted is that it’s inconvenient if your host snuffs it, so it’s good not to completely destroy it before it can spread you around.Is it a normal strain that someone has caught and for whatever reasons, it's mutated into something stronger and then been passed on?
Or is it something that is man made and released into the air for population control?
The Russians weaponised the mutated strain of the virus.
JPJPJP said:
And, in the longer term, unless new antibiotics are developed and/or the world gets better at using the current ones in order to retain their effectiveness, then we might have a much reduced armoury against infections that are quite easily treated today, but that without treatment would kill plenty of people
Isn’t this a virus?This one is yes. I was referring to the post above by otoliths mentioning plague, which is bacterial. Other candidates are cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, leprosy and more.
If antibiotic resistance continues to develop as it has in recent years, sepsis arising from the inability to deal with infections that we currently regard as quite trivial to treat could end up killing a lot of people
If antibiotic resistance continues to develop as it has in recent years, sepsis arising from the inability to deal with infections that we currently regard as quite trivial to treat could end up killing a lot of people
Tango13 said:
When the Russians were looking at weaponising the Marburg virus (similar to Ebola) a scientist managed to infect himself with it and died a very horrible death. Passing through a human host enabled the virus to mutate slightly which made it more effective against humans.
The Russians weaponised the mutated strain of the virus.
Filoviruses do tend to mutate when they circulate in human populations - they mapped the mutations in the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak and found multiple mutated strains with differential lethality. They also found that the more lethal strains infected more people, but I would say that is down to the (inefficient, brute force) way that Ebola is transmitted and local funeral practices - dead, leaking, mushy people with a massive viral load being optimal for that.The Russians weaponised the mutated strain of the virus.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/08/04/ebola-mutatio...
For something like a coronavirus, influenza, pox or Morbillivirus which spreads efficiently through aerosols, having the patient wandering around for longer increases the rate of transmission. I think the really terrifying possibility would be something lethal with a short latent period and a long incubation period (meaning that people became infectious before they became symptomatic) - we'd be playing catch-up. Measles and chickenpox do this, though only by a couple of days. Imagine if someone had been wandering round London infecting people for a week before they got sick.
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