A new disease that will kill us all?

bonkey

Isn't it time for another doomsday healthscare?

Ebola hasn't managed to rampage through the developed world.
The mad cows have not spelled the end of humanity via CJD
SARS has not brought us to a wheezing end.
H5N1 has not mutated into something that makes the Spanish flu of 1916 look like a walk in the park.

I think its about time that a new end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it illness threatens us.

Lest someone think I'm joking, I'm actually quite serious here.

Killer diseases threatening the established order of things have been a more-or-less constant "story" for as long as I can remember. Whether it was some fluff article about how a killer strain of the flu was statistically overdue, or something like the above, there is a pretty-constant flow of these threats, each conveniently materialising in the media's eye as the previous one subsides into memory.

Of all of the threats of the last 20-30 years, AIDS is the only one which has taken a horrific toll and even then it has been far less then the doomsday scenarios that were being thrown around in the heyday of the 80s awareness campaigns.

The list above is also far from complete. West Nile fever...superbugs...we could go on all day.

So while H5N1 is still refusing to die in the eyes of the media, it is surely on its last legs. Thus, we're due another disease that just might kill us all.

User45701

i havent been keeping up to date with H5N1 for a year or so but my understanding is its not a threat unless it mutates which could happen at any time...

Maybe some metorite will hit speading some new substance called tiberium across the planet?

That would do it

slumped

Although not a disease, Greed might actually end up killing us all.

As countries fight for what's left in terms of natural resources, it's only a matter of time before the start kicking the **** out of each other.

Humanity will suffer as a result.

S

User45701

No, its nothing got to do with nations

MM wrote:

What is needed is a contractor owned recruitment agency. We would own it and employ agents on generous comisssion. Rates would be higher and there would be complete transparency.

MM

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good idea why dont you do it??

This is the problem everyone wants to get paid lots of money.

Sometimes i wish the commies had taken over the world

bonkey

User45701 wrote:

i havent been keeping up to date with H5N1 for a year or so but my understanding is its not a threat unless it mutates which could happen at any time...

Well, yes, but then gravity could stop working at any time too.

The point is that H5N1 was never really a likely threat. Nor were any of the other myriad of "are we doomed" headline-grabbing super-threats over the past 20 years or so. But the media seem to have an almost-constant love-affair with such things...

So I reckon we're due for a new one.

My bet is that if nothing new materializes by the Autumn, the start of flu season will once more spark a rash of articles about how we're overdue a flu mutation which will bring civilisation to its knees, and how it could happen at any time, and how inadequate our vaccination techniques are, and, and and.

User45701

No, its nothing got to do with nations

MM wrote:

What is needed is a contractor owned recruitment agency. We would own it and employ agents on generous comisssion. Rates would be higher and there would be complete transparency.

MM

---

good idea why dont you do it??

This is the problem everyone wants to get paid lots of money.

Sometimes i wish the commies had taken over the world.

The world will truley be a better place when weath is no loger the driving force of our species

slumped wrote:

Although not a disease, Greed might actually end up killing us all.

As countries fight for what's left in terms of natural resources, it's only a matter of time before the start kicking the **** out of each other.

Humanity will suffer as a result.

S

Actually Humanity gets better the more people that die.

Ive always hoped for one of these dieses or maybe a large astroid to wipe out in and around 85% of our species, the reamining 15% assuming its not scatterd accross the entrie planet would be more than enough of a base genetic structure to begin repopulation.

The best thing for our race is massive annihilation, all of us, i dont care if i died because i would die happy knowing our species will become better because our entire civislation will have collapsed and we will start over, hopefully in pease and if we dont then we have had our chances and we should all die because that would mean that our race is actually like Agent Smith said is nothing more than a Virus

humbert

bonkey wrote:

Well, yes, but then gravity could stop working at any time too.

The point is that H5N1 was never really a likely threat. Nor were any of the other myriad of "are we doomed" headline-grabbing super-threats over the past 20 years or so. But the media seem to have an almost-constant love-affair with such things...

So I reckon we're due for a new one.

My bet is that if nothing new materializes by the Autumn, the start of flu season will once more spark a rash of articles about how we're overdue a flu mutation which will bring civilisation to its knees, and how it could happen at any time, and how inadequate our vaccination techniques are, and, and and.

Well I do agree that H5N1 is over hyped in the media, for lets face it, it doesn't seem to be very rampant in the bird population. However it does kill and can be communicated to humans, if it were to mutate such that it could be passed from human to human it would constitute a potentially lethal flu strain.

seamus

Even H5N1 isn't all that scary with mutation.

The last major pandemic in 1918 required a certain number of unlikely factors for it to get a grip. Even after the dust settled, about 1.5% of the world population had died. Not a devastating amount by any accounts (although I'm not discountingthe emotional effects). If a strain with similar properties were to arise tomorrow, it wouldn't have anything approaching the same toll.

For the past fifty years or so, we've been very concerned about the end of the world. It has driven our art, our culture, and our beliefs. Perhaps this is just the way it's always been.

When the cold war ended, there was a period where we were in worldwide recession. While the subject of the end of the world was still big, people were too concerned about getting some food and money for their families to give it much thought. As the global economy began to boom, the idea of human annihilation came back up into the agenda. Suddenly we were awash with scientists telling us how it's all going to end, the number of "Judgement Day" movies skyrocketed - from my point of view - and suddenly every decision made by a government was being attacked as "the decision that will destroy the world".

But maybe this is the way it's always been.

Even assuming that something as vicious as Ebola or Lassa began stomping around the world, it would require more than just its own contagiousness to become a major threat.

Marksie

Well given that Ebola has a greater than 80% mortality rate, it does pose a significant threat.

Don't watch / read "the stand" then .

Actually Mark Preston wrote a very good factual book on a viral haemmorrhagic fever outbreak (marburg i belive). "The Hot Zone". The symptom description of the illness is quite remarkable and 18 rated.

Interestingly one part concerned an outbreak in a "monkey house". The virus went airborne and apparently infected monkeys via the air supply rather than direct contact. Some of the workers seroconverted but didn't display symptoms.

Interestingly, the monkey house was only a few miles from washington DC

http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/zmag/articles/jan94eckhardt.htm

is one review which is intersting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone
this one is a simple wiki

What Pretson claims is not that filoviruses stomps around, but it is located in ints natural habitat and within its natural host population. As we put pressure in the sytems we will come into contact with these exotic viruses.
When it jumps across to humans it is know as a zoonosis, Yersinia pestis, the plague is one such.
Basically the organism/natural host exists in balance. When new factors are introduced like mutational pressure and then you have a brand new susceptible host, you get massive mortality.

and if you want something really terrifying:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1110144.stm

its old but stuck in my memory as a very cheap and effective way of doing real damage. I read the original article and thought wow, very easy to do.