| |
News: Dangerous MERS virus spreading
Member Since: 1/1/2013
Posts: 15,264
|
Dangerous MERS virus spreading
The new MERS virus is proving really dangerous, with 30 people dying out of the 51 that are known have been infected. Scientists are afraid it will become a pandemic and with 60% of the infected people having died from it as of now, things aren't looking good. Unlike with many other diseases, it's not just the ill and frail people dying, but a lot of normal healthy people.
Are you scared? What do you think will happen?
Below is an article by CNN on the virus
Quote:
Why MERS virus is so scary
By Laurie Garrett, Special to CNN
May 31, 2013 -- Updated 1656 GMT (0056 HKT)
CNN) -- The head of the World Health Organization warned the world this week of a new virus, awkwardly dubbed MERS-CoV, found in Saudi Arabia.
"Looking at the overall global situation, my greatest concern right now is the novel coronavirus," Margaret Chan said, calling it "a threat to the entire world."
"We understand too little about this virus when viewed against the magnitude of its potential threat," the director general said in her closing speech to the 66th session of the World Health Assembly. "Any new disease that is emerging faster than our understanding is never under control.
"These are alarm bells and we must respond. The novel coronavirus is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself."
With just 49 cases of the new disease reported since June 2012, it may seem puzzling that Chan named the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus -- MERS CoV or MERS for short -- the greatest threat to world health today.
But Hong Kong-born Chan can be forgiven a strong reaction. After all, she managed the response to SARS there in 2003, and MERS is a close genetic cousin. At least 8,000 people in 30 countries contracted SARS in 2003; 774 died of the disease.
No doubt her sense of urgency also stems from the apparently high mortality rate: To date, 27 of the 49 people who have caught the disease have perished, or 52%. Although the majority of illnesses have been in the Saudi Arabia, cases have emerged in seven countries.
Similarities between the SARS and MERS viruses are more than genetic. Both cause acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, and trigger reactions in the human immune system that are so severe, organs throughout the body are devastated -- collateral damage in an overly vigorous battle with the microbes. Both viruses spread between people through close contact, putting family caregivers and health care workers at risk for infection.
In April, for example, according to a report in the British medical journal The Lancet, a French man who had traveled to Dubai fell ill with the disease in France, although it wasn't diagnosed immediately. Another patient who shared the first man's hospital room caught the disease. The first man died on May 28; the second remains in intensive care.
A new report in the New England Journal of Medicine offers a glimpse of the depth of mystery shrouding MERS. A team of Saudi Ministry of Health researchers describe a November outbreak in a Riyadh urban household of 28 extended family members, four of whom -- all men -- contracted MERS.
The cluster of cases in this family presents a list of mysteries: Why were all the sick and dead men? With 28 people in this three-building urban household, why were these four infected, and the other 24 spared? The family lived in a big city, had no animals, ate supermarket food and had jobs that offered no contact with the virus. How did they catch MERS?
Until researchers can determine what animal is the natural host of the virus, and how MERS spreads from the host to humans, each new outbreak is dangerous and mysterious. The science is still unfolding.
Meanwhile, the WHO and world health community watch, anxiously, recalling how swiftly the SARS outbreak that started in southern China in December 2002 exploded a month later across Asia, Canada, and on, eventually hitting 30 countries.
Sadly, resources for confronting such outbreaks have decreased since the 2008 financial crisis, and MERS has emerged in one of the most difficult regions in the world. Were the virus to reach any of the refugee camps that house more than 2 million Syrian refugees, a genuine pandemic could ensue.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/31/op...rus/index.html
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 43,126
|
the hell 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 11/18/2010
Posts: 33,622
|
Oh my god. And what makes this all the more scarer is that I've been having strange issues with asthma recently. (Not even my doctor can tell me why its suddenly being triggered all the time.) And I was just in the middle east too.
Edit: I looked up the symptoms. The only one I haven't experienced recently is a fever. 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/30/2011
Posts: 6,553
|
Seriously, they have one of these scares every other year and it turns out to be nothing.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/10/2011
Posts: 3,484
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/12/2012
Posts: 13,665
|
Oh, I see the vaccine industry wants to make money again.
Scare the people like every year.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/1/2013
Posts: 15,264
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Neptune
Seriously, they have one of these scares every other year and it turns out to be nothing.
|
Yes, because 60% of the infected people, that are otherwise healthy, dying is nothing 
The spanish flu only killed 10 to 20% of the people infected and it wiped out 3 to 5% of the entire world population, just imagine what this could do if it becomes a pandemic in a world that is connected like never before.
The people in here who desperately try to appear calm and mature  I'm not saying you should be scared, but it's not like this is just another flu. There is NOT a vaccine for this disease so the industry has nothing to do with this
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2012
Posts: 2,748
|
Oh please, this is simply the new "global pandemic" disease of the month to get people scared. SARS, H1N1, Pig Flu etc. etc.
Reality Check
Quote:
With at least 30 deaths and 50 known cases of infection resulting from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the new coronavirus is prompting warnings of a global pandemic and providing plenty of questions for global health experts.
“The speed at which we know what we know is great, but what we don’t know is still much greater than what we do know about this virus,” explained Dr. Nathan Wolfe, a virologist and author of the book, ‘The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age.’”
Wolfe says the unknown variables include the source of the virus, the ability of the disease to spread from person-to-person and its overall lethality.
Thus far, more than half of individuals known to be infected have died, but that doesn’t mean MERS is actually as deadly as the numbers suggest.
“The problem is people who end up in hospitals often tend to be the sick percentage of individuals in a community,” Wolfe said, “so it makes it easy to overestimate the mortality by looking at the percentage of people who are ill in hospitals.”
Since the virus first came into the public light in September, infected patients have spanned the Mideast and Europe, from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to Germany, the United Kingdom and most recently France.
The World Health Organization Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, has called MERS “a threat to the entire world.”
Wolfe points out that in a day and age of interconnected populations, geographical boundaries mean very little.
“We’ve talked about cases in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, or France,” he said, “but the reality is while these might be valid political boundaries, from a disease perspective these diseases don’t really respect political boundaries.”
Renowned epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert Dr. Arthur Reingold, a professor at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, agrees with Wolfe that due to several unknown qualities about the virus, projecting it’s impact and global reach right now is quite difficult.
“This has the potential to cause an enormous problem, but there’s a very good likelihood that it won’t,” Reingold said. “And it’s impossible to predict whether it’s going to or not.”
Reingold said that viruses can mutate or swap their genetic elements, and essentially “reproduce” with other viruses, making it critically important to determine the source of MERS and try to stop its spread.
He said MERS would be more dangerous if transmissible early in the illness, unlike it’s close relative, SARS, also a coronavirus, which became more infectious once the disease progressed.
“The earlier we recognize something and can respond to it, the better able we’ll be to control it and reduce the number of people who are ill,” Reingold said.
Wolfe emphasized that the Bay Area has a substantial number of resources and academic and research institutions in public health policy, making it a natural springboard for developing a solution.
“We have this sort of incredible opportunity I think, here in the Bay Area, to have a huge impact on global public health,” Wolfe said. “We have a history in this area of being incredibly innovative with the way that we think about things, and these institutions really are producing leading scientists in this field.”
SARS is a virus that was borne from bats. Wolfe says the evidence so far suggests the same might be true for MERS, but right now no one knows definitively.
|
This doesn't mean it isn't a problem and shouldn't be taken seriously, but it's counterproductive to get people more scared than they need be.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 25,228
|
Ban all ****ing travel from Saudi Arabia ASAP.
Thank you.
|
|
|
|
Banned
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 8,388
|
**** this **** im outta here
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/16/2011
Posts: 20,617
|
Locking myself up as we speak
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 4,083
|
Again ? 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/30/2011
Posts: 6,553
|
Quote:
Originally posted by BadMonster
Yes, because 60% of the infected people, that are otherwise healthy, dying is nothing
The spanish flu only killed 10 to 20% of the people infected and it wiped out 3 to 5% of the entire world population, just imagine what this could do if it becomes a pandemic in a world that is connected like never before.
The people in here who desperately try to appear calm and mature
There is NOT a vaccine for this disease so the industry has nothing to do with this |
Desperately trying to appear calm and mature?
You are old enough to remember the HUGE drama they made over SARS right? When people were actually believing it was the end of human life as we knew it and millions of people were going to die..? Not to mention all the other super viruses that have come and gone since then.
Quote:
|
At least 8,000 people in 30 countries contracted SARS in 2003; 774 died of the disease.
|
More people die of the flu each year. Sorry, but even if it does turn out to be a real issue, call me when it at least starts killing people close to where I live.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 6/4/2012
Posts: 12,838
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Mike91
Ban all ****ing travel from Saudi Arabia ASAP.
Thank you.
|
.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/1/2013
Posts: 15,264
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Neptune
Desperately trying to appear calm and mature?
You are old enough to remember the HUGE drama they made over SARS right? When people were actually believing it was the end of human life as we knew it and millions of people were going to die..? Not to mention all the other super viruses that have come and gone since then.
More people die of the flu each year. Sorry, but even if it does turn out to be a real issue, call me when it at least starts killing people close to where I live. |
I remember SARS well, but I never thought that to be really dangerous.. I'm actually curious to find out what will happen with this disease though, it sounds more severe, but who knows.
As to the comment about it not being near where you live.. it is for me.. The first people have died from it in Italy, which isn't THAT far away
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/10/2010
Posts: 4,708
|
Quote:
Originally posted by BadMonster
Yes, because 60% of the infected people, that are otherwise healthy, dying is nothing
The spanish flu only killed 10 to 20% of the people infected and it wiped out 3 to 5% of the entire world population, just imagine what this could do if it becomes a pandemic in a world that is connected like never before.
The people in here who desperately try to appear calm and mature I'm not saying you should be scared, but it's not like this is just another flu. There is NOT a vaccine for this disease so the industry has nothing to do with this |
but some people are mature, it's not like we're all 13 yo.
And the Pharmaceutical INDUSTRY is the one that has to do with this.
In mid-July they'll "find" vaccine and ask everyone to get it, cuz it's gonna be "pandemic".
SARS 2002.
H1N1 Pig Flu.
H7N9 Bird Flu.
it's becoming a trend! #MERS
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/1/2013
Posts: 15,264
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Ale-Alejandro
but some people are mature, it's not like we're all 13 yo.
And the Pharmaceutical INDUSTRY is the one that has to do with this.
In mid-July they'll "find" vaccine and ask everyone to get it, cuz it's gonna be "pandemic".
SARS 2002.
H1N1 Pig Flu.
Bird Flu.
it's becoming a trend! #MERS |
Some people are mature, yes, but some in here were just pretending to be, resulting in showing the ignorance... Over here there have never been vaccinations for those diseases, so if it really was the industry then they'd have been everywhere... those diseases weren't even that bad.
This one, right now, appears to be one of the worst we've seen, but that might still change
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/13/2011
Posts: 5,631
|
Why is it always the non-english speaking countries starting these viruses?
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 21,846
|
I'm scared
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 43,126
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Firework
Why is it always the non-english speaking countries starting these viruses?
|
Most country's don't have english as official language
|
|
|
|
|
|
