http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081010/...ystery_diseaseGENEVA – The U.N. health agency says it is investigating a mystery disease that killed three people in the South African city of Johannesburg.
The World Health Organization says the disease appears to be a form of hemorrhagic fever.
It says tests have proved negative for Ebola, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Marburg fever and other main types of hemorrhagic fever.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl says the first death on Sept. 13 was a tour guide who had fallen ill in Zambia before being evacuated to South Africa. Two further deaths on Sept. 30 and Oct. 4. involved a paramedic and a nurse who treated the woman.
Hartl said Friday that 121 people are being monitored and WHO hopes to receive further test results by Sunday.
In movies and books, diseases that end up killing off the bulk of humanity always start off with little blurbs like this.
This probably isn't going to do that, but that is always what I think of when I see short, vague news stories like this.
The fact that two health workers exposed to the initial victim are dead within 2-4 weeks of exposure says that this is likley a quick killer and unlikely to be that civilization ending type of disease.
The charactoristics of a civilization ending disease:
1) High mortality rate
2) High transmission rate
3) Long incubation period
This seems to have the first two, but not the last one.
Just thought I would interject these cheery thoughts into your day.
hmmmm...the fact that the health care workers got it in the day and age of aids awareness and protection against blood/mucous exposure suggests it's airborne. That would make it particularly nasty. A tour guide exposes a customer, who gets on an airliner back to the states exposing the other passengers, who then land and catch their connecting flights all over the US...
That sounds like a Tom Clancy plotline.
Sigh.....
it, just pull out the 12 gauge and swallow.
Jesus you'll eat anything
Haha
funny
Purely satire trust me.
I really hope I am not alive when the next big super bug starts wiping out countries.
You hear about instances like this, listen to experts comment on the decreasing effectiveness of anti-biotics, etc...it'd be a ty way to go out.
Now that I know that Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend are on the case I'm sleeping easier.
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