Virus

[Steve Maskery]

I don't think that all Brits are out of China yet, it's being organised, yes, but it's not yet a done deal.
It must be terrifying to look at absolutely everyone and wonder if they are going to kill you.

 

[John Brown]

"It must be terrifying to look at absolutely everyone and wonder if they are going to kill you. "
Too right. It's bad enough when it's just your family you have to wonder about.

 

[MikeG.]

......It must be terrifying to look at absolutely everyone and wonder if they are going to kill you.

Steve............160 dead out of 6000 infected. That's a death rate of one in 38*, and those are reportedly mostly elderly or ill. At the moment, this disease looks puny compared to normal winter flu. Do we evacuate a country when winter flu breaks out?

*The New Scientist is reporting a death rate of 4%.

 

[SammyQ]

I agree with MikeG, we need to see this virus in proportion, in context.
From a biological viewpoint, the fact that it has jumped species at least once, possibly twice, is of far more import than the raw casualty figures. This illustrates a genetic versatility that is much more (potentially) threatening than your 'average' coronavirus.

Sam

 

[MikeG.]

........From a biological viewpoint, the fact that it has jumped species at least once....

But is that not a standard feature of almost every single disease which has ever affected man? Bill Bryson in "The Body-A Guide for Occupants" says something like ' humans were almost disease free until we started living with animals', according to what I remember of something my wife read out to me last week.

 

[SammyQ]

I'm a general-, not a micro-, biologist Mike, so I cannot answer that definitively; but I doubt "almost every single disease" is animal-originated. I suspect Bill may be over-emphasising a theory about the origin of HIV from FIV and SIV and then lumping in the bacterial and fungal diseases that are a LOT more easily transferred across the species barrier than viruses.
We're animals too and we have a lot of human-specific viral diseases that are not found in other members of Animalia. I'd further remind you a lot of viral diseases are the result of 'natural' mutation and subsequent selection, that can transform them from base virus (relatively unimportant, but in a 'reservoir' somewhere) into a form that one (or more) species may be then be highly susceptible to. This can mean, harmless to humans before mutation/selection and harmful afterwards.
My cross-species comment originates in the selection necessary for a virus to thrive in one species; its genetic sequencing must be specific to that species, adapted to overcome ITS physiology/cytology and would not normally be viable in a different species with differing physiology and crucially, immunology. There ARE viruses that buck that rule, just ask any veterinary surgeon; but they are largely 'irritations' and controllable, not epidemic originators.

Sam