The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: fatbaldguy on September 22, 2013, 08:45:24 AM
-
Holy Sh!t !!!!
http://www.birdflu211.com/
-
Again ?
The last time this was supposed to kill us all there were about 30 deaths nation wide.
-
Bring it on! Freeway driving will be easier.
-
Bring it on! Freeway driving will be easier.
It's a loosing battle....even if one out of every two were killed, there still would be half of them left ;D ;D
-
At least it's not the zombie apocalypse.
-
One can always hope that it confined to Democrats and Liberals.
-
Harummph. I'm keeping an eye on the MERs coronavirus. http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/index.html (http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/index.html)
There were a lot of rapidly increasing cases, perhaps mostly from Saudi medical personnel, then it went to zero during the ring around the rock festival. Afterwards, there started to be cases again.
Seems to somehow be related to camels? No kiddin',...read it for yourself.
Coronaviruses can generally be carried by bats....don't anyone let Feinstein, Pelosi or Boxer into the Midde East or if you do then don't let them back. Seriously, yes bats can carry the corona virus.
The mortality rate is very high with this thing.
-
Sickle cell for Muslims ?
-
SSDD from a science POV here.
I know the science really well on this and a H7 pandemic is VERY unlikely. MERS is interesting from a science POV but also still very local. At this point it appears to be folks being exposed to an animal host (unknown what) could be bats (feces) or bug bites around camels (which seem to carry the virus). Not much human to human transmission.
What has changed is not nature but our ability to see these small scale cross species infections at a much earlier stage than ever before. We ahve no historical record to compare these blips against so the crowd goes crazy.
Standard precautions still apply, just like they have for the last 200 years.
BTW 25% of all mammal species are bats!
-
This might be a stupid question but do you mean 25% by population (i.e. out of every 100 mammals alive on the planet, 25 are bats) or 25% by number of species (i.e. for every 100 different species of mammals, 25 of them are bat species.) Not sure if my wording makes sense, but I hope you know what I mean.
If it's the latter, to me, that just means more specialization, or more mutation within the... Genus? I didn't do that well in my high school biology class. If it's the former, how many bats would that be? What % are humans?
-
By #of species.
The point is that there are bats everywhere even though we don't much notice them and they have filled every niche they find. Bats appear to be an important reservoir for viruses and bugs and with their range of flight they can spread bugs in their droppings over a wide area. Saying the virus is in bats is useful but not all that surprising.
From a science POV the most interesting thing about this disease is how it is demonstrating that there is not a static equilibrium between hosts and microbes. It looks static just because we usually don't know what caused someone to have Flu Like Symptoms which are the body's standard response to infection. What we are learning is that like anti gunners, microbes area always testing the limits to see if there is anybody they can make sick!
There is deep research on the very start of the HIV infection in humans and they have traced it to a series of species jumps from primates to humans from like the 1920's through the 50's until it finally took hold and spread H2H. We can't (yet) tell which rare human infection will actually lead to any serious H2H infection. These events are getting lots of scrutiny since we don't know what it is we don't know that will be a good marker for long term spread. Folks shatter about "this virus only needs 4-5 mutations to be effective in humans..." but all mutations are not equally likely and some are very unfavorable from an evolutionary penalty POV and so we have what we call the species barrier that bugs have to get over to jump to a new host. Interesting stuff, exciting, not simple and not ready for prime time news talking heads and their sound bites...
-
I do know that the story about the CIA inventing AIDs originated with the Soviet KGB.
It was a propaganda operation to make the US look bad.
When it turned up in liberal papers in the US and Europe people got medals and promotions.
-
I do know that the story about the CIA inventing AIDs originated with the Soviet KGB.
It was a propaganda operation to make the US look bad.
When it turned up in liberal papers in the US and Europe people got medals and promotions.
The Soviets or the "journalists"?
-
Standard precautions still apply, just like they have for the last 200 years.
BTW 25% of all mammal species are bats!
Like Pelosi and Mikulski, maybe.. Commonly known as the "old" variety..
-
I do know that the story about the CIA inventing AIDs originated with the Soviet KGB.
It was a propaganda operation to make the US look bad.
When it turned up in liberal papers in the US and Europe people got medals and promotions.
The Soviets or the "journalists"?
Dept A of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB
-
It is a continuing source of amazement to me how the world is both much simpler and at the same time much more complex than people want to believe.
When you know the facts, things suddenly make more sense, but you can't get to the facts until you let go of your preconceived notions of how it ought to be and make the liars prove their statements. Unfortunately none of the connected people seem to have any interest in facts anymore.