MERS, AIDS, the Asian carp and the jet age

[bradly1101]

Thanks to one promiscuous flight attendant AIDS jumped continents and infected the world. Now MERS has started in a similar way except you don't have to exchange bodily fluids to infect someone, just a handshake will do, and what about close contact on a plane? This doesn't seem like it will end well.

We have great vessels that ply the oceans which also carry around all sorts of invasive species. It's perhaps a little ironic that the planet's most invasive specie has invented all these conduits for disease and other invasive species to move around, harming the inventors.

Invasive parasites are killing the bees, and a fungus the frogs.

I don't know of a solution since I'm sure most people would say that all this is worth the freedom to travel easily. But it sure seems like we're shooting ourselves in the foot with this one too.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Here's a good article for you to read.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/worried-about-mers-theres-more-where-came-n113351

Worried About MERS? There's More Where That Came From

 

[Newell Steamer]

160,000 dead people from lung cancer - no one bats an eye.

A little over 100 dead people from a virus/disease - OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE FUCKING GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS FUCKING SHIT?!?!

 

[BUnit1701]

160,000 dead people from lung cancer - no one bats an eye.

A little over 100 dead people from a virus/disease - OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE FUCKING GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS FUCKING SHIT?!?!

Well yea, I mean you cant spread lung cancer with a 747 can you? Or can you? :hmm:

 

[boomerang]

So many are obsessed with fairness. Seems only fair to share pestilence.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

160,000 dead people from lung cancer - no one bats an eye.

A little over 100 dead people from a virus/disease - OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE FUCKING GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS FUCKING SHIT?!?!

While I'm not on the "we're all going to die" train just yet,

Cancer isn't transferrable through the air nor through contact nor is it preventable by a quarantine or something similar.

A virus is. And a particularly virulant strain can spread extremely quickly through the power of casual interaction between hundreds of people a day.

 

[Newell Steamer]

Well yea, I mean you cant spread lung cancer with a 747 can you? Or can you? :hmm:

Both are airborn agents that can result in death.

Granted, smoking (or whatever else results in lung cancer) isn't as immediately lethal, but both are something you can get, because you breath.

And, for some reason, smoking is just glossed over and pish-poshed by those who try to stop it,.. yet the results are far more worse than a nasty little virus/disease.

We've got people willing to shoot down airplanes (not here, other opinions I've read about this) over outright stopping smoking.

Lets save a little over 100 lives, but, we'll let those 160,000 go on and die.

 

[Newell Steamer]

While I'm not on the "we're all going to die" train just yet,

Cancer isn't transferrable through the air nor through contact nor is it preventable by a quarantine or something similar.

A virus is. And a particularly virulant strain can spread extremely quickly through the power of casual interaction between hundreds of people a day.

Understood.

Viral and disease outbreaks are quite serious - but, imagine if we moved this swiftly and surgically over the other types of deaths? Instead, people then preach their political ideologies on why we should NOT save people from getting lung cancer.

 

[Jaskalas]

160,000 dead people from lung cancer - no one bats an eye.

A little over 100 dead people from a virus/disease - OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE FUCKING GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS FUCKING SHIT?!?!

Media has reported a 30% fatality rate. It's natural for us to fear something that, as reported, would kill every third person. Mathematically it's quite frightening, something that would reduce the world population to 2-3 billion.

Actual facts on it, however, aren't quite as scary.

As virologist Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University notes: "MERS has been in the Middle East for some time, at least since the '90s, and hasn't spread significantly. In my view, once you find a new virus and determine that it hasn't spread for a few years, that's the end; it's not going anywhere…. I don't think this virus has even the potential that SARS did."

 

[Strk]

The flu kills more people per year than MERS has in its entire existence. And AIDS is actually a pretty easily avoidable disease (testing, condoms etc).

 

[shira]

160,000 dead people from lung cancer - no one bats an eye.

You expect them to bat their eyes? They're dead, for goodness sake!

 

[shira]

The flu kills more people per year than MERS has in its entire existence. And AIDS is actually a pretty easily avoidable disease (testing, condoms etc).

So the correct strategy is to wait until it's already killing millions, and THEN start doing something?

 

[Moonbeam]

I wonder if I caught it. I picked up something in Italy or France, and have been riding the London Underground for the past week and now everybody's seems to have what I had. I spoke with the Queen today as she entered Buckingham Palace for a garden party. Hope I didn't give anything to her.

 

[zinfamous]

160,000 dead people from lung cancer - no one bats an eye.

A little over 100 dead people from a virus/disease - OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE FUCKING GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS FUCKING SHIT?!?!

missing the point entirely.

It's not about quantified deaths. It's about the very real, very devastating threat from any pandemic.

You're only jaded because science and medicine and public policy have achieved incredible gains over the last 5 or so decades to curtail these diseases, which your grandparents would recall used to utterly devastate humanity.

Most of us learn from history. Others shout "OMG Fear-mongering! where are your priorities!" from a position of complete ignorance.

 

[Scotteq]

/shrug

The world needs a massive dose of fatal human plague. Cutting the population by 4/5ths or more would be great for world hunger, global warming, and retail housing prices...
And that's not even touching on parking at the Mall!

 

[surfsatwerk]

Media has reported a 30% fatality rate. It's natural for us to fear something that, as reported, would kill every third person. Mathematically it's quite frightening, something that would reduce the world population to 2-3 billion.

Actual facts on it, however, aren't quite as scary.

Thanks for throwing some facts around.

 

[bradly1101]

Here's a good article for you to read.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/worried-about-mers-theres-more-where-came-n113351

Thanks.

 

[Newell Steamer]

You expect them to bat their eyes? They're dead, for goodness sake!

 

[Victorian Gray]

While I'm not on the "we're all going to die" train just yet,

Cancer isn't transferrable through the air nor through contact nor is it preventable by a quarantine or something similar.

A virus is. And a particularly virulant strain can spread extremely quickly through the power of casual interaction between hundreds of people a day.

The viral cancer that I had was certainly transferable. That's how I got it.

Infectious causes of cancer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_causes_of_cancer

 

[Strk]

So the correct strategy is to wait until it's already killing millions, and THEN start doing something?

No, doctors are studying it and trying to cure it. All I'm saying is that it isn't something to lose sleep over.

 

[Victorian Gray]

And who needs jet planes?

"Climatologists don't often end up working on a cardiovascular disease that affects children. But that is exactly what Xavier Rodó from the Catalan Institute of Climate Sciences has been doing: trying to find what causes the mysterious Kawasaki disease and understand how it spreads at unusual pace within Japan and the US. The answer, he thinks, may lie in a fungus that can cross the Pacific Ocean on the prevailing winds."

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014...-rides-on-the-winds-across-the-pacific-ocean/

 

[Northern Lawn]

Bird flu is the big one I wouldn't doubt if the mutation is done by humans as an act of terrorism.

 

[feralkid]

While I'm not on the "we're all going to die" train just yet,

Cancer isn't transferrable through the air nor through contact nor is it preventable by a quarantine or something similar.

A virus is. And a particularly virulant strain can spread extremely quickly through the power of casual interaction between hundreds of people a day.

Several viruses are linked with cancer in humans.


Oops, I see V.C. already made note of that.

 

[werepossum]

You expect them to bat their eyes? They're dead, for goodness sake!

lol! +1

It'd be a pretty neat trick though.

EDIT: Forgot to add that Asian carp, like so many highly destructive, invasive species, were not spread by people travelling. The government intentionally imported them to control aquatic vegetation. Some species were imported specifically by the government and some merely allowed by the government to be imported by fish farmers, but to my knowledge none were imported accidentally such as, say, zebra mussels.

 

[allisolm]

Thanks to one promiscuous flight attendant AIDS jumped continents and infected the world. Now MERS has started in a similar way except you don't have to exchange bodily fluids to infect someone, just a handshake will do, and what about close contact on a plane? This doesn't seem like it will end well.

Fortunately for everyone, it appears that you don't get MERS from a handshake or from sitting next to someone on a plane. The CDC has said the man who supposedly contracted MERS from 2 short business meetings does NOT have MERS but instead had a false positive which further testing negated.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/me...llinois-man-didnt-have-mers-after-all-n116436