Why the mediatic diseases don’t kill so much.

Ebola is a serial killer, between 50% and 90% of its victims die, depending on the quality of medical care they get. It appears to be highly contageous, as it is transmitted via body fluids, including sweat. Shaking a sweaty hand is enough to get infected. But how many times do you actually come in contact with someone’s body fluids ? If you don’t drink in their glasses, don’t smoke their cigarettes, don’t wrestle with them… most of the close contacts happen within the family. Therefore, Ebola epidemies are rather slow and many of the victims are to be found within the health care workers.

The MERS is also a slow disease, it requires close and prolongued contacts with ill people to catch it. SARS was a bit faster, but like Ebola it killed mostly the health workers.

Avian flu can be transmitted only from birds (mostly poultry) to humans, not between humans. Unless you come into close contact with poultry (like being a farmer or a seller), you have almost zero chance to get infected.

The famous pig flu pandemic killed less people than a regular flu. It got called “pandemy” only because three weeks before the outbreak, the WHO conveniently re-defined the word “pandemy”, erasing the lethality factor from it, in order to let people and governments panick and buy hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. You can already guess who got rich from it. Some countries like Belgium even signed a non-responsibility contract with GSK (the manufacturer of the vaccine) clearly stating that the company wouldn’t be prosecuted for ANY malfunction of the vaccine. Should it have wiped out 50% of the population, it would have gotten away with it. But the flu itself was just a mild one, it killed only the weakest people.

How a disease can turn dangerous for the world.

These diseases are all caused by virusses. A virus is a microscopic organism that reproduces extremely fast once it’s inside a host. Thanks to its reproduction speed, it can also evolve pretty quickly. Mammals need millions of years to evolve… a virus can do this in a few weeks time.

Here are the three possible scenarios for a lethal pandemy :

1. Avian flu. The virus can mutate at any given time and become transmissible between human beings, like a regular flu, but a lot more lethal. However, a “positive” mutation can also be accompanied by a “negative” one. By becoming transmissible, there’s also a chance that the virus will see its lethality decrease, but it’s only a chance.
2. Pig flu. This virus could evolve into a more lethal kind. It’s less likely than the avian flu becoming transmissible between humans because it makes less sense. Don’t forget that the main purpose of any virus is simply to perpetuate its specie. Killing people is only collateral damage. If the pig flu can perpetuate itself without mass-murdering humans, it will do so.
3. Ebola. The main concern with Ebola (or the MERS virus) is that it becomes airborne. This means that the virus can survive for a short period of time outside of the body or body fluids. If an infected person sneezes, the virus will contaminate other people in the room, just like the common cold virusses do. Should it happen, humanity will face its worst killer yet… our only hope would be that the virus also loses some lethality during that mutation.

How to protect ourselves from a pandemy.

As soon as a lethal pandemy breaks out, authorities will have to implement specific measures : closing down airports and borders, isolating confirmed cases and putting suspected cases in quarantine.

Individuals will also have to perform specific things. The first of them is to get educated on the disease, find out how it spreads and how to recognize the symptoms. Then adopt protective behaviors, like avoiding to come into contact with a body fluid, not touching one’s face before having carefully washed his hands (even this could be weak as the stomach flu virus is so contageous that it can survive a thorough hand washing with soap). Each home should have an isolation room ready where a suspected case within the family will be locked until the proper authorities can deal with him.

Bad behaviors that can help the disease spread.

Lack of education and conspiracy theories are the worst case scenarios. This can be witnessed in the current Ebola epidemy.

1. Lack of education : people have no idea how the virus spreads and continue touching one another, sharing glasses, cigarettes, sporting together. People with symptoms are kept at home and taken care of by unprotected family members or friends.
2. Conspiracy theories : the manipulation described hereabove about the Pig flu “pandemy” really doesn’t help. During an outbreak, some people will deny the existence (or the dagerosity) of the disease and adopt risky bevahiors, or even force their realtives into dangerous situations. If an outbreak is declared, you must absolutely compile as much information as you can about it and analyse it as objectively as possible in order to increase your chances of guessing it right : is it a genuine pandemy, or just a digusting manipulation like the pig flu pandemy ? (A future article will give you some clues as to how you can debunk a fake theory, but do know that no method is 100% reliable.)