Plagues of the 21st Century?

[MonsterHunterMaster]

There was the swine flu and also a Bird flu (do you call it bird flu?) and you don't hear anything from them anymore...

[Trandoshan]

Are these diseases for real, or just hype?

 

Do you believe in 'New Age Plagues' hype?

 

ARE WE ALL GOING TO DIE?

To answer all four questions... "yes".

 

There, don't you feel better now?

 

Much better...

 

So does this mean the topic is closed? :smile:

 

>on topic<

 

A zombie plague? as in Dawn of the dead, I am Legend, or Zombie Land?

 

I still don't think that Zombie plagues will ever be a problem IRL, but you never know. Glenn Beck caught it from a procedure in the 90's, and seems to be exhibiting the symptoms.

 

On a serious note, if a disease did find some way to over-stimulate our Amygdala (Anger Control Mechanism in Brain), and our Hypothalamus (Hunger Control Center of out Brains) we would probably be snacking on each other before the day ended. Course we would not be limping and gimping to get to our prey of choosing, but...

 

Oh, and not to mention there would be no 'friendliness among other zombies'. Of course, I still don't see anything like that happening within the next 5 years. I'd rather get the bomb dropped on me anyways.

[Ghogiel]

H1N1 hit the world 90 odd years ago as well. They called it the spanish flu. It killed millions, several hundred times as deadly as the most recent form. I'm surprised no one mentioned it already. Anyways, the strain that went around last year was extremely mild in comparison. And we have standard antibiotics that are perfectly capable of holding off the worst and deadlist of its effects anyway(pneumonia). the vacine is hyped. Flu kills several hundred thousand people every year anyway. that recent swine flu was mostly hype, it could have actually been worse. I'd be surprised if there weren't less total deaths of flu last year because people/media went mental about it.

 

aids and malaria are probably the 2 biggest ones we have currently. No joke.

[rebalious]

There was the swine flu and also a Bird flu (do you call it bird flu?) and you don't hear anything from them anymore...

It only really hit the badly prepared countries. Mostly just hype/fear in my opinion.

[AncientSpaceAeon]

Smallpox killed more than 300 million people. They don't exists again however.

[Balagor]

Smallpox killed more than 300 million people. They don't exists again however.

 

Over a 100 year period. Hardly a pandemic.

[Maigrets]

Smallpox killed more than 300 million people. They don't exists again however.

 

 

Smallpox does still exist in laboratories and is being studied in case of biological terrorism. In the event of a resurgence they have millions of doses of the vaccine stockpiled. But then I don't believe everything I read when it comes to Governments and their motives.

 

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/prep/cdc-prep.asp

[evilneko]

The potential for a pandemic is easily there. People in general are nasty, and don't wash their hands nearly often enough. With that in mind, let's play a hypothetical game and follow a disease from "patient zero" to outbreak.

 

Patient Zero is infected with a disease, he may know it or he may not, either way it doesn't matter -- people are nasty. His flight has just landed at an American international airport, arriving from outside the country. On his way through customs, he's made to put his finger on a scanner (true story). Now, he may have coughed on this hand, so his finger may be harboring germs for this hypothetical disease. Some of these are left behind on the scanner.

 

Unfortunately, the DHS agents don't even so much as give the scanner a quick wipe between passengers (also true story). The next several passengers through all pick up these germs from the scanner. Of these, a certain percentage develop infections. We've gone from one infected to an unknown number in just a few minutes time. We'll say six, out of two dozen that were exposed. The rest of the exposed may still pass on the disease to others for a limited time (eg, until they wash their damn hands). The infected will eventually become contagious and begin spreading the disease as well, even if they do wash their hands in the meantime.

 

Each of the 24 exposed comes into contact with at least four people, exposing all of them to the disease. Now we have 120 exposed.....

 

And on, and on, and if some of those exposed, or worse fully infected, gets on a plane.... well, you can see how things can get out of hand very quickly, even when assuming physical contact is required for transmission!

 

The main mitigating factors are how much exposure it takes to develop an infection, and how long the disease (whether virus, bacteria, or parasite) can survive "in the open" so to speak. The biggest mitigating factor though, is people washing their damned hands!

 

Cripes I thought we learned this crap in kindergarten, but spending time out in the real world, I can't count how many times I've seen people go to the bathroom and not wash their hands. And if they do that, you think they're gonna wash before eating, or after touching something remotely dirty? Hand sanitizer, fools! Do you speak it?! I used to think my coworker was paranoid for wiping down his keyboard, mouse, even his monitor with alcohol wipes at the start of his shift, and keeping a bottle of hand sanitizer. A couple days of paying attention to the hygiene habits of others changed that. :sick:

 

A large part of the reason H1N1 was such a relative flop was people were actually doing these things because of the media blitz. Hand sanitizer stations popped up everywhere, not just around my college campus but in public and work places as well. As well, more people got flu shots than traditionally would. A pandemic is imminently possible, but the media hype machine can quickly scare people into taking appropriate precautions. Thus, unless a disease has a fairly significant incubation period, I think things look alright for us in this regard.

 

Okay. Rant mode off.

[Balagor]

Where I come from, we wash our hands. :yucky:

[Trandoshan]

The potential for a pandemic is easily there. People in general are nasty, and don't wash their hands nearly often enough. With that in mind, let's play a hypothetical game and follow a disease from "patient zero" to outbreak.

 

Patient Zero is infected with a disease, he may know it or he may not, either way it doesn't matter -- people are nasty. His flight has just landed at an American international airport, arriving from outside the country. On his way through customs, he's made to put his finger on a scanner (true story). Now, he may have coughed on this hand, so his finger may be harboring germs for this hypothetical disease. Some of these are left behind on the scanner.

 

Unfortunately, the DHS agents don't even so much as give the scanner a quick wipe between passengers (also true story). The next several passengers through all pick up these germs from the scanner. Of these, a certain percentage develop infections. We've gone from one infected to an unknown number in just a few minutes time. We'll say six, out of two dozen that were exposed. The rest of the exposed may still pass on the disease to others for a limited time (eg, until they wash their damn hands). The infected will eventually become contagious and begin spreading the disease as well, even if they do wash their hands in the meantime.

 

Each of the 24 exposed comes into contact with at least four people, exposing all of them to the disease. Now we have 120 exposed.....

 

And on, and on, and if some of those exposed, or worse fully infected, gets on a plane.... well, you can see how things can get out of hand very quickly, even when assuming physical contact is required for transmission!

 

The main mitigating factors are how much exposure it takes to develop an infection, and how long the disease (whether virus, bacteria, or parasite) can survive "in the open" so to speak. The biggest mitigating factor though, is people washing their damned hands!

 

Cripes I thought we learned this crap in kindergarten, but spending time out in the real world, I can't count how many times I've seen people go to the bathroom and not wash their hands. And if they do that, you think they're gonna wash before eating, or after touching something remotely dirty? Hand sanitizer, fools! Do you speak it?! I used to think my coworker was paranoid for wiping down his keyboard, mouse, even his monitor with alcohol wipes at the start of his shift, and keeping a bottle of hand sanitizer. A couple days of paying attention to the hygiene habits of others changed that. :sick:

 

A large part of the reason H1N1 was such a relative flop was people were actually doing these things because of the media blitz. Hand sanitizer stations popped up everywhere, not just around my college campus but in public and work places as well. As well, more people got flu shots than traditionally would. A pandemic is imminently possible, but the media hype machine can quickly scare people into taking appropriate precautions. Thus, unless a disease has a fairly significant incubation period, I think things look alright for us in this regard.

 

Okay. Rant mode off.

 

I agreed with every statement posted here. This is exactly where I wanted this thread to go. As student who is studying medicine, I can honestly say that washing your hands -- Is Fatally useless -- that is with soap.

 

Here in my state, many of the restrooms we have contain non-antibacterial soaps. My college has the same problems, and I'll tell you why just washing your hands will not totally remove bacteria from your hand. In some cases it increases the amount of bacteria on your hands(Exposed).

 

The purpose of soap was never meant to be the elimination of bacteria from your hands, but more of a substance that emulsifies the oily substance on your skin. Based on experience in the lab, washing your hands removes the layer of oil on top of your skin. What lies under that layer of oil? More god-forsaken bacteria. The experiment that I carried out proved that even 'anti-bacterial' soap is useless unless applied so vigorously that you start rubbing the top player of your skin off. However, I am happy to inform that washing your hands with soap, and then applying hand-sanitizer (alcohol based only) does a good job of removing most of the bacteria (and some viruses) on your hands off.

 

The problem with that, however, is who the hell will spend 3-5 minutes washing their hands! Certainly not every moment that you come in contact with a surface that may contain a deadly virus, and trust me, bacteria and viruses are, of course, on every surface known to man. It is the fact that bacteria and viruses(also definitely not killed by anti-bacterial handwash) are so ubiquitous that it makes hand-washing obsolete in most cases. Paraphrasing my argument, even hand-washing is pretty useless.

 

OF COURSE, wash your hands after using that hand for toilet paper. There is no doubt that it helps with disease-control, but calling it the greatest mitigating factor is controversial. You can't rule out the other vectors of transmission. Droplet(Sneezing in an elevator), and mechanical (Mosquitos/West Nile) may also cause a patient zero scenario.

 

By the way, you didn't mention whether the pathogen was airborne :smile:. Everyone who was on the plane would have been exposed long before he ever touched his hand to a scanner. Just a thought.